Page 15

“Young Lady. You nearly fainted during last morning’s lesson,” Agatha chided.

“That happened one time.”

“It happened twice,” corrected Agatha.

Caelyn coughed suspiciously into his fist and quickly turned his attention elsewhere.

Elowynn pointed an accusing finger toward him. “You told her!”

“I value your continued survival,” he said with a shrug.

“Stars take me, you are both terribly dramatic! I am fine!” she whined.

Agatha crossed toward the central table before setting the books down with a heavy thump. “You possess the constitution of damp parchment, child. Sit before you collapse onto my observatory floor and become an inconvenience to not only me, but the healers who will need to deal with your choices of drinking tea all sun rather than eat any sort of real food.” She pointed at a chair with one gnarled finger, eyes blazing.

Elowynn sighed but obeyed, dropping into the chair with decidedly unladylike reluctance. She folded her arms across her chest and wore a thoroughly put-upon expression.

Caelyn pressed his lips together, turning away from Elowynn’s ferocious glare as he fought to suppress a laugh.

The truth was that she had never been particularly strong in any physical sense. Even at Astermere, she had preferred observatories and libraries over riding lessons or blade training, much to her father’s endless amusement and her mother’s exasperation. Since arriving at Lumenshire, that tendency had only worsened. Elowynn would happily spend entire suns buried among resonance texts if left unsupervised with only tea for company.

Which was precisely why Agatha and Caelyn rarely left her unsupervised anymore.

Agatha opened one of the heavy books atop the table and adjusted her spectacles. “The lesson of this sun concerns harmonic drift beneath weakened currents.”

Elowynn straightened right up, all thoughts of betrayal about her eating habits forgotten.

Caelyn muttered something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like, “There goes the rest of the mid-sun.”

Agatha and Elowynn ignored him entirely.

For the next several bells, the observatory filled with the sound of turning pages, the wind howling outside as the bells clanged, and Elowynn passionately arguing with nearly everything Agatha said.

“That stabilization sequence is inefficient,” Elowynn insisted while leaning over one of the diagrams spread across the table. “The pressure would collapse inward before the resonance could properly disperse.”

“It functioned adequately for nearly two hundred turnings,” Agatha replied calmly.

“That does not mean it functioned well,” Elowynn countered.

Agatha stared at her with a bland expression. “Remarkable. Centuries of Astrari theory undone by a child of only thirteen turnings. All before the evening bell tolls!”

Elowynn narrowed her eyes as color crept into her cheeks and the tips of her pointed ears.

“Well, you did not have to say it like that,” she muttered.

Caelyn, who had remained near the hearth repairing the lantern components throughout most of the lesson, made the mistake of laughing aloud.

Elowynn scowled in his direction. “Hush! You are not part of this discussion.”

“I didn't say anything,” he replied, his hands coming up in a placating gesture, but the grin was still plastered on his face.

“You laughed,” she said.

“That was involuntary,” he said while trying to stifle his amusement.

Agatha sighed and reached up to remove her spectacles, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Why do you only become unbearable when he is nearby?”

Silence. Deafening silence.