Page 21 of The Entanglement of Rival Wizards (Magic and Romance #1)

He sits for one more beat before he rubs a hand over his left shoulder. Through his T-shirt sleeve, there’s a faint blue glow.

The ice vanishes.

My brows pulse. “You have a counterspell rune tattoo?”

Chair freed, he spins enough to look at me and lifts one of his arms, showing the ink swirling across his skin. Even from here, I spot a few other runes now, camouflaged with intricate snaking ivy and grayscale flowers.

Magic tattoos supposedly hurt a helluva lot more than regular tattoos; bits of components are woven in with the ink and the whole process involves a constant, steady stream of magic imbued in the art. I never let myself look too closely at his tattoos before, but—

Woah, pump those brakes. Not let ; there was no letting. I simply did not look too closely at his tattoos. Why would I have wanted to?

I lurch away, scowling at my desk.

“Pouting doesn’t become you,” he says.

“I’m not pouting . I’m focusing .” I point at my laptop. “As should you. Stop distracting me. You should wear the hazmat suit.”

“I should—what?”

Breath gets trapped in my lungs.

That was not a thought he’d been privy to, wearing a hazmat suit to avoid uncomfortable situations, and saying it out loud has a nightmare-level realization cannonballing into my mind:

Am I attracted to Elethior?

Oh.

Oh, fuck no.

I have a fairly masochistic personality, but that’s taking self-flagellation too far, even for me.

“Nothing,” I fumble. “Never mind. Just—shut up and get to work.”

Where I expect a quip about how I need to be more mature, he hums.

“Fine,” he says. “Game on.”

He faces his desk again.

Leaving me stupidly slack-jawed.

I frown at the back of his head. “Game on?”

“Yes,” Elethior says. “I told you before that I was never involved in your ill-advised pranks, but if you insist on bringing that nonsense into our partnership…” He trails off and looks at me with a too-pleasant smile. “You started this. But I’ll finish it.”

Heat creeps across my face. Not rage this time. Something… definitely not rage.

I swing back to my desk. “Get to work, Tourael. We have my project to do.”

His stifled laughter sounds tinny in the big lab.

It’s not a huge sacrifice to work on my project. I’m still in the early stages, so we silently—separately—spend a few days ensconced in reading and note-taking. I hammer out things to try based on said reading and note-taking—only I have to, get to, share it with Elethior.

I wheel my whiteboard in front of the window and start a list of potential evocation spells that can be used as jumping-off points for my safety net idea.

I’d ordinarily put it in a document on my laptop, but we’re collaborating, and I’m vehemently pretending I’m not now overly aware of Elethior in the lab.

Gods-damned brain had to go and fuck up my already fragile truce with him by realizing, shit, he does have nice arms.

Thursday morning, before he’s there, I stuff his desk with kindergarten workbooks. He hasn’t reactivated a protection ward. Sucker.

He gets in while I’m scribbling a new idea on the board.

“Sebastian.”

I roll my shoulders under the huge sweatshirt I borrowed from Orok. Not a hazmat suit, but it’ll do. “Yes, partner dearest?”

Elethior’s quiet for a beat, like I tripped him up, and I grin at the board before turning.

“Is something wrong?” I ask.

He swings around in his chair and holds up the five children’s workbooks I’d shoved in the clutter of his desk. “I have no need for evocation texts, but you’re sweet to think of me.”

I cap the whiteboard marker a bit too hard.

“I’m surprised you found them in your—” I gesture at his mass of stuff that has, against my warning, crept over into my workstation.

I kick an offending item: a grocery sack containing a bag of chips and other snacks.

“For gods’ sakes, Elethior, the demarcation line, warfare, the collapse of our tentative peace—”

“Hey!” He shoves up out of his chair. “Don’t crush it.”

He grabs the grocery sack and pulls out a—not a bag of chips.

A thing of dog food?

He checks a few other items, a container of dried fruit, one of birdseed, before he decides they’re unharmed and slides the bag closer to his workstation.

Okay. I got nothing.

When he dusts his hands off and straightens, I must have a perplexed look on my face.

He blushes.

Those two stripes, perfectly level on either cheekbone.

Orok’s hoodie is way too thick; sweat drenches my torso and I curse myself up and down and all around.

“They’re, uh—” Elethior rubs the back of his neck, flexing that gods-damned bicep. “They’re for Nick.”

He might as well have yodeled for how much it derails me. “What? What’s for Nick?”

Elethior motions at the bag. “The food.”

“Is for Nick.”

“Yes.”

“My fox familiar. Nick. ”

“Despite the absurdity of naming your familiar something so mundane, yes . That Nick. How many other Nicks do you and I have in common?”

