Work Text:
“Hang on, let me grab another cup,” Riz says, not looking up from his textbook. He tries to balance it in one hand and carry his thermos with the other, something that certainly would go wrong if not for his well-trained dexterity. Somehow, he makes it to the coffee station in the Aguefort cafeteria and tops up his travel mug.
He screws on the lid one-handed, eyes still scanning down the page of his assigned reading for Beast Slaying class. He went over it once last night but he always likes to give the reading a second go-around before the lecture.
Riz slides back into his seat. “Okay, sorry. What were you saying?”
“I believe I was sayi—oh no. I’ve gotten a vision. A terrible vision,” Adaine deadpans. Riz’s eyes snap up from his book. She’s pressing her fingers into her temples and squeezing her eyes shut. “You shouldn’t drink that coffee.”
“What? Seriously?”
Adaine opens her eyes and rolls them. “Yep, I divined it. Something terrible will happen if you drink the coffee, Riz.”
Riz’s half-awake brain finally catches up to the joke. “Ha ha, Adaine. Something terrible will happen if I don’t drink the coffee. I’ll go through withdrawal.”
Adaine narrows her eyes. “School hasn’t even started yet and you’re on your, what, third cup of coffee already? You need to slow down, Riz, I’m serious.”
“So am I,” Riz replies and he takes a long, scalding sip from his thermos. It burns his tongue so terribly that he can’t even taste the coffee but he’s proving a point so he doesn’t wince. “See, nothing terrible happened. Now, can I get back to studying? I have a bad feeling that we’re going to have a pop quiz today.”
“Since when did you become a diviner?” Adaine asks, a quirk to her lips. She slides her spellbook away and opens her own Beast Slaying textbook. “What’ll be on the pop quiz, then, oracle?”
Riz rolls his eyes. “I don’t know. Everything, maybe. Miss Fleetfoot said we wouldn’t have a midterm this semester but I don’t know if I believe her. A pop midterm sounds like something that would happen at Aguefort, doesn’t it?”
Adaine frowns, her shoulders tightening. Riz knows that she still has a bad association with important tests, especially those that she doesn’t have time to study for in advance. “It does…”
“So let’s quiz each other. What are the resistances of a, uh,” Riz scans his page for a creature that they covered in class this semester, “flesh construct?”
“Lightning, poison, bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing.”
“And what happens when you do lightning damage to one?”
“You heal it.” Adaine says confidently.
Riz feels less confident than she seems. He doesn’t know why, exactly. He’s never gotten less than an A- on a test but there's a first time for everything. And there’s something strange in the air today, or maybe under his skin. His fingertips tingle with unspent energy. Something bad is going to happen, he’s sure of it.
“Your turn,” she says, interrupting his nervous rumination. “Vulnerabilities of a swarm of centipedes?”
“Uh, shit. Not water, not ice. Hm. Fire?” Riz asks, doubting his answer as soon as it leaves his lips.
Adaine shakes her head.
“Try again,” she offers.
“Electricity?” Riz asks, even less confident with his second attempt at an answer.
Adaine’s head keeps shaking. “Sorry, Riz. It was a trick question. They don’t have any damage vulnerabilities.”
Riz curses under his breath and takes another sip of coffee, burning off the last of his taste buds. “I should’ve known that. Fuck, I’m gonna fail out of Aguefort. At least… if this is my last day at Aguefort, I’m glad we spent it studying together,” he says pathetically and lays his head down in his textbooks.
“Oh, Riz.” Adaine’s voice is as sympathetic as he’s ever heard her. “It’s going to be okay.”
“I think it’s a trick,” Riz says, carrying his lunch tray, heavy with chicken noodle soup and sides, to his table. “The rogue syllabus says that today is going to cover picking locks but we already had that lesson a few months ago. Now, you’re probably thinking,” Riz says quickly, not giving Adaine a chance to cut in, “‘maybe it was just a mistake in the syllabus, Riz,’ but I think it’s a hint. A clue. Today’s actually going to be about traps.”
“What makes you think that?”
“A good trap catches you off guard. I think they’re trying to catch the rogue students off guard.”
Adaine squints her eyes. “Or it was a mistake in the syllabus, Riz,” she says wryly.
