Blooming Brews spilled out over the canal's edge in a tangle of wrought-iron chairs and flower boxes, lanterns swaying in the late light. The air smelled of honey, citrus peel, and warm bread. Skye perched like a hungry statue on the railing, head cocked, glossy eye fixed on the two cups of tea between Lytavis and Illidan.
"I've brought something better than tea," Illidan said, unable to hide the trouble-curved grin as he slipped a tightly rolled scroll from his tunic and set it between them.
Lytavis arched a brow. "Better than Blooming Brew's honey infusion? Bold claim."
"Smuggled from the library," he murmured, conspiratorial. "Treatise on Leyline Resonance. Restricted. Out of circulation. I have…" he tilted his chin "connections."
"Mm. You picked a lock," she said, sipping.
"Semantics." He unrolled the parchment with reverence. Ink gleamed in meticulous lines, margins laced with neat annotations. He tapped halfway down the page. "Here. It's ael'thuran. See the cadence? Redirection without backlash."
Lytavis leaned in, hair brushing his shoulder as she read. Her mouth curved. "Ael'the-ran. You're skipping the glottal stop. Otherwise you're describing a surge that collapses your own spellwork."
"I did not mispronounce it," he said, affront rising. "That's how Lea himself writes it."
Her eyes shimmered with amusement. "Lea?"
"The author," Illidan said, as if the explanation were a warding charm. "Lea. Ancient Suramar scholar. Centuries if the dating's right. Quoted everywhere. Unfortunately dead."
"Is that so?" she asked, too mildly.
"Yes," he said, more defensive than intended. "You don't argue with Lea."
"Don't I?" She set her cup down, fingertip brushing the flourish in the margin with easy familiarity. "Let's go ask my father. He wrote this."
Illidan froze. The café, the canal, even Skye's soft click seemed to pause with him. "Your…"
"Father," Lytavis finished, serenely unrepentant, sipping her tea. "Lucien Elias Ariakan. LEA. He's likely in the orchard trimming grapevines. Not dead. And I frequently argue with him."
His pride bristled; his mouth betrayed him by twitching toward a smile. "You could have mentioned that before I argued."
"I could have," she said, delight bright in her eyes. "But then I wouldn't have seen your face just now."
Skye croaked, scandalously pleased. Illidan gathered the scroll with a huff that wasn't quite a huff and stood. When Lytavis rose beside him, her fingers brushed his. He should have been too irritated to take her hand. He wasn't. He closed his around hers—warm, sure—and let irritation and desire tangle into the same steady grip as they crossed the bridge.
The Ariakan villa breathed its welcome the way living things do: ley hum thrumming under stone, blossom-scent caught on the late afternoon air. Ginger streaked from the courtyard like a comet, skidding to inspect Illidan's boots with serious nose-twitches before butting his knee in approval. He pretended not to be charmed. He failed.
Lucien Ariakan stood in the doorway to his study with a book in one hand, spectacles low on his nose. He took in their joined hands, the scroll, the way Lytavis glowed with barely contained glee.
"Well," he said dryly, "I see you've brought me trouble, daughter."
"Only a question," Lytavis replied, depositing the scroll on the desk with a gentle thump. "He thinks it's ael'thuran."
Lucien adjusted his spectacles, unrolling the parchment with practiced fingers. "Mm." He traced a precise mark with the tip of his quill. "Ael'the-ran. Here. The stop. Without it, your resonance destabilizes. Potentially catastrophic, depending on your weave."
Illidan's jaw worked once, twice. He held the line of Lucien's gaze and inclined his head a fraction. "Noted."
Lytavis tried – unsuccessfully—not to beam.
Lucien re-rolled the parchment and offered it back. "Your instincts are good. Your certainty is… abundant. Both useful, in the right order." A beat. "Next time, ask before you smuggle my work into the street."
Illidan's mouth twitched. "In my defense, I believed I was arguing with a dead man."
"Many have," Lucien said, deadpan. The corner of his mouth tilted. "It did not make them right."
Zoya swept in with flour on her hands and a wooden spoon like a scepter, eyes bright and assessing. "If you two are finished fighting phantoms in the margins, there's bread cooling. A man's worth is shown at the table more than on the street."
"Good afternoon, Zoya," Illidan said, respectfully. He glanced to Lucien. "With your permission, I'd… like to see the rest of your notes on this cadence."
Lucien's gaze sharpened—not suspicion, not challenge; measurement. "With my supervision," he said. "You'll ruin neither my pages nor your eyebrows."
"He already did that once," Lytavis murmured, and Illidan, who would have bristled last week, laughed under his breath.
"Come then," Lucien said, gesturing them into the study. Shelves rose in tidy ranks; the room smelled of ink, beeswax, and tea. Skye clicked from the window rail. Ginger slunk in and coiled beneath Lytavis's chair, claiming the study as part of her domain.
Lucien laid the scroll beside a neat stack of bound folios. "You were reading cadence as if it were force. It is breath. The stop is not a wall; it is the space that lets the next shape hold." He glanced over the rim of his spectacles. "Try saying it."
Illidan did. The glottal pause felt like yielding—and then, surprisingly, like control. The syllables settled, balanced, right.
"Again," Lucien said, not unkindly.
Illidan repeated it. Lytavis watched the tiny unclenching at the hinge of his jaw, the way something proud inside him refused to break and instead… flexed.
Zoya set a small plate of still-warm bread on the desk, then swatted Lucien's hand away when he reached without looking. "Teach first. Eat second."
"I was demonstrating absorption," he protested mildly, already yielding.
Lytavis tore a piece and pressed half into Illidan's palm, closing his fingers around it. "For morale," she said, eyes laughing.
He accepted it—no pretense, no posture. "For morale," he echoed, and the word sounded different in his mouth now: not a mask, but something honest.
Lucien's quill scratched a brief notation in the margin: student present—willing to be corrected. He did not say it aloud. He looked up instead. "You learn quickly when you stop arguing."
"I argue quickly when I'm not being taught," Illidan returned, and for once the edge in it was playful, not defensive.
"Good," Lucien said. "There's hope for you."
Zoya's smile was the kind that softened knives. "And room at the table when you're done."
The lesson stretched on in comfort: cadence, stop, breath; the give of bread; Skye's soft, smug clicks; Ginger's contented sigh against stone. When they finally stood, the sky beyond the window had gone velvet, lanterns stitching gold between the trees.
At the threshold, Illidan paused. "Thank you," he said to Lucien—quiet, deliberate, a word chosen as carefully as any spell. "For the correction."
Lucien inclined his head. "Thank you. For listening."
Back in the sitting room, the hum of the leyline pressed warm underfoot. Lytavis slipped her hand into Illidan's again, and this time there was no irritation hiding in the gesture—only the simple steadiness of two people who had, for once, put pride and truth in the right order.
Skye hopped to Lytavis's shoulder, approving. Ginger brushed Illidan's boot and trotted ahead, as if to say: Keep up.
They did.
For once, he did not mind being measured. For once, he wanted to be.