Page 1 of The Entanglement of Rival Wizards (Magic and Romance #1)

We’ve come all this way to get stopped by a door .

I recheck the runes I scrawled in chalk around the frame. I accounted for any fail-safe we might trigger, and even padded in unnecessarily complex runes for any fail-safe fail-safe; I would not put it past these assholes to have traps on traps just to fuck with me.

But Seb, Orok had said, isn’t it egotistical to think the Conjuration Department beefed up their security to spite you and not to, say, protect the thousands of dollars’ worth of spell components in their lab?

To which I’d responded with a deadpan stare. The protection ward currently keeping me out of the second-floor Conjuration Lab might as well have To Sebastian Walsh, With Love woven into the fabric of the barrier that glimmers an ethereal blue every time I try to break it.

I roll my shoulders, shake out my hands, and start the incantation. Again.

“You get one more shot,” Orok interrupts from where he leans against the wall behind me, “then I’m climbing the side of the building.”

“They’ll have wards on the windows, too.”

“Not ones this intense. They expect thieves to come through this way—”

“Thieves.” I snort derisively.

I can feel Orok’s eye roll as strongly as I can feel his next words coming, and I mouth along with him—

“And puny evocation wizards.”

Only I don’t add that descriptor, and I flip a glare back at him. “Puny?”

Orok eyes me head to toe, then holds his arms out in an unspoken comparison.

He’s got the height and bulk from his half-giant lineage, which has made him broader and taller than I am at every stage of our lives.

My family had been thrilled when we glommed on to each other in grade school, exclaiming what a good influence he’d be on me—right up until he opted into academia, and it turned out Orok Monroe wasn’t a good influence on me; I was a bad influence on him.

Lock up your kids, Sebastian Walsh might come along and tempt them to fall upon the sacrificial altar of student debt.

Orok lets his arms drop. “I meant that they probably only have simple locking wards on the windows. I can break those mid-jump.”

“All the more reason to get through this,” I say. “Prove to these dickheads that I cannot be stopped. I cannot be contained. I am inescapable, damn it, and I will not—”

“Your villain victory speech would be more impressive if you hadn’t already been at this for twenty minutes.”

I check my phone—ignoring texts from my mom—and sigh. Security only walks the upper levels a few times a night, but they could be due for their sweep soon.

I grab the little vial hanging at my side.

Orok groans. “No.”

“I need the boost. It’ll be quick.”

“If you’re that desperate over a locked door, I’m climbing the building.”

I elbow him back into place as he tries to pass me. “You gave me one more chance. Stand down, Monroe.”

“You know I hate your fox familiar, Walsh.”

“Because you’re heartless. Nick’s adorable.”

“He’s invisible. ”

“And when he wasn’t invisible, he was adorable, ergo, he’s still adorable. Now—” I bat Orok back to the wall and he goes with a resigned sigh.

I spill the spell components into my hand. With a whispered incantation they disperse, and the air at my feet grows hazy before clearing.

To anyone else, it’d look like I had tanked the Call Familiar spell. But I know better, and Orok knows better.

He presses closer to the wall like he’s trying to climb it and grumbles, “Where is he.”

Then chirps loudly and grabs his ankle. “ Motherfucker —”

He kicks blindly and I smack his chest. “Don’t kill him! I’ll have to call him again, and I don’t have another vial prepared, and it’ll be a delay we can’t afford.”

“He bit me .”

“Because Nick knows you don’t like him.”

“Because he bites me every time you call him.”

I scramble into one of the pouches on my component belt—the leather contraption around my waist that holds an array of pockets, loops, and buckles to store whatever spell supplies I might need—and pull out a tiny top hat on a string, brandishing it at Orok with a smile.

I click my tongue until I feel a soft brush against my calves, and I bend down to tie the hat onto Nick’s head so we can more easily tell where he is.

“Happy?” I say to Orok, who continues to rub his ankle. “Geez, you big baby.”

“Gods know what kinds of diseases familiars carry.” Orok holds firm that his physical strength and size compensate for any shortcomings he might run into by choosing not to call a familiar. How he expects punching to have the same effect as the occasional magic boost, I have no idea.

“Gods know what kinds of diseases you carry,” I mutter at Orok and scratch Nick’s chin now that I know where it is. He rumbles against my fingers. “Ready to power me up, buddy?”

Nick answers with a screeching bark that sounds like a dog with laryngitis.

I shush him, and he nuzzles his cold nose against my palm.

