Please Enjoy Your Companionship
The Master’s Lounge of the Wizard’s Tower was the sort of room you could live in for a week and never touch the ground with your feet. Every surface, be it the wingback chairs, the ancient teak coffee table, or the unruly tangle of rugs layered like an old wizard’s robes, was built for collapse, indulgence, and a studied disregard for the world’s bad news. That night the lounge was especially alive: the fireplace stoked hot, the scent of cedar and orange peel swirling in the air, and Kerrowyn Lightfoot sprawled at a forty-degree angle across her favorite chair.
Lavan Edor and Alistar Pembroke flanked her to either side, forming a tight crescent around the fire. Each cradled a mug, filled to the rim with hot cider spiced so generously it was less a beverage than a dare. Hallione, the Tower’s Heart, had even left a faint shimmer of snow above the mantel, purely for the aesthetic.
Pembroke, most senior in attitude if not years, nursed his mug with both hands, eyes narrowed as if expecting the cider to attempt escape. Every few minutes, Lynx would break from her lazy orbit above them and dive-bomb Pembroke’s cup, tongue flicking for the rim. Pembroke batted her away with the resigned dignity of a man who had been bullied by small creatures his entire life.
“Kerrowyn Lightfoot,” Pembroke called, using her full name as one might invoke a curse, “would you kindly instruct your familiar in the finer points of etiquette? She’s drooled in my cider thrice already. It’s unsanitary.”
Kerrowyn rolled her head without lifting it, eyes glinting with mischief. “It’s your own fault for spoiling her while I was in Volfast. She’s marked you as a softie. You feed her, she’ll eat your soul.”
Lynx, clearly delighted by the attention, spiraled once more and settled on the arm of Pembroke’s chair, tail thumping in time with his pulse.
Lavan, whose own mug steamed with the force of an industrial vent, snorted with laughter, then coughed as the cider’s fumes went to war with his sinuses. “If you don’t like saliva, you could always switch to the rum,” he said, and Lynx trilled agreement, a sound somewhere between the chirp of a happy cricket and the shriek of a kettle letting off steam.
The trio relapsed into a contented, post-party silence. The cacophony of the Faculty Hearthswarming Eve Party had faded to a faint hum behind the tower’s stone, leaving only the afterglow of too much food, too many jokes, and the rare luxury of nothing to do but drink.
On the low table between them rested a single, beautifully wrapped package. The paper was a marvel, cycling through impossible patterns and colors in a slow, hypnotic pulse. Someone had clearly wasted at least two spell slots on the wrapping alone. The card read: “To the Masters, from Tullups and Marida. Best Cookies in the City.”
Kerrowyn, who had never met a locked box or wrapped package she didn’t like, eyed it with hungry precision. She plucked the parcel from the table, held it aloft, and unwrapped it with a flourish.
Inside was a platter of cookies. Not just cookies, these were Tullups’ famous Hearthswarming shortbreads, each one shaped and iced into perfect, absurdly detailed likenesses of every master. There were even little stars piped onto the “Kerrowyn,” and a surprisingly accurate replica of Pembroke’s beard.
Pembroke lunged for the plate, fingers as deft as ever, and snagged an “Isemay” cookie before Kerrowyn’s hand reached the platter.
“Oi!” Kerrowyn snapped. “That’s for her, you brute.”
Pembroke examined the cookie. “She’s not here, is she?” He shrugged and took a thoughtful bite, then closed his eyes in a moment of genuine bliss.
Lavan grinned and grabbed a “Lavan,” holding it up to compare the cookie’s expression to his own. The resemblance was uncanny. He broke off the head, then, as if suddenly remembering propriety, set aside two cookies on a smaller plate and said, “We should probably save a couple for Isemay, just in case she makes it back before dawn.”
Pembroke, mouth full, grunted agreement, and set a “Sylren” and an “Evanton” aside as well. “Never let it be said the Masters are without courtesy.”
Kerrowyn, having claimed two for herself, one “Lavan” and one “Pembroke”, surveyed the spoils. She chewed with gusto, then wiped a crumb from her mouth and declared, “Tullups still hasn’t lost his touch. We ought to pay him and Marida a visit soon.”
They nibbled and sipped, the fire reflecting in their eyes, the cookies vanishing with criminal efficiency.
