Page 44 of The Entanglement of Rival Wizards (Magic and Romance #1)

He laughs, eyes catching the chandelier light, and he looks so damn happy.

I feel so damn happy as our gazes connect over the table.

The moment stretches, warping and extending until the bulk of his apartment fades into darkness; only his face is illuminated in light we generate. Our own chiaroscuro reality.

I stab a piece of chicken, but I just push it through the sauce.

I’d wanted it to come up naturally in conversation. I’d wait, and let it happen. I’ve never told anyone else before, not since I went through it, so I expected to get derailed by resistance and want to put it off, but—

But I want to tell him. I want him to know. It feels easy.

Everything with him has felt easy.

And it’s frightening, bone-rattlingly terrifying .

Thio frowns when I don’t keep eating.

“Orok and I went to Camp Merethyl together,” I say in a rush. “So a lot of this… what I tell you, know it’s my story, but it’s his, too.”

Thio lays down his fork and puts his elbows on the table to lean toward me, immediately attentive.

I should’ve waited until after we ate.

But he takes my hand, plays with my fingers, and doesn’t say anything, letting it be fully in my court.

The only reason I don’t scratch at my forearms is because of the grip he has on my hand.

I blow out a breath, staring at the roses.

Dark, rich maroon. “We started there the summer after freshman year of high school. It was a proud moment for us both—my family’s all into the military, his is all into the god Urzoth Shieldsworn.

We were going to do our four summers in their training program, then graduate and go off to the Arcane Forces.

Fulfill both our various family expectations. ”

Thio knows all about that weight. I don’t have to explain.

My knee bounces. “We got there, and there’s a test they make you do. A placement exam. They put you in one of five levels based on your skills. It’s—”

“Five levels?” Thio’s fingers throb on mine. “I’ve only heard of four.”

My lips pull up, but it isn’t a smile. I wonder if he can feel the way my heart kicks into overdrive, the thudding of my pulse in my fingertips.

“That’s what my father said. Sebastian, the Walshes have been going to Camp Merethyl for generations, ” I mimic his deep voice. “ We’d know if there was a secret fifth level you claim to have gotten placed in. Don’t make up stories. ”

Thio’s head tips. “The camp didn’t inform your parents of your progress? You were a minor. Don’t they have to get approval for things?”

“At Camp Merethyl, I wasn’t a minor. I was a soldier.

My parents signed the same waivers as everyone else’s.

And in those waivers, there’s a whole lot of legalese about safeguarding the proprietary training programs that Camp Merethyl uses, blah blah blah; basically, you sign away your right to know what they’re doing to your kid. ”

“How—” Thio hesitates. “How are people okay with that?”

I drop back against the chair, shoulders hitting it hard. Thio doesn’t let go of my hand; he adjusts to the edge of his seat so he can stay in contact.

“The people who graduate from Camp Merethyl go on to be some of the most powerful wizards in the world. So what if they come home at the end of the summer with scars and stories of abuse and neglect? It’s all in the name of toughening them up . That’s how soldiers are made. Even at fourteen .”

My voice gets too loud, knee bouncing, rattling the table.

Thio squeezes my hand. “Sebastian. You don’t have to—”

“I do.” My eyes lock on his. “I really do.”

He studies me, my wide eyes, my quivering tension.

I scrub a hand down my face, willing the words to uproot with the least pain.

“My family all graduated from Camp Merethyl. Well, not my mom, but my siblings, my dad; his side. None of them believed me when I told them Orok and I had been selected for an elite training level. I was also, well, me ; scrawnier then than I am now, and I was always good at spells, but the physical side of things? No way. Why would I have been chosen?”

My throat closes. I clear it, try again.

“There were ten of us in that fifth level. The camp dropped us in the middle of the Appalachians, no supplies. Told us we had two days to get back to camp, or we’d forfeit all meal tickets for a week.

They’d refuse us food and water regularly, in an effort to train us not to need it.

Sleep, too; we’d get woken up every hour for two days straight, one day off, and repeat.

They taught us fighting styles, hands and fists, and with weapons, too, but padding?

Blunted training weapons? No. If you bled, no meal tickets.

That wasn’t far off from what the normal training levels endured; wilderness training, combat.

Just not as… brutal as what we had in that fifth level.

