***

  Another bright morning began with Mia joining Calypso and me at breakfast.

  Yes, both Calypso and me — for once he had woken up early and hadn’t wanted to let me go. Which, I won’t lie, was incredibly nice.

  “Thank you,” the elf said in a confiding tone, looking at me with admiration.

  “For what?” I didn’t understand.

  Mia was glowing with happiness, practically radiating light. Though it seemed to me she wasn’t far from literally glowing.

  “Your ritual works perfectly,” the elf gave me a thumbs up.

  “What ritual?” I didn’t immediately understand.

  “You know! For attracting a man into your life!”

  That’s when I finally realized what she was talking about, and I choked on my cheese sandwich, remembering what spectacular nonsense I had spouted in that previous conversation.

  Calypso apparently also quickly remembered my tales of the great “man-attracting ritual,” because he set his glass of ginger tea aside and covered his rapidly widening grin with his hand.

  “Ah… So you… Um… Followed my advice, then?” I asked cautiously.

  “Went out to the academy’s inner courtyard at night, um, stark naked and all that?..”

  “Well, I was terribly embarrassed at first…” the elf sighed, thoughtfully twirling a blonde lock of hair around her finger.

  “I bet,” I thought to myself, unable to imagine how the quiet, gentle elf had worked up the nerve to follow my ridiculous advice and dance naked.

  “But then I got into it!” Mia added enthusiastically, smiling shyly.

  “At first I was dancing very stiffly, but then, you know, I rea-a-ally got into it! I’m dancing away, dancing, chanting everything like you told me, and then I saw Nolan’s coming! Yeah, that guy from the seventh group.”

  “And you just… right there?..”

  “Well, yeah. You said I had to grab the guy by the…” Mia didn’t finish, but expressively clenched her hand into a fist, shaking it in front of her.

  “So I grabbed him!”

  Holy shit.

  My jaw dropped, and the remaining piece of cheese slid off my bread onto the table. I stared at my classmate in shock, not knowing what to say, trying to hold back the laughter that was bursting to get out.

  Calypso wasn’t holding back. He was laughing so hard that tears were streaming down his face.

  “You’re laughing at me again,” Mia pouted.

  “What did I even say this time?!”

  “Everything’s fine, Mia, I’m just impressed,” Calypso said, finally calming down.

  “I’m genuinely impressed with you. You’re an amazing girl. So quiet and modest on the outside, and so bold on the inside… We’ve really got a whole season of still-waters-run-deep girls going on, don’t we?” Calypso winked at me cheerfully.

  “Yeah, Mia, you’re awesome,” I patted the elf on the shoulder.

  “After a spectacular meeting like that, Nolan could hardly have remained indifferent…”

  “We have a romantic dinner tonight, he invited me to this little restaurant,” Mia said shyly, cutely pressing her palms to her flushed cheeks.

  “I’m so nervous, so nervous! And I have no idea what to wear…”

  “Wear the same thing you wore the night you met,” Calypso said with an expert air, trying not to burst out laughing again.

  “You are making fun of me,” Mia sighed and shook her adorable little head.

  “How could you even think that of me,” Calypso objected with a serious expression.

  “I’m just sure Nolan would definitely appreciate it.”

  ***

  As Calypso and I were finishing breakfast, who should approach our table but Elza herself.

  “Mom? What are you doing here?” I raised my eyebrows in surprise.

  Mom appeared in Armarillis extremely rarely, only a few times a year. As a higher demon, even though she was the First Arma, she still didn’t feel comfortable in the Armarillis dimension. Mom said the atmosphere here was specific, the energy of the space didn’t really suit her. So she tried not to come here unnecessarily, only visited the academy strictly on business, and usually for very brief visits.

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  The dining hall grew quite quiet when Elza appeared, the chatter dying down abruptly. Everyone was a little afraid of Elza, let’s be honest. So they followed her with tense and curious gazes.

  “Zael asked me to tell you he’s waiting at the training grounds,” Elza said, approaching our table and snatching an apple from the fruit plate.

  “For who?”

  “Both of you. For a joint training session.”

  I choked on my porridge and stared at Mom wide-eyed. Calypso also raised his eyebrows in surprise.

  “Can we not?” I said plaintively.

  Elza snorted with laughter and winked at me cheerfully, crunching into the apple.

  “Tell that to your father, dear. And I’ll watch him tell you exactly what he thinks of your ‘can we not’.”

  “Does it really have to be today?”

  “Zael says it should have been yesterday,” Elza smirked.

  “Well, you know how he is…”

  “We have an important training session with Lori scheduled right now,” Calypso said cautiously.

  “What you have scheduled right now is an important training session with me and Zael,” Elza said in a tone that brooked no objection.

  “He says you urgently need to be trained as the only Fortemin besides him who can fly with wings. It’s a strength and endurance workout,” Elza continued, looking condescendingly at Calypso, who had now choked on his ginger tea.

