The Divine Gambit

19. Sam

"James, are you better now?"

The soft-spoken question lifted me from my slumber. Sam was still lying on my chest, looking utterly wiped out. Her mouth was open, a tiny streak of dried drool having crept out at some point during the night. Beth was beside me, an arm weaved between Sam's to hold my hand, her eyes reflecting the flickering bit of light creeping into the room.

"Sorry. Your alarm's going to go off in ten minutes, and I could feel that you were near the surface there. I wasn't sure if you were still planning on going to the gym after last night. Wasn't sure how you felt and wanted to turn it off before it woke us all up if you wanted me to. I already messaged Zoey and let her know you might not be feeling it."

"No, I'm going to go. I feel a lot better than I did, and a workout will help. I appreciate you offering that, though."

She gave me a halfhearted smile.

"I also appreciate you trying to comfort me last night. With the mood I was in, I didn't want to be helped. So, even if it didn't work, I really appreciate that you tried."

"But I didn't do anything," she responded forlornly. "Sam did."

"She did something she was trained professionally to do, something that literally runs in her family. You tried to help, too. Look, if you promise not to beat yourself up for not being effective, then I won't spend all morning apologizing for acting like that in the first place."

She smirked and responded, "Okay. Deal."

Sam shifted on my body, raising one hand and sliding it up my chest. She placed her palm over my face and tapped me clumsily several times, grumbling out, "I'm trying to sleep, you oaf. Stop rumbling underneath me."

I licked my thumb and tried to forget what I had done yesterday as I rubbed it on Sam's face, cleaning off her dried drool.

"I need to get up. A bat needs to teach me how to fly. But, after what you did last night, I think you should stay home and have a lay about this morning."

She sighed and stretched without sitting up at all, unrolling herself like a cat all over my torso. "Thank God. I wasn't going to say it, but that was a lot. Think I used more yesterday than the rest of my life combined."

"I also do want to actually take you out today, so you need to be all rested up and ready to go out later."

"I know. Sorry for wiping myself out two days in a row. Any hints on what to wear?"

"Casual and comfortable. Workout clothes aren't required, but they wouldn't be out of place. Well, Beth's would be. Yours would be fine."

I kissed Sam's forehead, then Beth's, as I climbed off the mattress. "Keep her in bed, Beth. Make sure she's rested for me." She giggled, Sam pulled the covers back over her head, and I went to the gym.

Zoey worked me hard. She didn't come right out and say she was looking to push me to failure, but the squat sets of eight became fives and then threes and then singles. By the time I was up to individual reps, she wasn't even working in anymore; the weight she had loaded beyond her own capabilities. After the fifth single, a grinder that took everything I had to give, I tapped out. I told her I wasn't comfortable doing any more.

It wasn't just the weights. I had questions rolling through my mind about what I was even doing with my life now, why I had been made a public leader here without any consultation and yet hadn't been given any training or introduction to that role. My dragon half was on edge, unnerved by last night's contact with the other thing. Speaking of, the other thing was resting and withdrawn, seemingly worn out just from talking to me for a moment. Maybe that contributed to my lack of ambition and hunger to get after the workout this morning.

"I thought so. That one was hard for you -- a much slower bar speed, and you fully braced and held your upper back tension. I wasn't going to let you do any more, but keep in mind, the only way to get comfortable with them is to do them. Not regularly -- well, not regularly for us mortals, maybe you're different -- but you have to lift heavy to get comfortable lifting heavy," she told me while stripping the bar.

We moved on to more accessory hip, calf, and glute work, where Zoey alternated with me again. Then, I spent some more time on a different piece of cardio equipment: a skier, this time, which I felt quite uncoordinated using at the start.

Mallory showed up while I was fumbling with the skier. She hung out for the final few minutes of the workout, talking with Zoey as I burned out my lungs. It was definitely a strange sensation when I stopped, going from panting and wheezing to perfectly fine in just a handful of seconds. My workouts no longer burned and lingered like they had just a month ago, and it was painfully obvious when I did cardio, even when I was fatigued from the resistance training.

