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"I want to train my signet," she tells him through gritted teeth, forcing the words out as if they sting her throat as she speaks. "But I don't know how."
Dain raises his eyebrows. Last time they spoke, she ended the conversation with an insult and a raised middle finger. Last time he told her to train her signet, she flat out refused. Then again, Draithus changed something in all of them. Changed something between them, too. "And you want my help with it?"
"I don't want your help," Sloane snaps. Blue eyes narrow, and she tosses her blonde braid over her shoulder. "But I don't trust any of the professors."
"And you trust me, Mairi?" Dain raises his eyebrows, pinning her in place with his gaze. "This is certainly a new development."
"You know what? Forget it." Sloane's face is starting to turn pink, and she turns to storm away. "You can fuck right off, you smug fucking–"
Oh, gods damn it all.
Dain grabs her hand, right as she starts to flip him off. Swallows the impulse to tease again. "Hey, wait, I'm sorry."
And she waits. Somehow, his words hit, and she pauses mid-movement, meeting his eyes again, a glaring scowl firmly pointed in his direction. She's so warm, her skin so soft, and there's something fresh and sweet about her scent– and wow, he really needs to not think about that when she's looking at him like that.
"I'm sorry," he repeats. "I'll help you. Of course I'll help you."
“Are you going to be difficult about it?” Sloane crosses her arms in front of her chest, and Dain mirrors her movement. As if he's the difficult one here.
“You mean, am I going to push you to do what I know you're capable of?” His gaze doesn’t leave hers, and though her cheeks look just a little more flushed than before, she holds it, blue eyes darting between his. Blue like a summer sky, hiding the raging storms beneath. “Absolutely.”
Sloane rolls her eyes in response.
"I mean, what else is a wingleader for?" Dain continues, a little grin sneaking its way onto his face. He’s finding more and more that he enjoys riling her up, enjoys pushing her buttons just enough that she gets that glint in her eyes, that flush on her cheeks. Because of him.
"A lot of other things."
"You know what I mean."
Sloane sighs as she turns away, but Dain is almost certain he spots the shadow of a smile being held back.
They find time for practice after classes are done for the day, a little later in the week. The classrooms are empty this time of day, and it didn't take Dain a lot of convincing to make the professors agree on letting him use one. The alternative would have been to bring her to his room, and that's–
"Let's start with imbuing. You're familiar, right?" He's brought an assortment of stones and other small objects for her to practice on, now lined up on the table in front of them.
"Obviously." She rolls her eyes, and Dain closes his for a second, taking three deep breaths before continuing, pushing down the simmering annoyance threatening to boil over.
"Show me."
They work through them methodically, and unsurprisingly, Sloane is excellent at imbuing. Because she's not just imbuing, Dain has to remind himself.
“Alright, good,” he praises when every last rune has been imbued. “Now take the power back.”
Sloane hesitates at that, her hand trembling above the smooth stone. She's afraid. If you only have experience with one, siphoning and channeling from the source sounds frighteningly similar. Luckily Dain has been exposed to both.
“Here.” His voice turns low, and Sloane's big, blue eyes turn to his. "Remember Draithus? It's not the same." He holds out his wrist, showing her the difference between clear, unblemished skin where she siphoned from him, and the ugly scars left behind after Jack Barlowe tried to drain him.
Sloane nods, eyes flickering to his arm, following the handprint with her gaze. "How did it feel?"
"You or Barlowe?"
"Is there a difference?"
"Is there a difference? Only like night and day." He frowns, grasping for words to describe it. Both hurt, obviously. Power leaving you tends to do that. But while Barlowe felt like a thief, Sloane felt like... something divine. A higher power, restoring natural balance, taking only what was needed to save Mira's life.
He's rambling inside his own head, trying to put to words something he doesn't quite understand himself. Sloane looks up at him, patiently waiting, for once. "Think of it like the difference between being stabbed and bloodletting."
“And I'm bloodletting.”
“You're bloodletting,” he confirms. Sloane looks down at his arm again. Then, reaches up to run her fingers over the gray scar. It's partially numb, has been ever since it was put there, but Sloane's touch still feels nice, warm and surprisingly gentle. Dain runs his gaze over her hand, then follows the shimmering, dark lines of her rebellion relic. It's beautiful, in a brutal, wild way.
Sloane slots her hand over the gray scar. Her slender fingers are dwarfed by the outline of Barlowe's meaty paw. Dain grimaces. If anyone had to leave their marks on him, Barlowe certainly wasn't at the top of the list of welcome candidates.