“We don’t even have that Nick in common because he’s my familiar. Why are you buying my familiar food?”

Another awkward shift. “I figured it would serve as an apology to him for the way I reacted to his presence.” Elethior’s face gets the teensiest bit self-aggrandizing. “It’s not his fault his owner is a stubborn asshole who thinks invisibility is funny .”

“I told you.” I sit on the edge of my desk.

“He likes being invisible. An ex-girlfriend got pissed at me and cursed him, but joke’s on her, because he was thrilled .

Despite your low opinion of me, I am capable of at least basic spell work, so of course I undid it.

But there’s nothing in the world more heartbreaking than a depressed fox, and it fucked with our wizard-familiar bond.

So I put the curse back on him; he’s happy, his invisibility has the added benefit of freaking people out, and everyone wins. ”

Elethior’s lips part in disgust. “Your ex-girlfriend cursed your familiar?”

“Hence the ex part. Apparently I can be a workaholic and she felt I neglected her for my junior year course load. But let’s loop back—you bought my familiar food?”

His blush deepens. “I looked into what foxes eat and bought a few things for the next time you summon him. Again, as an apology.”

“You bought my familiar food.” My lips curve into a grin. “You bought Nick snacks .”

Elethior translates my smile with an exasperated huff. “Laugh it up, Walsh.” He trudges back to his desk. “You’ve found yet another source of control over me. I’ve got a soft spot for animals, what can I say? Fuck off.”

“What’s your familiar?” The question’s out of me like a rock from a slingshot. I’m smiling still and my chest’s all tight and tingly and I think maybe it’s some kind of cardiac event? Surely it’s not from Elethior. Buying snacks. For Nick.

Elethior toys with a pen, seated at his desk, his back to me again.

“A desert rosy boa,” he says. “Named Paeris.” He looks back at me. “You know, a name worthy of a familiar.”

His expression becomes a challenge, daring me to mock him, a Tourael, for having a snake familiar. The jabs create themselves.

But I kick the toe of my Converse against the tile. “ Zootopia .”

“Excuse me?”

“ Zootopia . The movie? That’s where his name’s from. Nick, the fox.”

Elethior’s confused gaze widens until he snorts.

I throw my eyes skyward. “Don’t—”

“You named your familiar after a character in a children’s movie?” He laughs again, rubbing the skin over his nose. “You would. Of course you would.”

“I’m leaving your snake business alone, so you don’t get to mock me for Nick’s name. Besides, I was drunk, and it seemed fitting.”

Elethior chuckles one more time but waves his hand in surrender. “Fine. It’s added to our truce.”

His smile is too soft.

I knot the sleeves of Orok’s hoodie around my hands.

“Good,” I say.

“Good,” he repeats.

“Excellent.” Fuck. “Can we—” I wave at my whiteboard. “And, I’d like to point out, you’ve contributed no ideas to my list. Maybe there isn’t anything useful to conjuration after all.”

Granted, I’ve only added one idea to my own list—a rune that softens the severity of any lightning spell; figured something’s gotta be in there about affecting multiple spells with one single spell—but still.

Elethior doesn’t echo my thought, though it’s clear on his face.

“There’s a spell I’ve been researching by a conjuration wizard in the twelfth century.

Kojyngilla. She used it to braid several spells into one, but I’m still trying to work out if her spell was successful or if it’s something historians recorded but was never tested.

” He lifts one of the kindergarten workbooks.

“But now, I’ve got all these extra assignments on my plate.

I mean, I have to write the alphabet several times.

And, oh, there are coloring sheets for each letter, too? I’ll be here all night.”

He smiles at me. Smiles. Not smirks, not grimaces.

“Good. Okay. Thanks. Perfect.” Too many monotone words in a row but my hands can’t burrow any deeper into Orok’s sleeves, and running out of the room isn’t an option.

I sit back at my desk and grab my phone, tapping frantically on the screen. This conversation is over and I am very, very busy.

My dad tried to call me again. He left a voicemail.

My body already feels like it wants to claw out of itself, so I delete it without listening to it. Honestly, it’s nice to have something to do with my hands so I’m not pretending to be distracted.

Elethior turns back to his desk when it’s clear I’m done interacting with him.

But with every passing second, I feel the memories of joking with him, of him smiling at me, of all this bonding we’re doing.

We hop-skip-jumped right over professional and into camaraderie, and no part of me is okay with that.

He was only supposed to be another greedy, power-hungry Tourael.

He wasn’t supposed to buy treats for my fox .

I drop my phone, pull out one of my own books, and research nothing that sticks in my brain.