“Come on,” I said. “We can even go by that bakery you like!”

  I leaned on my roommate’s desk, blocking our main light and casting a shadow on his book. I knew that annoyed him and I usually tried not to do it, but he wasn’t listening to me. Even in our little double dorm room, converted from a servant’s room of the palace, there were other places to stand. But I wanted his attention.

  Adain sighed, finally pulling his head out of his book in defeat. “I like going there with you, not you and all those people you call ‘friends.’”

  My roommate was unusually dark-skinned for Lake City in its northern climate, as he was from a town nearer to the southern border with Amdriel. He had deep brown eyes, black hair, and a layer of softness over his muscles, though they were still visible when he stretched his shoulders or legs.

  Sometimes I studied the way his body moved when he wasn't looking. He was chubbier than some of the other Mage trainees, who bought into the old rumor that physical fitness helped magical fitness. He told me many times that it was a superstition based on an outdated understanding of magic, one of many historical and magical facts he always wanted to share with his friends. He avoided most people besides his study group and me, though he was an avid friend to a penpal in the Republic of Glenchan.

  I put my hands on my hips. “What, so you’re just going to spend your one single night off a week staying in and reading?”

  “Our walk in the city was nice today,” Adain said. “We saw that bridge that looked so lovely in the snow. I liked the coffee shop. It’s enough for me. It’s going to be way too cold out there, anyway.”

  “You can borrow my jacket,” I said. “I spelled it to hold heat myself, and you know I do it right. You’ll be nice and cozy.”

  He actually smiled a little bit at the offer. “I appreciate it, but you spelled my jackets, too. It’s not really about the cold.”

  “Then come with me!” I said. I pulled a chair close and sat myself down next to him. “Enjoy our weekends in the city before it gets too cold!”

  He pulled his mouth to the side in a skeptical frown. “That’s not what I call fun, hanging out with them.”

  “Then don’t hang out with them!” I pulled up my hands against my chest. “Hang out with me!”

  I think he would have blended into the background and focused on his own work if he could. Unfortunately he was the Mage trainee who was the oldest and last to join our class, and his size and skin made him stick out further.

  The way people treated him when he first came to the Division reminded me too much of how I'd been treated as the first Biralei recruited into our class instead of born into it. I had been the first to defend him, and he had helped me in my studying. When it was time for us to move out of the children's hall and into the dormitories we chose each other as roommates.

  He sighed, fully looking up at me for the first time in this conversation. “You’re not yourself when you’re with them, Izak. Watching you nuzzle up to people you hate with fake smiles isn’t fun, it’s unsettling. Do you even enjoy doing it? Why do you want to go?”

  “We’ll be working with these people in the future,” I said, ignoring the jab about whether or not I would have fun. That was beside the point. “Most of them have pretty important parents in the Mage Division, who will be hearing about us through them. Think about our futures.”

  Adain groaned. “Don’t I think about our future enough while studying?”

  “Come on,” I said. “There has to be some position you want, that you think of while studying. Or some idea of a position. Some kind of work that will give you power, appreciation, luxury, or respect as a Mage. What do you think about at night?”

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  Adain stared at me, an odd sort of look coming over his face, before blinking his features into an amused frown.

  “I don’t think about my future job late at night,” he said. “Is that seriously what you think about?”

  “Sure,” I said, “among other things.” A flicker of awareness, acknowledgement, embarrassment at certain thoughts concerning Adain himself moved through me, but I pushed that down. It wouldn’t touch my words or tone, which would remain light. “What do you think of?”

  He looked down. He couldn’t seem to meet my eyes, though he didn’t exactly seem embarrassed. His glances up at me were wary.

  “You know what I think about at night,” he said. “I’ve told you.”

  He meant his family. He was another recruited Biralei, many of us were actually. We were the same age, but I had come here at nine to a class full of superior children who had all grown up together in the Mage Division. He had come here at thirteen to a class full of established Mage students, behind in his studies and still too attached to his family.

