Chapter 14: Chapter Fourteen

As we both walked down the corridor, Aralia Cordivar tried to engage me, for no earthly reason I could discern, in what must have been the most stilted, awkward conversation ever experienced. By anyone. Ever. It was mostly one-sided, because all my attention was going to panic suppression.

How was my second term progressing, anyway? Did she really just say that? How much did she know about me? My cheeks were burning, my palms itchy.

“Um, its going fine, Factor,” I stammered weakly. I longed to flee. Was she going to follow me all the way back to my work station? She was the worst possible witness to my project, even the half-cleaned remains of it.

We finally reached the lab and I bowed out, babbling about glassware that needed cleaning. I opened the door and my heart instantly calcified with dread as she strolled in after me. Time seemed to be moving so slowly, and yet much too quickly.

“Is this your project, then? Not for class, is it?” She was the very picture of relaxed unconcern—it was absolutely nothing like her teaching persona. My mind was scrambling for a way to make sense of what was happening here.

I hurried after her. “Y-yes, Miss. I mean, no, it’s—it’s just the—I was just cleaning up,” I finished feebly.

She wheeled and her eyes were alight with something like fascination. “What is it, if you don’t mind my asking?”

I thanked the fates that I had a canned response prepared. “I’m studying the carminative properties of substance LS-32, and how they compare to those of the more commonly studied LS-17,” I said promptly.

“Ah.” Her eyes glinted.

Risking rudeness, I grabbed the alembic and started washing it out in the sink. My hands were shaking. I needed to slow down. ‘Slow is smooth,’ Gresha rumbled in my head, ‘and smooth is fast.’

To my dismay, Aralia was still looking over the remains of my project. “Isn’t a recursive binding of medroxy-anine to fentonite considered too fragile for working with the LS-class substances?”

I cursed internally. How had she put that together? She’d recognized that binding and the reagents from...what? The emerald ring of crust I’d left on the rim of a beaker?

How was I going to explain my decision to use a binding I’d learned in her class, a binding that was specialized for the delicate internal functions that concerned Apomasaics? I turned slowly, my mind flailing to formulate a response. I opened my mouth—

She cut me off. “Don’t answer that.” She waved apologetically. “Sometimes, I forget I’m not in my own lab. Please forgive my rudeness.”

I gaped at her like an idiot.

“N-no forgiveness needed, Factor.”

She nodded at me, turned on her heel, and left. I stared after her for a long moment, dumbfounded. Then I finished cleaning and got out of there before anything else could happen to me.

~ ~ ~

Abruptly, the exam rush was on me, and I had no time to think about anything—not the mysterious noble who possessed one of my hairs, nor the way she’d grabbed me, nor the goosebumps I’d gotten from it, nor the heavy purse she’d bribed me with (enough coin that I felt my chest lighten, as if a weight on it had lifted), nor whatever she’d needed my silence for (some very particular reagents, probably), nor Aralia Cordivar’s sudden interest in me, nor the way Alexi was starting to look at me instead of through me, nor the ever-narrowing edge I was balancing on.

Even before exams really began, I seemed to be working literally all the time. My thoughts seemed sluggish and thinned with exhaustion. And yet, I felt better than I’d ever felt?

I was dosing myself daily, marveling at the changes in my body. I’d tweaked my factoring for this latest batch, with a specific focus on, well, my junk, and the changes were impressive. I was paying for them, though. My appetites were enormous. I seemed not to be able to sleep enough. I craved food almost as much as I craved sleep. And I was always horny.

And yet, my appetites didn’t feel bad, necessarily. They were paradoxically helping me feel increasingly alive inside my own body for the first time I could remember. My felt sense of my body had always been opaque and distant, muffled by the screen of maleness. No longer, though—sensation and feeling lapped inside of me like clear, calm, dark water.

I felt the complaints of my body, felt aching muscle and smooth skin, sore nipples and tender crotch, felt some bones become supple and widen as others narrowed. It felt good—reshaping to fit myself, learning to follow the pulse of my wanting. And oh, was I wanting.

~ ~ ~

The lab was a seething beehive of activity, but for some reason all I could think about was the swept-back way one particular student across the room was wearing her hair, and the slender curve of her neck...I wondered if I could ever—

“Hey, you! For grief’s sake, are you daft? You!”

