Page 3 of The Entanglement of Rival Wizards (Magic and Romance #1)

Which sector of the Tourael fortune paid for it—their magical weapons manufacturing? The patents they hoard for spell developments? The Arcane Forces training camp they run?

I breathe out so deep my sides ache.

“I’m not going too far,” I tell Orok. Which sounds, like, so convincing. “Elethior deserves this. Don’t do the war crime if you can’t do the time.”

“I don’t think Elethior has committed any actual war crimes.”

“How would you know? And if he hasn’t, his family has.”

Orok’s chuckle is humorless. “And we should be held responsible for what our families do?”

Even in this hazy moonlight, I know the red flush heating my pale face is visible. Not embarrassment, not quite; just the shame of being called out.

“Don’t bring logic into my feud,” I mutter and throw another preservation spell at Sten so the poor guy has a hope of lasting the night.

Orok wrestles me into a headlock, nearly dislodging my glasses, and plants a kiss on the blond mess I call a hairstyle.

Unfortunately, Nick takes that as an attack, because by the way Orok yells and flails his leg to the side, I’m guessing Nick bit him again.

Orok hauls me to multiple parties. By the time two of his teammates text him about a fourth that we stumble over to—or, well, he stumbles; I’m maintaining a delicate buzz due to my grant ceremony in the morning—he decides to enter the house by bellowing, “Feel the sting, Feel the sting!”

Orok’s normal state has him collecting friends and acquaintances like a golden retriever.

Add on him being a lethal defensive tank on the university’s rawball team, and everyone picks up the chant until the first level of what might be a frat house is caught up in the swell of school spirit, high-fiving Orok and calling out greetings as we wind our way inside.

Two of Orok’s teammates are in a dining room off the main hall.

As grad students, none of them should still be playing, what with college rawball participation capped at four years; but every player during the past year and a half got special permission to extend their time thanks to a particularly gnarly accident that caused the entire field to get sucked into a portal dimension.

Luckily, all the players and fans who happened to be in the stadium were recovered, but it took a while to get back the various bits of the field itself.

You’d think complications like that would make rawball ban interdimensional spells, but noooo, where’s the fun in a safe sport?

Ivo’s a tank like Orok, though short and stocky, dwarven, with a buzzed head and a dark beard. Crescentia’s a rogue on the team, human, with neon-pink hair and a quirky art-student vibe, currently sporting her purple-and-gold jersey.

Orok hooks his arm around my waist and bends down to prop his chin on my shoulder, ever the touchy-feely drunk.

I nod at Crescentia’s jersey. Orok rocks with the motion. “That helping you pull tonight?”

Crescentia leers and puffs out her chest. “I dunno. Is it?”

Ivo elbows her. “His boyfriend’s right there .”

Orok rockets away from me at the same moment I glower back at him.

“You have got to stop cuddling me in public,” I say.

Ivo shrugs. “Crescentia was out of line to—”

“We’re not together, ” I cut him off. “Crescentia, feel free to hit on me.”

Orok groans. “Please don’t hook up with one of my teammates.”

Crescentia sizes me up and sips her beer. “Actually, pass. You’re always giving off high-maintenance vibes.”

My squeak of offense is swallowed in music blaring from the kitchen. “Fuck you very much, I am not high maintenance .”

“Eh.” Orok rocks his hand back and forth.

I punch him in the stomach. He doesn’t flinch.

Ivo points between Orok and me. “Back up. You two are constantly hanging off each other, and you mean to tell me you’re not fucking?

Are you serious ?” He looks at Orok. “Do you have any idea how many of my friends have asked for your number, and I always brush them off with a sorry, he’s basically married ? ”

“Two masculine people can’t be physically affectionate without being in a relationship,” I say, “but if two feminine people were, they’d be cuddly friends, right? Neanderthals.”

I allow myself one more drink and snatch a red cup from the dining room table. The contents smell like cheap vodka and grenadine, but I down it, wincing at the slight cough-syrup flavor.

Orok plants his palm on the side of my head and shoves until I’m standing between Crescentia and Ivo, no longer next to him. “This is the last time our codependency cockblocks me. You are whatever’s the opposite of a wingman.”

“A thigh-woman,” I say without missing a beat.

Orok glares at me, or tries to, but he’s half laughing and can’t stand up straight without bobbling. “Keep away from me for the rest of the night. I’m not going home alone.”

“You’re right, you’re not. We live together.”

He notes my empty cup and gasps like a hole opened up in the floor. “ Bad . I’ll fix this.”

