“Well, he’s back,” Rowan announced as he dropped his books on their usual table and dropped himself into his usual seat.
Lucien didn’t look up from his lute (no surprise there), but Merienna’s eyes widened and she immediately dove into her pack to find her well-worn notebook and a quill. She flipped through her pages of obsessive notes until she found a blank page.
“Where did you see him?” she demanded. “Was he with the professor? How close were they standing?”
Rowan groaned. “Melitele’s tits, I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Too late now,” Merienna replied with a grin. “I’ll just keep hounding you until you answer.”
“You’re never going to convince me they’re fucking,” Rowan retorted.
“They are. They so are. Don’t you think so, Luce?”
“I think it’s worse than that,” Lucien replied in his absent, dreamy way. His fingers never paused on his lute’s strings. “I think they’re in love.”
“How is that worse?” Merienna asked.
“Because the Witcher will watch the professor age and die.” The tune Lucien strummed fell into a minor key, low and haunting. “He’ll live years and years without him.”
“Oh,” Merienna murmured. “That’s sad.”
Rowan snorted. “Come off it. Witchers don’t feel, not like we do. Sure, he’s fond of the professor, but it’s a bit like having a favorite dog, innit? You miss it when it’s gone, but you always knew that’s how it would end.”
Merienna glared at him. “I think you’re the one that doesn’t feel, you ass.”
Before he could respond, Lucien’s wandering lute settled onto a new path, the opening of a tune not in progress but fully mature.
“The fairer sex they often call it,” he crooned.
As always, a sort of spell settled over them as it did whenever Lucien sang. His voice rose and fell, pulsing with the emotion he so rarely showed in their daily lives. The rest of the room fell away, and the three of them fell headlong into the heartbreak. When Lucien played the final note, Merienna’s eyes were bright and even Rowan had to sniff back a sudden heaviness.
“Is that yours, Luce?” Merienna asked, her usually flamboyant voice soft for once.
Lucien dropped his eyes and shook his head. His fingers went back to teasing out fragments of melody. “It’s the professor’s.”
“I’ve never heard it,” Rowan insisted.
“I don’t think he plays it in public anymore.”
“I went to his office late one night. I heard it from out in the hall. When I went in…” Lucien shifted uncomfortably on his chair, and the lute let out an uncharacteristically false note. “I think he’d been crying.”
“And you never said anything?” Merienna demanded, back to full volume. “When was this?”
Lucien squinted at the ceiling. “Three years ago?”
“Three years!” Merienna seemed set to scold, but then she suddenly snatched up her notebook and flipped through the pages. “That was when the Witcher didn’t show for a whole term, remember? We all thought he was dead!” She thrust the notebook across the table to Lucien. “Write down the lyrics. I want to know every word.”
Luicen’s lute went silent. His eyes focused on hers in a way he couldn’t normally manage. “No.”
Rowan felt his eyebrows lift as Merienna’s scrunched down. It wasn’t often Lucien expressed a strong opinion about anything, but the word fell firmly from his lips.
After a moment, he lowered his gaze and hunched over his lute. “It’s private,” he added in a murmur.
“He’s right, Meri,” Rowan agreed, and Lucien snuck him a grateful glance.
Merienna huffed and sighed but pulled back the notebook and closed it. Then she smirked at Rowan. “I can’t believe you compared the professor to a dog. If I tell him, he’ll dock your mark for sure.”
“Then I’ll just tell him about all the doodles you’ve made of him and the Witcher in that notebook,” Rowan shot back.
Merienna gasped and smacked him with the book, but her cheeks flushed red. Lucien chuckled softly, and his lute sang along with its own lilting laughter.
