Her student. Her first student, the panicky boy who had needed her help just to keep a steel spear pointed in the correct direction, currently reading her fastest work on nothing but the base she had given him and whatever monstrous thing he had grown on top of it.
Heirs and retainers and prodigies had been drilled on this floor for time immemorial. Not one of their teachers had ever handed a primordial his first guard. The pride sat in her chest wide, hot, and thoroughly inconvenient, and she had no intention of letting him see a single gram of it.
She swallowed the whole thing behind a circling step and a lowered blade.
"Your base is still honest," she noted. "Who taught you that, I wonder?"
"Some cocky brat who needs a good spanking."
"Wrong answer. It was a peerless visionary. A saintess~"
Quinlan wanted to respond, but his brain was overwhelmed. She said his body was unfair, but Quinlan felt hers was a much greater weapon. At least against him.
She was plain breathtaking.
