Chapter 1: The Warrior’s Entrance
The University Staff Meeting Hall always smelled of aged parchment and enchanted ink, a scent Alistair Fairmont found comforting. It was the smell of institution, of quiet knowledge, of his own corner of the world. He settled into his usual chair, its familiar creak a Tuesday ritual, and pushed his round glasses up his nose. They immediately began their slow, inevitable slide back down. Around him, the murmur of professors in their robes was a low, familiar hum against the grand vaulted ceiling of polished mahogany. Stained-glass windows cast colored lozenges of light on the stone floor, depicting alchemical symbols that had made sense to someone, centuries ago.
He was sketching a potential mandrake-root stabilizer in the margin of his notebook when the double doors at the far end of the hall swung open.
Headmaster Dr. Steven Ashwood Claus entered, not with his usual subdued gait, but with a purposeful stride that silenced the room. His hands came together in a single, sharp clap that echoed off the high ceiling. He wore that slightly unsettling, sly smile he reserved for announcements he knew would cause a stir.
“Before we begin with the semester’s budgetary agonies,” Claus said, his voice carrying easily without need for amplification, “I have a rather exciting introduction to make.”
Alistair set his pencil down, curious. New hires were rare here.
“Everybody,” Claus continued, sweeping a hand toward the doorway, “I would like to introduce our new Magical Combat professor… Rosalinda Evermore.”
Rosalinda walked in.
It was like there was a collective breath held.
Because people knew who Rosalinda Evermore was. She was a legend. She was a warrior. She was a battle witch.
As she walked in, her head held high, her eyes—a piercing, impossible blue—scanned the room. Platinum blonde hair was woven into a thick, loose braid that fell like a rope of spun moonlight down her back. She wore a navy tunic, trimmed in black, over black high-waisted pants, with a crisp white blouse tucked in. No flowing robes, no ceremonial stoles. Just clean, severe lines that spoke of motion and purpose. She strolled in with the easy confidence of someone who owned every space she entered.
She turned and faced everybody, her unnaturally clear blue eyes looking around the room. A faint, polite smile touched her lips. “Hello. It’s an honour to be here.”
Her gaze swept past Claus, over the stunned faces of the senior theorists, across the curious younger lecturers… and then they landed on him.
His met hers.
And then it was like they were at the Academy again, competing for who got the best grades, who mastered the advanced transference charm first, whose name was called at the top of the class rankings. Years dissolved in the space between one heartbeat and the next. He saw the faint, surprised arch of her eyebrow, the slight twitch at the corner of her mouth.
She smiled when she saw him. A real one, not the polite one she’d given the room. It was a smile laced with memory and a sharp, familiar challenge.
“Alistair Fairmont,” she said, her voice cutting through the silent hall. It was lower than he remembered, layered with a rasp that hadn’t been there at eighteen. “Is that you?”
All eyes swiveled to him. He felt the heat rush to his face, a schoolboy’s reflex he thought he’d outgrown. He fumbled, his glasses slipping to the tip of his nose as he stood up too quickly, his chair scraping loudly against the stone.
“Rosalinda,” he managed, his voice thankfully steady. He pushed his glasses back up. “Welcome. I… hadn’t heard you were joining us.”
“Last-minute decision,” she said, her eyes never leaving his. “The headmaster was very persuasive.”
Claus looked between them, his sly smile widening. “I wasn’t aware you two were acquainted.”
“We were contemporaries,” Alistair said, at the same moment Rosalinda said, “He used to cheat off my potions notes.”
A ripple of laughter went through the room. Alistair felt his ears burn. “I did not. You consistently mislabeled your base reagents. It was a public service.”
“My reagents were fine. Your interpretations were just… conventional.” Her smile didn’t waver. “Some things don’t change, I see. Still planning your little departmental solstice parties?”
“Someone has to maintain morale,” he retorted, sinking back into his chair, feeling oddly off-balance. The meeting droned back to life around them, budgets and curriculum reviews, but the energy in the room had shifted. It was electric, focused on the two of them at opposite ends of the social gravity.
He tried to listen to the discussion on allocated funding for protective warding, but his attention kept fracturing. He watched her from the corner of his eye. She listened intently, posture perfect, occasionally nodding. Once, she caught him looking and gave him a slow, knowing blink before turning back to Claus. It was a minute gesture, a ghost of their old, relentless one-upmanship. His stomach did a strange, unfamiliar flip.
The meeting ended. Chairs scraped, robes swished, conversations resumed in excited, hushed tones about the new, infamous professor. Alistair took his time gathering his notes, deliberately slowing his movements.
As the crowd thinned, she approached him. He could smell the crisp, clean scent of ozone and something else, something green and dangerous, like a forest after a lightning strike.
“Fairmont,” she said, stopping before his table.
“Evermore,” he replied, finally looking up at her fully. The years had honed her, sharpened the elegant lines of her face, etched a faint scar—new, he didn’t remember that—along her jaw. But the intelligence in her eyes was the same, bright and ruthless. “Combat, huh? Couldn’t settle for a nice, quiet career in curse-breaking?”
“Too many rules,” she said, shrugging one shoulder. “Here, I get to make the rules. And break the ones that don’t suit me.”
The phrase hung in the air between them, a quiet promise that felt more like a threat. Alistair gave a short nod, a strange tightness in his chest. He needed air, space, a moment to process her presence in his ordered world. He shoved his notebook and pencil case into his leather satchel, the clasps snapping shut with a decisive click.