“You don’t get it. Rogue classes are weird. I bet they’ve already started. Shit,” he puts his tray down on the Bad Kid’s lunch table and crouches down, investigating his chair. “This table could be trapped.” He pulls a pen out of his shirt pocket and taps it against the chair lightly. “Or, fuck, the food could be poisoned. Kristen, do you have Detect Poison and Disease?”
“Hm?”
“He thinks his lunch is trapped.”
“What kind of trap involves poisoned milk?” Fig asks, laughing. She sips from her own carton.
“Who’s lunch is poisoned?” Gorgug asks, sliding into his chair.
“Everyone’s, it’s a school cafeteria,” Fabian says, curling his lip as if just remembering the room that he’s in. “I mean, what is that? There’s mold in your soup, The Ball.”
“What?” Riz leans in and spoons through his soup. “Where?”
“The green stuff.”
“That’s celery, Fabian,” Adaine says with a sigh.
“Even worse,” he replies, sneering. “Like salty, crunchy water. It’s disgusting. Just once, I wish Aguefort would serve a white bean and kale stew. Or maybe a gazpacho.”
Riz is still leaning in close to his lunch, investigating each part of it. He opens the milk carton and sniffs it cautiously, then carefully taps on his apple with a single claw. When nothing explodes, he slowly lowers himself into his seat. “Kristen?”
“What?”
“The Detect Poison. Do you have the slots for it?”
“Why am I casting this?” She asks, already having sent the magic through the air. It forms a light cloud over Riz’s tray and sparkles with dusty purple light. “Should I worry about my own food?” Kristen keeps chewing her bread roll slowly.
Riz furrows his brow. “You should always be worried. We all should. Any one of us could be poisoned at any time. We need to stay on guard.”
Adaine puts a hand on Riz’s arm, who flinches at the contact. “Riz, I thought this was about rogue classes.”
“It was at first, but Kristen’s right. We all need to be hypervigilant. Always.”
“I don’t think I said that.”
Fabian snorts.
Riz runs a nervous hand through his hair, pushing it off his forehead. He slides his glasses off his face and rubs his eyes.
“Do you need to go to the nurse’s office, Riz?” Fig asks. “You’re… you’re acting kind of weird.”
“I’m fine, it’s the rest of you who should be worried. Don’t you think we’re underestimating how much danger we’re in at all times, guys? I mean, right now, for instance—”
“Chill out, The Ball.”
“Riz,” Adaine says, squeezing his arm. “Why don’t you tell me about rogue classes? What did you learn last week?”
Riz knows when he’s being willfully distracted but he doesn’t protest. He appreciates the chance to go over the curriculum again with a willing audience. It’ll be a good chance to review the material.
“Well, last week was all about subclasses you can take. Most people in class wanted to be thieves and assassins but, I don’t know, I liked the sound of the arcane trickster.”
“You’re walking down a temple hallway and you see crumbling cobblestone up ahead. Behind you is a wall of fire. Above you is a ceiling made of iron spikes. Under your feet are swarming, poisonous snakes. What do you do?” Riz asks.
“I wake up from the terrible nightmare I’m having.” Fabian says, rolling his eye.
Adaine fights a smile as she empties one of her component pouches onto the shiny, laminate surface of Basrar’s largest table, shaking out pine needles, stuck together with resin. Her smile turns to a grimace as she starts picking them out of the sticky substance.
“Engage with the hypothetical, Fabian!” Riz says. “Your life’s on the line.”
“It’s not, because I would never be in that circumstance. That’s crazy, The Ball. Nothing like that is ever going to happen to me so it’s not worth worrying about.”
“We’re adventurers! Anything could happen to us.” Riz grips his spoon so tightly it feels like it’ll bend under the force of his grip. He finished his ice cream less than ten minutes after making it to the ice cream shop, and he’s been trying hopelessly to get the others to engage with his own version of a pop quiz ever since, seeing as they didn’t have one in their morning lecture.
“It’s a little unrealistic, Riz,” Fig admits. “I mean, one or two traps, I get, but four at once? What are the chances we’ll run into something like that?”
“If we do, wouldn’t you rather be prepared for it?” He asks, begging the others to play along with desperate eye contact. “Kristen?”
