Chapter 22: Romance Must Wait Until Everyone Can Count

By Monday morning, Dante had studied enough ceiling tiles to resent their lack of character development. The nurse finally let him walk without following him with a chair, although his burns remained dressed and dizziness meant coming straight back.

Miss Vale met him at the ward desk with Artemis’s report. All five support pads were isolated and the dish showed no remaining repeated pulse, which allowed Bell to propose one small supervised test without pretending they understood Dante’s collapse.

"I want to finish one without somebody catching me," he said. Miss Vale agreed that stopping safely was a better goal than impressing the room, then reminded him that attending class didn’t depend on passing today’s test.

Mom brought his bag from the side room, checked his cracked phone was inside and kissed him on the cheek. She asked Posey to call if he became stupid, giving the girl a responsibility Dante considered completely unreasonable for someone taking classes.

Outside, a groundskeeper guided fallen leaves into a floating sack while a squirrel tried dragging them back out. Students passed beneath a covered walkway where rain stopped at its edge, leaving Dante wondering how the weather had learned more campus rules than him.

Anika showed him Jett’s request for a laptop, complete with arguments and a miserable face beneath them. Her emerald sleeve brushed his jacket as she refused it until the nurse approved, making responsibility look attractive.

"He joined the debate team because someone told him to stop talking," she explained. Dante suggested this qualified as community service for everyone outside the room, and she told him to keep that observation for her brother’s return.

At Bell’s classroom, the nurse joined Dante at a demonstration desk beside the other students’ tables. Bell had set out a low tray and a wooden ring for the test, while a second instructor watched the laboratory update and the shadow bird investigated a stool.

Lucan waited at the next table, pale pink hair tied back above his shoulders. He asked whether the restrictions had changed, and Dante prepared to resent him until Bell answered as though concern and competition could exist in the same person.

Lucan drew two linked strokes, closing the hanging blue line while speaking Bell’s rolling Korean phrase. The first attempt broke at the final syllable, so he started again until the ring rose steadily above the tray.

Warmth spread into Dante’s fingertips as he pictured the ring rising. At Bell’s signal he pictured it settling inside the tray, slowing before it touched wood; the ring landed without a knock. The nurse checked him while the other instructor confirmed the dish remained clear.

Three women in the class stopped working to watch, including the student with moss-green hair from Saturday. Her practice light sank into her pencil case while she assured him he hadn’t interrupted anything, which made his apology sound less than useful.

Lucan offered a higher lift, but Bell tapped Dante’s tray. "You stopped it where you intended, which is what I asked for. Remember that when an audience suggests something stupid." Dante looked at the ring instead of the watching women, briefly pleased with the right thing.

The nurse checked Dante again and cleared him to watch the rest of the lesson, with no more casting. She returned to the medical wing while Bell put the ring away and directed Dante to the spare chair beside Posey, where Anika joined them with her notes.

Posey opened the spare notes she had made while waiting for him yesterday. Her blonde hair brushed his wrist as she found the matching exercise, and her cream sweater pressed against his sleeve while he forgot how headings worked.

Anika placed a finger beneath the first question. "Eyes here, Dante, and read it properly before she does all your work," she said, sounding sufficiently pleased with herself that his imagination attempted something unsuitable for a classroom.

He read the page number instead, earning Bell’s request that romance wait until everyone could count. "I’m trying to impress her academically," Dante said, and Posey wrote the actual question beneath his finger, smiling as she told him to start there.

Bell called the class back to the demonstration desk and set out a tray of water for the next exercise. The students drew hooked lines and spoke the incantation to hold a gap through the water, while Dante watched from his chair and Bell explained how the barrier kept the water apart.

Dante wrote down where the warmth began and how he had pictured the ring stopping, giving himself something useful to repeat when he was cleared.

A classmate’s barrier leaked, sending a thin stream into a bucket that scolded him for missing. Bell made him release it and start again, explaining that equipment could complain but students still had to understand the mistake. Dante copied the warning into his notes without attempting the spell himself.

He left space for further instructions, remembering Jett and deciding a spell that stopped properly was worth more than a taller one.

At the break, Lucan asked how he had stopped the ring so gently. Dante explained the picture in his head, then admitted he couldn’t explain why it worked. Lucan stayed to discuss the landing instead of walking away.

"My brothers would make me start again until I could," Lucan said, describing one in detective work and another in the magical army. Both were roughly ten years older, and being part dragon hadn’t made their expectations any lighter.

Dante asked about football instead of comparing family disappointments, and Lucan’s answer became noticeably less guarded. He described a tackle that had ruined his shirt, then complained about the teammate who kept the replay available for educational purposes.

Posey invited them to Thursday tennis, reminding Dante that he could come along and watch, but playing would have to wait until the nurse said his hand was ready. Lucan confirmed the court while Anika said she would come if her climate research allowed it, then informed Dante that spectators could still carry water.

Iris arrived during the break with the tablet comparison, catching Bell before he called the students back to class. The breakfast photograph had been stored beside the collection order, while the ward image came through a separate dispatcher thread; a staff member admitted sending the order but denied taking either picture.

That gave investigators a claim to check rather than a complete confession. The theater list also named a speaking figure, equipment Bell described as ordinary for remote lectures and deeply inappropriate for manufacturing a student’s approval.

Dante asked whether someone had made a puppet of him, and Anika said she hoped it came with a mute button. Posey didn’t laugh, because Iris was already opening the attached delivery photograph on Bell’s desk.

The figure wore his university jacket, with his face above the striped collar. Beneath it sat a Thursday afternoon date, before his Friday assessment, leaving Dante looking at evidence that somebody had ordered him before he knew where he was going.