  “Oh,” I said. Part of me wanted to say, still? Haven’t you gotten over that? Another part of me wanted to say, I’m so glad you trust me with your confidences. There was a sense of intimacy in knowing exactly what he meant.

  (A small part of me wanted to say I understand. I know how you feel. It was easily squashed.)

  “I remember,” I said.

  “Stuff that’s important to me,” he said. “Not job stuff.”

  There was judgment to his tone; it irked me. Especially because I just resisted the opportunity to make a judgmental remark on his desires.

  “Well, this stuff is important to me,” I said. “Respect, as a Mage, a Biralei, and a man. Why wouldn’t I think about that?”

  At the words “a man”, Adain’s face pulled into tight-lipped, warm-eyed sympathy, and I looked away. I tried to cover the movement by adjusting in my chair. I didn’t want him to pity me for being transgender.

  “That’s not what I think about late at night,” Adain said. “But if it matters that much to you, then go. I’ll still be here. Why do you even want to take me with you?”

  “Because I want those things for you, too!” I said, leaning back and gesturing to him appealingly. “Don’t you want to be there with me?”

  He opened his mouth, closed it again, and bit his lip. He looked at me, and I gave him my largest and most pleading eyes.

  “I want to be with you,” he said, and my heart beat hard at his words, “but not there.”

  Then he looked down and flushed. There was a moment of raw silence, and I couldn’t break it. There was a sense of potential, of a world that could be mine if only I chose the right words. But for once I didn’t know what those words were.

  “Did you mean that?” I asked. “The way you said it?”

  He stared down at his hands. “You should go out, to those friends who will get you what you want. I don’t see what I could have that you’d want. I don’t have any connections.”

  I sat next to him, not saying anything. I was supposed to be good at this. Navigating social situations was something I prided myself on, part of how I’d pulled myself from the odd student out to a prime part of the most ambitious young Mage social circles that would give me the connections I needed. Except now, looking at the hunched lines of Adain’s back as he prepared himself for rejection, I had no idea what to do.

  I wanted to reach out and take his hand, but somehow I couldn’t. It would be a vulnerable thing to do, and I had myself trained out of that by now. I couldn’t.

  Unless…

  Maybe there was a way to get everything I wanted. I could be a brilliant Mage and impress Adain with it.

  “I’ll be back,” I said, standing up. Now that I was up, not quite so close to him, not quite so deep in that moment, I could put my hand over his. “Wait up for me, please.”

  And then I was out the door.

  It took me forty minutes to come back with my prize. It had taken some finessing, a bet with Tom and Milo, and maybe a bad decision. But, even with a little bit of ribbing, I knew I had impressed the entire lot of my friends by getting a bottle of confiscated wine in thirty minutes. They would be talking about me all night.

  Which freed me to come back to my shared room, with the light still on.

  I charged in and marched up to Adain’s desk, where his book still lay open in his hands. I plunked down my bottle of wine with triumph.

  “What-?” He started, looking between me and the bottle. “How did you get that?”

  “A rather ingenious use of the teleportation spell to get into the dormmaster’s closet,” I said. “I’ll tell you all about it if you’ll have a drink with me.” I grinned at him.

  “It’s only been half an hour!” he said. “Did you go out planning to steal prohibited substances?”

  “I always have a plan,” I announced. “Now, my plan is to drink. It’ll make things easier.” For me, at least.

  “You have to tell me how you did it,” he said.

  “I will,” I agreed.

  We both choked on the taste, but I was right. It did make things easier, to eventually say what I wanted to say. And the wine didn’t taste bad when I tasted it on his lips.

  It was something I remembered, later. After he was gone. Sitting on our floor and passing a bottle of wine back and forth between us. Staring at each other as we drank straight from it. Sitting closer and closer, until the alcohol finally freed us from our inhibitions, and let us press our lips together for the first time. The bittersweet taste shared between us. All the things I thought I’d never have again.