Before heading down towards the pool, Zoey anxiously asked again for confirmation that we were still on for tomorrow. I gently affirmed, trying not to show my amusement at her nerves. I didn't want to tease her over it, and I understood why she was nervous, but seeing her acting so strangely was still jarring. Even Kyle never got anxious -- flustered, occasionally -- but this was the first time I had ever seen anyone in their family show their nerves.

In the reserved and abandoned pool locker room, I quickly ditched my clothes and wrapped a towel around my waist. Mallory was already waiting for me in the water when I walked out onto the deck, and it was pretty clear how she had been so much faster than I was -- her clothes were strewn recklessly around the lifeguard station. She hadn't bothered using the locker room, just stripping down here. Which, since we were the only ones and would both be getting completely undressed, started seeming less and less weird the more I thought about it.

I set my towel with hers and slipped into the water but remained leaning against the wall. I had a question to ask her, and I wanted to do it before we started.

"Hey, Mal? I know this is going to be completely out of left field, but how serious are you and Sophie?"

She looked at me with a raised eyebrow, the cold, calculating sharpness returning to her brown eyes. "Mr. Steal Yo Girl isn't a great look on you, lizard-boy. You best not be suggesting what I think you are."

"Not even a little bit. I was actually asking because you seemed awfully interested in teaching me how to fly. A little over-eager to be around me naked. Seemed like something a partner might not be happy about."

"Oh, yeah, she knows I strip down for the lessons. Being nude is much less odd for weres, given the whole animal shapeshifting side. It's either destigmatizing it, or everyone needs to replace clothes every week, or wait a month for self-repairing enchantments to work."

I shook my head, "I get that. Did you tell her that you really, really enjoy it when I shapeshift, though? I'm sure that's not in the regular paperwork."

Mallory exhaled sharply, "Why are you so interested in my girlfriend, James?"

"Because if I was in her shoes, and I wasn't told that it was going this far, I would probably be upset. Even if we didn't ever do anything intentionally, we knew it would happen and kept going, you know? If she finds out in six months, she's probably going to feel pretty rightfully betrayed if she wasn't informed and never got a chance to say no. She would have a pretty legitimate reason to be upset with me, let alone you."

"I didn't tell her. Honestly, I was hoping it was a one-off, and I wouldn't have to have that conversation. If, I mean, well, when it happens again, I guess I'll have to."

"Sorry. I just wanted to get in front of it, and Zoey wouldn't actually tell me anything about you two, so I wasn't sure if I even needed to or not."

She shrugged and moved promptly into her lessons. I shapeshifted, she spent a minute blushing and breathing heavily, and then we got going. She started by having me do the same drills from last time, skulling the water and traversing the length of the pool. This time, she added several laps of doing it sideways and backward, as well. Then I was up on the diving board, lifting myself to the frequency of the board's bounces, feeling the air catch under my wings. Then, I did the different turns and rotations on the board, including spending time lying on my stomach and back. To wrap up this set of drills, she had me hold onto the board's end and dangle from it into the pool.

After a minute of my ankles and legs dangling in the water as I flapped to my own beat, she had me lift them out of the water and wrap them around the board. I was entirely underneath the painted fiberglass board, and I immediately understood why I was doing something so strange when I tried to flap my wings. It turns out that trying to control yourself in the air while upside down is quite counterintuitive, and Mallory spent nearly twenty minutes working with me before I had any semblance of control. Even then, she beat into me that I should always be trying to right myself if I had any choice.

Then, we had jumped flight again. Rather than having me continue with the board, she had me use the starting blocks. I evidently didn't require the extra lift from the flexible boards and could go directly from the blocks into the air. And I did. The sideways starts, and especially the backward starts, felt fundamentally wrong to me after years of practicing my starting jumps for swimming competitions. But I was able to control myself well enough, my wings catching the air just as well.

