Chapter 107: Play the Hand You’re Dealt

Uriel sank into the hot spring until only his nose and eyes remained above water. He looked like a crocodile lurking at the edge of a swamp. The splash he'd made standing up seemed to make the figure across the pool stir, but she hadn't turned around.

Good. 

He still had a chance.

He worked his way toward the steps one submerged handhold at a time. His fingers found a protruding stone, and he used the water's buoyancy to slide sideways. A second handhold brought him close enough to see his neatly folded towel waiting at the top of the steps. The faint ripples around his chin vanished into the spring's natural churn.

Almost there. 

All he had to do was climb out.

He rose slowly, letting the water drain from his shoulders in a whisper. Then his legs cleared the surface, and the splash rang through the quiet bath like someone dragging a chair across a library floor. Behind him, water shifted. Someone had turned.

Uriel snatched the towel, wrapped it around his waist, and looked back. A stray breeze parted the steam between them.

Seraphina had turned sideways, one hand on the pool's edge and her other arm across her chest. It covered what needed covering. The air seemed to stop moving; a bead of condensation fell from the eaves and tapped the water.

Her deadpan expression hadn't fully loaded yet, but the progress bar was moving. Uriel had seen enough to fear what came next.

"Uriel. Are you committing a crime?"

From where she sat, he looked like a man caught sneaking into the women's bath. In truth, he'd paid twelve gold to reserve the whole place.

He ran through his options. Blame the girl at the front desk? Cheap. Claim to be the victim? Suspicious. Run? That would turn the question into an answer.

"No. I paid twelve gold to rent the whole bath. The girl at the front desk took my money. You can ask her."

Seraphina studied him, then flicked her hand in a clear instruction to turn around. Uriel obeyed. Water sloshed behind him, and he waited until she gave permission to face her again. She had wrapped herself in a towel.

She went to the sliding door and pulled a thin cord hanging from its frame. A bell sounded somewhere in the building. Apparently, she knew the place well.

The front desk girl arrived wearing the expression of someone who had just discovered a clerical error could ruin three lives. She hesitated in the doorway, braced for the worst.

"Miss Seraphina... did you two need anything else?"

"He rented the bath, correct?"

"Yes. He asked for a private booking when he arrived, so I charged him for one. Is something wrong? I didn't hear anything. Please, carry on."

The girl spoke faster and faster, her voice growing quieter. Her fingers twisted together inside her apron pocket.

"Carry on with what? If I rented the whole bath, why did you let her in?"

"Wait. Aren't you two dating?"

Three people fell silent. Seraphina broke first.

"I'm a regular here. I sometimes pay when I leave. Perhaps that confused her."

"I'm sorry! I thought he had reserved it for both of you. You mentioned having a boyfriend, and people at the academy were saying..."

Uriel raised a hand. The girl stopped. Every additional word was making this worse.

He could see the whole catastrophe now. Seraphina was a regular who sometimes paid afterward. The girl also attended the academy and knew the rumor that Uriel and Seraphina were a couple. Their breakup hadn't come with a public announcement, and neither of them had been around school to correct the story. So when he booked the bath, the girl had cast herself as an extra in a surprise date.

Mystery solved. A student working to cover her expenses had made a romantic assumption, and everyone else had suffered for it.

"Let's split the bill, then."

The girl apologized again and fled, her cheeks burning. Seraphina returned to the steps, folded her towel, and eased back into the spring. She settled against the stone wall as if she intended to finish her soak.

Uriel stood on dry ground with a towel wrapped around his waist, water still dripping from his hair. Split the bill? Was that the end of the matter? Why was she still in the water?

His mind assembled possibilities. Perhaps Estella was chasing her again and she needed her former rental boyfriend as a shield. But this was the Holy City of Trido, not the capital, and Estella was nowhere in sight. Perhaps Seraphina hadn't told her family about the breakup and wanted to keep up appearances in front of the girl. Or perhaps she'd simply been interrupted mid-soak and intended to finish her bath.

The third explanation was the obvious one, which made Uriel distrust it on principle. Still, she had offered to split the bill. Leaving now would make the arrangement stranger than staying.

He dropped the towel onto the steps and slipped back into the water. At his end of the crescent-shaped pool, he leaned against the wall. Steam and a respectable distance restored an uneasy peace.

"What brings you to Trido? You shouldn't be eligible for the Hero's Ascent."

"The Hero's Ascent? Is that a tourist attraction? I'm here on vacation. If I'm not eligible, maybe you can take me along."

Seraphina went quiet. Even through the steam, he could feel the familiar flat stare reaching him.

"You're very good at letting other people pay your way."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

She declined to pursue the subject. Her explanation came across the pool in the calm, precise voice she used for things that actually mattered.

"The Hero's Ascent is a selection event run jointly by the kingdom's academies. Each academy nominates outstanding students. A magic circle measures a candidate's strength and summons a heroic spirit of comparable power."

Uriel lifted an eyebrow. Now the materials she'd collected in the rainforest, and the potions she'd made from them, had a purpose.

"So that's what those rainforest ingredients and potions were for?"

"You remember."

Her tone held a hint of surprise. Uriel knew her well enough to recognize a knife with a polite handle. He let it pass.

She went on to explain the format.

"Candidates and their summoned spirits fight as pairs. The last team standing wins."

"So it's a tournament where everyone gets a heroic spirit? Sounds wildly unfair. The strongest candidate gets a top-tier partner and steamrolls the bracket."

"Exactly. In the early years, weaker pairs formed alliances and attacked the strongest together. As the gap between candidates widened, even superior numbers stopped helping."

She shifted in the water before delivering the part that mattered. This year's rules had changed the entire contest.

"The spirit is still matched to its summoner, but the format changed this year. Candidates no longer fight alongside their spirits. They fight against them."

Uriel considered it. A personal opponent at roughly the same strength meant no powerful teammate to carry anyone and no weak opponent to farm. Skill, adaptability, and command of one's own abilities would decide the match. Whoever designed that rule understood the assignment.

"That actually sounds good. I'll come watch and cheer for everyone."

He closed his eyes. The conversation gave way to a long, companionable silence. Water burbled softly; now and then, one of them moved to take a drink. Mist blurred the face at the far end of the crescent pool, leaving a strange kind of peace in a city neither of them called home.

Eventually, his head began to swim. He had stayed in too long. He climbed out without checking Seraphina's reaction, retrieved his towel, and called across the steam.

"Send me your half of the bill later."

"All right."

He slid open the door and put one foot into the changing room. Her voice followed him.

"How very gentlemanly, Uriel. You're so proper a girl might start to wonder whether you even like women."

He stopped with one hand on the frame. Through the steam, she was still leaning against the far wall, expression impossible to read.

The old arrangement would have forced him to swallow that one. A rental boyfriend had an image to maintain and a client to please. The contract had expired. So had his patience.

She probably expected a silent eye roll and a dignified exit. For once, she had miscalculated.

"Go home. You're too old for me."

Uriel laughed all the way down the bathhouse corridor. It was a ridiculous line, which made leaving before she could ask for an explanation even better.

In the pool, Seraphina turned her head. Her usual composure stalled, and she tilted her head in genuine confusion. Too old? She was seventeen. Had he just called her old?

"What is that guy even talking about?"