Page 4 of The Entanglement of Rival Wizards (Magic and Romance #1)

Elethior’s jaw twitches. “I got a call earlier tonight from campus security,” he tells me.

His voice stays even, despite the rise and fall of the music, and I have to watch his mouth to catch what he’s saying.

He has snake-bite piercings through his bottom lip.

“Apparently, someone left bones, skin, and a chattering skull in my lab space. Are you saying I have Santa Claus to thank for that?”

He wasn’t the one to find Sten? Damn.

I resist the urge to check the time, but by my calculation, Sten barely lasted four hours before the preservation spells failed him. Double damn.

“Wow,” I say. “You must’ve been really naughty if that’s what Santa left you.”

Elethior sucks his teeth. “You’re lucky nothing important was damaged.”

“Wait.” I fake a gasp. “Are you accusing me of something? I’ve been out all night, partying it up. These guys can vouch for me.”

Orok sways on his feet and shrugs. Way to back me up, dude.

It’s Crescentia who leaps to the rescue.

She tosses her empty beer bottle onto the table while glaring daggers at Elethior. “Awfully hypocritical of you to come over here and lob baseless accusations when your family has been proven guilty of more than a few heinous crimes.”

Oh. Maybe we should hook up after this.

Crescentia missed a party one time when she was off in DC lobbying for a ceasefire after another portal to the Demonic Plane popped open somewhere in the Midwest. The Arcane Forces always respond to those with an aggressive counterstrike before any demons or fire elementals can sneak through, but destroying the portal so violently causes untold damage to the surrounding area.

And who provides the bulk of shit used for these counterstrikes? Who has the market cornered on magical weapons, deadly spells, even the specialized training those soldiers receive?

The Tourael family.

But Elethior is ignoring Crescentia’s social justice energy, his focus on me.

The fact that he looks smug sends a shiver of ice down my spine.

“I didn’t accuse anyone of anything,” he says to me. “I know for a fact it couldn’t have been you to break into my lab. Do you want to know why I’m so certain? Why I didn’t throw your name to the security guard who called me?”

“Because I’m the picture of motherfucking innocence?” I give him my best syrupy smile.

His nostrils flare and he leans in. I hold my ground and let him get an inch from me, the heft of his cologne clotting the air, choking me with earthiness and roses.

“Hardly,” he growls. “It’s because I know you’re not good enough to have broken my ward, like you’re not good enough to win that grant tomorrow. Are you, sweetheart?”

The fucker pats my cheek.

Maybe that last cup of vodka cherry whatever did have a mystery potion in it because I blink, then Orok’s holding me back by the collar of my gray T-shirt, his other arm belted around my waist.

Elethior’s torso is bent slightly backward like he was dodging me, and I don’t remember lunging. But I definitely did; I feel the burn of movement sizzling in my muscles, feel the flash-bang of fury aching along the sides of my body.

“Don’t you fucking touch me,” I snarl, and Elethior plunges right back, getting so close that the world is consumed in the harsh angles of his half-elven features, the abyss of his eyes.

“Don’t fuck with my lab,” he snaps, and I wrench against Orok’s hold.

“ Seb, ” Orok hisses.

We’ve drawn attention. A dozen or so people watch us, and the music still plays, but one idiot chants, “Fight, fight, fight.” It doesn’t catch, especially when Elethior pivots his glare in the guy’s direction, and the attitude plummets from the crackle of entertainment to the lightning strike of This is not a joke.

Elethior faces me again and straightens his tight black shirt like it somehow got mussed in his few sharp movements. He licks at the silver ring on the left side of his mouth and sizes me up before shooting a bored look at Orok.

“When he loses the grant to me tomorrow,” Elethior tells him, “don’t let him come near me. I’m done with his bullshit.”

I laugh. It rattles out of me, half-hysterical, pushing me right up to the threshold of unhinged, like Orok had been worried about.

I’m done with his bullshit.

His words set off other voices in my head, a swelling, overlapping symphony.

Is that all you’ve got?

Pathetic.

This was wasted on you.

I shove Orok off, and he lets me go. I’m not sure why. Maybe he can sense the dip in my rigidity.

“I’ll happily leave you alone after tomorrow,” I tell Elethior. “They’re going to award that grant to me, then I’m never going to think about you or your family again.”

“Oh, baby boy,” he coos. “We both know every bit of that’s a lie.”

I spin away from him, seeing red, seeing flashes of things that slither along my arms and creep across my body and— fuck .

My skin is too tight and my chest hurts and I try to unbutton my collar, only to remember I’m wearing a T-shirt and can only ineffectively tug at the cotton that’s trying to suffocate me.

I trip on the rug in the entryway, wrench open the front door, and plunge into the night.

The autumn-chilled air stabs into my lungs. It smells like damp leaves. Dying, mildewy rot, but in the comforting way that promises the season’s changing so you can change with it.

Orok follows me. Crescentia, too. But it’s Orok who grabs my arm and tugs me to a stop, and I spin on him.

He gets it. He gets it instantly, and he lets me go.

“Unclench your hands, Seb,” he tells me.

I obey, flexing my fingers, but it’s bullshit .

It does nothing . Several therapists got me on exercises like this—in the throes of anger, focus on relaxing tense muscles; breathe deep; get yourself back in your body—but these techniques only make me more pissed that I need help calming down at all.

I don’t want to calm down.

I don’t want to let it go.

No one else had to calm down, so why do I?

“Fucking Tourael,” Crescentia says. “Right? Blood-money rich rat bastard.”

That, in spite of everything, makes me laugh. A real laugh, not the bitter, harsh thing Elethior got out of me.

I rip my glasses off, scrub them clean, and shove them back on.

Crescentia turns to Orok. “Think Seb can handle a few rounds of Blast Off?”

He doesn’t get a chance to answer. I groan, head thrown back, it’s damn near pornographic. “ Gods yes. ”

Blast Off is a rawball training game Orok complains about doing every few weeks. It involves a fire-blasting machine, and the only way to shut it down is to get it to burn to a certain temperature which, for wizards, means one gloriously destructive and explosive spell: fireball.

With my head still thrown back, I turn my groan into a mewl of unease. “Wait. Are you asking me to go raw, then blast a load with you?”

I tip a cheesy grin at Orok and Crescentia.

They share a long-suffering look.

Orok holds up a nonexistent watch on his wrist. “You went almost half an hour hanging around my teammates without making a rawball joke. I’m pretty proud.”

“Aw, babe, your approval means everything.”

Orok drops his wrist and frowns at me. “You sure you’re good to play, though?”

There’s a lot unsaid in his question.

I nod. “End tonight by burning the shit out of something? This is exactly what I need.”

There’s a lot unsaid in my response, too.

Small things. Focus on small things. Pretend and pretend and maybe I won’t have to pretend eventually.

Orok exhales. But he manages a smile. “All right. Let’s burn some shit.”

Crescentia cheers.

We all turn, weaving through parked cars to cross the road and head to campus.

Even with the briefly heightened emotions, I’m the only one who seems to have burned through what little alcohol I’d pumped into my body, or maybe Orok and Crescentia drank way more than I did.

But Orok slants to the right until I tuck myself under his arm to steer him toward the rawball field, while Crescentia dances ahead of us with hiccupping giggles.

Enacting pranks: a good way to burn off stress.

Going to parties: a bad way to burn off stress.

But actually burning things? The best way to burn off stress.