There are drawbacks to being self-taught. What this teacher is saying is Draconic to me. How in the unholy Hell am I supposed to “find the metal within” and “conjure it forth”? I can’t even make fire out of nothing. Which… is probably why I am—yes, Professor Tungsten, I am paying attention and attempting your utterly unhelpful directions! I am failing despite that! I am… failing this class. Great. My parents get me into a cutting edge college for something that’s actually interesting and I’m failing one of the entry-level classes because I never got formal training for the fire sphere. Mother evidently went the other way, she learned to conjure flame and little else for the longest time. Which does me all of no good, except that if she can do that I can probably do this, if only someone would explain to me how someone does this!

  I’ll ask Fierce. He helped me un-egg my egg, maybe he can explain to me how someone conjures fire and I can extrapolate from there. Maybe we’ll kiss again. Except we can’t kiss during study hall, but he can help me to conjure fire. That’s valid use of class time. And it’s not like we’ve kissed since Saturday. Which I’m not counting the days from—six. It was fun, but I basically ambushed him and then he liked what he got, I shouldn’t count on him having a continued interest. Besides, I’m “awkward.” Although I don’t think I’m a bad kisser. I’ve practiced, even if my partners were biased.

  Not paying attention is probably only going to compound my problems. Okay, so drawing forth metal is more complicated than conjuring flame. You have to embody the whole thing while with fire you can make a spark and spread it. I… don’t know what the sarx that means. I know how to blow up a flame, I nearly ashed myself and Fierce because I’m good at that. Which does me zero good, because evidently I can’t do that with the metal sphere.

  Evidently Fierce is well-liked, Patience looked dubiously at the gaggle of novices gathered to his banner in the name of teaching her to evoke flame. I don’t see how witnesses are going to help me learn to conjure flame.

  Okay, so I am going to make something called an “investiture” using the smoke from some coal. It’s supposed to make fire sorcery easier. Feel the fire outside, and then bring that awareness to summoning flame. I can do this. Come on, Patience.

  “Patience, the investiture isn’t a fire for you to draw on. Bitumen, back off a bit. If she can draw fire at that distance, she can get her—for pity’s sake, Patience, I’m watching you draw fire off the coal!” I’m not trying to, but with the smoke there, the fire is also right there! “Okay, friends!” He’s got friends already? “Draw your cheese knives, and let’s just apply a little survival pressure to Patience!” Wait what?

  The students around her drew various sharp utensils from their pockets, and began to circle Patience. Oh, sarx no. This is not happening. I’m going to, what, die if I don’t scare them off with fire? One of the students swiped at her, and she could only back up so much before coming in range of the other side of the oblong enclosing her. No. No. No! Get away from me! I am not surrendering control to a bunch of novice fire mages with cheese knives! Patience drew on the fire inside her, and channeled it into its domain. She conjured forth a towering wall of dread, and the wards of the students were as nothing to her manifestation. One or two dropped their knives and rocked backwards, the others halted mid step. Who the sarx thinks that getting classmates to threaten my life will get me to figure out how to conjure fire, when I can perfectly easily terrify them into backing off?

  Patience broke the ring of students, striding up to Fierce, and poked him in the chest with her finger. Or would have if he hadn’t drawn back, arms crossing over said chest. You don’t like getting poked? I don’t like getting threatened with knives! “What the festering fulmination was that, Fierce?!”

  Fierce put up his hands. “I was trying to help you! You asked me to!”

  Patience closed the distance between them again, and grabbed his shoulders. This time he didn’t step back. “How is threatening me going to help?!”

  “Some fire sorcerers manifest flame in response to danger! Again, I was trying to help you, you infuriating woman!” I’m infuriating?! You’re reckless! Patience was still pouring on her manifested emotion, this time ranging into sheer fury. She could feel the students behind her cowering. She could feel Fierce’s indignation and shock. Shock? What, I’m supposed to be unable to overcome a fifteen minute lesson in wards after a good twelve years of sorcerous practice influencing emotion? I don’t think so!

  Patience met Fierce’s gaze, and the next thing she knew, she was once again kissing him without asking first. And he was reciprocating. When his tongue touched hers, she broke off the kiss, asserting, “I am still furious with you.”

