Chapter 48

“You’re getting better,” Tess said.

“That is the point of practice.”

“Faster than most, I meant. Or, even more frankly, faster than I expected, with how you started out.”

Natalie snorted. She didn’t take offense. Struggling with spellcasting had her temper fraying faster than most things did, but she didn’t mind being called bad. It was self-apparent. Plus, it made Tess’s praise that much more meaningful. Though, the praise hadn’t been that she was good—just getting better faster than expected. Still, small victories.

“It’s all I’ve been doing, so I hope so,” Natalie said, shrugging. “Been neglecting everything else, pretty much. And lots of that is probably more important than messing around with a single illusion spell.” As a paladin, being her team’s frontline would require more traditional fighter skillsets than it did spellcasting ones. Just, she wanted passing competency with it. Maybe that was a bad idea?

“The age old question,” Tess mused, mirroring her thoughts. “Train to improve your deficiencies, or train to hone your strengths. Which is a better use of time?”

“And the answer?”

“It depends.”

Dryly, Natalie said, “Real useful advice, that.”

“Oh, no. The world is nuanced. Certain questions don’t have simple answers. Such a novel discovery.”

“Smartass.” Despite her response, a smile had found its way onto Natalie’s lips. Tess’s dry—even snippish—sense of humor had been something she’d only gotten hints of yesterday, but which had come out in force during practice today. Just with Natalie, though. She remained polite with the others. Did that mean...?

“Smartass?” Tess quoted. “Students are supposed to respect their instructors, you know.”

“Good thing you’re not an instructor.”

Tess looked around at the gathered students and raised a neatly trimmed eyebrow. The upperclassmen really had such stern poise to her. More of an air of ‘instructor’ than most actual Tenet faculty did. She didn’t come off as only a few years older than Natalie.

“I’m not?” Tess asked. “And all this is, then?” She swept a hand out at her collected students.

“Not a real instructor,” Natalie clarified, though Tess had known what she meant. “And even if you were, what? Gonna punish me for talking back?” After yesterday’s fantasies, the accidental innuendo had Natalie’s heart skipping a beat. “Wash my mouth out?” Hopefully Tess hadn’t noticed the way she stumbled.

She rolled her eyes, so she probably hadn’t. That was good.

Patting her shoulder and turning, Tess said, “Keep it up. You won’t need to be in my course for long, I can tell.”

“Wait.”

Tess paused, body still turned, about to move to the next student. “Yes?”

“Uh.” Telling her to stop hadn’t been fully intentional. Like usual, Natalie’s impulses had guided her. Oh, well. There’d been an idea she’d been considering, so she might as well try, right?

“I was wondering if you wanted to, uh, show me around the mage’s guild.”

Her eyebrows went up. She faced back to Natalie, crossing her arms. She seemed unimpressed. That was a default expression of Tess’s, but in this situation especially? A first-week freshmen hitting on a third year? Especially a girl like Tess?

Not that Natalie was discouraged. Hitting on girls out of her league didn’t scare her. Was kinda fun, actually. She stuffed her hands in her pockets, shrugged, then smiled.

“I know it’s, like, a secret rule you should stick with one guild, and I’ll probably be going with tank. But still. I’d like to look around. Maybe talk about it, a bit.” Then, just in case Tess hadn’t picked up her real intent: “And maybe after, we can hang out? Get something to eat, or whatever?”

Her expression didn’t change, so she had sussed out Natalie’s goal. Or was especially good at not reacting. That would hardly be a rare trait at Tenet.

Natalie would like if she didn’t have to be so blatant about things, but she didn’t have much choice. Straddling the line between being ‘grossly obvious’ and ‘obvious enough’ could be hard. But was necessary. One of the woes of being a girl that liked girls. She had to bludgeon potential partners with her intent. Else all sorts of misunderstandings could happen.

Because some people were unimaginably dense when it came to romance. Natalie was fortunate she wasn’t one of them, but others, she knew, weren’t spared from that fate.

Tess’s scrutiny lasted long enough most people probably would’ve started squirming. Natalie almost did, but while Tess was cute, and she did want to get to know her better, this was hardly some long-standing confession. She wasn’t that anxious.

“Only if you want to,” Natalie offered. “I think it could be fun.”