“I’d lay down and accept my fate.” She reaches into her backpack, and pulls out a pen, leaking ink. Fig offers her hand and Kristen takes it, drawing flowers and smiley faces across her skin.
Riz groans. “Gorgug?” He asks, dropping his head in his hands.
“I don’t know, man. I don’t know what I’d do.”
Riz rubs his temples hard, the pain grounding him in the midst of his frustration. He sighs, having resigned himself to a failed experiment.
“I’d cast Spider Climb on myself,” Adaine says deliberately. “Then, I’d walk along the walls of the temple to avoid the crumbling floor and the sharp ceiling. The snakes would probably get one attack off at me before I could get fully free, but they don’t have any sort of ensnaring strike so I’d get away quickly. Once I’m out of range of the snakes and past the crumbling floor, I’d cast Mage Armor on myself to prepare for the fight that I’m sure I’m about to walk into once I exit the trapped hallway.”
Riz looks up, mouth fallen open. “Oh.”
“What, did I do it wrong?” Adaine asks, looking up from her components spread across the table.
“No, that’s… that’s a great solution. Thank you.”
She smiles and shakes her head like it was no big deal. “It’s good practice to think about,” she says to the others. “I don’t know why the rest of you didn’t want to play along.”
“I’m not going to be complicit in The Ball’s exercises in anxiety. He should learn to relax a little.”
Riz lifts his thermos, finding it almost empty and scowls, slamming it down on the table. “There’s no time to relax on the battlefield.”
“To be fair, we’re not on a battlefield, Riz,” Adaine says, gently.
“Everywhere’s a battlefield, if you think about it,” he says. “Or at least, it can be. You never know when a dragon is going to fly down from above and rip the school apart. Or maybe some other students are going to turn evil and start a killing spree right here in Basrar’s. We have to be ready.”
He looks wildly between five faces at the table and is met with nothing but bewilderment and concern.
“Guys?”
Riz reaches for his thermos again. Adaine snatches it out of his hand.
“Hey!”
“No,” she says, voice firm, holding the thermos over his head.
“Please,” Riz whines, reaching out across the table. “I need it.”
Adaine passes his thermos off to Gorgug who tucks it next to him on the bench. “Sorry, Riz. You’re cut off.”
“You’re kind of losing it, man,” Gorgug adds.
“I’m not—I’m not losing it! I’m thinking perfectly clearly. If anything, I’m thinking more clearly than usual.”
“Says the guy foaming at the mouth about how we’re currently under attack. I’m eating ice cream right now. No one’s ever died while they were eating ice cream, The Ball.”
“That’s… that’s categorically not true, dude,” Riz says, so baffled by the boldly declared statement that it actually causes his brain to slow down for a moment. “I guess I do sound a little paranoid, don’t I?”
“Uh, yeah,” Kristen says, punctuated with a sip from her milkshake. “Like category five paranoia.”
Riz bites down on his lower lip and furrows his eyebrows. “Huh. I guess I just have a bad feeling about things right now. Like something really bad is going to happen.”
“You said that this morning, Riz,” Adaine reminds him. “And nothing bad happened.”
“Yet,” he replies and taps his spoon against his teeth. “Yet.”
Riz stacks pillows on Adaine’s desk chair, raising the seat so he can comfortably reach the desk’s surface. It’s almost 3:00 A.M. and Riz, despite himself, has started feeling tired. If he dives into his First Aid notes, he hopes he can keep himself awake.
“Do you think I should start carrying a needle and surgical thread?” He asks through a yawn. “What if one of you needs stitches?”
“Then Kristen will heal us,” Adaine responds, looking up from the essay she’s writing.
“What if Kristen’s out of commission?” Riz can barely keep his eyes open. The panic that spikes through his body when he considers these hypotheticals is the only thing keeping him awake. It makes him feel vaguely nauseous and his heart beats hard and fast.
“Then Fig will heal us.”
“And if she’s down?”
Adaine sighs and puts her pen down. “I think Fabian knows Cure Wounds. What’s really going on, Riz?”
“You could go down so easily, Adaine. Wizards, you know? You can’t take a hit.”