I told my parents what they were doing to us, and my dad said I was exaggerating. ”

Thio’s watching me. I can feel it. But my gaze isn’t here anymore, I’m only grounded in his touch.

“Orok and I were paired up from the start.

We were all in pairs. Anything we did, we had to do together, or fail and lose meal tickets, water tickets, sleep tickets—yeah, after the second summer, we had those.

They controlled everything we did at every moment of the day, all in an effort to hone our skills .

But these tests, the things they taught us and had us do—they were about how far we could push magic.

How much we could test the limits of spells on the elements, on our situations. On ourselves.

“The only reason I got through those summers was because of Orok. He was there, enduring it with me.” My lungs quake, hurting. “He made me feel like I wasn’t crazy. The things I told my father were being done to us were happening, and I wasn’t lying. It was real.”

I’m up and pacing in a tight line behind the chair before I realize that means releasing Thio’s hand, but I’m in motion already.

“The last summer.” My fingers go to my arms under my sleeves, scratching.

The pain flares, centers me. “We knew it’d be bad.

We’d spent the previous summers getting screamed at, doused in freezing water, beaten when we complained, left for nearly dead in all manner of places, starved and driven to insanity with sleep deprivation, all while doing things with magic that left us drained emotionally, physically—but we knew, this summer?

It’d be worse. Orok and I promised we’d watch out for each other.

But we still—gods.” I shove my glasses up my nose.

It doesn’t clear my vision. “We still wanted to make our families proud, ya know? Orok’s were pushing the doctrine of strength; mine were impatiently waiting for the last Walsh to prove he wasn’t a whiny little bitch. My brother’s words, not mine.”

Thio’s standing. I don’t know when he moved. His arms are loose at his sides and his head shifts as he tracks me across his dining room.

“Somewhere during the first weeks,” I say to the floor as I walk, turn, walk, turn, “the other pairs of fifth-level students—soldiers—vanished. I don’t know what happened to them.

If they dropped out, or if they… but it was just me and Orok.

In that mythical fifth-level training program.

The instructors focused all their attention on us.

Said we were the future of wizardry and a whole lot of other bullshit as they pushed us and pushed us and we obeyed, because—because we were kids, we were scared kids, and no one ever believed us anyway. ”

I stop. Stop walking. Stop digging at my arms; they ache, feel bruised.

“Our final test,” I whisper, “was before graduation. Before all their hard work paid off—the instructors’.

We were an experiment; that was why no one had ever heard of a fifth level.

There hadn’t been one. We were the first. A test of an elite type of training, pairing up wizards for remote, risky missions.

The program had been about testing the limits of magic and forging a bond between us.

Well, Orok and I had certainly bonded. We thought we could handle whatever final thing they threw at us, then it’d be over, it’d be over . ”

My hand goes to my forehead, and I take a couple of deep, steadying gulps of air. Get it out. Get the words out.

Get out get out GET OUT—

“They put us in a sealed, empty room. Used scrying magic to communicate with us. Told us there was a ward on the door. Told us to break it.” My eyes meet Thio’s.

He hasn’t moved, watches me, hands still loose, ready.

I’m not. “We didn’t have any components.

They’d yanked us out of bed in the middle of the night.

We were sleep-deprived, hadn’t eaten in two days.

But they told us to get out of that room.

How do you do a spell when you have no components? ”

I’m asking him.

Thio frowns. “You don’t.”

“Wrong. To break a ward, what do you need?”

Thio knows I’m pushing him toward something but he can’t see what yet. And I hate that I’m doing this to him. That there’ll be a before and an after.

“Chalk to draw sigils, and iron from a lock,” he says.

“No,” I snap. “No. You only need iron to break a ward. It being from a lock is semantics. It isn’t required . You can force the spell to work through it, like with chalk and drawing sigils; it just helps you focus. But you don’t need any of that. You only need iron.”

He looks appalled. As he should. “That isn’t how magic is done,” he hisses, not at me, at the situation. “That’s—there are rules . Forcing magic to use components like that could damage the wizards who do it or result in the spells recoiling dangerously—”

He cuts himself off. I know he’s thinking of his mom, how her experiment recoiled; but that’s how dangerous magic can be. That’s how volatile. And now here are two instances of the Touraels being behind the advancement of magic, whatever the cost.