The Lustful Villain: Every Milfs and Gilfs are Mine!

Rex watched Mireya hold the right flank for another twenty seconds and thought, Useful to know.

At the eleven-minute mark, the pack broke into smaller groups, and when Nerith called out from the northern edge, three more groups were coming in from the limestone flats. Rex had been using the engagement to demonstrate for Elizabeth’s benefit a restrained variety of workings.

It was a layered ice construction, dividing the leading pack group at the intersection of two approach vectors. There’s also a wind-pressure working, reversing a creature’s charge and redirecting it into its own cluster, and a fire-suppression barrier, technically a compound working that combined elements in a sequence that was not part of any standard academy curriculum.

Elizabeth saw them all three. He watched her see them and saw how she tilted her head just a bit between her own workings, the indication that she was filing what she’d seen, the small professional interest that she was too disciplined to show in the middle of an engagement but was there all the same.

After twenty minutes, the last pack retreated back into the scrub, and the group reassembled on the path and started to move again.

"Nerith," Elizabeth said as the group gathered. "Northern approach. Are there any more of them?"

"No. It’s clear for now because the nest system is settling," Nerith replied.

"We moved fast enough that they’re not reading us as a sustained threat." She paused. "They’ll be active again in about forty minutes if we’re still in range."

"We won’t be," said Elizabeth. "Good call on the signal timing."

Nerith gave a brief nod. The leaves had stilled in the way they did when she concentrated on something outside herself instead of her inner thoughts, and Rex noticed this as the group resumed their pace.

"Anyone hurt?" asked Apollo.

A round of negatives followed. Apollo visibly relaxed by about a third, reflecting a specific type of person that Rex understood well: someone whose instinct in a group situation was to prioritize the well-being of everyone else first.

"Talyra," said Aisella.

"I’m fine," Talyra replied.

"You’re limping."

"I’m fine and limping because of the walk," Talyra sighed. "Those are not mutually exclusive states."

"What happened?"

"I stepped on a plate edge wrong during the second cluster." She waved it off. "It’s not structural, but come on now! Stop looking at me like I’m a weak archer."

Aisella looked at her like that for another moment, then made a decision and let it go, which was its own kind of competence. "It’s my healer’s instinct."

Meanwhile, Elizabeth fell into step beside Rex without preamble.

"The ice construction," she said. "Stacked pressure gradient on a converging set of vectors."

"That’s not the canonical form."

Rex said, "Nope."

"Where did you pick that up?"

"I worked it out from first principles," he said, and that was wholly true. "The basic geometry is written in the third-level theoretical framework in the Academy library."

"The application just needs extended practice."

Elizabeth looked at him with the scrutinizing gaze of someone who is re-evaluating a previously made classification. "If you had done that in the written practical assessment, you would have scored the highest in the advanced division."

"Probably," he said.

"You were just average on the evaluation."

"I was."

She stared at him for another second. "You are going to give me administrative problems," she said. It was not quite a complaint, not quite an accusation.

"I will get them under control."

Her face shifted slightly, not with warmth, but with a diminishing of the professional vigilance she maintained with most people. "Quite frankly, I don’t understand why I have you take the standard exams at this point."

"You would outscore half my faculty."

Behind them, Mireya spoke up. "Miss Elizabeth, with all due respect, that’s quite unfair."

"Some of us studied for two years for those examinations."

"I know," said Elizabeth, without turning around. "It’s not a serious proposal either."

"It sounded really serious," Mireya said.

"It was not."

"It had a serious tone."

"Mireya."

"I’m just saying the tone was there."

Alexander, ahead of them by a few steps and apparently pretending not to have heard any of it, said, "How far to the tributary mouth?"

"Another hour," said Elizabeth, and the conversation closed itself.

That certainly sounded serious.

Alexander chuckled briefly and Iris didn’t answer at all. Apollo stepped between them and said, in the tone of someone who is helping usefully, "I thought it sounded a little serious."

The group spread out into march formation again. Elizabeth stayed at Rex’s pace rather than moving forward to her usual position at the head, which he noted without comment.