Kerrowyn raised her cookie in an impromptu toast: “To Isemay! For enduring the abominable torture of representing the Tower at the Council’s Ball.”
Lavan and Pembroke lifted their own cookies in turn, and Lynx, not to be outdone, snatched a tiny “Lynx” from the plate and gulped it whole.
Kerrowyn watched the familiar, a smile creeping across her face. “You are such a spoiled thing,” she cooed.
“Better her than my students,” Pembroke replied, and Lavan laughed.
The warmth, the booze, the afterparty lassitude conspired to loosen the Masters’ tongues. Pembroke waxed nostalgic about Tullups’ tenure at the Tower and the time he nearly blew up the entire Illusion lab with a batch of self-replicating candy canes. Lavan, cheeks flushed with cider, told a story about his own apprentice days, the time he’d accidentally turned the entire fourth floor’s laundry pink. Kerrowyn topped them both with a tale of her latest misadventure, and the way Abraxos, the talking pseudodragon, had tried to convince her to take over the abandoned Tower in Volfast by sheer force of personality.
Through it all, Lynx migrated from one lap to another, never pausing in her relentless campaign to taste every mug on the table.
For a while, the trio luxuriated in the rare peace. It was the kind of silence that only existed in the wake of catastrophe and comfort, when the mind had not yet remembered to resume its endless calculations. Kerrowyn’s eyes fluttered shut, and for a moment she seemed perfectly at ease, until Lynx, ever the agent of chaos, trilled in her ear and nearly launched her from the chair.
Lavan, meanwhile, felt the warmth of the cider radiate out in concentric circles through his body. He let his gaze roam to the darkened window, where fat flakes of snow drifted against the glass, swirling and coalescing before melting into nothing. The sight reminded him, absurdly, of the way Isemay’s hair sometimes stuck to her skin when she emerged from the bath, silver-blonde and clinging, her eyes narrowed in that expression she reserved for him alone, somewhere between soft affection and a fierce determination.
It was typical that she’d been conscripted to the Ball, no one in the Capitol could project “calculating intelligence” with such effortless grace. But the political theater was exhausting, even for her. She’d be home soon, and Lavan had planned everything down to the smallest indulgence: a hot bath, a bottle of the new Tremane red they’d been saving, and, if she wasn’t too tired, an hour in bed with no obligations except to each other.
He was rehearsing in his mind what he might say to coax her out of her post-Ball mood, when Hallione’s voice shimmered into existence from the walls themselves, echoing precisely where his musing left off. “Lavan, would you like me to put out a bottle of Isemay’s favorite scented oil? I have already steamed her bath to preferred temperature. I can also prepare mood lighting, or—“ the pause was infinitesimal, “—a warming spell for the bedding, should you wish to maximize comfort.”
Lavan choked on his cider, the hot liquid nearly launching from his nose. Kerrowyn, who had just bitten into another shortbread, coughed a cloud of crumbs halfway across the table. Even Pembroke, seasoned in the Tower Heart’s eccentricities, set down his mug with a sudden clack.
“Halli,” Pembroke said, with the weary authority of a parent whose child had just announced a secret family shame in public, “what have we said about answering inside thoughts with outside words?”
“Apologies,” sang the Tower’s Heart, their voice trailing off as if hoping to follow the apology right out of the room. “Is it not customary to anticipate one’s Master’s needs?”
“It is, but not so much as to, ah, say the quiet part loud,” Pembroke finished, with a pointed look at the ceiling.
A ghostly ripple of magenta slid through the grain of the wood, as if Hallione themself were blushing. “I beg forgiveness, Masters. Please enjoy your companionship.” The Tower’s Heart receded, but not before a faint scent of ylang-ylang perfumed the air, and the fire, previously orange and well-behaved, kindled an undertone of lavender.
Lavan’s face, already ruddy from the cider, deepened two full shades as he stared into his mug. “She’s never done that before,” he mumbled, to no one in particular.
“She’s always done that,” Kerrowyn replied, flashing her teeth. “You’re just not used to being the subject instead of the spectator since you and Isemay used to spend your nights at her manor. Welcome to the Tower’s panopticon.”
“If we’re finished embarrassing poor Lavan,” Pembroke said, seizing the conversational wheel with ruthless efficiency, “I heard from the Archives today. They want us to submit monthly reports on leyline draw, with special attention to the impact of recent ‘incidents’ in the Iron Peaks.” He made air quotes, clearly enjoying the ambiguity.
