"M' sorry," Salem said, his face slightly red with shame.

"It's not your fault," I said immediately. "There was a miscommunication on the nature of the seals, and they'll be repaired. They'll be even better when Elder Tywyll gets here."

Salem let out a long, uncertain hum, the shrugged and cast another mending cantrip to target another large crack on the chair.

"I still los' control a' myself," he said, then spoke slowly. "She though' she could jus' take ya' cuz she's powerful an' attractive, and you'd jus' play along. Thought she could score 'erself a powerful ally for 'er own problems."

"How do you know that?"

"When I. The loup garou. When we attacked 'er dreams, I saw some'a her mind," Salem said. "She fully though' you'd get all 'cute an' flustered'. Her words. Thoughts. Whatever."

I pressed my lips together, and was reminded again of how the Creep and the actions of ordinary wealthy and confident people could go hand in hand. Maybe she really was at risk of falling to the Creep. Maybe she was just rich and confident. I didn't know. Either way, I hoped the mind healer would help.

I was so caught in my thoughts that I almost didn't notice Salem's hand twitch into a fist for just a moment on saying the words 'cute and flustered'. But I did notice, if only barely, and Salem caught me glance at his hand. He swallowed and took a deep breath to give himself courage.

"Also… I didnae like seein' someone else kiss you. It made me see red."

My heartbeat started to pick up in an entirely different way than it had when I'd been in the fight. We had been dancing around the exact definition of what we were, and what we wanted, ever since I'd earned my freedom.

"Are you saying that you'd like to be the one who kissed me?"

Salem was quiet for what felt like an eternity, though in reality, it probably hadn't been much longer than a few seconds.

"Yes," Salem eventually said, before turning away and starting to speak in a rush. "But I dinnae expect ya' to feel the same way. 'Seems like I lose control every couple'a months. M' havin' ta completely restructure my psychic power an' I've got a monster trapped inside'a me."

He turned, looking back at me, and his eyes were watery. It distorted the vibrant green of his irises, making them look like a glowing magical treasure, hidden beneath the waves of a clear ocean.

"An' you… You're not like that. I dinnae if I can keep up wit' you at all. You've got a dragon bloodline potent enough ta' trade blows wit' someone a hundred years your senior. You're a talented enough mage ta' match anyone in our year at summonin' or at protection magic, and on top a' that, you're also studyin' transmutation. You're an archmagus in waitin'. You're a year away from bein' on first bloody names wit' an Erudite!"

He gestured at himself as he continued to rant.

"An' me? I'm jus' a liability. Even if I dinnae fall to the creep, I'll never be able to match anyone else on the team. Yushin's a thrice-cursed demigod, an' Jackson's got the backin' of a bloody divine. I'm a broken psychic who needs another type a' magic to even scrape by, an' a monster."

"No," I said, keeping my voice quiet but firm. "You are not either of those things."

I reached out and took his hands in my own. While we still hadn't defined what we were, we'd held hands several times, and it was the greatest act of intimacy I knew he'd be comfortable with me making.

"I said it at the end of last year, when you brought up being a risk of becoming an aberrant, but I don't care. You were dealt a bad hand in life due to an aberrant tainting your bloodline, but that is not who you are. I am not the horrible things that the woman who birthed me is, and you are not a monster just because the magic of one touched on you when…"

"Three days after I was born," Salem said. "S' a story my mam'll likely tell ya. Or I can."

"Just because an aberrant reached you when you were a newborn does not make you an aberrant. It doesn't make you destined to become an aberrant. It does not make you a monster, it makes you someone with a problem."

I squeezed his hands gently, and he squeezed back.

"You aren't a broken psychic. Did you have to pivot away from the usual path? Sure. But by that logic, I'm a broken dragon who has to rely on another path to get by. I compressed my bloodline to the point of damaging it. You've built more knots than people twice your age out of a need to protect yourself from nightmares, and now you're finally in a spot to turn all of that into power you can use. You're not broken, you're just delayed. And even if you were broken – I don't care. I like you. You're charming, witty, clever, and an excellent mage. I'm interested in you. Not your power. If I only cared about power, I never would have left home to begin with."

Stolen novel; please report.

Salem studied me for a moment, before swallowing so thickly that I could actually hear it. He reached out and pulled me into a hug, and I hugged him back, squeezing as tightly as I thought I safely could.

When I finally pulled away, Salem took a deep, slow breath, then looked me up and down.

"Are ya' sure?"

"I'm sure."

"Then can we make i' official? Really official?"

I leaned forward and kissed Salem, pulling him closer as I did so. As far as first kisses went, sitting on the dirty floor of a theatre, next to a half-reassembled chair, while cleaning spirits and other classmates bustling around the rest of the room wasn't exactly optimal romantic conditions.

