Ajak and Sersi walked back to the hotel in silence, which was unusual. Sersi had known Ajak long enough to recognize the particular quality of her silences — the difference between contemplative and burdened. This was the latter.
She waited until they were inside.
"What happened?"
Ajak looked at her and chose her words deliberately. "We need to win tournament. A real attempt, with everything we have."
Sersi frowned. "I thought Mr. Smith was going to look into another method for Thena. Has that fallen through already?"
"That part stands. He'll follow up on it." Ajak moved to the window. "There's something else. Something separate that requires us to have a wish."
"What something else?"
"I'll explain it to everyone once we've secured the spots. For now, just understand that the stakes are higher than Thena."
Sersi studied her for a moment. Ajak wasn't someone who withheld information for dramatic effect — when she kept something close, she had reasons. Sersi filed the question and let it go.
Smith found Wanda in the common room.
"I've arranged something for you. A place better suited to what you're developing into."
Wanda looked up. "Are you finally going to teach me yourself?"
"No. The Kamar-Taj library."
Her eyebrows went up. "Kamar-Taj. Where Kaecilius trains."
"Where the Ancient One runs the most comprehensive magical archive on Earth." Smith kept his tone even. "I've already spoken with her. You have open access — come and go as you need, borrow whatever's relevant. It's not a commitment, it's a resource."
Wanda crossed the room and pulled him into a hug before he'd finished the sentence.
Smith stood there for a beat, arms slightly out, recalibrating.
She's doing this on purpose, he thought.
Wanda, her face against his shoulder, thought: I should have just kissed him.
Smith cleared his throat. "Wanda. Let go. I'll take you now."
She released him with the composed expression of someone who had executed exactly the operation she'd planned and was satisfied with the result. She stood to the side, perfectly orderly.
Smith opened the Space Stone portal — a clean wormhole directly to the Kamar-Taj training courtyard — and stepped through.
The monks in the courtyard turned as the portal deposited them in the plaza. The greeting was immediate and practiced.
"Welcome, Mr. Smith."
Word moved fast inside Kamar-Taj. Smith had visited enough times, and Kaecilius's circle had talked enough, that most of the practitioners here had a working picture of who he was — the friend of the Sorcerer Supreme, the person who could open spatial portals with what appeared to be complete indifference to the effort it required.
"I'd like to see the Ancient One."
"She's expecting you."
One of the monks slipped away toward the far corridor at a pace slightly faster than a walk. Smith led Wanda across the courtyard and through the interior passages toward the Ancient One's office. Behind them, they didn't see the mage who peeled off from the group and headed directly toward Kaecilius's quarters.
The Ancient One was at her desk.
She looked up as they entered, and Smith watched her attention move — first to him, where it paused. He'd grown since her last reading of him. Not incrementally. The increase was a step-change, several times what she'd registered before, and whatever ceiling she'd been quietly modeling for his trajectory had been pushed back again.
She filed that with the satisfaction of a hypothesis confirmed.
Then her gaze shifted to Wanda.
Chaos magic. Native, not borrowed — not drawn from a book or a ritual or a stone, but intrinsic, woven into the structure of who she was. The kind of power that didn't require external permission to function. The Ancient One had encountered it perhaps four times in her long life.
A born sorceress, she thought. Arguably more qualified than most of my own students.
"These are the students you've brought to use the library?"
"Just Wanda," Smith said. "She needs the theoretical foundation. The practical side she's managing on her own."
Wanda stepped forward. "Hello, Ancient One. I'm Wanda."
The Ancient One nodded once, appraising. Then she touched a small bell on her desk.
Wong appeared in the doorway within moments. He was the kind of man who made promptness look effortless.
"Wong. This is Wanda Maximoff. She has full library access — all collections, all categories." The Ancient One folded her hands. "Show her the layout first. Let her orient."
Wong looked at Wanda with the evaluating attention of someone who took the library's contents seriously and preferred that borrowers do the same. "Follow me."
Wanda glanced at Smith. He gave a small nod. She went.
Across the compound, the mage who had slipped away arrived at Kaecilius's door slightly out of breath.
"Smith Doyle is here. He brought Wanda."
Kaecilius set down what he was reading.
His student? He turned this over. Smith Doyle didn't apprentice people — he didn't operate that way. But bringing someone to Kamar-Taj specifically for access to the library was a different kind of investment. An indirect one.
If she's going to be here regularly, we should know her.
The last tournament had ended in a loss he'd replayed too many times to count. What had shifted, since then, was his relationship to that loss. The aimless years before the Dragon Ball— the research going nowhere, the purpose unclear — that was what had felt like defeat. This was just a result. Results could be changed.
The next cycle. Better preparation. He'd focus.
"Keep me informed if she starts coming regularly."
The Ancient One waited until Wanda's footsteps had faded down the corridor. Then she looked at Smith with an expression he recognized as the one she used when she was about to say something she already knew the answer to.
"You're truly not going to let her become my formal student?"
"She doesn't need the structure. And she has other things she's meant for."
The Ancient One smiled — a small, genuine one. "Then let me put another name forward. Your magical range is considerable, your spatial manipulation is approaching the level of a Master, and your tactical discipline would serve the role well." She let the offer sit. "The position of Sorcerer Supreme. It would suit you."
Smith shook his head. "With respect — no. The Sorcerer Supreme's domain is dimensional security. Threats from outside normal space, incursions from other realities. That work needs someone committed to it fully." He met her eyes. "My work is in this dimension. The real-world invasions. That's where I'm most useful."
The Ancient One held his gaze for a moment, then inclined her head slightly.
She had already known he would refuse. She'd offered for the reason she always offered things she expected to be declined — to demonstrate to Vishanti and whatever other forces paid attention to these things that the position had been tendered properly, that no slight had been given. Formality, extended as a courtesy.
In truth, she didn't want Smith Doyle as Sorcerer Supreme. She wanted him exactly where he was — developing, unbound by institutional obligation, growing in a direction she couldn't fully trace. The position would constrain him in ways she couldn't predict, and constraining him seemed, on balance, like a mistake.
She poured tea and said nothing more about it.