Kerrowyn caught the toss and ran with it. “Doesn’t surprise me. The city is twitchy. The Watch and APS are on edge, and there is a demonic incident nearly every other day.” She shrugged, but Lavan could tell it was the kind of shrug that contained too much knowledge to be healthy. “It’s not sustainable. I give us a few months, a year at most, before the next disaster.”
As the fire burned lower and the cider settled into their bones, the conversation grew quieter, the jokes edged with the subtle melancholy of old soldiers who know the next campaign is always just around the corner.
Lavan, who had been uncharacteristically quiet for the last few minutes, traced the rim of his mug with a finger. “You ever wonder if we’re actually making a difference?” he said, eyes on the embers. “Or if we’re just the last ones left to pick up the pieces when everything falls apart?”
Pembroke leaned back, fingers interlaced over his stomach, and regarded the question with the seriousness it deserved. “That’s the curse of old age, my boy. You live long enough, you start to realize that the world’s best trick is pretending to be new. Every disaster, every triumph, it’s just the same game with different pieces. All we can do is play our part with as much dignity as possible, and maybe, maybe, teach someone to play it a little better the next time.”
Kerrowyn considered this, then added. “Or cheat. That’s always an option.”
They laughed, but it was softer now, the kind of laughter you only shared with people who had seen you ugly-cry, bleed, or both.
The silence that followed was the comfortable, worn-in kind, the kind that made you realize you could spend a hundred more nights like this and not mind at all.
The spell broke when Kerrowyn, having just finished her third cookie, caught the look on Lavan’s face. It wasn’t the usual abstracted frown or philosophical malaise. It was white-hot panic, shot through with something darker.
Pembroke caught it too. He sat up a little straighter, setting his mug down with care. “What is it?”
Lavan’s hand hovered over the table, twitching. “Isemay,” he said, voice strangled. “She’s in pain.”
Kerrowyn blinked. “From the curse?”
Lavan shook his head, hand clasping his forearm where his Friendship Symbol was radiating distress. “She usually shields it from me. I never feel it unless it’s bad. This is different, sharp. And she’s scared.”
Pembroke and Kerrowyn both rose at the same time, the cookies forgotten. Even Lynx sensed it, tail flattening, wings tensed for flight.
Hallione’s presence thickened in the air, the magical equivalent of an alert beacon. The room’s temperature plummeted a fraction, the walls warping with a faint auroral shimmer.
Halli’s voice boomed, echoing from the stone. “Iliyria Sylren is drawing a significant amount of leyline energy at Fountain Square. The strain is…impressive. Also dangerous.”
Lavan was already halfway to the door. “Halli, bring me my staff,” he called, not waiting for a reply. Kerrowyn and Pembroke followed, each moving with the hard, flat focus of long-time survivors who knew when things had gone from bad to critical.
They were three steps from the main entrance when Pembroke paused, his eyes glazing as a sending spell landed. His whole being went still, then he spun, voice low and urgent: “Shut down the Tower, now.”
Halli responded instantly. All around them, the stones began to hum and pulse, wards activating with a succession of thunderclaps. Lavan whipped around, mouth open in protest, but before he could move the entrance to the Tower disappeared, gone, replaced by a seamless curve of wall.
He howled, rage and panic warring on his face, and launched a barrage of firebolts at the barrier. The spells struck, left blackened scorch marks, but the wall absorbed the impact, shimmered, and sealed itself tighter.
Kerrowyn watched, helpless, as her once student, now friend, pounded his fists against the stone. The light from the mage lamps, now trapped, flickered in desperate shapes across the ceiling.
Lynx, perched on Kerrowyn’s shoulder, tilted her head, eyes luminous in the gloom. She chirped once, soft, questioning. Kerrowyn reached up, stroking the familiar’s chin, and found the gesture steadied her. She turned to Pembroke, who stood rigid, every muscle straining against the urge to shatter into a thousand pieces.
The Tower’s hum grew louder, then fell away into absolute silence.
Kerrowyn stared at the sealed exit, and wondered, not for the first time, whether it was ever possible to cheat fate.
She wiped the last of the cookie crumbs from her lip, squared her shoulders, and waited for the world to end.