The skin on the spot feels dead and numb, wrinkled like he’s been in the bath for too long, void of all color, no matter how much sunlight he’s exposed to.
"It's cold."
Dain nods. "Never truly warms up anymore."
He watches as she closes her eyes and furrows her brows, then feels that warm feeling of power shifting where her hand touches him. He braces himself for the sharp pressure, but this time, it's not flowing out of him, but into him. Sloane's power feels like a summer breeze and an ice bath, all at once, and the skin under her hand tingles with more sensation than it has in months.
A gasp escapes his lips without his permission, and he focuses on Sloane’s face to distract himself from the way the surge of power makes his skin sing, warmth spreading through his limbs.
Long, fair eyelashes fan out against the tops of her cheeks, and there’s a slight flush to her skin, under almost invisible freckles, that he hasn’t noticed before, and a fading scar following the line of her cheekbone. He finds himself wishing she’d open her eyes and look at him with those brilliant blues.
Before he can say anything, tell her, order her, beg her, to look at him, the surge of power ceases.
When Sloane lifts her hand, color has returned to his skin, the scarred outline much fainter. And then she collapses against him, body going limp. Dain catches her, as naturally as breathing, wrapping his arms around her, pulling her close to his chest.
"Shit, Sloane–"
Her name, her given name, not Mairi, slips out, and Dain doesn't know why. The side of her face rests against his shoulder, forehead furrowed, her breath coming in quick pants, brushing against his neck, and he looks down at her. She’s a moment away from burnout, and he didn’t even realize. Distracted and useless. And by what? The way her eyelashes look in the pale afternoon sun? By the feeling of her sitting close to him, touching him as if she doesn’t hate him?
A surge of guilt floods through him.
"Hey." He lifts a hand to cup her cheek, and her skin almost stings him, hot and damp against his fingers. Long, almost translucent eyelashes flutter as her eyes open again. She looks up at him – finally – sky blue eyes unfocused for a second before she blinks unconsciousness away.
She doesn't pull away immediately, which convinces Dain that she's still not all the way back yet.
"What happened?" Her voice is soft, confused, unlike he's ever heard it.
"You tell me." He helps her sit up straight again, but keeps a hand on the center on her back. For support, he tells himself. When she doesn't pull away, he doesn’t move either.
Then he shows her his arm. The mark is so faint, it might not even be there anymore.
"How did you do that?"
"You have an absurd amount of power." She glances up at him, one eyebrow raised. "Like an absurd amount."
"You say that like it's an insult."
"It's not normal."
"Ouch."
She looks back down at his arm. "But that spot doesn't. It's like it’s... broken."
He takes her hand in his, placing it back on his arm, spreading her fingers out with his own. Her skin is so warm, so soft. "Still?"
Sloane shakes her head.
"You gave back the power Barlowe took." The words, the implications, hang in the air between them. "If you ever needed proof that you're not venin, it's right there. You're the opposite."
Her face flushes further, and she looks up at him again, the look on her face a mixture between fear and something deeper that Dain can’t decipher. He lets the hand on her back linger, fingers tracing soothing patterns, as he releases the other.
It all feels so soft, so gentle, that Dain almost forgets that she hates him. That he's only here, helping her, because she hates Basgiath's leadership even more than she hates him. Because the ranks are still in disarray after the revelations about Riorson and Violet after Draithus. Still, she doesn’t move to put distance between them, doesn’t even move the hand resting on his arm. And if there's anything he can do to atone for the things he's done, it's this, helping her, making sure she survives.
“It felt easy,” she tells him. “Is it supposed to feel easy?”
“I don’t know,” he answers truthfully. “But the first time I wielded, the first time we all wielded, was by mistake. For me, even though I've trained it, it's like second nature. Happened a lot of times without me even meaning to.”
Sloane furrows her brows. “Do you still do it without meaning to?”
His signet isn't as classified as it once was, and he has impeccable control, he made sure of both of those things himself. He meets her gaze, keeping it steady, hoping that she can believe him, trust him. “No. Never.”
Silence fills the empty classroom, quickly turning awkward, and Sloane stands up, only wobbling a bit as she takes a step back. She opens her mouth, and closes it again, like she wants to tell him something else, but has to stop herself.
Then, finally: “Same time tomorrow?”
“I expect you won’t be late, cadet.”
And then she's off, leaving him alone. Sunset shines in through the high, painted windows, catching in the dust suspended in the still air. Dain sighs. Rubs the bases of his palms into his eyes until explosions of color go off behind his eyelids. A remnant of Sloane's soft, sweet scent lingers in the space next to him, her power still thrumming through him. He runs a hand over his arm, over smooth skin that almost feels wrong now that he's gotten used to the scars.
