Sam let out a tired sigh as he opened the door to his room, and the sight of Erianna half-laying horizontally on his bed, engrossed in the e-reader in her hands, greeted him.

  “You’re late,” she said without looking up.

  “And you’re squatting. But this is a first time for me and the umpteenth time for you.”

  “Ugh. Will you stop whining? Look, my feet aren’t on the bed.” She raised her left leg and, Sam assumed, twirled her toes for emphasis. “And I dare you to even try and impugn my personal hygiene. Go on, I dare you.”

  “I would never, Your Highness.” Sam put his backpack down. “Now get up.” He kicked Erianna’s leg as walked over to wash his face in the bathroom.

  “How rude. Is this how you treat your prodigious and caring tutor, who has continuously given—of her own free time and will—her utmost attention and guidance in order to make you a better Thread-Weaver?”

  Sam turned on the faucet. “Yes.”

  “For shame, I say. For shame. Why, without me, you wouldn’t have even been able to know before entering the room whether I would be occupying a certain piece of furniture.”

  “No.” Sam dried his face. “I wouldn’t have been able to confirm it without a shadow of a doubt. I would still have been able to know where I was going to find my prodigious and caring tutor without… Well, you actually wouldn’t have been there, in that case, I guess.”

  “Ah!” Erianna raised her chin in triumph.

  Sam yawned as he leaned into a stretch. “Take your victories wherever you can find them, Ms. Ninae. And no matter how minor they are. God knows you need them.”

  “Sore loser says what?”

  “Indeed.” Sam moved both chairs opposite each other, taking a seat on one and gesturing Erianna to do the same.

  She blew a raspberry but complied. “You still haven’t given me justification nor satisfaction for being so egregiously late, young Cadet Anders.”

  Sam’s exaggerated smile was wide enough to narrow his eyesight. That joke hadn’t grown thin in the two weeks that passed since his first physical combat class, not at all. “I was only two minutes.”

  “Three and a half.” Erianna tapped on the left side of her stomach, where he knew her time-keeping pattern to be.

  “Hm… fair enough. I didn’t realize we had denigrated to keeping timers on our friends.”

  “Of course not. Not on our friends. Unruly pupils though…?”

  “That’s hurtful.”

  “Now you know how I felt when I had to wait for you for three minutes and thirty seconds.”

  Sam nodded. “I do. And I promise never to do it again unless I have a good reason, like today.”

  “Which was…” Erianna gestured with her hand.

  Sam slapped his chest twice. “I had to finish imprinting my very first actually impactful recovery pattern. There! Aren’t you proud of me now?”

  “Why? Any child could’ve done what you did.” She smiled. “How’d the quality turn out?”

  “Pretty good. Definitely no reason to rework it considering I’ll upgrade it in a year or so.”

  “Much less than a year, I’d say.”

  Sam shrugged. “We’ll see. The important thing is that I won’t have to rely on Maurice topping me up every few weeks anymore.”

  Erianna chuckled and shook her head dismissively. “You don’t have to rely on him now. You only do because otherwise you’d have to slow down. I’m sorry to tell you, but having one recovery pattern won’t solve the drawbacks from your overzealous training.”

  “Look who’s talking.” Sam smiled.

  “Exactly. I’m talking from experience.”

  “Well, can we at least celebrate the fact that I now have three meaningful patterns imprinted to my name?”

  “Certainly. Did you bring anything for us to celebrate with?”

  “Huh…” Sam leaned back. “Do you think I should reconsider my policy on having soft drinks as well as snacks in my room?”

  “Only if you promise to allot a significant part of them to me.”

  “I’ll just go grab us two cans of coke from the vending machine, shall I?”

  “If you must.” She made a dismissive motion. “I’ll be here waiting. And the clock will be ticking.”

  Sam matched eyes with her, tensing in his seat before scrambling up and rushing out the door, leaving it open. The vending machine was one floor down, and by the time he got there, he already had his phone ready to pay. The moment he had the two cans in his hand, he ran up the flight of stairs and back to his room, slamming the door behind him before crashing his butt into the chair.

  “Ahh.” He let out a breath. “One for you, Your Highness.” He held the can forward.

  Erianna wrinkled her nose. “Hm. Almost five minutes of delay.” She shook her hand as she took the can from him. “Very problematic.”

  “Maybe someone should’ve used her prodigal powers to gaze into the future and know about the need for soft drinks beforehand…”

  “Maybe someone else shouldn’t have been important enough to warrant an obfuscation and protection weavings from someone’s uncle. Also… you didn’t need to read the future to know about the need for soft drinks.”