“Ouch.”
Riz rubs his hand across his face. “I’m just… I—”
“Are you okay? Genuinely?” Adaine stands up and opens the mini fridge in her room, pulling out a cold water bottle. She hands it to Riz. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m tired,” Riz answers before he can stop himself. “Sorry.”
Adaine tilts her head. “We still have four hours until we have to wake up, it’s fine.”
Riz laughs humorlessly. “Not all of us are elves, Adaine.”
Adaine’s eyes widen. “Oh, shit. You don’t trance. How—I’m sorry, Riz, I forgot.”
Riz takes a long sip from the water bottle and feels a fraction better. “It’s fine, Adaine. We do this all the time. Study sessions, then four hours of sleep. I’m used to it.”
Adaine’s face flushes. “How did I not realize I’ve been keeping you up? Oh gods, I’m complicit in your sleep deprivation, aren’t I? Riz, you should’ve said something!”
“It’s fine, Adaine; what am I gonna do? It’s so much more fun studying with you than sleeping. I’m not going to say, ‘hey, Adaine. This has been fun but it’s time for me to get some Z’s.’”
“That’s exactly what you should say!”
Riz scoffs. “I rather stay up with you. Wouldn’t you get lonely if I cut things short?”
“I would be… fine.”
Riz catches the flash of deception in Adaine’s eye, just a hint of emotion in the twitch of her lip.
“Adaine, we’re the Nerd Squad. I’m gonna keep you company and I’m gonna help you with your homework—whenever I understand it—okay? That’s what we do.” Riz screws the lid back on his water bottle and pushes himself to his feet. He pats Adaine’s hand. “Even if it means I don’t get very much sleep. It’s fine. That’s what coffee’s for.”
“I wish you would drink less coffee, Riz.”
Riz rolls his eyes. “Anyway,” he says, squeezing her hand, “you need to cast Mirror Image on yourself.”
“What?”
Riz grimaces, squeezing Adaine’s hand tightly. She flinches from the harsh grip and Riz quickly lets up. “Sorry. It’s just that we’re going to be attacked, I’m sure of it. I’ll protect you as best I can but you need to be prepared.”
Adaine puts a hand on Riz’s tense shoulder and guides him back into the cushioned desk chair. “Would it make you feel better if I cast it?” Riz nods. “Okay,” Adaine replies and she waves one hand in the air, summoning from the ether three ghostly versions of herself. They stand in her periphery, making her true shape hard to focus on. “Okay?”
“Yeah, that’s better.”
“Now, we’re going to talk. I want you to think as logically as you can, push away the anxiety and just be entirely pragmatic. What has you acting so strange today? I don’t want to say out-of-character because it’s not necessarily that strange for you to be nervous. But it’s certainly dialed up.”
Riz narrows his eyes and stares at the wall. He knows Adaine is making sense. He just doesn’t want to admit it to himself. “You’re… you’re right. I am acting weird, aren’t I? More paranoid than usual. Shit. Someone must’ve done something to me to make me paranoid.”
Adaine takes a deep inhale and blows it out slowly. “Riz, you must realize how paranoid that sentence just made you sound, right?”
Riz barely hears her. “We gotta get the others. Come on!”
He flies through Adaine’s bedroom door and runs down the long hallways of Mordred Manor, out the front door, and to the connected chapel on the east wall of the house. He doesn’t bother knocking, just bursts into Kristen’s bedroom.
“Wake up! We’re under attack.”
Kristen sits up blearily and narrows her eyes at Riz. “Huh?” She mumbles. “We—”
“We’re not under attack,” Adaine asserts from behind Riz.
“Are we under attack or not?”
“Yes! Well, no, not necessarily. Maybe. But I certainly am,” Riz says, words spilling out over one another. “Someone poisoned me; Kristen, can you cast Detec—”
“I already detected poison.”
“That was on my milk. Do it on me this time.”
Fig pushes her way through the heavy wooden doors of the chapel-slash-bedroom. “What’s going on?” She asks, running a hand through her hair and flattening her bedhead.
Kristen grabs her staff from next to her in bed—Riz takes note of the fact that not one Bad Kid seems to be able to sleep without a weapon within arm’s reach—and stomps it on the floor. Dusty purple magic flies across the air and settles over Riz before lighting up in a painfully bright white.
