Page 19 of The Entanglement of Rival Wizards (Magic and Romance #1)

WEATHER ALERT: Dagger hailstorm spanning western Philadelphia. Residents encouraged to take shelter inside ward-protected structures. If you must go out, engage proper shielding precautions.

The hail is attributed to the witch-king Tempest Salaedrus resisting arrest. Multiple adventure parties have the situation under control and authorities expect Salaedrus to be apprehended by midafternoon. Arcane Forces are on standby.

Dagger hail’s a pain in the ass, but it doesn’t have shit on that one horrible summer where a warlock got pissy and unleashed a plague of dire mosquitoes.

Dire mosquitoes .

They were the size of chihuahuas.

So though it means traffic extra sucks because everyone has to dodge yard-long spears of ice plummeting from the sky, I happily embrace the dagger hail, and most everyone around me does, too. The plunk, plunk, plunk of shards rebounding off the bus’s force shields doesn’t faze anyone.

By the time I get to the lab, I am a bit annoyed by the hail, since it meant I had to keep a personal force shield up on the walk from the bus stop.

My first day working under this tentative truce with Elethior, and I’m going in tired.

But he likely had to keep up some kind of shield, too, so odds are he’s in the same boat.

I push into the lab and don’t find him out of breath and sweaty. He’s standing by his clusterfuck of a workstation, thin blue strands of energy forming a web between his splayed hands.

I stiffen.

He scowls in concentration as he reads something in the spell he’s cast.

The door thuds shut behind me. The distant plunk ing of the ice shards immediately vanishes thanks to the lab’s soundproofing.

Elethior acknowledges me with a slight flick of his eyes to the side.

All he asks is, “How did you do this?”

I don’t have to answer him. We have a professional truce; I owe him nothing else.

I clench one hand and cross behind him to deposit my bag on my desk. “Genetics. I wake up looking this good.”

“Yeah, that’s obviously what I meant.” He turns from his analysis spell to give me a quick once-over.

Or what he clearly meant to be a quick once-over.

But his eyes shoot to where I’m peeling off my hoodie. My T-shirt is caught on the hem and I can feel both rise up, a gust of cool air brushing across my bare stomach, making my abs tighten.

Elethior stares at that line. That revealed skin.

It itches. Prickles right where my stomach runs along the edge of my pants.

I release a noise. A gasp? A grunt? I want it to be an offended ahem, but I know it’s too soft and breathy for that.

Elethior whips back to his spell. Those stupid lines of scarlet flare across his cheekbones, racing back so even his pointed ears turn vivid red against the silver metal of his piercings.

I can make him uncomfortable very, very easily, turns out.

But I don’t take advantage of that. It doesn’t feel like discomfort. Not really.

Oh, gods.

You know what? It’s cold in here. Think I’ll keep my clothes fully on today. Maybe come in tomorrow wearing a hazmat suit, normal laboratory fashion.

I jerk my hoodie and T-shirt down, pulling until both stretch below my component belt.

“I meant,” Elethior swallows roughly, “ my ward . It’s—gone.”

He claps his hands so the analysis spell falls, and he stares at the space over his desk, seeing nothing, trying to see something, with the same bewildered frustration as when he was trying to see Nick.

“You didn’t just break it,” he says. Does he sound… awed? He reaches out, fingers moving over where the barrier was. “It’s—gods, it’s like you neutralized the particles around it, too.”

I busy myself pulling my laptop and supplies out of my bag, ignoring the dread ballooning in my chest. “Maybe your ward was unstable. I did a simple breaking spell. On principle of the fact that I’m offended you assumed I’d go through your shit.”

One pierced eyebrow goes up. “There’s no way that was a simple breaking spell. What did you do?”

I slam a book onto my desk. Bad enough I lost control at all, but doing it where Elethior could find the evidence and pester me about it—

“You want me to explain a ward-breaking spell to you, the mighty Elethior Tourael?” I ask.

He doesn’t rise to my baiting, still more confused, intrigued, than annoyed.

One arm bends as he scratches the back of his neck, tattooed bicep flexing under his black T-shirt. “I’m trying to figure out what happened. I’m going to have to cleanse this area before I do other spells here.”

“Well, if there’s any fucked-up magic, it was from your wonky-ass barrier.”

His arm falls with his expression. “I see we’re diving straight into hostility, despite what progress we made on Saturday. Forgive me for trying to have a calm discussion about wonky-ass magic happening in our lab.”

I deflate over my desk, fists pressing to the wood.

