effie.

It's one of those days when Magnus is preoccupied by things that aren't swordfighting lessons with Lancelot during his swordfighting lesson with Lancelot. They happen occasionally, days like this. Sometimes he pushes through it. Sometimes he gives up and goes home. Occasionally, he gives up, and he and Lancelot will have a conversation instead. Shockingly, those conversations are only sometimes rife with mutual ribbing. Lancelot actually can be (Magnus will never tell him) a good listener. And Magnus doesn't even threaten Lancelot to keep some of those conversations a secret or else, anymore, so that's growth, right?

It's thanks to those rare quiet talky lessons that Lancelot is the only person besides Alex and Sunny who knows Magnus killed Olaf. He actually knows a little about a lot of things, at this point: little smatterings of the stuff that's keeping Magnus from focusing, that Magnus shares so he can get them out of his own mind and return to form (i.e., training and teasing).

By rights, Magnus shouldn't be out of sorts today. Nothing out of his ordinary is weighing on him. But he just can't get it together, for some reason. He knows he's being obvious. Lancelot can definitely tell that Magnus is out of sorts. He's failing to land hits during obvious openings, and he's not getting his blocks into place in time, and he's getting more frustrated with his own slower-than-usual reactions than he has in months. After he nearly trips over his own feet, he sighs, drops his sword on the ground, and takes a lap around the clearing, tugging at the ends of his hair.

—-

After his conversation with Lancelot, feeling more — determined, at least, if not lightened — Magnus goes to hunt Janet down.