“I fucking knew it!”
Riz spits into a petri dish and hands it to Gorgug who slips it under his parent’s microscope. He has three textbooks splayed open in front of him on the workshop table, all open to pages on different types of poison.
He leans down, towering over the tiny microscope and peers into the eyepiece, rotating a piece on the side. Riz holds his breath.
“Should we wake Fabian up?” Fig whispers. “It feels weird going on a quest with just five of us.”
“It’s not a quest,” Adaine says uncertainly. “We’re just… we’re just investigating.”
“Fabian wouldn’t answer his phone even if one of us were dying on the other line. There’s no chance he’d wake up for a science project,” Kristen says.
“It’s not a science project,” Riz protests. “I was poisoned, Kristen. We have to figure out what kind of poison it is so I can start thinking about who the perpetrator might be.” He pulls out a small notebook from his pocket and uncaps his pen. “I need more information to find the motive.”
“It’s kind of a science project,” Gorgug says quietly, face still pressed into the microscope. “I never get a chance to use this stuff. I hope my parents don’t mind.”
“I think they’d be pumped that you’re interested in their interests, dude,” Fig replies.
Gorgug just hums noncommittally and pulls away from the microscope. He starts flipping through the books, scanning the pictures. Riz holds his breath the whole time.
“Here,” he says. “Doubtfern.” He holds up one of the books with a picture of a tall green fern, heavy and laden with white flowers. He reads aloud. “Consumption of this drug leads to high levels of suspicion and paranoia. The effect increases in intensity for forty-eight hours before reaching its peak. There are no long-term effects of this dru—”
“Holy shit, he was right,” Fig interrupts. “He was poisoned by someone. He wasn’t just being paranoid.”
“I mean, he definitely is being paranoid,” Kristen adds.
“It’s not paranoia if you’re right,” Riz replies. “And I was right.”
“About one thing today.”
“Shh, I’m thinking. When did it start…” Riz closes his eyes and moves backwards through time, thinking of every instance when he said that he had a bad feeling about things. His eyes spring open. “I think I know where to investigate next but I can’t do it until school opens. Tomorrow morning, breakfast at 7:00 A.M. in the cafeteria. Adaine, will you come with me?”
Adaine looks down at her watch. “Of course,” she says, “But it’s 6:30, Riz. It is tomorrow.”
Riz lets Gorgug lead him outside where he sees the sun rise over the Thistlespring Tree. “Oh.”
“Do you want to maybe skip school today? Get some sleep?” Adaine puts a hand on his shoulder.
“No, no. This is important. Someone’s targeting me. I need to figure out why.”
Adaine nods and hugs him to her side. “Okay. Let’s do it.”
Riz looks up at her and smiles. “Thank you,” he says on an exhale. “And can you please cast Mage Armor on yourself? Just in case! Just in case,” he says, forcing a laugh. “I know it’s the drug but it would make me feel better.”
Adaine drops her arm around him to summon energy through the air, wrapping her body in golden light. “Better?”
“Much.”
“See you all at school?” Riz asks, calling over his shoulder as he walks down Ballaster Street with Adaine by his side.
“Oh, I’m absolutely skipping,” Fig says just loud enough for Riz to hear. He chuckles.
“See you in homeroom,” Gorgug shouts.
Riz nods. As concerned as he feels, the knowledge that his feelings are caused by a drug actually serves to calm him down slightly. He tries to fight the thought, “something bad is going to happen,” with, “you were dosed with something that’s making you think that.” It doesn’t work perfectly but it does help him lower his heart rate just slightly.
Adaine looks down at him. “You okay?”
“Not really,” he replies.
“That’s okay,” she replies, taking his hand. “We’re the Nerd Squad, you know? I’m gonna keep you company until you’re feeling better.”
Riz nods and presses his eyes shut tightly, squeezing her hand. He fights his paranoia with the knowledge that his friends are going to be by his side no matter what happens next.
“Morning, Philippa,” Riz says, walking into the Aguefort cafeteria and swiping his school ID.