I snatched my attention back up, my cheeks rapidly heating. How long had I been staring? I’d been caught staring so much lately. A glaring boy in furs towered over me, flapping a reagent request form. He shoved the paper into my chest and I flinched as the soreness in my breasts blossomed acutely. I again thanked the fates that it was early winter and nobody looked twice at me for wearing a coat indoors.

“Go, go!” He shooed me irritably. “I need those precursors five minutes ago! Don’t waste my time!”

I went, rolling my eyes at the sloppiness of starting a project before assembling all the needed materials. Gresha would have words to say about that.

Two more students rushed up to me with their own request forms before I even made it to the door. Just as I passed the last workstation, I looked out the plate glass window into the corridor and blanched as I saw Aralia Cordivar sweeping past. I hastily averted my eyes and instead of turning left out the door, I turned right and went over to the far wall, where Phineas was hustling to unload the autoclave.

He glanced over at me. “Hi?”

I had already joined him in stacking the newly sterilized glassware. “Hi, need any help with this?” I muttered desperately.

“Uh, no. Aren’t you supposed to be running requests?”

“Yes? But, um—”

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The autoclave was empty. Phineas started sliding trays of dirty beakers into its gaping maw. “Okay, Eli, look. I don’t know a better way to say this, but I ought to at least let you know. I’ve been hearing some things from the other assistants. About you.”

My heart tripped, caught itself, and staggered into a ragged sprint.

“You’re starting to get a reputation. For being distractable. Unfocused. Do you even know how many tasks you’ve lost track of in the past week or two? The rest of us have been picking up after you, and it’s getting wearisome. I heard Krema say something about it yesterday.” He shrugged. “Just take it into consideration, okay?”

My cheeks were uncomfortably hot again. That wasn’t the worst thing Phineas could have said, though. It wasn’t the thing I’d been mortally afraid he would say. I opened my mouth to apologize, but then I heard, unmistakably, from across the room—

“Hey! Hey, you!”

Shit. I glanced at the corridor. All clear. I turned to go, stammering something sheepish to Phineas, who merely returned a skeptical look.

~ ~ ~

I made three more trips to the stockroom in quick succession, and even managed to avoid zoning out again. Then it was tenth bell, and the end of my shift. I ducked into a servant’s passage off the second floor corridor, slid down the wall to sitting, and brought out my notes. I still had half a bell to study until my first exam.

This was actually how I’d done nearly all my studying lately, snatching time in the margins of my schedule. It wasn’t ideal, but maybe I could eke out passing scores this term. I was so tired, despite having fallen asleep so early last night. I must have slept deeply, too. I hadn’t even noticed Alexi come in and get ready for bed, and I usually didn’t miss that show…

I blushed and bit my lower lip. Lately, I’d been staring at his cock more and more, and wondering how it would feel to glide my tongue along the underside of it. It just looked so smooth and yummy. The idea of sliding my lips around it, while he watched, made a delicious clenching happen between my legs and I squirmed.

Abruptly, I noticed I’d been reading the same notation over and over, taking in nothing. Oh, for grief’s sake, why was this so difficult? Sure, I’d had problems with focus before, but I’d always been able to bear down and brute force my attention to, well, attend. This was more…like my body was in charge of my attention, not me. And hadn’t I gotten off just yesterday?

I tried one more time to buckle down and read my notes, but the aching hot need in my body was fuzzing all my thoughts and I couldn’t concentrate on what any of the words meant. I heard more and more students pass by in the corridor nearby. How long had I been staring at this page? Finally, I slumped in defeat and gathered my things. If I’d spent the last half-bell before the exam humping my hand instead of looking at my notes, I thought sourly, I’d probably be more prepared.

~ ~ ~

I left the exam limp with relief. I’d gotten lucky, and was able to use a factoring trick Aralia had shown us in Apomasaics to get what I hoped were the right answers on most of the questions, instead of using the ponderous equations this class had supposedly been testing us on. It had taken me half the time, too, so my distractability hadn’t even cost me too dearly. Shaking my head at the close call, I wolfed down some food that I’d packed from the dining hall that morning, then reported to the labs again for my second shift of the day.