  “Oh, like you were in real danger.”

  “I have no way of knowing that! Fire sorcerers are some of the least well-adjusted, manipulative, controlling, amoral people I’ve met! Every single one that I’ve opposed has used their superior position or might to get their way! How am I supposed to know that they’re fronting false emotion?!”

  “Superior might? To the woman who just overwhelmed eight students and their wards rather than conjure fire?”

  “You know perfectly well that I have never had formal training and never conjured fire in my life, so if there’s a time to find a domain solution to an elemental problem, fighting for my life is that time!”

  “May I kiss you again?” I didn’t ask, why would he? Still seething, Patience nodded. Fierce evidently trimmed his beard but didn’t shave it clean, because his stubble was still the first thing Patience noticed. Does he run hot? He’s so warm. And he’s kissing me. After making me fear for my life. The rotter. Patience reached out to feel how Fierce was feeling, and found he was warded. With actual spell architecture. She reached out to break his walls and he broke off the kiss. “Ah ah. You’re not playing with my mind!”

  “Then see if you get more kisses, dungbag!”

  “Oh, so we’re name-calling now.” How dare you make me look like the unreasonable party here! You threatened me with knives! You—you—you! Patience felt her temper blaze like it hadn’t in years, and the distinct smell of burning hair was abruptly on the wind. Fierce yelped and wiped the fire off his head, a less refined version of the siphoning the upperclassmen had done to the novices as they tried to keep themselves warm. “What, so the only time you can conjure flame is when you’re mad at me?! That’s the second time you’ve tried to set me on fire!”

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  “Fire is the choleric element, it’s a better start than threatening me with knives!” I’m so glad they covered humors, Mother thought fire was the sanguine humor. Mom will probably tell me not to correct her.

  Shaping, on the other hand, was progressing quite well. I think I’ve got the hang of this. I wonder when they’ll get into humors or domains of the metal sphere. I can make whatever shape I want, and I’m even figuring out motion. It’s like making a candle flame dance or shape. Kinda. You have to watch for the metal getting stressed but if you move it right that doesn’t happen.

  Of course, that shouldn’t be relevant during my conjuration exam, except I’m cheating. Patience had a belt of pewter around her waist, a wire-thin strand extending to be a ring around her finger, and plumped an egg of pewter into her hand from the metal on her waist. If they can’t instruct me, it’s hardly my fault I need to cheat. Her teacher cleared his throat and said, “While that is impressive metal control, it is not conjuration, Skarlefaxus. Please hand me the mass of it and try again.” Sarx.

  Ultimately, she failed the exam, and she was placed on academic probation. She was failing one of her core classes. Mom is going to be so disappointed in me. She tried so hard to find me something that would be interesting and practical. And somehow I suspect that cheating by getting a classmate to conjure for me… the upperclassmen are unknowns to try and enchant, and I don’t think any of my fellow novices could do so subtly enough. I suspect that would go worse for me. “Dean Blade, I am more than competent in my domain and at shaping. I don’t deserve to be booted just because I can’t do one specific thing!”

  The Dean laced her fingers and leaned forward on her desk. “You have the rest of the quarter to develop a proficiency in summoning metal. We will not advance a student who does not know the rudiments of the element. However, you are correct that your mastery of shaping, to say nothing of your Scriptural studies, warrants a special exception.” Patience opened her mouth to say something. “Which is why if you can conjure by the end of the quarter, you will be permitted to advance.” Patience, disappointed, closed her mouth.

  “It’s not sarxing fair, Fierce! If I had to conjure to get into the college to begin with I’d understand—”

  “Uh… it was a requirement.” Oh sarx. Mom must have pulled strings. Oh God, I’m going to disappoint her even more. Or she didn’t know. Then it’s her fault. If she listened to Mother and assumed I could conjure fire… “Orth to Patience?”

  “No, I just… I didn’t realize. And my Mom must have pulled some strings and not realized I’d need it to progress. And that just makes me so angry! I shouldn’t be put in a situation where I have no reasonable expectation of success just because my Mom didn’t know my limitations as a sorceress when she put in the application!”