Orok’s phone pings and he checks it with a passive-aggressive exhale. “Oh, look. Another picture of another end-of-semester party currently happening. And, oh, wait—yep, yep, we’re not in that picture . Because we’re here.”

I face the door again, trying to refocus on the incantation. “Toddle on off to whatever party you’re missing. I can handle getting revenge on the Conjuration Department all by myself.”

Nick chirrups.

“I mean, Nick and I can handle it.”

He purrs happily.

The first few words of the incantation roll off my tongue, boosted now by Nick’s connection, the magic he pours into me from the Familiar Plane.

It won’t last forever and is generally considered to be a last resort during spell work, but the cheerful squeaks Nick’s making confirm that he’s glad to be here, so why should I feel guilty for wasting a high-level spell on a prank?

What’s the point of magic if you don’t get to use it for silly shit anyway.

“The Conjuration Department only retaliated for what we did to them,” Orok says quickly.

I stop the incantation again and look at him.

His pale skin is washed out in the safety lights that cast the hallway in a faint milky white, but is that exasperation on his face?

“What’s with the tone?”

He shoves his phone into the pocket of his purple Lesiara University hoodie.

The bright gold Manticore logo has a scorpion tail curving around a snarling lion face.

“They’ll retaliate for this, too, and on and on, and we fucking graduate in the spring.

Shouldn’t we, I don’t know, focus on that instead of this dumbass rivalry? ”

I sparred with him once. And only once. His words hit now like his fists did then, in rapid succession, chest then stomach.

Yeah. We graduate in the spring.

Yeah. This rivalry is dumb. Evocation and conjuration are under the umbrella of the Mageus Studies Department, but unlike other focuses, we have similar needs and aligned goals according to university funding, so we’ve been in the same building for decades—which put us at odds long before I enrolled at Lesiara U.

I just took what was a simple we’re clearly better than them attitude and cranked it up a few notches: spelling their dried insect wings to fly around the storage room or all the books in their library to scream upon opening.

And for a while, the Conjuration Department responded in kind. Fake plastic spills on our expensive equipment, dozens of pictures of famous conjuration wizards taped all over our walls.

Until I put a spell on their lab’s door to make it look like it’d vanished—it was just an illusion; it didn’t go anywhere—and the Conjuration Department did not like that .

Namely, the Conjuration Department’s golden boy, Elethior Tourael, did not like that. His ranting could be heard all the way down to our floor.

And the next day, the Evocation Department’s ash tree dew we painstakingly gathered during the super blood moon had been replaced with ocean water, but we didn’t notice until after a number of experiments had already been fucked up.

Line. Crossed.

Nothing I’ve done ever damaged any of the Conjuration Department’s shit. I’m a professional, unlike elitist, trust-fund nepo babies who rest easy on beds of blood money.

The Evocation Department will get our revenge, and the piece of me that’s always a little on fire, always a little shaky, always a little livid will be satiated.

We graduate in the spring.

Tomorrow, I learn whether I even do graduate in the spring.

Nick pushes against my leg again, a solid, warm weight.

I flex my shaking hands, all too aware of the way that shake reverberates up my arms, down into my chest, my anxiety plucking each rib like harp strings.

Tomorrow, I have to stand in front of the Mageus Research Grant Committee and listen to their verdict, and that imagined scenario has all my internal shivering ramping up to earthquake levels.

They get to decide my future.

And I have to let them.

I almost tell Orok to fuck off if he’s over this prank war.

He doesn’t have to worry about funding his final project, with the Church of Urzoth Shieldsworn sponsoring everything he’s doing, since his focus is on drawing magical energy out of holy items. He doesn’t have to worry about a job after he graduates, since he’s similarly guaranteed a position in any Urzoth church across the country.

Meanwhile, I managed to snag a job post-graduation with Clawstar Foundation, a nonprofit that specializes in protective spell research, but I know the cutthroat drive is alive and well.

If I slip up, Clawstar will be well within their rights to rescind their offer and shift it over to a wizard who was able to fund their final research project.

But what comes out is the worst thing I could say. A simple, brittle “Please, O.”

His annoyance vanishes in understanding. I can’t be a mystery to him. I can’t hide.

Orok sighs—inward, at himself—and waves his hand at me. “Proceed.”

I grin. “We’ll go to the party of your choosing right after this.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Now stop distracting me. I need to— Oh! Wait—”

“Good gods, what now?”