“Hey there, kiddos,” the lunch lady responds. The position seems to turn over every month or two but, as one of the few students who attends breakfasts on campus, Riz tries his best to keep up with their names. “Eat up,” she says, gesturing to the sweet toast sticks and the slices of fruit.
“Hey, there are student workers who help prepare breakfast, right?” Riz asks, forcing as much nonchalance into his voice as possible. “Do they make the coffee, too?”
Philippa narrows her eyes. “Something happened with the coffee again, didn’t it?” She sighs and raises her voice. “Domino! Dom, get over here. Did you put salt in the coffee maker again?”
A tiefling student peeks her head out from the kitchen. Her skin is red around her eyes and nose and her hands are clenched into awkward fists. There’s a nervous look in her dark gray eyes.
Adaine sends a message into Riz’s head. “Well, doesn’t she look guilty? Do you want me to get Kristen? For a Zone of Truth?”
“I’ve got this,” Riz replies. “Hey, Domino. I’ve seen you before, haven’t I? You’re a sophomore, right?”
Domino nods. Riz does, too. He makes it a point of knowing every student in his grade and Domino is no exception. His only impression of her, though, was that she was quiet, a loner, and reasonably proficient in the classroom. He wouldn’t hate if he were assigned to a group project with her but he had no intention of getting to know her otherwise.
“Cool,” he says casually, “me too. And you’re a rogue, too, right?”
“Yeah,” Domino says, her eyes on the floor. She fidgets with something behind her back.
“What’ve you got there?”
“A book,” Domino says, flashing the title. Riz recognizes it: Wendy Wallace and the Candlenights Caper.
“Nice, I used to like mystery novels too. Before I started doing the job myself. Now, if I’m being honest, they seem a little amateurish. Real life is a lot more complicated than the simple crimes in those books.” Riz smiles with his fangs on display. “At least, life is usually more complicated than those tropes. A dagger in a secret compartment. A locked door murder. Poison in the coffee pot. Oh wait, that last one isn’t from those books, is it?”
“Uh, I don’t kno—I dunno.”
Adaine straightens up, arm at her side, fingers tight, ready for however the situation might turn. Riz is grateful for her presence by his side, giving him the confidence he needs to lay things out to Domino.
“That’s right. It’s not from a book. It’s from the real world. But you made a mistake when you dosed the coffee with Doubtfern, didn’t you? Because there’s nothing that sparks an investigative spirit like a bit of paranoia. Nothing could make me solve the mystery faster than the highest level of suspicion and hyperfocus I think I’ve ever experienced in my life.” Riz laughs. “It’s funny, right? You made me so suspicious of everything that it was a breeze solving the mystery of why I was so suspicious.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Domino mumbles, unable to meet Riz’s eye.
“I think you do. My only question though is why you did it? It was almost impressive, right? I didn’t think twice about the coffee tasting a little off; it’s free cafeteria coffee after all. I’m already paranoid so I didn’t even notice the change until I started really losing it. But why, Dom, did you dose me with it in the first place?”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Tell the truth,” Adaine insists. “You’re caught, so just—just let it out.”
“I’m not going to get you in trouble,” Riz says, trying to urge Domino to talk. He’s not sure, yet, if he is going to report her but he certainly wants to know what she has to say for herself first.
Domino’s fists clench even tighter, veins popping out over her knuckles. “You’re too competent,” she hisses, eyes darkening. She stares Riz directly in the eyes and her words pour out of her like a river rapid. “Gods, I mean, everything you do you do perfectly; it’s obnoxious! You know the answer anytime the teacher calls on you, you always set the curve on tests, you steal every private investigator gig in Elmville. I’m sick of it! What about the rest of us, huh? The ones who aren’t perfect?” She spits.
Riz flinches backwards, not expecting the aggressive transformation of her demeanor. “Oh,” the word pushes its way out of his mouth without his permission, an exhale. He doesn’t know what he expected but it wasn’t jealousy. “I’m not perfect,” he offers like a white flag flown.
Domino rolls her eyes. “The only time I ever saw you be anything but hypercompetent was when you got back from spring break. You were so paranoid about everything for a week and it’s the only time I’ve ever done better on a test than you. It’s the first time I ever saw you sweating. I thought—” Domino cuts herself off, as if she just realized how much she admitted to.
