Page 12 of The Entanglement of Rival Wizards (Magic and Romance #1)

A competent, mature wizard.

There are, most assuredly, parts of those things in me, so I spend my Winter Break of Solitude desperately digging them out.

I get up every day at a reasonable time and go to bed at an even more reasonable time and keep up with personal hygiene, all of which are at least nuggets of pyrite in mining for emotional intelligence, right?

I said I went to bed and woke up at reasonable times, not that I slept at reasonable times.

But those aforementioned internet searches, while immediately telling me not to commit murder, led to an approach I have not yet tried: killing Elethior with kindness.

We’ve been at each other’s throats. We’ve insulted each other and played dumb pranks. But neither of us has tried to be, gasp, cordial, so by gods, that’s what I’ll do.

And the fact that I’ll be the first of us to attempt this feat of adult sensibility means I win the moral high ground forever and ever, so he can suck it.

I daresay I’ve got a pep in my step as I jog down the hall toward the lab, ready to test out this new resolve to extend an olive branch. Turn over a new leaf. Nurture a fresh seedling.

Why did the internet give me so many plant-based mantras? Are all psychologists druids?

I find the door to the lab on the first floor of Bellanor Hall, a keypad glowing arcane blue next to it.

I half expect the code I was given not to work, for Elethior to have used his winter break to oust me—but I enter the four-digit number and there’s a low beep before the keypad shifts to green and the door unlocks.

A sense of rightness settles over me. This is all really, actually happening.

The lab shows the Quad through huge windows.

There are four workstations, as this is ordinarily a space for doctoral students, but two of them have been closed off.

In the other two, I find everything Elethior and I might need: a desk, storage locker, electronic hookups, office supplies, and a rolling whiteboard each.

A shared space at the back has a cabinet, fridge, and rows of shelves, all furnished with spell components, and a round dais made of smooth white marble in the middle of the room sits under a few protection glyphs embedded in the ceiling, perfect for testing out spell circles.

Elethior isn’t here yet, so I claim the best workstation, the one with the most light near the window. I unpack the stuff I brought, mostly binders of research and texts from the library, and once I flip on my laptop, I lean back in the desk chair and… wait.

I don’t know what Elethior’s schedule is. We probably were expected to coordinate, but I don’t have a way to contact him and didn’t care to ask for one, and neither did he.

I roll idly in my desk chair and check how long until I have to go to work—one of my scholarships is dependent on work study, and since I’m not a TA this semester, I took a job stocking books in the library.

It’s sure to be mind-numbing, but I didn’t want anything too taxing to compete with this research project.

I’ve got several hours until my first shift.

Another ten minutes pass, 9 A.M. rolls around, and I think, why the hell am I waiting on Elethior? I’ve been wanting resources like these at my fingertips for years .

First things first: I summon Nick. I don’t plan on doing any spell work, but I need someone to talk at, and he’s a good listener.

He comes, curling his invisible body around my shin with deep, crackly fox purrs.

“Hey, buddy.” I scratch what turns out to be his back, his spine arching under my fingertips. “Gotcha something over break.”

I dig into my component belt and pull out a jaunty fedora.

I secure it to his head with an elastic band.

“You’re dapper as hell, Nicholas,” I tell him, and he chirps in what I interpret as delighted approval. “Now.” I stand, clicking my tongue as I open one of my binders and flip through notes. “Ready to be the world’s best sounding board?”

The fedora leaps up and lands about a foot above my desk.

I poked at my project over break but purposefully kept distance from it so I could come back fresh. But something’s stalling out in my head.

My eyes flick to the lab’s door.

A beat, and the lock pad on the other side disengages.

Elethior saunters in, peeling off aviator sunglasses, backpack hanging on his shoulder, black leather jacket tight over an eggshell-blue shirt.

His hair is pulled up at the back of his head, showing the buzzed side and his slightly pointed ears, and he’s in jeans with those dumbass motorcycle boots again.

Black leather component harnesses squeeze each thigh.

He stops as the door closes behind him. He looks at the room from left to right with deliberate precision, surveying the workstations, the shelves, the marble dais, until he gets to me.

He sucks his teeth. “Sebastian.”

I point at the clock over the door to make a crack about how he wasted the morning, but I catch myself. I’m supposed to be cruising down the high road, wind in my hair, one of those kitschy driving scarves fluttering behind me. We’re killing with kindness now.

Only my hand’s lifted.

I wave stupidly.

