Page 164 of Glutton for Punishment

Like they’re cataloguing me….

Or maybe it’s just my paranoia. It’s been a stressful week.

I reach the corridor outside my room and stop as realization hit. The buzz cut detail is still gone. Considering where I’m going, I guess that’s a positive thing. The door to Professor Nikolai Gabriel’s office is closed when I arrive.

I knock once, then hear his calm, controlled voice say, “Come in.”

Professor Gabriel is leaning over his desk with a pen, grading papers. He’s wearing glasses, and that same damn adorable loose strand of brown hair has fallen across his forehead again. When his grey eyes lift from the page and find mine, I forget what I came here to say.“Arwen.” He straightens, squaring the papers in front of him into a neat stack. “It’s been a while. I thought you’d decided not to come.”

“Yeah, there’s been a lot going on,” I reply, closing the door behind me. “And I had to figure out how to ditch my escort team.”

A faint flicker of amusement crosses his face.

“Well, I’m glad Maddox has them watching over you after what happened with the explosion. We were lucky that only a few were injured. But I’m sure it puts a damper on your more nefarious activities.”

I huff a laugh, “Like I have nefarious activities?”

“So, no more late night excursions in pigtails, I take it?”

Embarrassment floods my face as I shift my bag off my shoulder and place it on the chair opposite him. I unzip it as I bite my lip, forcing my mind back to the task at hand and away from the mortifying night between his knees.

Fully clothed, of course. Fully drunk and fully unwanted.

“I brought the relics, as you asked.”

That sharpens his attention.

I dig them out of the bottom of my bag where they’re hidden under a jacket. Carefully, I place them one by one on his desk. Instead of moving to touch them, he assesses them intently.

He reaches for the smallest one first. A small jade green stone the size of a grape. As his fingers hover over it, a small energy pulses around it, and I can tell he’s analyzing it with his magic. Interesting…

“This one is pretty ordinary,” he says after a moment. “Or as ordinary as an illegal relic can be. It’s meant to preserve paper. Documents. Anything placed beneath it resists fire, water, and decay. Useful for ensuring the life of a contract or important records. Thankfully, not that dangerous.”

He sets it down.

“It also hasn’t been activated.”

I stay quiet as he continues his studies. Fascinated by the little things I’ve been carrying around and excited to know what they do.

He picks up the larger, orange one next. It’s about the size of a plum but flat, almost transparent and covered in etchings. He pauses before testing it, almost like he already knows what it is. Once his magic prods at it, his eyes narrow.

“Ah,” he murmurs. “This is interesting.”

He turns it slowly between his fingers.

“A truth stone. If activated, anyone within a limited radius experiences severe pain when speaking a lie.”

My eyebrows raise. “That’s… useful. And frightening.”

His gaze sharpens. “Highly useful. But you’re correct. It’s also dangerous because they can reveal you are using a relic to others, since they would feel the pain. They were used during the early Sloth uprisings to detect infiltration. Once the rebels were eradicated, most of these relics were destroyed.”

He sets it down with careful precision, like it might detonate. “Clearly, it’s not activated.”

My eyes drift to the last stone, a small, plain brown rock. It doesn’t look as mystic as the other two, but it’s the one I’m most familiar with.

Professor Gabriel reaches for it, and the moment he touches it, something in his expression changes. “…Ah,” he says softly. “This relic is active. Amazing, I can feel it without even using my magic to probe. It’s a healing stone.”

I nod, very familiar with its abilities from my time in Greed.