  “Damn. I’m really coming in behind today, huh?”

  The soda popped as Erianna opened her can. “When aren’t you?” She smiled and raised it.

  “Fair enough.” Sam opened his own can and clinked it with Erianna’s.

  “Cheers. I, for one, will never forget where I was while Sam finished imprinting his third meaningful pattern.” She nodded towards the bed. “And how long I waited.”

  “Well technically I wasn’t late by the time I finished imprinted.”

  “Hm… one to you, I guess.”

  Sam clicked his tongue and shot her a finger gun. “That reminds me. I never did find out how you actually keep entering my room.”

  “I’ll give you three guesses.”

  “You duplicated Sarah’s key?”

  “No, that’s illegal.”

  “Is it?”

  Erianna gave him a baffled look. “Of course. This is a military installation. You can’t just duplicate keys for its locks whenever you want.”

  Sam’s head bobbed as he considered that. “Huh, yeah, that makes sense. Guess I never thought of it.”

  “Second guess.” Erianna raised her finger.

  “You got one from… I don’t know, Dan or someone in the administration?”

  “No dice.”

  “I don’t know, then. You lock picked it.” He laughed.

  “Well done.”

  “What? No way.”

  “Yes way. Well, the very first time. Afterwards, I just asked for an extra key.”

  Sam shook his head with a laugh. “Come on. You don’t actually expect me to believe that you know how to pick a lock, right?”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Cadet…”

  Sam rolled his eyes. Yep, definitely wasn’t growing old.

  “But the fact remains that I did in fact pick your lock. What are you gonna do about it?”

  “Doubt it?”

  “What’s so incredulous about me knowing how to pick a lock?”

  “It’s not something that most people learn. Royalty especially so. Unless we’re talking metaphorical locks. And the vaults are… fuck, I can’t think of a good joke.”

  “Let me guess, the punchline would be ‘royalty bad?’”

  Sam puckered his lips and shook his head. “No… could also have been royalty good cause people are stupid. Anyway, you really know how to pick a lock?”

  “Yes!” Erianna laughed. “Marin taught me when we were fourteen. I’m not as good at it as he is, but I liked it—or the idea of being someone who can pick a lock—well enough that I never completely forgot how to do it.”

  Sam nodded. “And of course, your being a Thread-Weaver makes picking locks extra easy.”

  “As long as they’ve been used recently enough to leave residue.”

  “Ew…”

  “Grow up.”

  “This does raise the question, though. Will you teach me how to pick a lock?”

  “Let’s finish with the one subject I have to teach you first, shall we?”

  Sam smacked his lips. “Yeah, I guess. Want me to keep the Sight on during some of the breaks to make up for the five minutes I was late?”

  Erianna rolled her eyes. “Don’t be an idiot. And how would it even be a break if you keep the Sight on?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t be doing something with it during.”

  “You’re not quite good enough for that to count as a break, I’m afraid. Come back to me when you can last a full hour without getting a headache.”

  The silence lasted for only a few seconds before they both burst out laughing. “I don’t know…” Sam said between laughs. “Most people would say a headache was worth it if it meant lasting a whole hour.”

  Erianna coughed to stop her laugh and made a ‘yeah, yeah’ gesture with her hand. “Good job, you spelled out the joke. You happy now? Can we finally start?”

  “I’ll try my best to satisfy.” Sam said before ducking away from the can raised in Erianna’s hand.

  “So you only start practicing magical combat next week?” Philip asked as Sam finished checking Felix’s gear was put on correctly.

  “Only next week?” Yvessa raised an eyebrow.

  Philip held up his hands to mollify her. “I didn’t mean it like that. Obviously, it’s a tremendously fast pace. I guess I was just surprised since that means you’ll barely have a year and a half of training before we graduate.”

  Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

  Sam sighed. “It is what it is. I gotta make do somehow, right? And before you ask, staying another year is not on the table.”

  “Yeah, I hear that. I would also want to get out there as soon as possible if I were in your shoes.”

  “Well if you really wanted to see combat as fast as possible,” Felix said. “You could just sign up as a regular enlisted. It all depends on what kind of combat you want to see.”

  “That doesn’t matter as much as what kind of combatant I want to be,” Sam said.

  “A live one.” Philip nodded.

  “Hey now.” Felix laughed. “I’m not sure our casualty ratio is that much lower than the average trenchie.”

  “He’s right.” Yvessa nodded. “There’s a lot more rank-and-file enlisted and even officers than there are people who’ve been trained like us.”

