The restaurant Thyal took her to specialized in packaged food for Academy students to take with them and eat on the run between classes. It sat on a rise in the rolling landscape of the Academy grounds, with a half-moon-shaped paved courtyard on one side, full of two- and four-seater tables. The L-shaped building was open on the inner side, displaying the many shelves full of packaged food and drinks, and a bank of heating units and eating utensils on the side that opened into the eating courtyard.
Four young men in the dark gray uniforms of Fleet
cadets stepped into the serving line just ahead of Thyal and M’kar. One turned
around and nodded greeting to Thyal, who nodded back. Then his gaze drifted
down to M’kar. He nodded to her, started to turn away, then frowned and looked
back. M’kar got a prickle of warning down her back.
M’kar met the cadet’s gaze and tried to put on
that neutral expression her father insisted was far more frightening than a
glare or frown or baring her teeth. He stared at the sharp dip where her
eyebrows met between her eyes. She had laughed when her father joked about
disguising themselves by shaving that little bit of their eyebrows, but now
M’kar felt sick. It was such a small thing, this telltale, so why did she hate
the way his gaze seemed to snag on her face like that?
“Don’t tell me you’re courting already,” the cadet said, turning back to Thyal.
M’kar muffled a snort of laughter at the wide-eyed look Thyal gave the cadet, then her, then him again. He shook his head. “M’kar is a guest in my parents’ home.”
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