“Well, it was… something to see you again,” he said, shifting the strap onto his shoulder. “I’ve got to…”
“Where are you going so fast?” Rosalinda asked, her gaze tracking his hurried movements. “You’re packing up in a hurry.”
He was, precisely because he wanted to get out of there. The scent of ozone around her was scrambling his thoughts. He looked at her, fabricating the nearest escape. “I have a class.”
She tilted her head, the platinum braid sliding over her shoulder. “Class starts at 8 a.m.”
She looked at her watch, a sleek, utilitarian thing strapped to her wrist. “It’s currently 7:45 a.m. We have fifteen minutes. We can chat.”
Alistair looked at her with an eyebrow raised, the skeptical professor expression he used on first-years who claimed their griffin ate their homework. “Why would we chat?”
A flicker of something passed over Rosalinda’s face—surprise, maybe, or genuine confusion. She looked a little offended. “Well, we’re friends, right.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a statement, delivered with a matter-of-fact certainty that stopped him cold.
Alistair was shook.
The word rattled around in his brain.Friends. He had to run the tape back. The fierce academic duels, the heated debates in the library that spilled out into the courtyard, the palpable tension of their final exams where they’d circled each other like rival predators. He remembered the electric, unspoken thing that had crackled between them at their graduation ball, the one where he’d been too nervous to ask her to dance and she’d spent the night with her coven, casting sideways glances at him. He’d spent fifteen years categorizing that history under ‘Professional Rivalry’ and ‘Missed Opportunity’.
And she thought they were friends.
She was looking at him with such an innocent, almost earnest expression that he almost thought she was about to laugh, to say she was joking. That sly, competitive grin would break through, and they’d be back on familiar ground.But no. She just tilted her head again, waiting for him to respond. Her piercing blue eyes held no deception, only a straightforward expectation that felt more disarming than any challenge.
The hall was nearly empty now, just the echo of their conversation and the distant hum of the university waking up. He shifted his satchel strap, the leather groaning. “Friends,” he repeated, the word tasting foreign.
“Yes,” she said, as if it were obvious. “We spent four years in the same cohort. We worked on the Illusionary Illumination project together—you nearly set my hair on fire with that errant spark charm, I still have a scar on my left thumb from your botched jarvey-tooth extraction. That constitutes friendship, doesn’t it? Or am I misremembering the entire academic experience?”
He hadn’t forgotten the jarvey tooth. He remembered the precise shade of pink her cheeks had turned when she’d hissed in pain, the way she’d refused to go to the infirmary, insisting she could suture the cut herself with a basic mending spell. He’d held her hand steady, his own fingers trembling for reasons entirely unrelated to the spellwork.
“No,” he said slowly, pushing his glasses up. “You’re not misremembering. I just… I suppose I categorized it differently.”
“How?” she asked, genuinely curious. She leaned a hip against the edge of the long meeting table, seemingly prepared to settle in for the full fifteen minutes.
“As combat,” he admitted. The truth slipped out, unvarnished.
A slow, understanding smile touched her lips, but it wasn’t sharp. It was soft, almost rueful. “It was,” she agreed. “The best kind. It made us better. That’s what friends do, Alistair. They challenge you. They don’t let you get away with your… conventional interpretations.” She parroted his earlier jab back at him, but the edge was gone.
He looked at her, really looked. The scar on her jaw was silvery and thin. There were faint, feathery lines at the corners of her eyes that hadn’t been there before. They were traces of sun and strain and a life lived at high velocity. She was still the most formidable person he’d ever met, but the armor she wore now seemed less like a fortress and more like a second skin, something worn-in and essential, not just for show.
“Fifteen minutes, you said?” he finally murmured, lowering his satchel back to the floor with a soft thud.
“Fourteen now,” she corrected, her smile widening. “So. Tell me something real. How is this place? The real version, not the brochure.”
He let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. The tightness in his chest unfurled, replaced by a low, buzzing warmth. “The coffee in the staff lounge is an abomination against magic and nature. The west wing’s third floor has a tricky poltergeist in a water closet that enjoys locking people in. And the headmaster’s ‘theatrical flair,’ as you just witnessed, is a chronic condition.”
Rosalinda laughed, a bright, clear sound that bounced off the mahogany panels. It was a sound he hadn’t heard in seventeen years, and it unlocked a cascade of other memories—late nights in the stacks, whispered arguments over theory, the shared, secret exhaustion of finals week.
“See?” she said, wiping a non-existent tear from the corner of her eye. “Friends.”
Alistair found himself smiling back, a real one that made his cheeks ache. “Okay,” he said. “Friends.”
The distant tower bell began to chime the hour, eight deep, resonant gongs that vibrated through the stone.
“Your class,” she said, straightening up.
“Your… office, I assume?” he said, grabbing his satchel again. This time the movement was slower, less frantic.“Apparently. Claus said something about the old dueling chamber in the east tower. Sounds drafty.”
“It is,” Alistair confirmed, walking with her toward the doors. “But it’s warded to withstand a localized dragon attack. Should suit your needs.”
“Perfect,” she said, pushing the heavy door open. Morning sunlight streamed into the dim hallway, illuminating the dust motes swirling in the air between them. She stepped into the light and glanced back at him. “Solstice party still on, then?”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” he said, and for the first time in a long time, he meant it.