Chapter 68: He Had Promised Her an Evening

Dante looked at the chairwoman’s notice again while changing for his evening with Anika. The promised room had proper seating, a raised demonstration area, and lighting that would probably treat him with the respect he deserved.

Jett glanced at the screen while looking for a clean shirt. “If you start charging admission to our room, I want half.”

“You’d spend it on dates before we purchased a suitable curtain.”

“I already have a curtain,” Jett said. “You keep calling it your side of the room.”

Dante put the phone away before they could debate property rights. He had promised Anika an evening after the break, and becoming important seemed a weak excuse for making her wait beside a food stall.

She stood under the promenade lights with her copper hair pinned up and one shoulder bare above a dark top. He noticed the small gold clip before the shoulder distracted him, which he considered evidence of personal growth.

“You changed your hair,” he said when she turned.

“For the person I was meeting,” Anika replied. “I hoped he’d notice before announcing a campaign.”

“I noticed the clip first.” Dante stopped because reporting the order of his observations did not improve them. “You look good.”

She took his arm with a smile and chose dumplings from a stall whose sign kept turning itself toward whichever line looked busiest. Across the path, two sky pixies pushed a loose practice cloud away from the hot-oil vent.

The vendor threatened to charge the cloud for using his steam. It responded with a tiny flash, which convinced Dante that several weather systems on campus had been raised without proper supervision.

They found a table beside the planters, where Anika set a weak draft around their cups to keep blowing leaves out of them. Dante watched its edge press one leaf gently against the table before she changed the angle and let it pass.

“People see that and ask you to manage the whole event, don’t they?” he said.

“Usually after they’ve forgotten to hire enough help.” She took a dumpling from the carton. “If I can keep rain off one table, somebody decides I can save their outdoor party for free.”

“You make it look easy because you decide where the air should go first.”

Anika looked at him across the table. “Keep going, that was almost a useful compliment.”

“You leave it somewhere to escape instead of pushing harder against everything. It’s why your fundraiser worked after we cleared the drain.”

“And why were you staring at my shoulder?”

“Because my academic interests are broad,” he said, and she laughed before making him describe the spell’s release point.

He finished the answer while she rested her foot lightly against his beneath the table. His private advisers recommended discussing pressure, then withdrew the suggestion after considering how he might phrase it.

For a while, they talked about her coursework and the next event she had agreed to help design. She had put the hours and materials in writing before saying yes, which Dante admired more after meeting several generous people with expensive favors.

A pair of students passed their table carrying the remains of a paper dragon, its folded head still snapping at the umbrella that had defeated it. Anika waited until they were gone before asking whether Dante had heard back about the chairwoman’s offer.

“I haven’t accepted,” he said, which was accurate and less useful than answering why he kept looking at it.

“She offered the audience before you offered a safe demonstration,” Anika said. “That should tell you what she’s buying.”

He looked toward the students trying to make their dragon fly again. Attention had a way of making bad equipment seem ready, and he knew that from more than one side.

When the draft weakened, Anika ended it instead of feeding the empty shape. The last leaf landed harmlessly beside his carton.

“The workshop door was a simple spell too,” she said, looking at it. “I keep thinking about that.”

Dante set his chopsticks down. “You knew he wanted to leave.”

“I did. I also knew the worker thought refusing would cost him his shifts.”

“Helping the worker didn’t require everything that happened afterward.” He heard his own certainty and remembered the open doorway the technician had offered him. “I made it easy not to ask, though.”

Anika turned her cup between both hands. “You liked the result, and we liked being the people who gave it to you.”

That answer reached him more cleanly than another warning could have. He liked her competence, her attention, and the fact that she had chosen this evening with him. He did not want those things stripped away merely because they also made an ugly decision possible.

“I want the truth while I can still choose what to do,” he said. “Not after somebody has handled the part I’d rather avoid.”

“You might still choose badly,” Anika said, holding his gaze instead of allowing the admission to end the conversation.

“I’d rather own the choice than find out I was standing in the impressive half of somebody else’s.”

She studied him, then picked up the last dumpling and split it between them. Neither called the conversation finished, but they were able to keep eating.

At her residence, the common room stood quiet beneath a notice showing when the house event would end. A small brass salamander slept beside the radiator, lifting its head when Anika switched on the reading lamp.

She sat on the sofa and patted the space beside her. Dante joined her with less confidence than he had shown beside several dangerous pieces of equipment.

“You can stop planning your next sentence,” she told him. “I invited you here.”

Her fingers touched his collar, then waited. He put his hand over hers and asked whether he could kiss her, which made her smile in a way that destroyed several carefully prepared responses.

“You can, and you don’t need to defeat my brother at anything first.”

He kissed her, and Anika drew him close enough that his next clever answer could wait. The cups cooled on the table while they kept the evening to themselves.

Later, they sat with her legs tucked beside him and the brass salamander staring as though their use of the sofa had lowered property values. Dante helped gather their empty cups before the other residents returned, then stayed at the door long enough for Anika to straighten the collar she had disturbed.

They agreed on another evening before she kissed his cheek goodbye. He left smiling, and nothing interrupted the walk to the gate until he chose to take out his phone.

He declined the chairwoman’s event and the claim in her notice, deleting a sentence that would have left room to negotiate a larger audience. Then he opened Professor Bell’s separate research invitation and asked whether a limited test could include student observers.

The reply arrived before Dante reached his residence. Before discussing an audience, Professor Bell wanted Dante to identify who would carry the living cost.