She forced a smile, rising to her feet, and gave Nico’s ankle a kick as she went.
“Try not to touch your hair,” was Nico’s parting benediction, muttered under his breath and of course intended to make her fixate on her bangs, which for the entire two minutes of her prepared speech threatened to fall into her eyes. One of his lesser magics, getting under her skin, and by the time she finished, she wanted very badly to kick him again, falling into her seat and reminding herself how marvelous life was going to be in approximately twenty minutes, when she would be free of him forever.
“Well done, you two,” Breckenridge said wryly, shaking their hands as they departed the stage. “An entire commencement ceremony, impressive.”
“Yes, we are very impressive,” Nico agreed, in a tone that Libby would have slapped him for, only Breckenridge gave a low chuckle of amusement and shook her head fondly, departing in the opposite direction as Libby and Nico made their way down the stairs.
Libby paused to conjure something terrible; a final, devastating parting malediction. Something to haunt him while she walked away.
But then instead, she held a hand out to him, deciding to be an adult.
Civil.
Et cetera.
“Have, you know. A good life,” she said, and Nico glanced skeptically at her palm.
“That’s the line you’re going with, Rhodes?” he asked, pursing his lips. “Come on, you can do better. I know you must have rehearsed it in the shower.”
God, he was infuriating. “Forget it,” she said, retracting her hand and pivoting away. “See you never, Varona.”
“Better,” he called after her, pairing it with careless applause. “Bra-va, Elizabeth—”
She whipped around, curling a fist. “What was your line, then?”
“Well, why bother telling you now?” he asked, with a grin that was more like a self-satisfied smirk. “Maybe I’ll just let you ponder it. You know,” he added, taking a step towards her, “when you need something to occupy your mind over the course of your monotonous life with Fowler.”
“You’re a real piece of work, you know that?” she snapped. “Pigtail-pulling isn’t sexy, Varona. In ten years you’ll still be alone with no one but Gideon to pick out your ties for you, and believe me, I won’t spare you a single thought.”
“Whereas in ten years you’ll be saddled with three baby Fowlers,” Nico retorted, “wondering what the fuck happened to your career while your patently unremarkable husband asks you where dinner is.”
There it was again:
Incensed.
“If I never see you again, Varona,” Libby fumed quietly, “it’ll still be too soon—”
“Pardon me,” came the voice of a man beside them, and Nico and Libby both rounded on him.
“What?” they demanded in unison, and he, whoever he was, smiled.
He was dark-skinned, his head shaved and slightly gleaming, appearing somewhere in his forties. He was also exceedingly British, from mannerisms to dress （tweed; very much tweed, with an accent of tartan）， and quite tall.
Also, enormously unwelcome.
“Nicolás Ferrer de Varona and Elizabeth Rhodes?” the man asked. “I wonder if I might make you an offer.”
“We have jobs,” Libby informed him irritably, not wanting to wait for Nico’s inevitably patrician response, “and more importantly, we’re in the middle of something.”
“Yes, I see that,” the man replied, looking amused. “However, I am on something of a tight schedule, and I’m afraid when it comes to my offer, I really must have the best.”
“And which of us would that be, exactly?” Nico asked, holding Libby’s glare for a gratuitous moment of conceit before smoothly turning towards the man who stood waiting, an umbrella hooked onto his left arm. “Unless, of course, the best is—”
“It’s both of you,” the man confirmed, as Nico and Libby exchanged a heated glance akin to of course it is, “or, perhaps, one.” He shrugged, and Libby, despite her disinterest, frowned slightly. “Which of you succeeds is up to you, not me.”
“Succeeds?” she asked, before she quite realized she was speaking. “What does that mean?”
“There’s only room for five,” the man said. “Six are chosen. The best in the world,” he added.
“The world?” Libby echoed doubtfully. “Sounds fairly hyperbolic.”
The man inclined his head.