“Stay away from me,” I hiss, wrench open the door, and leave.
As I’m hunched over a mocha in the student center—a regular mocha, no extra shots or potions; I triple-checked with the barista—an email pings on my phone.
It’s from Dr. Davyeras.
My heart sinks, reliving my interaction with Elethior and, again, wondering if he pulled strings to oust me. I’m pretty sure that’ll be a concern of mine until I have my degree firmly in hand, because what’s stopping him? He has the family heft to make my life very, very shitty.
I gulp the rest of my mocha, crack my neck, and open the email.
The first line is asking how I like the lab space, so I let myself breathe again.
But as I read, tension creeps back over me.
As part of your commitment to excellence through the Mageus Research Grant, you will be expected to participate in two university events.
The first is this Saturday, a welcome-back cocktail party on campus. An invitation will shortly be sent to you with the details.
The second will be part of the Lesiara Founder’s Day festivities prior to spring break.
Attendance at both is mandatory.
I don’t let myself do more than absorb this at surface level. I toss my coffee cup, grab my bag, and head back to the lab.
Elethior’s still there, bent over open books, scribbling notes on a crowded piece of paper. He doesn’t look up, so I don’t say anything, just cross to my desk and pull all my stuff back out.
When I have nothing else to busy my hands, I flop into my chair and stare at the wall above my workstation. “You get the email from Davyeras?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Elethior’s head lift.
He must not have. He shuffles through his books and papers until he unearths his phone.
A beat of silence passes as he reads.
“Shit,” he hisses, so low I wonder if I wasn’t meant to hear.
“What’s wrong? Worried they won’t have the right vintage of wine at the cocktail party?”
Elethior tosses his phone onto his desk. The position of our workstations is in an L shape, with his back to me while I face the wall, which honestly makes talking to him easier. Maybe this is how we’ll survive the next semester: having full conversations with the ether instead of each other.
“Yeah,” he says dryly. “Last time, they ran out of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti.”
He’s quiet when I scowl at his hair.
Was that a joke? I sort through it, trying to figure out how it was at my expense. Or maybe it was him showing off a flawless pronunciation to be pretentious.
Then he adds, “Just hate being on parade.”
And that, more than offering to fix Nick’s invisibility, feels like an apology. It’s his tone, his words raw in a way that’s—that’s—wrong.
Don’t try tobondwith me, jerk.
“Then drop out of the grant,” I tell him and open a textbook. “It looks like this is the beginning of ourcommitment to excellence,and I’ll be at this cocktail party all set to charm the pants off the donors and board members if you can’t handle it.”
Elethior bends back over his own desk. “I have work to do. Stop bothering me.”
My mouth opens, ready to rip into him again, but I clench my jaw. I have work to do, too, if I’m going to go to this party with any update on my plans for the semester and how I’ll be using this grant money. It won’t be as the committee intended, with Elethior, so I’ll have to make my project sound strong enough on its own.
Elethior and I spend the next few hours ignoring each other in a tense, living silence. But nobody’s dead by the time I leave for my shift at the library, so I’d call that a successful first day.