For her final instruction, she had me do something I was quite familiar with as a swimmer. I would sink to the bottom of the pool, push off the bottom in a tight streamline, and use the advantage my buoyancy gave me to feel faster than normal until I reached the surface. Normally, that was its own drill, but here, she had me push through the surface and unfurl my wings until I could flap them at the apex of my swimming ascent and lift out of the water. Getting the timing down was an essential part of familiarizing myself with my wings. It only took some twenty attempts before I was tired of the repetition she demanded and flew to touch the ceiling above the pool.

Mallory dismissed me after that, decreeing that I had passed the initial screening and training. While toweling herself off on the deck, she explained that next week, she would be taking me to a different location, and we would be practicing landing. We'd have two weeks of that, assuming everything went well, and then I'd be taken on some planned flights in the countryside to test my endurance.

Her phrasing raised a question in my mind, but it was something for me to bring up with Antonin. There was a feeling that I had been getting for the last week that didn't sit right with me. But, I had already had one questionable interaction with Mallory today, and it certainly wasn't her decision if my paranoia was justified. Someone above her was making the decisions, and Antonin would probably be the best way for me to get genuine answers. Besides, I didn't really want to get into it now. I wanted to be in a good mood for Sam, and I had a phone call and a pit stop at an ATM to make before I went back to find my date.

Sam was waiting patiently for me back at the apartment, wearing jeans and a shoulderless, frilly lavender blouse that would've looked adorable on Beth but was devastating on her fuller frame. I stopped momentarily on my way in, frozen in place as I took in the spectacle of the goddess I was involved with. Her eyes met mine, and she reached for Beth's hand, looking to hold onto something.

"Damn," she whispered under her breath, "Never going to get used to feeling that."

Her words broke the spell holding me in stasis, and I asked, "Are you okay?"

She blushed deeply crimson but nodded, "Yeah. So good. Every time you look at me, and I can feel what you're thinking as you do -- Beth told me it was getting more intense day by day, but, damn. Waterfalls, honestly. Might need to borrow your towel."

I shook my head in confusion, "Wha-- Oh. Oh. Oh, damn."

"So, go get ready, please."

A quick shower to rinse the lingering chlorine smell from me and a fresh set of clean clothes later, Sam and I walked out of the apartment, her arm wrapped dotingly around mine. We took the train, getting off a few blocks away from my destination. Sam kept her eyes open and looked around at every business ahead of us, curious which one I was going to go into.

She smiled when I opened the door for her, and then we were inside a place with flashing neon lights, matte black surfaces everywhere, and a reverberating bass beat bouncing through the building. She raised an eyebrow at me as we walked towards the desk at the front.

"Hi," a chipper teenage guy greeted us. "Two for open skate?"

"Yes, please."

"Renting skates? Sizes, and inline or quad?" he asked.

We rented our skates, stored our things in their day-use lockers, and then made our way down to the rink itself. While not entirely empty, it was sparsely dotted with a handful of other people skating around. A bored-looking employee was absentmindedly doing laps, keeping herself awake by doing them backward and sideways as she watched the patrons and kept herself available if anyone needed her.

"Skating isn't something I would have predicted, James," Sam said as she slid on her skates and laced them up. "What'd you do with Beth?"

"Wait, you guys didn't talk about it?"

"She told me she had a really nice time and that it changed her mind about everything that happened. She didn't want to share any details without you, though."

"Oh. Well, we went to a museum."

Sam did a double take, fumbling and nearly dropping her second skate. "Wait, what?" She asked incredulously. "Why did you do that?"

"Okay, first, it was the Franklin Institute magic section. I wanted something that could get Beth more acclimated to the world we're now in without overwhelming her since she can't contribute to the magic lessons besides being a guinea pig for Antonin to play with, and she hasn't really engaged with his regular lectures. I wanted to look at magic stuff in a different environment and talk to her about how crazy all of it was."

Sam and I were now in the rink and had joined the procession in going around, although we were both content with moving slowly, holding hands and talking, rather than trying to actually be any good with the skates.

"And, you brought me here -- Why?"

"Well, I wanted something we'd both be pretty mediocre at so that we'd be on a level playing field without any stress. I also wanted something not a part of that world, given your complaints and my growing irritation with it. I wanted something where we could talk together but still be doing something new. Something that could be ours if we both liked it and wanted it to be. Not that I want to force this specifically on you, but, with Beth and now Zoey, it would probably be nice to have something that was uniquely ours."

