My foolish chest was all aflutter. The new student, Tez.
I wrestled my traitorous heart into submission before he could notice my gobsmacked expression. Fortunately, he appeared engrossed in a book whose spine must have been three inches thick. But his focus on it seemed rather deliberate, considering I was standing no more than ten feet from him.
As I paused, a tiny bird emerged from beneath his hair. It took flight, and he made a grab for it, but it nimbly evaded him and darted toward me.
It hovered in front of my face, and chirped. For some reason, I shifted my heavy books to one arm before raising a finger—and to my astonishment, it perched upon it.
“Who is this?” I asked him.
The expression he now directed to his pet could best be described as a glare. Not something to be dismissed, it hardened every plane of his face and gave him a vibe best not tangled with in dark places. It also temporarily robbed me of breath.
A muscle jumped in his cheek as he replied, “Her name is Nemi.”
I managed to wheeze, “That’s pretty.”
His brows dropped. “My grandmother named her.”
The bird took off again when the books started to slip from my grasp, and I grabbed at them. Sort of. I made a lunge for the table, and dropped them onto it.
“Do you mind if I sit here?” I asked.
The tiny bird had returned to his shoulder. He hesitated, and to my astonishment, her wing rose up and thwapped him along the back of his head.
He said, “Go ahead. I’m leaving soon, anyway.”
The bird pecked him hard in the side of his neck, and he winced, ever so slightly.
“She’s hard on you,” I commented.
“You’ve no idea,” he said with a fair amount of emphasis.
I sat down. As we were now across the table from each other, it became apparent that he was avoiding looking right at me. So instead I glanced at the book opened in front of him. It took me a moment to read the title.Residents Of The Realms—A Synopsis Of Realmian Cultures.
“Is that a textbook?” I asked.
“What? Oh—no, I’m just looking up some stuff.” He set the book down. The page he’d been reading offered a drawing of a two-legged being resembling a lizard, with a long tail.
“Don’t think I’ve ever met one of those,” I said.
He glanced to the picture. “I have. You have to watch out for the tail. And they spit acid, too.”
“Must come in handy, if someone attacks them.”
His mouth quirked. “Not as handy as you might think.” He shot a glance down the aisle. “Where’s your muscle-bound friend?”
His tone was casual, but rather deliberately so, and I thought I detected the merest hint of derision. Why was he asking about Riggs? “I don’t know,” I admitted.
“Are you two together?”
Why did my chest suddenly hurt? I countered with, “That’s a rather nosy question.”
It startled me when his eyes flared turquoise. “I’m a rather nosy guy.” His gaze moved to the hilt looming over my shoulder, and his arched brows drew down.
“Isn’t that your boyfriend’s sword?”
“What? I never said he was my boyfriend.”
“Then why do you have his sword?”