It was my dumb fault he even has weird magic to fixate on, and I sure as hell won’t be making that mistake around him again.

“You’re right,” I whisper to my desk. “I’m sorry.”

Elethior’s quiet for a beat.

A beat so stretched out that I glance over to see if he teleported away.

His eyes glitter.

“Did you just,” he licks his lower lip, “say I was right, and apologize to me?”

I drop into my desk chair, face hot again, and fiddle with my hoodie’s sleeves. “We’re on a fresh start, right?”

He’s grinning. Smug-ass bastard. “Uh-huh.”

“Get that look off your face.”

“I can’t help it. This is the look I get when an apocalypse is looming.”

My mouth lifts in the barest smile that I quickly smother. Screw him.

I wave at my books and laptop. “Can we get to work, or are there other things you’d like to accuse me of? The dagger hail, perhaps?”

His eyes zip to the window, where beyond a slight ripple from Bellanor Hall’s activated shield, we can still see spears of ice stabbing into the Quad.

“Fine. You’re right.” He sneers at me. “Thinking you did any powerful magic is giving you way too much credit. It had to be my ward.”

I exhale relief before realizing, insult . So I turn my exhale into an aggrieved sigh.

Elethior reaches back to grab his overstuffed notebook. He wheels his chair to my workstation and sits, notebook open, pen in hand. His component harnesses are pinched tight around each thigh and the leather creaks as his legs spread.

He waits.

I turn on my laptop and swivel my chair to face him.

And I wait.

He waves at my desk. “Feel free to get started. Wow me with your evocation wonders.”

I snort. “Um, hell no. You get started. I’m not spilling my project to you before I know what you’re working on and whether this partnership is viable.”

That eyebrow today is sharper than the dagger hail. “I don’t think you understand how this is going to work. You’re still the one who has the most to prove—”

“Oh, fuck all the way off.”

“—because you are the reason we wasted all of last week working solo. And before you prattle on with what I’m sure will be a commendable speech displaying the versatility of the word fuck, I’m going to need you to tap into that earlier You’re right, Elethior, I’m sorry energy. Because I am right.”

It would be so easy to make each and every one of his piercings turn molten and sizzle right through his face.

But I’m not reacting anymore. I’m not leaping to defensiveness. I can do this. I have to do this, and not everything needs to be an explosion.

My eyes bore holes in the wall over my workstation.

“How do I know your family won’t steal my project?”

I push the question into our lab, let it nestle alongside the silence after Elethior’s too appropriate dressing-down.

His chair squeaks as he shifts. “What do you mean?”

“I mean—” I hiss out a breath and shove my glasses up my nose.

Everything in my body feels inelastic. “I mean, what’s to stop your family from snatching up our work under the guise of whatever a Tourael does belongs to us and slapping a patent on it, then carting it off to wreak untold havoc with my research? ”

Nothing in my tone is accusatory and I offer more of an olive branch when I force myself to meet his gaze.

He watches me, eyes darting between mine, back and forth, his face drooping as he realizes I’m being serious.

But if he says, Well, sucks to be you. I’m turning over everything to them no matter what, can I do anything? I need this grant. Need to complete this project for my degree. Need all of that to keep my Clawstar job.

This massive lab is suddenly very, very small.

“Never mind,” I mutter to my laptop. “Whatever you say, I have no other choice. So—my project.”

Numb, I click open the document with all my plans.

“My family won’t touch a gods-damned thing we do here.”

I’m blinking at him before his words fully process. “What?”

He leans forward, eyes intent, a focus laden with promise that silences me.

“I’m playing nice with them until I graduate, but once I’m out, I have no intention of working for any of the companies my family has their hands in, and I sure as hell have no intention of letting them patent my research.

Our work— your work—is safe from them. Through me, at least.”

That noise isn’t the dagger hail; we can’t hear it in here. It’s my pulse thud, thud, thudd ing in my ears.

I can’t sort through my thoughts for several seconds, and in those seconds, I stare at him, waiting for the wink and the laugh, the punchline.

Elethior smiles, apologetic. “You don’t believe me. Well, believe at least that I gave you a huge bit of control. You could tell my family what I said and create problems for me. Hopefully, in some way, this helps even the power imbalance?”

My eyes widen.

Holy shit.

He could be lying about not wanting to work with his family, or laying out yet another game of chicken between us.

But his eyes are on mine, unshrinking, vulnerable, and I feel a prickling on my skin, the hyperawareness of sensation, the brush of my clothes and the firmness of the chair and the static space between his legs and mine.