Page 13 of The Entanglement of Rival Wizards (Magic and Romance #1)

“Are you asking for my opinion?” I swing around in my chair so I can face him, feeling like an action movie villain with Nick in my lap and my fingers scratching his neck. The effect would probably land more if he weren’t invisible. “Me, the obsolete man ?”

It knocks the wind out of me when his chin lowers in—deference?

What the fuck?

“I said I overreacted.” He rubs a hand down his face and tugs on one of his lip piercings.

“Had a rough morning. Had a rough whole—no, fuck that. We have to do this. I’m not going to waste time dancing around each other.

Our first check-in with Davyeras and our advisors is in a month.

We need to get to work, so step up. I’m giving you a chance to prove yourself. ”

I rocket out of my chair so fast Nick tumbles from my lap with an annoyed shriek. In a burst of magic that sizzles on the air, he vanishes back to the Familiar Plane, his fedora dropping limp to the floor.

“ Prove myself?” I thrust right up into Elethior’s face, so livid I can feel heat wavering out of me.

He rolls his eyes. “This is what I mean. You can’t—”

“I have to prove myself? To you ?”

“You spent the better part of the past few months fucking with not just my shit, but the whole Conjuration Department. You can’t honestly tell me you don’t understand where my distrust of you is coming from.”

“And what about my distrust of you ? I’ll have you note, not one of the things I did ever damaged anything. You can’t say the same. Your prank screwed with projects in the Evocation Department, so if either of us is deserving of distrust, it’s you. I know when to—”

“Wait.” Elethior sways back. “You think I had a hand in the pranks against you?”

I snort, unamused. “Don’t try to tell me it wasn’t you.”

“ It wasn’t me .”

“I heard you complaining about the missing-door prank. Heard you shouting about the inconvenience of it. Then the next day, the Evocation Department’s dew water gets screwed with? You’re the chosen one of the Conjuration Department. Your name is on the fucking lab.”

He’s back again, leaning so close we’re steaming each other’s air. “I was shouting about the inconvenience of the lab being inaccessible because it made me late for a meeting with my cousin, and she doesn’t—”

“Oh, gods forbid I upset the Touraels. My deepest condolences.”

Elethior’s shoulders rise, his face darkening.

When he speaks again, he says each word with disturbing calmness.

“I have never once partaken in the ridiculous and unfounded rivalry between our departments because I have better things to do with my time. Meanwhile, how much of your life have you wasted on useless tricks?”

My mind races over all the pranks the Conjuration Department enacted. So often, Elethior would be the first one I’d see in the aftermath, usually with a group of fellow conjuration wizards. He was there, watching whatever dumbassery unfold with that smug, self-righteous sneer.

Of course it was him.

Wasn’t it?

I had never caught him doing anything. No one had ever caught me either, though.

“Oh, right.” I knot my arms over my chest, upper lip curling. “You’re so innocent. You admitted to laying the spell work on the Conjuration Lab door.”

“Yes, I did, because I knew you’d try something else.”

“Fuck off with this pious act, Tourael. It’s beneath you.”

“No—what’s beneath me is you !”

He’s damn near screaming, his face fully red, and I’m no better. It’s a wonder no one’s barged in to check what all the yelling’s about, but given the nature of this lab, I wonder if it’s soundproof? Great, Elethior and I can kill each other without being disturbed.

That sinks past my fury. The barest brush of shadow against the light.

No one can hear us in here. We’re alone.

My breath snags.

Pathetic.

Is that all you’ve got?

I’m not trapped in here. I’m not locked in.

I can leave .

So I do.

I snatch my phone off the desk and knock all my stuff into my bag in a frantic, ungraceful shove. As I walk around Elethior, I pop him with my shoulder.

“Where the hell are you going?” he demands. “Giving up already?”

I slam back up close to him, unmasking all the anger in my eyes, but I think I show a little of my fear, too.

“I’m going to cool down because if I stand here much longer, I’ll fireball your ass.

When I get back, you stay on your end of the lab.

I’ll stay on mine. Don’t talk to me, don’t so much as breathe in my direction. ”

Elethior’s nostrils flare. “We have to work together.”

“No. We have to report how conjuration and evocation overlap as we explore restricting spell energy,” I quote the instructions the grant committee sent a few weeks back. “We’ll conclude that our research topics were more different than initially thought, and we’ll present two separate papers.”

