As I’m looking for more books on magic and anatomy, I hear footsteps.

“Your smell is unbearable,” Levener says to my mind.

“Thank you, buddy. I hope you choke on it. Or better, I hope you get sinusitis – I’d be curious to see how you would manage all that,” I say, pointing at my own mouth as a reference.

We don’t get along much, to be honest. He idolizes Princess Valarith, and I don’t give a damn about either of them. My ‘disrespect’ has started irking him. Also, he’s still angry about me trying to fry him in our duel.

“Your mental defenses are still mediocre,” he says.

“Haven’t had much time to practice them. Unlike you, I’m not spending my days fantasizing about—” I catch my tongue before starting a fight. “Do you have something to tell me? I’m looking up some stuff about curses like [Rottenbone]. I’m trying to understand if relapse is a possibility or if Claudia’s strong constitution will be enough to prevent the disease from resurfacing in the future. I mean, if it goes away from her head, we should be in the clear. But who knows?”

“I want to show you something,” the big, buff man says.

“Pass.”

He stares me dead in the eye.

“I want to tell you about Princess Valarith’s great battle against Mauser.”

“Pass.”

I start walking away when a powerful aura engulfs the library.

“Dude, I’m hopped on way too much caffeine to have a rational response to this, ok? So, before I go all straight-outta-Compton on you, back off.”

…

Princess Valarith reaches me as I swear at one of her tomes in her library. The degree of variations and applications of [Regeneration] is insane. Without Lord Juler, I would barely be able to cast one of the components of this thing. But the sheer degree of complexity in this spell is insane.

“Levener arrived at the wrong moment,” she says in her weird manner of speech. That’s what centuries without real conversations do to a mothertrucker.

“Not a problem, lady,” I say with a smile before rubbing my eyes. Once again, I have lost any sense of time in this blasted tower. There are barely a couple of windows, and it’s disorienting.

“He’s overzealous.”

“That he is.”

Feeling a looming presence at my back, I close the book in front of me and turn.

“Wassup?”

Princess Valarith is wearing a simple black robe. It looks out of place on her sickly frame, and it creates a gloomy feeling when you pair it with the beautiful face marred by a terrible scar.

“You don’t like me.”

I look at the woman who killed two [Archmages] as if it were nothing.

“You saved my life. I can’t not like you, Princess.”

She’s more silent in the tower, less intimidating. She’s simply a broken person here, not a legend walking the world.

“Look,” I say while a pang of guilt hits me, “I have nothing against you. I’d have liked it if I could have saved, in a way. Also, it sucks that the only person ready to save me was a stranger. I don’t know if Stan would have intervened if you hadn’t.”

She shakes her head.

“He wouldn’t have.”

I could ask how she knows, but I’d rather leave a part of me believing that Stan would have done something.

“Levener is young. Accepting his defective traits is part of the maturation process of two people.”

Sometimes, her speech becomes hard to parse. What she’s saying is that if we both want to grow out of our teenage phase, we better start trying to understand each other.

“Ok. I’ll try,” I say.

Immediately, Princess Valarith turns and walks away.

“Wait!”

“Yes?” she turns to me.

I sigh and pass my hands over my face, giving it a good rub. This gesture has now become a tic of mine.

“Listen, Valarith. I don’t know how to say this, okay? I’m tired. I wish someone would fucking shoot me in the head so I could sleep for three days before coming back to life. I’m not sure I’m completely sane at the moment, ok? The lack of natural light here, plus the shit I’m going through with Claudia – the literal shit – is starting to get to me. I’ve been here for barely a fraction of what you have. And I’m going crazy. How are you still subjecting yourself to this torture? Why don’t you go back? Why are you not on Kome, for Christ’s sake? Lord Juler says you have great reasons, but he can’t specify, can he now? And you just asked me to treat Levener better, but you don’t mention how I should treat you better. I don’t know what the Vanedenis make of mental health – and look, I’m definitely not completely well myself. But you, girl—you need a vacation. Please, start looking after yourself.”

I’m panting slightly after having regurgitated so many words at once. Valarith is looking at me with her typical lifeless expression. There’s nothing of the pride that she showed in the arena. There’s an idea of her people in her—or better, she’s a reincarnation of an idea. Or just an incarnation. But what matters is that a person can’t be an idea. Not unless they want to become sick, to get terminally ill. We can’t just shoulder the kind of weight that this person chose for herself.

“Please, just drop the ‘I’ll die to remit your sins’ vibe, Valarith. I don’t know what you liked to do before this, but please, look after yourself.”

She looks at me and smiles. Then, she turns again, as if she had never looked back, and just walks away.