"Hmm. That's pretty sensible."

"I also really wanted to check in with you. I mean, I wanted to do it before last night, but now I want to check in for two separate reasons. So, first, how do you feel about last night? I'm sorry I--"

"Stop right there," Sam said, flexing her hand around mine to emphasize her point. "You were pretty reasonably upset last night. You didn't direct it at Beth or me. There's no reason for you to apologize for having an emotional release."

I could feel that there was something else Sam wanted to say, but she didn't. After half a lap, I prompted her when she was still contemplating saying it. "But?"

"No. No 'but', James. I wanted to say 'and'. As in, and it gave me a great opportunity to try out the magic that runs in my family, something I've seen Mom do time and time again but I've only ever been able to offer cheap imitations of. I still don't understand how she manages to do it because trying to pull it out of you submerged me in it instead. She almost always stays pretty calm and detached, and I was just pulled along for a ride in the typhoon of emotions you had."

"You know, I can -- okay, smell isn't the right word, obviously, but that's what it feels like -- emotions. From everyone besides two people, I've been able to sense some kind of feeling. Antonin is usually a blank slate, ranging between disinterested and academically animated. Zenya doesn't have severe magnitudes to the emotions she feels, and I am concerned about why, but that's a different conversation. Zoey's been able to clamp down and suppress her emotions pretty hard, but I still get occasional glimpses. The only one who I've never gotten much from was your Mom. She's pretty much entirely a blank slate at all times. Given her expertise with emotional manipulation, I figured she was masking herself from me intentionally somehow."

Sam shook her head, "I don't know anything about that, really. If she is, I wouldn't have been capable of it before you supercharged me. I was taught the basics and struggled with that, so I could just be doing something wrong because I never learned any deeper into the subject."

"Sam, I really need to thank you. I was really spiraling last night, and I'm not sure where I could've ended up without you. Just feeling you trying to throw me a life preserver tempered it somewhat; it made me realize I wasn't alone and had support."

"I would kiss you if I wouldn't fall over trying to do it right now," she responded. "James, I love you, and I have for years. You get that, right? Supporting you how I can is something that I've wanted to do forever. I don't want to make it sound like I was happy you were drowning in angst last night, but I leapt at the chance to try to help for a reason. You'll never be alone again."

Sam had turned her head to look at me while talking, and I returned her gaze. Unfortunately, that meant neither of us were looking where we were going, mostly relying on our mental map of the loop and others looking out for us. Neither of us noticed the teenager coming up quickly beside us nor that we were coming up behind an older couple moving very slowly. The kid swerved in front of Sam to avoid running over the retirees. She snapped her head back forward as the guy passed by and tried to change her path, but while holding my hand and the older pair taking up space on the other side, she simply lost her balance.

Maybe it was just an instinctual reaction, or perhaps it was because we had spent so much time practicing the previous day and so it was still fresh in my mind, but as Sam started to tip over, I used my newfound magic to ensure that she didn't crash into the ground. I projected some force on her other side, a spot locked into a relative position in the air, and Sam fell onto it. In a split second, she intuitively used it to pull herself back under control, holding on to the conjured invisible bar and my hand to stay upright. It only took her a second or two to return to normal, and I let the magic fizzle out as she looked at me.

Under her breath, she whispered, "Thank you, but you can't do that in public. Could get us in all sorts of trouble."

Before I could ask for an explanation, the previously bored-looking staffer flew up alongside us. "Nice save," she opened with, "Are you alright?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," Sam responded. "We weren't quite looking where we were going."

The employee looked at her for an extra moment, then said, "Alright, if that's how you feel. Let me know if you need anything."

After a half-lap of silence, Sam asked, "What was that about?"

"I believe she was hoping you would blame the kid, and then she would have a justification to talk to him. He's been speeding around the entire time, just on this side of being reckless."

"Oh. But we really weren't watching where we were going."