After the sparring match concluded, Nova found a vending machine near the park entrance and bought two energy drinks. He held the lime-flavored one out to Seraphine without asking — he had remembered from somewhere in their childhood that she always picked lime — and she took it with the expression of someone still processing several things simultaneously.
She cracked it open and took a long pull, her cheeks still puffed with residual annoyance.
"You were cheating," she said.
Nova opened his own drink. "When exactly did I cheat?"
"I don't know yet. But you were." She swung her legs from the low wall she had claimed as a seat, glaring at him with the specific resentment of someone who had spent three years quietly outperforming him academically and physically and had just watched all of that get reorganized without her permission. "This match doesn't count. We'll see who scores higher in the Martial Aptitude Examination."
"Fine by me."