“It’s okay,” Adaine says quickly. “We’re not going to report you. You can—you can say whatever you need to say.”
Domino sighs, deflating. “I thought if I made you paranoid, you would crash and burn and everyone would see that you’re not untouchable. But it looks like I just gave you another mystery to solve without breaking a sweat. It’s all just so easy for you,” she says, stomping her foot.
Riz’s stomach sinks. He feels bad for this girl, this stranger. He never meant to present himself in a way that inspired jealousy. He just tried his hardest every day and minded his own business. He didn’t even consider the fact that other people were watching his every move and judging him for it.
“Domino, I’m always sweating. Maybe you don’t see it but I’m constantly stressed out of my mind. Nothing comes easy to me. I work hard for everything I have; my grades, my jobs, everything. You’re jealous that I work hard?”
“I’m jealous that you get everything that I want,” Domino says quietly. “Maybe if you had lost your composure publicly, people would’ve thought differently of you. Maybe you would’ve stopped getting detective gigs and I could finally take one or two. Maybe teachers wouldn’t love you as much as they do.”
Riz laughs. “Teacher’s don’t love me.”
“They do,” Adaine interrupts. “You’re a teacher’s pet, Riz. Come on, you know that, right?”
Riz’s brow furrows. “I’m n—I’m not a teacher’s pet.”
Domino groans in exasperation. “You don’t even realize. You don’t realize what you look like from the outside. Gods,” she curses under her breath. “Whatever. My plan failed because of course I couldn’t outsmart the perfect rogue,” she hisses. “What now? Going to get me expelled?”
Riz turns to Adaine. She messages him, “what’s up?”
“I don’t want her to get expelled,” he says, eyes turning sad. “She… she’s not cruel. Just, uh, confused?”
Adaine gives him a half smile. “What do you want to do, then?”
“Dom, do you want a tutor?” Riz asks, turning to face the tiefling whose entire face has turned bright red. “I can—I want to help you.”
“What?” She asks, mouth falling open. “Are you… what?”
“If you want better grades or if you want to get better at investigating, I can help, I think.” Riz turns to Adaine, shoulders shrugged, as if to ask her, am I being crazy? She shakes her head at him and smiles encouragingly.
“Did you not hear what I just said? I poisoned you, dude.”
“Yeah, it happens. Aguefort’s a crazy school, y’know? My offer stands. I’ll let you think about it though,” Riz says, grabbing Adaine’s arm and leading her to the cafeteria’s doors. “I have to, uh, I have to go.” He rushes through the double doors and takes two deep breaths as he drags her down the long hallway, walls covered in dirty lockers.
“You okay?”
He whispers, “I think the bloodrush field is about to be overtaken by a zombie horde. I have a bad feeling about it.” His hands shake.
“Mhmm,” Adaine says. “We need to find you an antidote.”
“No, I know that it sounds like I’m being paranoid but this time, it’s for real. Cast Mage Armor—no, Mirror Image. No, cast Greater Invisibility on yourself. We can’t risk having you as a target.” Riz sucks in a quick inhale. “We need to get the others. Do you think they’re here yet? Fig says she was going to skip school; can you call her? I’ll call Fabian, he usually answers if it’s me. And listen, the fight’s going to be tough but—”
“We’re going to be fine, Riz.”
Adaine pulls Riz to a halt in the middle of the hallway.
“No, we’re—”
“Riz,” she says, imbuing her words with all the reassurance and warmth that Riz has ever heard from Adaine before, “we’re going to be fine.”
Riz freezes and takes a deep breath, sucking it in, then letting it all out. His shoulders lower an inch and his tense muscles relax. “Are you sure?”
Adaine smiles.
“I’m sure of it.”
Riz nods slowly, shutting his eyes. He trusts Adaine. If she says they’re going to be okay then Riz can relax. “Okay. But can you—”
Adaine sweeps her hand through the air and casts Mage Armor on herself. “Of course.”
Riz laughs lightly. It was nice to have a friend who could read his mind. One who can talk him down when his paranoia gets the best of him.
“Thanks, Adaine.”
“We’re the Nerd Squad, you know?”
“I know.”