  ”Do you want to rage, or do you want to make out? And I ask that as a man who is averse to having his hair set on fire. Again.” I did it once. Almost twice, but only almost. So once. Once!

  Patience tried to fold her arms up between them to feel Fierce’s muscled bulk, but he caught her wrists before she could handle him. With raw muscled force, he put her hands behind her back and conjured metal around her wrists. Of all the nerve! Of all the impetuous, presumptuous—

  Her train of thought was interrupted by a scratchy kiss on her cheek. I think I like that. We’ve rushed to tongue more than once, I haven’t had a lot of kisses on places other than my lips. Another kiss, and this time a gentle bite to her earlobe. I want more. She strained against the bands, but he hadn’t conjured pewter, whatever he’d done. Finally, he kissed her lips, and she tried to take his lip between her teeth but he drew back. Infuriating man. The nerve, to manacle me! Why are we even still talking after… because there’s something I like in a man I can actually get mad at. He challenges me. He’s even probably the only novice who could keep me out of his heart. Except that’s making me want into his heart. Sarx, is this love? Have I been missing out with my sycophantic lackeys? He smothered her train of thought with a direct, passionate kiss, her last thought, His control is slipping. He’s burning hot.

  It was several kisses and some breathless laughter later that she realized something. He bound me with metal. I can’t conjure but I can shape. Almost as soon as she thought it, the bands slithered up her arm, and she let it wind its way along Fierce’s hand on her shoulder to reach for his other hand. He looked at her, wide-eyed, and then down to his bound hands. “Patience, wait—”

  “Why should I wait? You didn’t.”

  “No, you don’t understand.”

  “What don’t I understand? I want to touch you. Unless…” Does he not actually want my hands on him? What’s with all the kisses, then?! He was happy to touch my shoulders and neck.

  “No, Patience, I can feel what you’re putting off, it’s not that. I swear it’s not.”

  “Then why can’t I touch that strongman body of yours? Are you shy?”

  “After a fashion. I… sarx, I wasn’t going to share this yet. I… drink a special herbal tea to be masculine. I have body hair and muscles, yes, but I also have… well, breasts. And I don’t like… I’m a man, not a… I don’t want to be wanted as a woman.” Is that all?!

  “I don’t want you as a woman, Fierce. I barely want you as a man. I want you as a strong, stubbly, passionate kisser. Mother’s the same way as you, just in the other direction, but Mom is the muscle in the family… frankly, I’m most interested in whether you’re a fire baby but I’m willing to overlook it because you’re a fire sorcerer.”

  Fierce went on a face journey. His ward was still in place, so she could only catch the edges of what he felt, but what little Patience could pick up was incredulity, followed by relief. “You shouldn’t be outing your mother.”

  Patience waved him off. “She doesn’t care. She’s said as much. Something about my lack of nephilim features meaning the alternative is her being cuckolded and that offends her pride more than she cares about her gender.”

  “So… you going to let my arms loose?”

  Patience grinned. “Get the bands off your wrists yourself, muscleman.”

  “I swear you don’t even want to kiss, you want to fight.”

  “It’s novel, being disagreed with.”

  “Just how much did you have your classmates wrapped around your finger growing up?!” Uhm… that’s not anger, that’s alarm. Also amusement. Or at least that’s what he’s warding with. Nice of him to bother emanating what he’s feeling, now that we’ve passed the delicate moment.

  “Maybe a lot.”

  “You’re not terribly moral, are you?”

  “That’s rich coming from the guy who trapped me in a circle of knife-wielding classmates.”

  “For the last time, I was trying to help you! And you were never in any actual danger!”

  “So it’s moral to make me think I’m going to die unless I manifest fire, as long as I’m not actually going to?”

  “Precisely so.”

  “Ohhh, you… shut up and kiss me.”

  Much to her delight, Fierce proceeded to do exactly that. Mindful of his concerns, Patience put one hand to his cheek and one hand on the thick, muscular mass of his bicep. It wasn’t a pectoral, but that could wait. He was so deliciously strong, even compared to her own muscle. He wasn’t taller than her, but he was strong enough to bundle her into his arms as they explored one another’s mouths.