Page 57 of Serpent and Shadow

“Don’t apologize,” he cut in, his voice a touch harsh. “You were following the assignment. And it’s about time, too. I’ve been waiting for you to actually get angry enough to hit me for a change. Rather than dancing around the edges and glaring at me like I’m the one torturing your husband in that damned tower.”

My whole body tensed before the words fully landed. Once they did, I bit my lip, fighting a rage so intense I briefly couldn’t see.

“What?” he taunted. “Was it something I said?”

Still clenching my jaw, I lowered my hands. After staring at him a beat longer, I turned and walked back to where I’d left my satchel by the wall.

“You’re not leaving?” He let out a derisive snort. “After you finally got a hit in? What, did Bones get pissy when managed to knock him down?”

“I never got hits on Bones,” I said coldly. “Not unless he let me.”

That’s not exactly true, wife. There was that one time––

“I have to be somewhere,” I blurted, cutting him off. I bent down to grab the satchel’s strap. “I can come back tomorrow, if you have time.”

Quicksilver scoffed, running a hand through his short black hair, but his voice came out brusque. “Sure. After lunch. One o’clock.”

I nodded, not trusting myself to answer.

With Bones’s presence all around me, making it hard to breathe, much less think straight, I just wanted to get the hell out of there.

I saw something in Quicksilver’s eyes change as he looked at me. I had a momentary bout of panic where I wondered if he’d noticed something. Could he see the difference in my magical aura? I definitely didn’t intend to wait around to find out.

I hitched the strap over my head and settled the satchel by my hip.

“Tomorrow, then,” I said, nodding.

I turned to go, but Quicksilver stopped me.

“Wait,” he said, his voice subdued.

I bit my lip. After a too-long pause, I turned around. “What?”

“Bones really taught you that? That sequence of spells?”

The taunting note had gone out of his voice, so after a pause, I nodded.

“Did he teach you any others?” Quicksilver asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Bones was big on combinations.”

When Quicksilver only stood there, waiting for me to go on, I sighed. I used my wrapped hand to brush that piece of now-sweaty hair out of my eyes.

“…He was fairly tiresome about it, most days,” I admitted, my own voice growing subdued. “He would annihilate me whenever I tried to get him with a single attack spell. He never let up on that, maybe because I weighed a lot less than him.”

At Quicksilver’s raised eyebrow, I averted my gaze.

“He wanted me to hit him with three or four spells, at minimum. Sometimes as many as seven or eight, before I went for the real attack.”

Quicksilver nodded, his expression unchanging.

That time, he didn’t smile. He didn’t even smirk.

“He was right,” he said, matter of fact. “But now that you’ve told me that, I’m going to adjust my strategy to compensate. You must realize that?”

He threw a cloud of dark blue at my head.

I knocked it aside with a hasty shield.