  Sam had to chuckle over Yvessa’s overly egalitarian phrasing. Erianna said that she had always talked like that; trying to make sure that her words didn’t offend anyone and avoid having them think her an elitist or arrogant. “In any case,” he said, “I don’t care about not dying so much as I care about not dying because I wasn’t strong enough.”

  “What’s the difference?” Philip asked.

  “You can save the world in the first scenario but not in the second one,” Felix answered.

  “You can still save the world in the second scenario. Just means that you could’ve been stronger and survived.”

  “Yes, that makes sense, doesn’t it? Shows your mind isn’t twisted.” He gestured with a nod at Sam.

  Sam shrugged. “I am what I am. And what I am is not someone who’s going to fall one meter before the finishing line because he hadn’t run enough laps in training.”

  A few moments later, Mila, Shore, and the other instructor whose name Sam still didn’t know (either first or last) entered the hall, and their group started walking towards the center. The class started the same as the last two, with Shore tasking Sam to be the prize pig of a sparring circle, this time with Felix in attendance, before releasing the students to join the rest of the class after a third of it had elapsed.

  Sam joined Felix in running through some exercises, watched and guided this time by the other instructor, whose name as given to Sam in Felix’s whisper was Arnold. Again with the mixing of the first and last names, Sam suppressed an annoyed sigh. He could just make an effort to learn each of the instructors’ full name, he supposed. But then again…

  After about ten minutes of running through his routines, Sam decided to call it there for the day and went to join the sparring. He made a concentrated effort to avoid fighting with either Felix or Yvessa and tried seeking out people who he didn’t remember fighting with (Sam had fought with everyone by this point, so he figured that if he didn’t remember them, then he had more to learn from fighting with them).

  Be that as it may, his last fight ended up against Tara, who he distinctly remembered losing to plenty of times in the last two lessons. Today was no different, despite the fact that he got really close to scoring a second point. One good thing about being so bad was that it gave you a lot of opportunities to fight different opponents as your fights were that much shorter. And he still had plenty of longer spars in his weekly schedule thanks to both Lin and his friends.

  He let out a tired sigh, or maybe it was a yawn, as he limbered up after the fight and took off his eye protection. “You almost got me on that sixth point,” Tara said with a smile as she did the same.

  “Almost doesn’t carry you that far in our trade, I’m afraid.”

  She laughed. “It can turn into a positive with enough time and training, though. And before you know it. I’m willing to bet on that.”

  “I thank you for the vote of confidence.”

  “Hey, I’m just calling it like I see it. You’re much better than I expected you to be, you know?”

  Sam nodded. “That is the feedback I usually get from women, yes.”

  “Well.” She shot him a crooked smile. “I wouldn’t mind helping you get better.”

  Sam’s mouth almost ran ahead of him, but his brain managed to catch both it and Tara’s insinuation before he said anything stupid. Or to be more exact, before he said, ‘Thanks, but I think the three older men who are already helping me with that might get jealous.’ Time seemed to slow to a crawl as his mind scrambled for anything normal to say. Jokes with sexual connotations were fun and all, but only as long as the other side didn’t take him seriously.

  He could feel the blush creeping up his neck when he finally managed to hold a wispy smile and say without mumbling, “Thanks, but I’m not really looking for… any help right now.” He suppressed the urge to bolt as he kept holding the smile.

  Tara shrugged. “Oh well, can’t fault a girl for trying, you know? Hit me up if you do change your mind, though.”

  Sam nodded rapidly. “Sure thing,” he croaked.

  Tara chuckled as she passed him on her way to the storage room. “See you next week.”

  “Bye.” Sam stayed rooted in place and signaled Felix with his eyes urgently.

  “What’s got you bugging out?” Felix asked a minute later as he came to join him after finishing his spar.

  “I think I just got hit on.”

  Felix looked both ways before leaning down to whisper conspiratorially. “Tell me everything.”

  “So that’s pretty much it,” Sam said with a sigh as they sat down for dinner, having delayed Felix’s request until they were out of the gym and on their way to the mess hall.

  “Yep.” Felix nodded. “She was definitely flirting with you. And to be fair to her, she didn’t know you well enough to know that you weren’t flirting back. Well, that you didn’t flirt first, I mean.”

  “Is making a joke about insinuating that I’m bad in bed really flirting?” Sam’s voice almost broke.

  “Oh yeah. Well… It can be. Like, you have the aura of a self-deprecating yet still secure in himself kind of guy who might say those kinds of lines. I know plenty of guys who dig that, so I’m assuming there are plenty of women who do too.” He gestured questioningly to Yvessa.

  “What are you looking at me for?” she said. “I’m not part of this conversation.”