He snatches it and he’s off, the crowd easily parting for his substantial size, and I’m honestly not sure where he’s wandering to, given that the table where I got the drink is right here, spread with dozens of various alcoholic options.

And more than a few potion bottles with labels like PROPER FUCKED-UP—NO HANGOVER, GUARANTEED!

and LIQUEFIED MAGIC SHROOMS: PINEAPPLE PIZZA FLAVOR.

My nose curls.

Gods, I hope whatever I drank was cheap vodka.

Crescentia takes another sip of her beer. My eyes get caught on her lips around the bottle’s rim, and my reaction conflicts with Orok’s plea not to hook up with his teammates. Was that a serious plea? Is it worth having to prove to Crescentia that I’m not high maintenance ?

Though if I do try to get with her, even for a one-night thing, would Orok be all accusatory again about me slipping back into reckless behavior? I have had hookups without his judgment, so maybe it was the bit where he thought I’d connected it to a favor.

This is a lot of mental hoops for an orgasm I’m not sure I—

I’m flung into Crescentia, who flattens against the wall with a shout of surprise.

I whirl on Orok and steady him. “Dude, what the—”

“We gotta go, ” he says, putting his face right up in mine. “Seb. We need to leave .”

“You were gone two seconds. There’s no way you fucked something up that—”

“Elethior is here.”

My grip on Orok’s shirt tightens. I pop my eyes past his shoulder, scanning the party.

People press around us, everyone well past inebriated, limbs strewn in the air and heads lolling to the music or thrown back in laughter.

A figure leans against the wall that divides the dining room from the kitchen.

Elethior Tourael is all length and height—long black hair buzzed on one side; long, slender, half-elven ears; long limbs under a black T-shirt and black pants; thick boots like he rode here on a motorcycle, though I think the fuck not.

It’s okay for a Tourael to play pretend at being some kind of badass, with the black tattoos up the side of his neck and along his arms contrasting against his pale skin, but for him to actually be a badass would require a level of slumming it that he’s not capable of.

He’s listening to whatever someone in his group is saying, but he reaches for his drink on a table behind him and his eyes lock with mine.

Recognition transforms Elethior’s expression. Seizes him in a cringe of revulsion.

My already rapid-fire pulse goes ultrasonic. I can’t even hear the hum of it in my ears anymore.

“ Seb, ” Orok pleads. “We gotta go. What if he knows we were in his lab? Oh my gods .”

“Hey.” I break my gaze from Elethior like I’m emerging from underwater—sound throbs again, movement speeds back up—and I cup Orok’s face so his bloodshot eyes focus on me. “You always get super paranoid when you drink. We’re good.”

Ivo pats Orok’s shoulder. “Maybe lay off the hard stuff. And stop doing whatever this moron tells you to do.”

Crescentia tips her beer at Ivo. “I’ll drink to that. What is this rivalry about, anyway? Evocation and conjuration are basically the same thing.”

My hands are still cupped around Orok’s face, so when we both turn to look at her, it’s more than a little ridiculous.

There are a good number of spells all wizards are capable of.

Once you get into higher-level stuff, things break into rigid class structures—and evocation uses magical energy to create nonliving things, like magically generated fire.

But conjuration uses magical energy to pull inanimate shit to the caster, regardless of where it came from; no creation, nothing new, just something fully formed that belonged to someone else, then poof .

“Evocation creates from magical energy. Creates . Like a—like a— We’re artists .” I release Orok to point at Crescentia, who looks like she’s regretting ever having said anything, or maybe being this side of sober when she did. “Conjuration wizards are thieves —”

“Funny. I was going to say the same about you.”

The words are only spoken loud enough to be heard over the music, but the voice itself is a thunderhead, and it crashes into my nerve endings like each one was caught unaware in a storm.

Our group turns.

To Elethior.

Orok curses, Crescentia chugs the rest of her beer, and Ivo rolls his eyes and ducks around Elethior to slip off into the house.

I’m only vaguely aware of these things, tuned in to Elethior in a tunnel of narrowed awareness, the primitive part of my monkey brain screaming threat, threat, threat.

Elethior gives me a flat, cold stare.

I return it with a confident grin. “Can I help you?”

He tips his head, his dark hair catching the yellow light with a sheen. A cloud of cologne, smelling of floral vetiver, billows over me, so thick it takes a beat for it to emanate from him.

“Though thief is the incorrect word,” he carries on like I didn’t speak. “What’s the name for a person who breaks in and leaves something?”

My grin widens, more a baring of teeth than a smile. “Santa Claus.”