He looks like he’ll fight me more. And I realize, in him trying to get us to work together, that he’s being the bigger person and has therefore claimed the moral high ground.

Gods damn it.

But he scoffs in disgust. “Fine. You’re nowhere near my level anyway. You can’t even put aside this stupid rivalry when it matters.”

“First of all, I’m so far above your level you’d choke from the lack of oxygen up here.

Second—” I talk over him, and his lips shut with a snarl.

“ Second, I don’t want to work with you, not because of any rivalry, but because you’re an entitled asshole spawned from a family of entitled assholes, and I’m not playing into whatever Tourael jack-off fantasies you being here fulfills. ”

“I earned my place here,” he says, speaking through his teeth. “And—”

“And, what, it looks good on your résumé? Like Mommy and Daddy don’t have a cushy job waiting for you after you graduate.”

The ferocity of our argument makes me physically aware of our silence. It grates against my skin like sand particles, and I realize it’s Elethior who’s stopped yelling, stopped talking, who is now watching me, his frown wilted.

“Stay away from me,” I hiss, wrench open the door, and leave.

As I’m hunched over a mocha in the student center—a regular mocha, no extra shots or potions; I triple-checked with the barista—an email pings on my phone.

It’s from Dr. Davyeras.

My heart sinks, reliving my interaction with Elethior and, again, wondering if he pulled strings to oust me. I’m pretty sure that’ll be a concern of mine until I have my degree firmly in hand, because what’s stopping him? He has the family heft to make my life very, very shitty.

I gulp the rest of my mocha, crack my neck, and open the email.

The first line is asking how I like the lab space, so I let myself breathe again.

But as I read, tension creeps back over me.

As part of your commitment to excellence through the Mageus Research Grant, you will be expected to participate in two university events.

The first is this Saturday, a welcome-back cocktail party on campus. An invitation will shortly be sent to you with the details.

The second will be part of the Lesiara Founder’s Day festivities prior to spring break.

Attendance at both is mandatory.

I don’t let myself do more than absorb this at surface level. I toss my coffee cup, grab my bag, and head back to the lab.

Elethior’s still there, bent over open books, scribbling notes on a crowded piece of paper. He doesn’t look up, so I don’t say anything, just cross to my desk and pull all my stuff back out.

When I have nothing else to busy my hands, I flop into my chair and stare at the wall above my workstation. “You get the email from Davyeras?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Elethior’s head lift.

He must not have. He shuffles through his books and papers until he unearths his phone.

A beat of silence passes as he reads.

“Shit,” he hisses, so low I wonder if I wasn’t meant to hear.

“What’s wrong? Worried they won’t have the right vintage of wine at the cocktail party?”

Elethior tosses his phone onto his desk. The position of our workstations is in an L shape, with his back to me while I face the wall, which honestly makes talking to him easier. Maybe this is how we’ll survive the next semester: having full conversations with the ether instead of each other.

“Yeah,” he says dryly. “Last time, they ran out of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti.”

He’s quiet when I scowl at his hair.

Was that a joke? I sort through it, trying to figure out how it was at my expense. Or maybe it was him showing off a flawless pronunciation to be pretentious.

Then he adds, “Just hate being on parade.”

And that, more than offering to fix Nick’s invisibility, feels like an apology. It’s his tone, his words raw in a way that’s—that’s— wrong .

Don’t try to bond with me, jerk.

“Then drop out of the grant,” I tell him and open a textbook. “It looks like this is the beginning of our commitment to excellence, and I’ll be at this cocktail party all set to charm the pants off the donors and board members if you can’t handle it.”

Elethior bends back over his own desk. “I have work to do. Stop bothering me.”

My mouth opens, ready to rip into him again, but I clench my jaw.

I have work to do, too, if I’m going to go to this party with any update on my plans for the semester and how I’ll be using this grant money.

It won’t be as the committee intended, with Elethior, so I’ll have to make my project sound strong enough on its own.

Elethior and I spend the next few hours ignoring each other in a tense, living silence. But nobody’s dead by the time I leave for my shift at the library, so I’d call that a successful first day.

Only several more months to go.

Elethior and I fall into a rhythm.

We don’t talk to each other. If one of us has to get up to leave the room or check something in a supply area, we don’t look at each other.

I don’t summon Nick again; like hell am I going to talk through my theories and risk Elethior eavesdropping.

The lab is so quiet I can hear the squish of my internal organs every time I move.