As far as kisses went, neither of us were particularly exemplary, and the kiss wasn't especially romantic or long. Not that I'd had many kisses to compare it to – I'd had a short relationship with a member of the Sinclair Sword School, and another slightly longer one with another wanderer who had traveled with me for about a year, but that was mostly it.

It didn't matter. It was the best first kiss I'd ever had.

We finally pulled away, and Salem looked around the room, finally raising his pierced eyebrow.

"How bad did the fight exactly get? My memories from t'e leak aren't exactly… clear. Keep an eye on me while I look?"

I nodded, interested to see Salem look into the past. I didn't think I'd actually seen him do it before. As it turned out, there wasn't much to see. Salem raised his hand and pressed it to the floor. A moment later, scents of the battle drifted up from his hand, and then he pulled it away, shaking his head.

"Not as bad as I feared. Though by all the hells, wha' was 'at physic attack on the harpy?"

"The harpy? Oh, Sandara."

I suppressed a brief snort at the nickname. It was more than a little rude, but at the same time…

"I don't know," I finally said. "I just assumed it was psychic magic. Professor Alydia and the Erudite seemed to think manifesting a power like that was normal for psychics."

"Aye, tis, but… I dinnae ken that knot was. Never seen Moira use one like 'at."

He stood and shook his head, sighing.

"We shoul' prolly get back ta' work."

The rest of the period passed shockingly swiftly, with Salem and I both using cantrips to repair things. I'd already blown through my ether pool early on, but I managed to recover enough ether to cast an extra greater mending spell, repairing a large chunk of the broken chairs.

Leaving the course, Salem and I walked hand in hand to the dining hall, where we were served a dinner of a chicken dish in a sort of rich cream sauce that had been thickened with a salty cheese. Salem's face went white when he saw it, but he refused to tell me why, muttering his curses at the dining hall's magic under his breath as he did. The meal was finished off with a chocolate cake filled with a cherry compote and topped with a toasted meringue.

A bit different from the normal meals, but with the adaptive nature of the magic, I didn't think it was too strange. No, the strangeness came when we got back to the dorms. I slipped into my room to take a shower, and Salem headed to do the same, but the moment I entered the room, I spotted a new adjustment.

Set in the middle of the wall next to my dresser, in a spot that had been mostly unadorned, was a stone arch with a wooden door set into it. I blinked, then reached for the door and tried the handle, glancing at my ring to see if my status as a member of the coven of the twilight grotto might have caused it to manifest, but my ring remained entirely dormant.

The door, on the other hand, swung open soundlessly, revealing a small sitting room. There was a loveseat large enough to comfortably fit two people, as long as they were willing to be close to one another, a low coffee table that had a bowl of chocolate mints on it, and a small fountain in one corner of the room that tinkled with water.

On the other side of the room, exactly opposite to my door was another archway with a wooden door, but this one was set with a plaque that read 'Salem Alderson' in silver lettering, and had a stylized symbol of a feather on it. I glanced back at my door to see 'Emrys Dreki', followed by the image of a flame.

Salem's door opened as I examined the room, and he stepped through, glancing around at the sitting room.

"Tha's new."

"Yeah," I said, and I could feel heat rising in my body, staining my cheeks red. "It's… not what I expected. How the hells did the dorm know what happened?"

"Magic," Salem said, waggling his fingers dramatically. "But we should look an' see'f we can get inta eachother's rooms."

I nodded and strode over to Salem's door, trying the handle. It was locked, and Salem tried the same with my door to identical results, while neither of us seemed to have trouble getting into our own rooms. I was honestly a bit thankful. I liked Salem, but I wasn't sure we were at the point where we should just be able to barge into one another's rooms.

"I do wonder if there's some sort of mind magic at play? Is the dorm responding to our emotions? But it didn't respond to me beating Gerhard. Is that because it didn't directly change my schooling? The room is supposed to adapt to test scores primarily, isn't it?"

"Nah, I already told ya', it's just a bit a' magic," Salem said, a smarmy grin on his face. I rolled my eyes at him, and we speculated how it might work for a few more moments before we shut the door again and actually showered.

After changing into a loose shirt and some sleep pants, Salem and I re-entered our new sitting room and curled up on the loveseat together. I leaned on one of the armrests, holding my grimoire with one hand, with my other around Salem's shoulders as he lay on his side, using my stomach and hips as a pillow, holding his grimoire over his head.

In a strange way, spending the night with his small, perpetually slightly chilly frame pressed against my own blazing furnace, each reading our books, I felt more relaxed than I had in my entire two weeks of vacation.

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