As Breckenridge took her seat and Nico decided to pretend at reasonability, Libby pondered what it would be like in her blissful future where things didn’t always come down to the two of them competing. For four years Nico had been an inescapable feature of her life, like some sort of bothersome vestigial organ. Physical medeians with their mastery of the elements were rare; so rare, in fact, that they had been the only two. For four long, torturous years, they’d been shoved into every class together without respite, the extent of their prowess matched only by the force of their mutual antipathy.
For Nico, who was used to getting his way, Libby was purely an annoyance. She’d found him smug and arrogant from the moment they met and hadn’t hesitated to tell him so, and there was nothing Nico de Varona hated more than someone who didn’t adore him on sight. It was probably the first trauma he’d ever suffered; knowing him, the idea that a woman could exist who didn’t worship at his feet must have kept him up at night. For Libby, however, things were far more complex. For all that their personalities clashed, Nico was something far worse than just an average asshole. He was also an obnoxious, classist reminder of everything Libby failed to possess.
Nico came from a family of prominent medeians, and had trained privately from his opulent palace （she assumed） in Havana since he was a child. Libby, a Pittsburgh native whose suburban lineage had no medeians or even witches to speak of, had planned to go to Columbia until NYUMA, via Breckenridge, intervened. She had known nothing of basic medeian principles, starting off behind in every aspect of magical theory, and had worked twice as hard as everyone else—only for that effort to be dismissed in favor of yes, that’s very good, Libby… and now Nico, how about you try?
Nico de Varona would never know what that felt like, Libby thought again, as she had countless times. Nico was handsome, clever, charming, rich. Libby was… powerful, yes, equally as powerful and likely to become more so over time given her sense of discipline, but with four years of Nico de Varona as a yardstick for magical achievement, Libby found herself unfairly measured. If not for him she might have breezed through her studies, perhaps even found them dull. She would not have had a rival, nor even a peer. After all, without Nico, who could even hold a candle to what she could do?
No one. She’d never met anyone with anything even close to hers or Nico’s proficiency with physical magic. The little tremors from the slightest flaring of his temper would take a lesser medeian four hours and herculean effort to create from nothing, the same way a mere spark from Libby had been enough to secure a full scholarship to NYUMA and lucrative full-time employment after that. That sort of power would have been revered, even exalted, if either of them had been singularities—which, for the first time, they would be. Without Nico for comparison beside her, Libby would finally be free to excel without having to push herself half to death to stand out.
It was a strange thought, actually, and strangely lonely. But still, thrilling all the same.
She felt a little rumble under her feet and glanced over, noting that Nico looked lost in thought.
“Hey,” she said, nudging him. “Stop.”
He gave her a bored glance. “It’s not always me, Rhodes. I don’t go around blaming you for forest fires.”
She rolled her eyes. “I know the difference between an earthquake and a Varona tantrum.”
“Careful,” he cautioned, gaze flicking to where Ezra sat beside her parents. “Don’t want Fowler to see us having another row, do we? Might get the wrong impression.”
Honestly, this again. “You do realize your obsession with my boyfriend is childish, don’t you, Varona? It’s beneath you.”
“I didn’t realize you thought anything was beneath me,” Nico replied lazily.
Across the stage, Breckenridge shot them a warning glance.
“Just get over it,” Libby muttered. Nico and Ezra had loathed each other during the two years they’d all been at NYUMA together before Ezra graduated, which happened to be a separate matter from Nico’s opposition to her. “You never have to see each other again. We,” she amended belatedly, “never have to see each other again.”
“Don’t make it sound so tragic, Rhodes.”
She shot him a glare, and he turned his head, half-smiling at her.
“Where there’s smoke,” he murmured, and she felt another rush of loathing.
“Varona, can you just—”
“—pleased to introduce your co-valedictorian, Elizabeth Rhodes!” came the voice of the commencement announcer, as Libby glanced up, realizing that their entire audience was now staring expectantly at her, Ezra giving her a little frown from the crowd that suggested he had observed her bickering with Nico yet again.