The next thing I wanted to do was get Lea settled. I’d visited her for at least a few minutes every day since I’d finished with my exams and she was clearly starting to get very antsy despite Miranda’s best efforts to distract her. Apparently there was only so much time two women could spend together in bed and Miranda did have a number of other commitments on her time. I’d promised her freedom, not a new, slightly-larger bedroom to waste away in.

There was always the option of just putting her to sleep for a few days, but I wanted to leave that as a last resort. Lea was my friend, not an experimental subject to be put in storage until I needed it. I would find her somewhere to live where she could enjoy her life and be free of the fear and danger that had haunted her life.

Unfortunately, and as much as I loathed the very idea that I was prioritizing her over my precious friend, I could only push back Brenda for so long before it became an issue. Brenda was not a particularly patient person by nature and I was publicly pretending to be dating her, so it would be suspicious if I kept delaying the date I’d promised her.

I’d only managed to delay her for as long as I had by telling her I wanted to have it in Gulivine, and then asking for time to get everything set up just right. Thankfully she’d been flattered rather than offended and a shared dinner earlier in the week had settled her down slightly. I desperately needed Brenda’s full and unwavering confidence if I wanted my plans for her to work out, so Lea would just need to wait a little longer.

Thankfully, I didn’t actually have to do much to get everything ready, leaving me time to focus on things I actually wanted to be doing. I was really starting to come around to the beauty of delegation. If you were bad at something, you just needed to find people who could cover your weaknesses while ensuring they couldn’t try to exploit those same weaknesses for their own benefit.

Camille and Briella were able to get everything planned, booked, and set up with minimal input from me. I had absolutely no idea what a stupid, spoiled-rotten princess like Brenda would enjoy, but between Camille’s local knowledge and Briella’s comparable upbringing, I was hopeful that we’d ended up with something that would impress my ‘girlfriend’. What we ended up with was certainly better than anything I could have come up with in a comparable amount of time.

That was how I found myself waiting for Brenda just outside the portal room dressed in the fanciest clothing I’d ever owned. My crisp white shirt was made of smooth silk and embroidered with flowers done in gold thread, a number of runes hidden in the stitching. It was very tight around my chest and shoulders and had short, loose sleeves that left my arms bare. Over it I wore a red wool vest, the outside embroidered with a few more flowers while the inside hid as many of the protective enchantments from my usual jacket as I’d managed to squeeze into the reduced space.

At Miranda’s urging, I was also wearing leather pants––apparently they were all the rage these days in certain circles––and matching pointy shoes that were so much less comfortable and practical than my usual boots. The entire outfit had ended up costing not as much as I’d feared, but much more than I liked spending on clothing. I could afford to spend nine pieces, but that was so much money for a shirt, a vest, and some shoes! For gods’ sake, you could buy a half-dozen cows for one piece! How did a pair of leather shoes cost twice that?

I tamped down my frustration and focused on watching my surroundings. I was considerably more worried about being attacked once I’d left Avalon with Brenda than I was within the Academy, but it was stupid to ever drop your guard, even during winter break. I couldn’t sense anyone except for Miranda, who was hiding some ways down the hallway and was going to be shadowing me today, but that didn’t necessarily mean that there was no one around.

As the minutes ticked by, I began to shift awkwardly from foot to foot, my mind focused on the spell matrix of a fourth-circle shield spell I’d been practicing. Brenda was running slightly late and I’d come to our meeting point a little early, which meant I’d been standing here for considerably longer than I would have liked. Staying in one place within the Academy was a good way to give people plenty of time to ambush you. Hopefully she would be here soon.

This shirt and these pants were both too tight. They limited my range of motion to an unacceptable degree. Miranda, Briella, and Camille had all agreed that my outfit looked good and Rea had done an excellent job with the embroidery, but it galled me to dress so impractically. Next time I would make sure to impress upon my servants that safety was a lot more important to me than style, but there was no time to go change now and so I was left feeling like a stuck-up noble.

…okay perhaps that was going a little bit too far. I’d seen some of the impractical garbage that real nobles wore and it was so much worse than this. Ultimately this outfit wasn’t really that bad, but I was just feeling a tad frustrated by this entire situation and the other things bothering me weren’t currently squeezing my thighs and shoulders.

I felt Brenda’s approach a few seconds before I saw her. She flounced around the corner, the many ribbons on her canary-yellow dress bouncing up and down with every step, and her face lit up in a huge smile the moment she saw me. “Orion!” she called out shrilly, her voice echoing down the marble hallways.

She broke into a run and I mechanically opened my arms for her. I was slightly surprised when she leapt the last few steps towards me, but managed to catch her in my arms and spin her around the way I’d seen a few couples do in the past.

“And hello to you too, beautiful.” I planted a gentle kiss on her forehead and tried to set her down on the ground, but she instead wriggled in closer to me and half collapsed against my chest until the only things keeping her upright were my arms.

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She turned her head to look up at me, a dopey smile on her face. “It’s great to see you, Orion. I’ve missed you.”

“And I you.“ I paused for a moment. “Though we did eat dinner together two nights ago,” I reminded her gently.

“Doesn’t count,” she grumbled into my chest. “You were only there for like, twenty minutes.”

We’d sat together for one hour, three minutes, and sixteen seconds. Most of that had been spent listening to her retelling of all the mindless gossip she’d heard in the past few days. I’d counted out each and every tortuous second until I’d finally tolerated all that I could and politely excused myself before I said something I would regret.