It was even busier and more crowded than before, if that was possible. I joined another assistant distributing lab equipment to frantic students, and I was in the middle of passing someone a scale when my gaze flickered and suddenly, over his shoulder, I saw her.

She was three rows away, focused on adjusting a burner just so, wearing a very slight frown. My eyes widened, and I froze. The boy in front of me gave me a funny look and grabbed the scale impatiently. Fuck, she was right there. She raised her eyes from the burner and I immediately dropped my gaze to the floor, face burning. WhatdoIdonow, oh whatdoIdo, I thought stupidly.

The Apomasaics class we were both in was huge. The lecture section was big enough that I’d been able to position myself safely away from her for the entire term, and thankfully we were in different laboratory sections. But now, she was standing right there, and Aralia Cordivar wasn’t here to command the attention of the entire room—and she was right there.

I groaned internally. Why did her presence exert so much gravity on me? I wanted some excuse to look in her direction, but that was just creepy, and I didn’t think I could survive the embarrassment if she caught me staring at her again. The memory of how our gazes had locked in the courtyard last term brought back the overwhelming confusion and anxiety that had surged inside of me then.

The assistant next to me kicked me in the shin. “What are you doing?”

I flinched, and turned to help him, muttering an apology. For the rest of the shift, I was tense and jumpy.

~ ~ ~

I tentatively knocked on the door of my room and peeked inside. No sign of Alexi. I climbed up to my bunk and flopped down, blinking tiredly at the ceiling. What a day. I marveled again at how organic all my mood swings were feeling now. What had been a featureless scrum of numb, blank anxiety and despair was opening up into a rich, variegated tapestry of anxiety and...well, not despair, actually. No, the despair seemed to be gone now, along with the buzzing, overcharged frenzy that had lived inside of me ever since boy puberty.

I sighed and pulled a sheaf of mail out from under my pillow. All the envelopes had ragged edges—I’d read them each a few times, since I’d gotten them. There were two from Heather, one with a terse note from Gresha tucked inside. Another from Kisma. Each of them wished me well in my studies, and told me they missed me, in their various ways. Gresha had even written to say that the Foundry felt different without me—the closest I’d ever heard her get to admitting that she missed someone.

Writing letters back, though, was something I kept putting off. The only version of myself with which I could possibly respond to them was fast becoming something like dead skin I was itching to shuck off. Not even dead skin. Dead shell. Not even a cover identity. Closer to a lie. The idea of signing a letter as Eli appealed less and less to me every day.

And though none of them said it, I knew they were each offering that person a place to come back to if I washed out.

I sighed. Bless their hearts. But the idea of actually going back to Stuhkrad, as who I was becoming? As a girlish hybrid kuffa version of the old Eli? Nope.

No, a certainty was setting in me like quicklime cement—I was never going back.

The thought made me dizzy, as if I’d looked down and suddenly realized I had been walking on water—not flat water but a rollicking, heaving, fast-moving river current. Solid ground had given way at some point, it was behind me now, and I was being carried away at velocity, trying to keep my balance on nothing but roiling bubbles. It was terrifying. It was heart-leapingly giddy.

I tucked away the envelopes, and slid my hand down between my legs, to check the, uh, progress. I gasped at how sensitive my clit was. And it did seem to fully be a clit at this point—I’d been obsessively checking my downstairs parts against the best anatomy book collection in the known world. Over the last week or so, my urethra had separated from it and migrated downwards, to sit between the labia lips that had emerged. And just below that—I gasped again as my finger curled and slid into the canal that had been slowly tunneling deeper into my pelvis. Holy fuck I was wet.

My breath hissed as the palm of my hand brushed my clit. Without thinking, I did it again, and my back arched as pleasure shocked through me. I heard a low, gusty moan and belatedly realized I was the one who’d made it. My finger glided out, then back in, and I couldn’t stop my hips from urging down to meet it. My toes curled as sheets of pleasure surged under my skin. At the same time, the inside of my body felt enveloped in streams of gentle, euphoric bubbles, a swirling, lifting wave of rightness.

I released a shaky, guttural breath. Was I really doing this here? Alexi would be getting back from class at any moment. And yet—I didn’t seem to be stopping...

 

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