It's harder to be around her after that. In sparring, his gaze is drawn to her, to the toned muscles in her arms flexing under pale skin, the flush of her cheeks and the tendrils of sweaty, blonde hair having escaped from her braids, sticking to her forehead. To the power and emotion flaring in sky blue eyes. It's clear that Imogen's lessons have paid off, and there's something satisfying when Sloane has her opponents on the ground, in a secure and confident grip, even though Dain himself has nothing to do with it.
She still glares his way, still refuses to obey the simplest of orders unless it's the third time he gives them to her, still manages to find new ways to rile him up, to get under his skin.
"I want to fix your other arm," she tells him matter-of-factly one day as classes are ending, that surly, pretty face of hers set with determination. They’ve been working almost daily for weeks, focusing on Sloane learning to manage her power, on not using more than she has access to and recognize the cues for approaching burnout. She still refuses to siphon from anything though, despite Dain's insistence.
"You almost burnt out last time," Dain argues, crossing his arms across his chest. “I’m not going to let a first-year–
"I don't care. I don’t know why you think you have the authority to let me do anything.”
Dain raises an eyebrow, pointing to the wingleader patch sewn onto his uniform. “Does this mean nothing to you?”
“No,” Sloane says simply, and Dain has to close his eyes, blocking out her blue gaze and her pouty lips as he counts to ten mentally. He’s made a promise to stop coddling the cadets under his command. It did nothing but harm when he was squad leader, and he's determined to be a better wingleader.
“It should, Mairi.” He shakes his head, planting his hands on his hips. He already knows he's going to go along with her. “It really should.”
“Whatever.” Fucking first-years. Fucking Sloane Mairi and her fucking eyes and her fucking lips and her–
He has to stop this.
They meet in his room this time, sitting on the floor away from the crowded halls. Dain tells himself it's because Sloane deserves privacy as she attempts difficult wielding that she isn’t used to. Part of him is hyper aware of her gaze skating over his
immaculately made bed, the books on his desk, the window facing the ravine.
She doesn't comment, just sits across from him, eyes seeking out the gray scar still remaining on his skin, perfectly visible when he's only wearing a short-sleeved tunic.
“Siphon power from me first,” Dain tells her, and when she refuses to meet his gaze, he doubles down, reaching over to take her chin in hand, forcing her to look at him. “I mean it. I have more than enough, and the only siphon in recent history died from burning out while wielding. I’m not having you hurt yourself again because of stubbornness.”
A soft inhale, and a nod, as cheeks flush, just a little bit. Dain's hand lingers on her face for a breath too long before he leans back, holding out his arm for her.
“Siphon power before you give it back,” he repeats.
And then her skin is pressed against his again.
She's so close, sitting on the floor between his spread legs, both hands on his forearm. Dain can’t help gasping at the sting when she starts pulling power from his wrist, redirecting it into the gray scar.
“Look at me,” he murmurs softly, and her gaze snaps to his, just like it did when she siphoned from him at Draithus. Her eyes are the color of the sky on a lazy summer afternoon, crisp and endless as they stare back at him. Searing heat and piercing cold spreads through him from the space where they're touching. “That's it. How are you feeling?”
“... Good,” Sloane says, after a moment's hesitation. Her eyelids flutter, and her brows furrow.
“Hey.” Dain leans in a little closer, keeping her gaze. His voice is more breathless than he expects it to be, lacking the authority he tries to convey. “Eyes on me, and if it's too much, you stop.”
One last push, warmth spreading out across his skin, like a soft caress, and then it dissipates, as Sloane ceases siphoning. The feeling lingers though, the sensation of her in his veins, under his skin.
His breath shudders as he drinks in air desperately, his hand coming up to cover hers where it still rests on his arm.
“Fuck, Sloane–” She's on him in a heartbeat, pushing at his shoulders until he's flat on his back on the floor, with her straddling his hips. Her lips taste like crushed mint and desperation, and Dain is right there with her, her power under his skin boiling over, with no outlet except for through rushed kisses pressed to her lips.
Sloane's pupils are wide as she pulls back, lips glistening, hanging half-open. She touches her fingers to her lips, then rushes to her feet.
The room feels bigger when the door slams behind her, and Dain leans back on the floor again, an arm free of ashy marks slung across his eyes. His lips still tingle where she kissed them, and he craves more, feeling like he’s only ever going to feel complete with her pressed up against him.
Gods, it's going to be hard to train with her after this.