  “Why not?” Felix heightened his pitch on purpose.

  “It’s icky. I don’t want to hear about my friends and their sex-life.”

  “Oh, grow up, will you? It was just innocent flirting. Perfectly normal for people who aren’t emotionally stunted like you guys. Matter of fact, I’m still not really sure why you rejected her? I mean, she was sending a pretty strong and clear signal. I think we can all agree about that.”

  “Agree about what?” Sarah asked as she and Erianna sat down to join them.

  “A girl in our combat class who wanted to screw Sam.”

  Sarah choked and coughed as Erianna laughed and hit Sam on the shoulder. “Good for you, Cadet Anders!”

  Sam let out a low, threatening groan as he slowly and purposefully grabbed a bite of one of Erianna’s cupcakes. “Stop it with the cadet jokes, already. Or the rest of this cupcake gets it.”

  “Alright, alright, you crybaby. Just give it here, will you? Ugh, you almost ate half of it.” She shook her head as she made a show of wiping the cupcake with a napkin before laying it back on her tray. “So what’s this about a crazy woman wanting to have sex with Sam?”

  “No one said she was crazy.”

  “Oh sorry, I just assumed.”

  “So you do agree that she definitely wanted to have sex with you?” Felix smiled.

  “I didn’t say that,” Sam mumbled.

  “Well, what’s the story?” Erianna said. “Give us the scoop already.”

  “It’s nothing, can we move on?”

  “It definitely wasn’t nothing,” Felix said. “So, there’s this girl, Tara, in our class, and Sam was sparring with her…” Felix somehow managed to take a minute to recount the few seconds of the exchange. And the damnedest thing was, he didn’t really embellish anything. “…And then Sam summoned me with his pleading puppy eyes.”

  Erianna leaned back and slowly exhaled. “I got to tell you, Ca… good chum, she was definitely trying to get into your pants.”

  “How would you know?” Sam shot back.

  “What, like you need first-hand experience to know when someone wants to sleep with someone? If that were the case, nobody would be having consensual sex with anyone. Was she hot?” She turned to Felix.

  “We can’t really answer that.” Felix gestured at himself and Yvessa.

  Erianna’s gaze returned to Sam. “So? Was she?”

  “I…” Sam cleared his throat. “Stop it. You know I don’t like to think of people that way.”

  “Oh, get off you high-horse, Sam,” Felix groaned. “We both know how to recognize hot people when we see them. It’s objective.”

  “It obviously isn’t.”

  “Well, the subjectivity of it is objective is what I meant. We all—at least at this table—have hormone-riddled brains that want us to go out and sow, after all. And that part of our brains is pretty binary. Either someone is sexually attractive, or they aren’t.”

  Sam crossed his hands. “I still try not to objectify the people I know by thinking of them in sexual terms. Binary or not.”

  Felix rolled his eyes. “Whatever. But yeah, she’s hot.”

  “Good for you, Sam.” Erianna gave him a thumbs up.

  Sam sighed. “Yeah, thanks. Can we move on now, please?”

  “Of course not,” Felix said. “You still didn’t say why you turned her down.”

  “What is this, an interrogation? Why are we still talking about this?”

  “Oh come on, we’re all friends. We all share personal stuff with one another. So share, baby, share.”

  “I never agreed to that part of the social contract.”

  “Well you did, so…”

  Sam shrugged and pursed his lips.

  “Ah…” Felix sighed. “Why the hell am I even friends with you bunch of virgins… You all need to get laid. Oh, right, all of you except Sam because he doesn’t care about getting laid. Yeah right.”

  Erianna laughed. “What’s that now?”

  “It’s Sam’s stupid excuse for why—”

  “It’s not an excuse,” Sam said.

  “It’s his reasoning for why he doesn’t care about being a virgin.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with being a virgin,” Erianna said. “What’s that got to do with not wanting to have sex?”

  “I know, right?”

  “Look, Felix, can we just drop it?” Sam asked. “Look at Yvessa: she’s been fuming for the last five minutes.”

  “I’m not fuming,” Yvessa grumbled. “Don’t use me to get out of the ditch you dug us into.”

  “Really? You too, Yv?”

  She shrugged. “You brought it up. You carry it to the end. Maybe next time you’ll think twice before bringing up your sex life.”

  “I, for one, will do just fine without anyone talking about their sex life,” Sarah said.

  “Yeah but it’s three to two, so you’re outvoted.” Felix smiled.

  “That’s not how liberal democracy works,” Sam objected. “You’re using your majority to trample over the rights of the minority. I’m not going to take part in this.”

