Page 6 of Monsters in the Museum (Defenders of the Light #1)
Chapter six
X ander blinked rapidly, trying to get his eyes to focus on the scroll in front of him. He realized he had been staring at the same sentence for several minutes without absorbing any of it. He straightened up from the table he was bent over and tilted his face up to the sky, trying to relieve the aching in his stiff neck. The sunshine warmed his features as he let out a huff of frustration. He was attempting to study the eleven attributes of a successful ward, but his progress through the monotonous manuscript had stalled. Wading his way through the first five attributes had gone efficiently enough, but when he got to the sixth one, his distraction had arrived, and he hadn’t made much progress since.
Xander spared a glance down the long table, stretching the length of the open-air courtyard to where his distraction sat. She perched on a stool about four down from his on the opposite side of the table, a heavy leather book open in front of her. She seemed engrossed in the tome, oblivious to the other people milling about the courtyard’s long tables, some studying as he was, others chatting and laughing amongst themselves. Given her current focus, Xander reasoned that he could get away with staring a little longer.
Her left elbow was propped up on the table, and in that hand, she held a delicate bronze dagger. Xander was enraptured as he watched it twirl between her deft fingers, which were crisscrossed with scars from countless hours of combat training. What fascinated Xander the most, though, were the three balls of light that trailed from the tip of the dagger as she twirled it around and around. The balls were no bigger than a candied date, yet their brightness was as intense as that of the sun overhead.
Xander couldn’t help but be impressed by her control of the Light. While he was certainly no slob when it came to casting defenses, and his knowledge of theory and philosophy was unmatched in their class, he could barely do what she was doing now while focusing completely, let alone while he was reading a book. He wondered what she could be reading that had captured her attention so fully.
While Xander had been enraptured by the Lights twirling around the woman’s fingers, he had failed to notice a large form walking up behind her.
“Go away, Cyril. I’m busy,” she said, neither looking up from her book nor ceasing the twirling of the dagger around her fingers.
The hulking man folded his arms, making the red fabric draped across his chest stretch across broad pectorals.
“Oh, come on, Aediene,” Cyril said. “Don’t be such a bore. Come have some fun with me.”
Aediene still didn’t look up at the man. “I am having fun. In fact, I would be having more fun if you left me alone now.”
Xander’s lips twitched, but he remained silent. He had watched the woman long enough in their years of training together to know where this was going to end.
Cyril scowled, making it clear that this interaction wasn’t going how he expected. He reached out a meaty hand and grabbed Aediene’s shoulder, jerking her away from her book.
“How can you be having more fun with that book than—”
He didn’t get to finish his sentence because Aediene whirled to her feet faster than Xander could follow. She managed to grab the wrist of the hand that Cyril had placed on her shoulder and now had her nails digging between the tendons of the sensitive inner side in a way that looked most excruciating. Her other hand still held the dagger, which was now pointed with the tip less than a centimeter from the slight bulge at the meeting of Cyril’s legs, the balls of light still hovering around expectantly near the tip. Her voice remained calm as she said, “Because at least this book is somewhat intellectually stimulating, something I’m afraid you could never hope to offer.”
Xander bit down on his hand to keep from laughing at the outraged look on the big man’s face. Cyril turned an unflattering shade of purple, and a vein throbbed in his temple. Still, the big man managed to splutter, “You’re much too pretty to worry about me being intellectually stimulating, when I could be stimulating in other, far more fun ways.”
Xander’s eyes widened, but Aediene only looked amused. Just then, Cyril violently wrenched his wrist, trying to free it from the woman’s grasp. Before he could twist free, the three balls of Light flew up from where they had been hovering around the knife. They stopped in front of his face just inches from his eyes and burst with an audible pop, getting even brighter than they had been before.
Cyril stumbled backward, rubbing at his eyes and cursing loudly. “She blinded me! The bitch blinded me!”
At this point, the noise of the orbs of Light exploding combined with the large man’s yelling had drawn the attention of everybody in the courtyard.
Aediene acted like she hadn’t noticed. “Oh, calm down, you big baby,” she hissed. “It’s temporary. You’ll be able to see just fine in a couple of hours.” She turned back to the table, looking as if she fully intended to return to her book, but froze when a commanding voice echoed across the courtyard.
“What seems to be going on here?”
Everybody in the courtyard rushed to get out of the way of the woman striding between the tables. Fabric swirled around her from head to toe, the cloth so white, it hurt to look at. As she drew nearer to the center of the commotion, where Aediene and Cyril stood, Xander shot to his feet and stepped around the table in order to get closer to the action.
“What is the meaning of this?” the woman demanded. Her tone made everybody in the courtyard stand up straighter.
Cyril spoke first. “Commander, she blinded me! I was just trying to talk to her, and she blinded me!” He threw a thick arm out in the general direction of Aediene, the other hand still covering his eyes.
Aediene held her chin high, opening her mouth to protest, “Commander, I—”
“It was me,” Xander interjected.
The Commander’s eagle-eyed gaze shot to him. “You did this Xander?” For once she seemed caught off guard.
“You did?” Aediene echoed, a crease forming between her brows.
“Yes,” Xander continued. “I was practicing my control by juggling some balls of Light, and I lost focus when I heard Aediene and Cyril arguing, and well… you know my control isn’t the best.” He looked down at his sandals and rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly.
The Commander’s eyes narrowed for a moment as she appraised him. “I thought at least you were intelligent enough to have better judgment, Xander. I do not want to hear of anything like this again.”
Xander nodded emphatically, causing his hair to fall into his eyes, “Of course, Commander.”
The Commander turned and led Cyril away toward the infirmary. As they went, Cyril turned his head and threw a snarl over his shoulder in Xander’s general direction.
Xander grimaced at the thought of making a new enemy, especially an enemy who had arms three times as thick as his own lanky limbs. He turned away to find Aediene staring at him with her arms crossed and an eyebrow raised.
“You know I can fight my own battles.”
Xander hopped back over to his side of the table to settle onto his stool. “Oh, don’t worry, you made that abundantly clear.” He chuckled. “However, I get in less trouble than you do, so I could better afford the slip-up. Besides, I am a Defender, not a Warrior, so the Commander can’t do much to me anyway.”
Aediene looked at him curiously as she gathered her book up from the table. “Still, you didn’t have to take the fall for me.”
“Nonsense. I have far too much fun watching you taking on those meatheads for you to have to stop.”
“So, you watch me do that regularly?”
Xander looked down and rubbed the back of his neck again. This time, his sheepishness was not feigned. “Well, that’s not—you do tend to make quite a scene.”
Aediene laughed at his awkwardness, and Xander couldn’t help but hope that he could make her laugh like that more often.
She gestured to the stool across from his. “Do you mind if I join you?”
“Of course not.” Xander shuffled a few of his stacks of paper out of the way to make room for her book as she sat down.
Aediene settled into the seat and reopened her book, resuming the twirling of her knife between her fingers.
Xander had a smile on his face as he looked back down at the parchment in front of him. He still couldn’t focus on the sixth element of an effective ward, but he found that he didn’t care.