Chapter 32

Under Tess’s tutelage, Natalie made surprisingly good progress. Certainly more than she had by herself, bashing her head against a wall back at Tinford. While Titus—her, Jordan, and Sofia’s primary mentor—knew his way around weapons, he was as poor at spellcasting as Natalie. That might’ve been one of the reasons she’d been hopeless at it. With proper training, she hoped she could crawl out of mediocrity. Or maybe to mediocrity, by Tenet standards.

At 9:20, a bell rang through the training facility, announcing that personal hours were over, and that it was time for Natalie to make her way to her class for official training—spars, primarily, which doubled as combat instruction.

Admittedly, she was anticipatory as she trekked through the polished halls of the facility, headed for the sparring room her schedule indicated. It was time to meet her class ... the fifteen other individuals she’d be spending the year with. And fighting against.

Or, thirteen. She’d only be meeting thirteen of them, because two, she already knew. In either a stroke of unlikely coincidence or intentional arrangement by Tenet—Natalie suspected the second—she, Jordan, and Sofia had been put in the same class; they’d noticed it at lunch by comparing classroom numbers.

Sheer chance seemed unlikely, so Tenet must have grouped them together intentionally. It was a given the process wasn’t entirely random, because they needed to balance a classroom’s composition to have a roughly equal spread of roles—some mages, some fighters, and so on.

But that they lumped students together with more deliberation than just composition did come as a surprise. Not that Natalie was complaining. It meant she and Jordan were in the same class. Though, Sofia too, so not wholly ideal. But worth it, in the long run, especially since the three of them were teaming. It wasn’t like Natalie hadn’t already spent years tolerating her rival’s presence. Just part of life, at this point.

Finding the appropriately marked number, Natalie walked into the sparring room she would be becoming intensely acquainted with over the following year.

Naturally, Natalie’s eyes sought out Jordan, who had turned to see who had arrived—probably waiting for Natalie. Natalie raised a hand in greeting, gave a begrudging nod to Sofia as well, who was next to Jordan, then scanned the rest of her classmates as she walked over.

Most had arrived, though at a brief survey, one or two hadn’t. They still had a few minutes before they’d be late.

Natalie recognized another of her classmates, which, considering the size of Tenet’s years, was more than she could have hoped for. It was the girl with short black hair—one bright streak of blue—who had been talking the ear off of a rather unenthusiastic-looking blonde bed-neighbor back at the barracks.

Like the first time Natalie had seen her, she was chatting up a storm, and again, to someone who didn’t match her eagerness in half. Though, that’d be hard, considering how animated the girl was. The boy at least didn’t look like he wanted to be away ... he just seemed bored. Though, more of a passive boredom, like an expression he always wore. He nodded along here and there, adding to the conversation when appropriate.