I wasn’t going to say anything about that though. “Any time spent with you always feels far too short,” I told her instead, briefly squeezing her sides in a makeshift hug.

“Oh, you’re such a charmer, Orion. Strong, handsome, and whitty,” she sighed dreamily, “I’m so lucky to have found you.”

I wondered if she would still think that when I was done with her. Probably––assuming the spells worked the way they were supposed to––but hopefully she’d also be a lot less annoying to deal with. I couldn’t wait until I could just order her to shut up and she’d see nothing wrong with going along with it.

We stood there together for another minute and then I gently reminded Brenda that we had places to be. She stomped her foot like a child that wasn’t getting its way, but the mention of a cozy two-person booth was enough to calm her right back down.

We stepped through the portal arm in arm––well, Brenda was hanging off my arm and I was half dragging her along with me––and emerged into warm, mid-afternoon sunlight. Unlike in Xethis and Port Anangala, the portal wasn’t situated in a city square, but rather a small park. We checked in briefly with the two mages guarding the portal, then followed a cobblestone path that wound through a small copse of flowering trees until it emerged onto a much larger, much busier road.

I flagged down one of the dozen or so carriage drivers waiting patiently by the side of the road and helped Brenda up into the carriage box. “de’Vaalis’ Hearth, please,” I told the driver, who nodded sharply, then climbed in after her. The carriages were something the local government had arranged––both as an easy way to score points with the visiting mages and as a way to keep an eye on us––but it was a convenient way to get around and I wasn’t too worried about them knowing that I’d taken Brenda out to a nice restaurant.

The trip to the restaurant Briella had picked out took about fifteen minutes. I had been slightly worried that I would run out of ways to keep Brenda entertained, but she seemed completely content to blather at me while blatantly pawing at my chest and bare arms, so I needn't have worried. Perhaps Miranda had been on to something with this shirt. There were several minutes when Brenda actually shut up all on her own because she was too busy staring, sparing my ears her voice for a time.

While Brenda focused on enjoying ‘the view’, I took the opportunity to watch the city pass by through the carriage’s incredibly clear glass windows. Oratrice City, or at least the part we were passing through, was a clean and beautiful city. The wide streets were lined with two- or three-story buildings made from a slightly pink-tinged white stone that shone in the afternoon sun. Most buildings were recessed slightly from the road by what I could only describe as large, high-ceilinged porches, the roofs of buildings extending out towards the road and supported by graceful columns. It meant there was a lot of shade to be had, while leaving the road feeling more open than it really was.

Most of the buildings we passed had huge windows. While some were open to the air or blocked off my clear glass, others were decorated by lavish-looking stained glass or had flowering vines growing around the edges. Such huge windows would have been an unthinkable luxury in Xethis. With all the storms and freezing weather the islands experienced it was just impractical to have such big holes in your buildings. Here however, the weather was much more temperate and barely changed from season to season. According to Janna, many plants that in other countries needed to be grown in special greenhouses grew wild in the open plains of Gulivine.

I didn’t bother prying Brenda off me when we finally made it to the restaurant Camille had made me reservations at. Instead I scooped her up into my arms and carried her to where a waitress wearing a three-layered dress was waiting by the door. “Reservation for Hunter,” I told her over Brenda’s giggling.

“Of course, sir. Please follow me.”

The table she led us too was just as awful as I’d known it would be. We were tucked away in a small booth recessed into the wall. There was a curved table and a tiny loveseat barely big enough for me to sit comfortably on my own, much less with a second person. While I squeezed past the table and sat down, the waitress set down two glasses shaped like fish, each scale perfectly defined and gleaming, and filled them with cool water from the large crystal decanter on the table.

“Please get comfortable, honored guests. I shall return soon with your first course.”

Yeah. Comfortable. I wished.

Brenda grinned at the waitress and ground her butt against my thigh. She was all but sitting in my lap, only the arm I had wrapped around her waist stopping her from doing just that. “That sounds great, thank you!”

Were it any number of other people sitting here with me, I probably would have been enjoying myself as well. If the food was good, maybe I could bring Lea here later to help wipe away the memories of Brenda. As it was, I constantly had to resist the urge to push her away. At least she’d had the courtesy of wearing a very modest dress, even if the color was utterly atrocious. I didn’t know what I would have done if she’d worn something like the dresses Miranda tended to favor.

I really wished I could find it in me to be attracted towards Brenda, but years of interacting with her had utterly poisoned my opinions of the Goodwitch girl. As much as I disliked her, I could admit that, at least physically, she was rather attractive if I didn’t look too closely at her face. Even that wasn’t like, horribly disfigured, or anything. Just kind of plain and bulbous like one of those horribly inbred dogs some nobles kept.

However, between her behavior, voice, lack of personality, general attitude, terrible perfume, and everything else, I just couldn’t see her in anything resembling a positive light. I really wished I could. It would make this so much easier if I didn’t constantly have to pretend. But I couldn’t. Not without the sorts of mind magic I wasn’t willing to let anyone cast on me, not even me.

I suppressed a sigh and instead gently nudged her roaming hand away from my crotch, catching it in my own and raising it momentarily to my lips. Today was going to be a long day. Hopefully the play––a famous local drama about a dashing bandit and a magister’s daughter––would be colorful enough to distract her for a little while so I could recuperate before we went to watch the sunset. What a waste of time.