After a stretch of path that went long enough for the conversation to feel like a new one, she said, "The compound sequencing you used on the fire barrier... that’s not in the third-level framework."

"No," Rex said. "That one is further out."

"Back then... I had Lily in an advanced seminar last term," Elizabeth said. "She submitted a theoretical paper on compound elemental sequencing."

"The structural logic was almost identical to what you just used in the field." She said it the way she said most things, which was plainly and without visible intent, but Rex understood that she was not saying it without intent. "Same base geometry also with the same branching pattern in the secondary layer."

"But even if she’s an amateur mage... her knowledge about all sorts of magic is something that I respect about my niece, and she always manages to get some of the important academy books."

Elizabeth sighed. "But, of course, I was the one who gave it to her because I trust her."

"Lily is a good mage," Rex said.

"She is." Elizabeth paused for a few steps. "She talked about you constantly in that seminar."

"Every third application she referenced what you had shown her or explained to her. I thought at the time she was overstating it, but students tend to credit their influences selectively." She glanced at him. "I’m revising that assessment."

"She still goes to the academy, huh?" Rex asked. "I thought she had graduated."

"Well, you could say that, but this is a unique situation for my niece, and I felt compelled to give her support. She has expressed a strong desire to become more knowledgeable and to assist you, even though she doesn’t feel confident in her abilities."

Rex said nothing to this, which was a deliberate choice, and Elizabeth apparently read it correctly.

"Now I’m really curious..." Elizabeth rested her chin on her hand. "This is my aunt’s instinctive talking, not the instructor."

"Are you and Lily together?" she asked, and it was direct, the way she asked everything, with the same professional evenness she used for questions about ceiling supports and limestone weathering.

"That’s a personal question of which an instructor should not ask," Rex said.

"It is," Elizabeth agreed. "However, I’m asking it anyway because I’m her aunt, and that counts."

Rex looked at the path ahead. "Why does it matter to you?"

"Because I’m her niece, and I’ve had to watch her sit through my seminars trying not to look like she’s thinking about someone." She said it without judgment. "Additionally, Helena is my older sister."

Rex processed this information without revealing his thoughts. He already know that Helena was Elizabeth’s older sister, which clarified the connection between their surnames.

This also indicated that any information Elizabeth might provide would come from a family perspective, making it significantly more valuable than mere hearsay.

"We’re close," Rex said, which was accurate and noncommittal in proportions he found acceptable.

Elizabeth accepted this. "Good answer."

"I’m not asking for a formal declaration," she said. "I’m asking because there is a relevant piece of information you probably don’t have, and if you and Lily are involved, you should have it."

Rex waited.

"Helena doesn’t approve of reincarnators as partners for her children," Elizabeth said. "She has never said this to Lily or Diana or Elliot directly."

Rex raised his eyebrow. ’Here it is...’

"But I have heard her say it to our mother on two separate occasions over the past three years."

"Her position is that the gap in experience creates an imbalance that tends to resolve badly and that reincarnators come into this world already formed and the relationships they build here are functional rather than genuine." She said it without editorializing. "I’m not saying she’s right."

"I’m telling you it’s what she thinks, and I know that you and Diana share the same thing as well... it explains why my sister was mad at her."

’She knows a lot.’

"She doesn’t approve of her children having a relationship with a reincarnator having to forget about her son, eh?" Rex considered the path ahead for a moment.

"Elliot is with Evelyn, you know," he said.

"That’s true."

"And she’s a reincarnator."

"Yes," said Elizabeth.

"And Helena’s position on that is what... exactly?"

Elizabeth was quiet for three steps.

"Complicated," she said.

’Bullshit.’

"Evelyn was with Elliot before Helena had fully formed her position."

"Evelyn’s relationship with Elliot, her son, influences her calculations differently than her relationships with her daughters do." She paused. "My sister is not a simple person."

"She holds positions that are not always internally consistent, and she is aware of this, which makes her more careful about stating them directly."

Rex said, "So she would apply a standard to Lily and Diana that she doesn’t apply to Elliot."

"She would not state it that way," Elizabeth said. "But yes, in practical terms, that is what it looks like."

"This is just straight bullshit and idiotic thinking coming from that big boobed bitch."