“Elethior,” I return.

His eyes narrow in suspicion. Which, earned.

He crosses to the other workstation, his back to me as he slides off his coat and pulls stuff out of his bag.

He’s got a few of the same textbooks I do.

I look at my books and frown.

Evocation and conjuration are nothing alike. Creation versus theft. So him having those books is an attempt at fucking with me, right?

My gaze lingers on my desk. Something’s missing.

No fedora.

Elethior lets out a shriek that’d have me rolling if I wasn’t clinging to a one-sided olive branch by my fingertips. I lurch toward him as he whirls around, whipping out spell components and dropping his weight into an expert attack stance.

I stop a few paces from him when I realize he’s got stuff for a fireball. “Really?”

“What the fuck is in here?” he snaps, eyes darting around.

Nick’s fedora bobs behind Elethior. I swear it bobs smugly.

Oblivious, Elethior hits me with a glare, and I open my mouth to explain Nick.

“What did you do ?” Elethior cuts me off.

He rises out of his attack stance, pockets his spell components, and redirects his defensiveness at me.

“I refuse to spend the next several months fending off your idiotic pranks, so allow me to bring you in on a secret: I am not threatened by you. Yet you, obviously, feel threatened by me, and I am telling you right now that I won’t tolerate petty insecurities from an obsolete man.

I have a job to do here, and you will not interfere with that.

I will crush you if you keep on with this time-wasting bullshit. ”

Three weeks of fortifying myself to face Elethior as a calm, level-headed adult.

Thirty seconds of him reminding me that that’s not possible.

My chest seizes, stealing a breath that I cover by clamping my jaw tight.

“What you felt,” I start through my teeth, “was my familiar.”

I point to the fedora.

I see my words process. I see him realize he overreacted—is that regret in the smoothing of his forehead?

But he follows where I’m pointing and, of course, sees nothing. Nick’s now tucked under Elethior’s desk and the fedora is only half-visible behind one of the legs.

“I don’t—” Elethior clears his throat. His voice is thinner. “What is it?”

“A fox.”

He bends, still seeing nothing. “A—fox?”

“Yeah.” I put my lip between my teeth and whistle. “Nick, c’mere.”

The fedora bobs out.

Elethior jerks upright at the disembodied hat. “What are you playing at?”

My face stays neutral. I’m locked down now. He threw that lock, he melted the key. I’m a vault, baby, and he’s getting nothing from me but what I choose to give.

“Huh? Oh, the hat?” I shrug. “He likes to dress up. Familiars, ya know? What can you do?”

“No, I—” Elethior studies the fedora. “He’s… invisible?”

I scoff. “Good one.”

Elethior points at the fedora. “He’s invisible .”

I put on my best what the fuck look. “Um. No. I think I’d know if I couldn’t see my own familiar.”

“But he’s—”

I scoop Nick into my arms and hold him up for Elethior. “Wait, wait—are you telling me you can’t see this full-grown American red fox ? Elethior. I’m not sure I can, in good conscience, work with a lab partner who’s such a moron.”

I’m grinning when he looks at me.

“He’s invisible,” he says, this time flat and declarative.

I set Nick down. “Mad observation skills you have.”

“Go fuck yourself, Walsh.”

“I will, and I’ll think of you while I do it.”

His face flares red. Bright red, two near perfect lines along his cheekbones.

He doesn’t give me any time to revel in embarrassing him before he juts his chin at Nick’s fedora, still obediently next to me. “There are spells to undo that.”

I roll my eyes and head back to my desk. Nick plods along beside me, rubbing against my calf and purring gently, which I’m almost certain is his way of asking if I want him to bite Elethior again. I’m undecided, so I sit in my chair and scratch under Nick’s chin.

“He likes it,” I say.

Elethior grunts. “I… might have overreacted. I can undo the spell. As an”—Gods, I can hear his shudder—“apology.”

“No.” That’s all I give him.

Elethior pauses before he returns to his own desk. “Wow.”

I snottily mouth wow to his back and bend over my notes.

But my concentration is shot to hell.

I’m painfully aware of him moving around, opening drawers, sorting his shit. Then of him exploring the room, looking in the fridge and storage areas, cataloguing the spell components.

Nick curls up in my lap, purring like a vibrating space heater.

I flip to a new page of notes that swims in front of my eyes, but when Elethior stops next to my desk, I am deeply focused on reading .

“So,” Elethior says. “How do you want to do this?”