  “No one asked you to. So”—Felix held up his hand to his mouth as though whispering to Erianna—“Sam’s reasoning for why he doesn’t care about being a virgin is that sex doesn’t mean all that much to him. He says that if he had wanted to have sex that badly, he could’ve just flown to Amsterdam—which apparently was a city where prostitution was legal.”

  “You’re butchering the whole perspective,” Sam said.

  “Then you go.”

  “The whole point is that I said being a virgin isn’t something you should feel insecure about. Because it’s so easy to lose your virginity. Well, if you have enough money or not enough moral scruples, I suppose. But what people should really care about is having a romantic relationship. That’s what’s special. You can’t buy that with money.”

  “Eh…” Felix twirled his hand.

  “Not a good version of it. That’s what I care about. Having a romantic partner. Not a sexual one.”

  Erianna laughed and gestured at Sam with her thumb. “What a nerd… I totally agree with him, though.”

  Felix nodded. “Oh, don’t get me wrong, he makes a lot of sense. It’s just that with all his other hangs up and… his whole personality. One really gets to worrying about our dear Sam, you know?”

  “Should you really be worried about your friend’s sex life?” Sarah asked.

  “Is that a rhetorical question?”

  “You know it wasn’t.”

  “Fine, whatever. We’re putting this topic behind us. A hot girl flirted with Sam, and Sam didn’t flirt back because he wasn’t interested in her romantically. There, chapter closed. Happy?” he asked the table.

  “Yeah, I’m pretty happy with that descriptor,” Sam said. “Now I guess I’ll have to watch out for what I say, though. Don’t want to lead anyone on.”

  “One girl flirts with him, and he suddenly thinks he’s Casanova.” Felix shook his head at Yvessa.

  “I just don’t want my stupid sense of humor to put me in any more awkward situations.”

  “That’s a little too tall a task, wouldn’t you say?” Erianna asked.

  “OK, what exactly is your agenda here?” Sam wheeled on her. “You’ve been too fucking giddy about this entire thing.”

  “Don’t know what you mean.” Erianna took a bite of her half-eaten cupcake.

  “Is this because I was late yesterday?”

  “You were late yesterday?” She asked innocently as Sam’s hand slowly inched forward to grab the cupcake out of her hands. “Don’t,” she warned him. His hand came closer. “Don’t.” His hand slowly crept forward. At the last second, Erianna stuck the cupcake in her mouth and gave him a self-satisfied smile, which wasn’t easy to do when you were chewing.

  “Anyway, I guess I’ll just have to watch what I say around people who don’t know me that well.” Sam sighed.

  “It’s amazing that this is some kind of big revelation for you,” Yvessa said.

  “Well, I was fine so far because my bar for being embarrassed is pretty high.”

  “Expect for when it comes to people wanting to get into your pants, I guess.” Felix smiled.

  “Guess so. So what’s new with everyone else? Any of you got hit on today?”

  “Sarah did.” Erianna gestured towards her.

  “Really?” Sam asked as all gazes turned towards his fellow Taken.

  “No. Not really. But I do think that there’s a guy in our class who fancies her.”

  “Ah ah…” Sam narrowed his eyes at Erianna. “And why do you think that?”

  “Just a hunch,” Erianna lied.

  “Did I allow you guys to talk about me without my input and I just forgot about it?” Sarah raised her eyebrow.

  “Sorry Sarah.” Sam nudged Erianna.

  “Sorry Sarah,” she added.

  “Hmph.” Sarah crossed her hands. “Anyway, I do have something interesting to talk about. Maurice sent me this fascinating article… Just hold on a minute,” she added when she saw the dejected looks the rest of the table adopted, “I didn’t say what it was about.”

  “I think we can all make a pretty good guess,” Felix said.

  “Well you’d be wrong. It was about the possible interactions between your diet and the efficiency of your patterns.”

  Sam rubbed his brow. “I mean… that isn’t really interesting, but I still feel like it might be important to learn about.”

  “Why?” Yvessa asked. “If they reach any important conclusions, they’ll just tell us about it.”

  “Go ahead, Sarah, we’re listening,” Erianna said.

  “Hey, just because you want to get back at Sam doesn’t mean you need to take it out on us,” Felix said.

  “I beg to differ. Sam is very susceptible to collective punishment because he hates it when people feel bad because of him.”

  “Only the people I care about,” Sam said.

  “Oh right, so I guess we don’t need to hear about that article after all.”

  Sarah cleared her throat and gave them all a level stare. “Are you quite finished? Good, so anyway, one of the assumptions of the researcher was that…”