Chapter 18 Sneak Peek! - Stormweaver II

Early sneak peek for an early chapter coming tomorrow! Friday morning I'm going to be (hopefully) swamped with a special event you guys will get an announcement for, so I wanted to get 18 to you ahead of time so there was no conflict! Enjoy!

***********

“Are you really the Prince?” the same boy asked, sounding outright amused now. “I mean we’d heard he was small, but come on. Are you a stand-in? Did they pay you to die your hair like Wards?”

Rei would have laughed out loud had Catcher not stiffened in the middle of passing the plate as request, his fingers suddenly latched onto the potatoes so firmly Rei couldn’t pull them from his friend’s grip.

“Come again?” Catcher asked the Maston’s cadet, who was lucky it was the Saber who had gotten a word in first. Viv looked ready to murder, and glancing sideways Rei noticed that even Aria and Cashe had gone pale.

“Hey man, I’m just checking,” the Maston’s boy answered, and ven without turning—and as he fruitlessly continued to tug the dish from Catcher’s frozen fingers between them—Rei could tell the he was smiling. “It would make sense, wouldn’t it? Galens keeping their secret weapon out of sight?”

No, it made no sense, but the first year knew that. They all knew that. For one thing Aria was still probably seeded higher than Rei despite their matching ranks, given she’d qualified undefeated for Sectionals. For another, there wasn’t a single person in that hall that could image a world where the ISCM would allow such asinine theatrics in our around their precious SCTs.

The Marston group had come angling for some kind of reaction—maybe in some desperate bid to throw Firesong off their game—and they was getting it.

What was more, when no one spoke for a moment—every Galen’s student in the vicinity at a loss given the logic that had just been presented to them—the boy decided to press his advantage, addressing the back of Rei’s head now.

“I mean even if you are the Prince, that’s only good for us. Must mean Galen’s is slipping. How else could—”

Then, though, he was interrupted by a cool, clear voice.

“What’s your name, first year?”

There was an audible snap of a jaw closing, and Rei had to suppress a choke of laughter as everyone within a 10 foot radius of them went completely still immediately. Even Catcher jerked, finally allowing the potatoes to be freed from his grip, and as soon as they were safe on the table again Rei couldn’t help but look down the table.

Lennon was looking over him at the Maston’s group, taking them in with the sort of bored expression one tended to keep for a particularly plain breadth of cement wall.

After a second of no reply, he asked his question again, tilting his head slightly over his plate so that his grayish dreads shifted out of his blue eyes.

“I asked you what your name was, first year.”

This time, the answer came, though in a much higher pitch than Rie suspected the boy had ever previously spoken in his life.

“A-Adam, sir…”

Rei almost felt bad for the poor guy. He knew all too-well what it was like to catch the Lasher’s attention when you didn’t want it, just like he knew all too-well how hard it was not to call the A9 “sir” even if they were technically the same rank.

“Your last name, first year,” Lennon pressed cooly.

“Uh… Digs, sir.”

“Adam Digs…” Lennon muttered with only the faintest hint of annoyance, frame coming to life in his eyes as the other third years of Steelbound looked to be trying hard not to snickered all around him. “Digs… Ah, here you are. Maston’s. Mauler. C…” He smirked suddenly “My apologies. D9.” He closed his NOED again and jerked his head pointedly up the aisle towards the rest of the milling schools. “If you’ve got something of value to say to our underclassman, Digs, you can spit it out now. Otherwise, move on. At D9, I can assure you’re about as interesting to Cadet Ward as you are to me.”

The tension broke, and there was a roll of laughter from up and down the rest of the Galen’s table at this, echoed by a choke of noise from behind Rei and a stammering of apology. Next thing he knew the Maston’s first years were gone—all but sprinting away—and Rei looked at Lennon with a grin.

“I could have handled them, you know?”

The Lasher nodded and shrugged, returning his attention to his plate. “I’m sure. But you get to punch their lights out on the field. I don’t. Let me have my fun.”