  “Zael says you need it. And I’ll be working separately with Lora, explaining some nuances of working with you as a pair. So finish your breakfast and head to the training grounds. Eat as much as you can. Zael’s in such a mood that he probably won’t let you go for lunch, just so you know.”

  She left, and all the Fortemins watched her go. Since the dining hall was quite quiet, everyone had heard our conversation, so they were watching Calypso and me with equally keen attention. Some with a touch of envy, some just with surprise. Some with open sympathy. Honestly, I felt more sympathy for myself. I knew my parents’ training methods and harbored no illusions.

  “I’m so screwed today,” Calypso said gravely.

  I had nothing to comfort him with.

  And for good reason: Zael put us through such hell that I wanted to swap places with anyone who’d envied our ‘luck’ at training with the Firsts. I would have gladly traded this luck for something calmer, because after just one hour I felt completely wrung out, and according to Zael, we had only finished warming up.

  He ran Calypso around the training grounds quite aggressively, drilling flight technique, various secret combat techniques involving wings. The information was actually invaluable — it wasn’t taught in regular Armarillis classes, and Zael had enormous combat experience that he was now generously sharing. Calypso appreciated this, so he didn’t make a single peep of protest, just silently practiced all the strikes and techniques.

  Meanwhile, Mom was giving me guidance on how to work most effectively with a Fighter. At first we worked at a distance from Zael and Calypso while I learned to maintain a strong connection from afar.

  Then we moved on to practicing combat spells as a pair, and that’s when I was sweating bullets, as they say… Though Calypso still had it worse — Zael wasn’t sparing him at all.

  At one point, he even put special artifact bracelets on Calypso that deliberately made the Fortemin feel unwell. We used these bracelets in specific training sessions where we practiced fighting in poor condition: with a fever or a serious wound. Anything could happen in our combat practice, but Fortemins had to be able to act through “I can’t”. Even when you just want to sit in a corner and quietly die. These bracelets created a realistic illusion of various types of physical distress, depending on what settings you specified on the artifact.

  Zael didn’t hold back and simply cranked Calypso’s bracelet settings to maximum.

  “Body temperature of 102 degrees, nausea, dizziness, weakness from significant blood loss due to injury,” Zael commented on the settings and looked at Calypso questioningly.

  “Think you can handle it? If you feel like it’s too much and you can’t go on, give me a sign. I’ll stop if you feel too weak to continue training.”

  Calypso just gritted his teeth but said nothing, only breathing harder from his suddenly worsened condition.

  A nervous laugh escaped my lips. Yeah, right, as if Calypso would ever admit when it became too much. He would rather drop dead than admit weakness, especially in front of Zael. And given Calypso’s complicated relationship with showing weakness…

  I watched Calypso anxiously. I needed to pay closer attention to him. But Mom was helping me with that, teaching me to finely sense my combat partner’s aura so I could monitor how close to exhaustion the Fighter was. This was exactly what allowed me to track Calypso’s condition as he trained somewhere on the edge of his capabilities, in survival mode.

  Actually, these training sessions were extremely useful for us, because if you learn to work well in such awful condition, then in a normal fight in good condition, you feel like you’re floating on air for a while.

  So I tried hard, and Calypso tried hard too, and it paid off: his wings didn’t fade by the end of training, becoming stable, confidently keeping their owner in the air. I was given a much lighter load — everything was relative to experience.

  After all, Calypso had far more combat experience than I did, so his load was heavier. Then Elza even unleashed her demonic powers to train Calypso in aerial combat against higher demons. There was no time to relax; the training was very tough, focused on endurance.

  In short, we both took a beating, especially Calypso… A serious beating. My legs were shaking from exhaustion, and at some point my arms started not responding properly. Calypso didn’t show his wild exhaustion much — only his very heavy breathing gave him away.

  Zael didn’t let us go from the training grounds until evening, and Mom was right when she warned that nobody would let us go for lunch. Though personally, I was so tired that I couldn’t even think about dinner — I just wanted to sleep.

  “Dinner… want to go?” I asked, my tongue barely moving.

  Calypso just gave a short:

  “Nah…”

  “Tired?” I said knowingly, barely moving my own feet, looking at the completely exhausted Calypso.

  He shook his head, but uncertainly.

  “Nah… I’m not tired…”

  He said that — and nearly fell flat on his face because he tripped on the rug at the entrance to our living room and only caught himself by desperately grabbing onto the nearest armchair, into which he promptly collapsed, trying to maintain at least a shred of elegance.

  “Oh really?” I snorted with laughter.

  “Then why are you barely dragging your feet?”

  “I just don’t feel like rushing, enjoying a leisurely stroll,” Calypso drawled evenly, leaning back in the armchair.

  He stopped mid-sentence, suddenly falling silent as his eyes closed. It seemed he fell asleep the moment he got into a comfortable sitting position. Not from tiredness at all, of course.

  I smiled, covered him with a blanket, and kissed his cheek, though Calypso had fallen into such a deep sleep so instantly that he didn’t react to my touch at all.