Page 45 of The Entanglement of Rival Wizards (Magic and Romance #1)

“Where can you get iron,” I whisper, “if you’re trapped in a room without any components? Just you. And your partner. Where can you get iron?”

His face drains of color.

“They’d been testing us for years,” I say.

“Leaving us in barren places, telling us to do this spell or work out this problem with whatever we had on hand. Forcing us to use what we had available, in the most extreme, stark situations. They called it an ouroboros partnership. It was why we were paired up. Every wizard has most of the components they need—if they have access to a person.”

Thio collapses back into his seat. “No. That kind of magic is illegal. Highly illegal. Not even necromancers use human remains in spells.”

“It isn’t human remains.” The words come and I’m separate from them.

“Not if the person’s still alive. Not if they give it up willingly.

An ouroboros, symbiotic; a snake eating itself.

That’s why they had us work on our bond, so one of us would be willing.

The instructors rationalized it—it wasn’t crossing legal boundaries if it was a new form of wizardry.

They were sculpting an exclusive type of arcane soldier. ”

I don’t need to pace anymore. I don’t even need the numbing pain of scratching at my arms. I go limp, staring at Thio.

“Orok and I both refused to do that to each other to get out of that room. Then they started pumping in water. Your parents signed the waivers, they told us. Accidents happen .”

Pathetic.

This was wasted on you.

No one else could handle this program either. Are you going to let this be a failure? You could change the rules of magic. You could be a pioneer. The first ouroboros partnership.

You had such promise, Mr. Walsh. Mr. Monroe.

I touch my shoulder. The place where Orok dragged his nail through his own skin, tore it open. Use it, Seb. Fucking do it! As frigid water lapped at our thighs and we shuddered head to toe.

His blood was sluggish. Because of the hypothermia, the malnutrition. I had to drag it out, focus on the iron in him and pull .

Tears drip down my cheeks. I scrub them away with my thumb and cut my eyes up to that massive chandelier. That massive chandelier that the Touraels paid for, in this massive apartment they own.

“I got us out,” I tell Thio. “And while Orok was in the infirmary, unconscious from blood loss, and the instructors were congratulating me on doing such a good job, I told them I was done. I wasn’t going to graduate. I wasn’t going to be their elite wizard pet. They… did not like that.”

I smile at the memory of their shocked faces, how they were unable to comprehend why I’d say no now, when I was done. Why I hadn’t voiced concerns years ago.

I had. Over and over. To them. To my dad.

Gods, I’d been so certain he’d save me after that first summer. I’d known he’d help.

My smile grows. Grows too big. I’m bent double, laughing at things that aren’t funny.

“And then that stupid iron box,” I wheeze to the floor. “At the challenge today? We had to leave our component belts, too. And the iron was missing. The iron . I probably dropped it, but gods, Thio. I was back there and they were making me do it to you now, and I—”

He’s sitting perfectly still in his chair, eyes wide, face deathly pale.

I’m on my knees in front of him before I can process why. My hands rest on his thighs, and I look up into his face.

“I dropped out of Camp Merethyl,” I tell him. “I dropped out and became the disgrace of my family, and they think I’m an immature screwup who couldn’t cut it as a real wizard. Now my father is going to run that place—”

Thio jolts. I hadn’t told him that yet.

“He got the job, he’s going to be the next director, and—and part of me is glad for it. He’ll have access to the records, won’t he? He’ll see what they did to me. He’ll know that I wasn’t lying. That it happened, he let it happen, and it was horrific .”

Thio stays silent, not reaching for me.

Oh, gods.

Does… does he not believe me either?

The idea is more sickening than I anticipated. That he’ll scowl and echo one of the things my father has said. Don’t make up stories, Sebastian. Do you need attention that badly? No one would pervert magic like that, certainly not at a place as esteemed as Camp Merethyl.

I dig my fingers into Thio’s thighs. “Say something. Say—say anything, please.”

“Who?”

My shoulders go rigid. “What?”

“Who was at the camp?”

His voice is—I can’t figure it out. Angry? No.

He’s irate .

Redness rises up his neck, hits his face; his eyes are murderous, his jaw tight.

“Which of my piece-of-shit family members were part of that program?” he asks through his teeth. “Which of them did that to you?”

My mouth opens. Nothing comes out.

He believes me. He’s not dismissing it. He’s not putting it on me.

Thio grabs my hands. “No, never mind. You’ve told me enough. I can find out on my own. You don’t need to do anything else, okay? You—”

“Thio—”

“They’ll pay for this, Sebastian,” he swears to me. His eyes are wide and manic in their fury. “Everything they’ve done. Everything they do . They won’t get away with this. I’ll make them pay for this .”

Tonight has ripped open wounds and I feel every single one all at once. Gashes here, cuts there, a laceration in my chest; my heart beats and hits it.

“No,” I say. “Going up against your family for this is a move you can’t undo either, like getting a job with their competitor. You have too much to lose.”

“I’ve lost everything to them already.” He’s practically yelling. I flinch. “I won’t lose—”

“This isn’t what I need from you.”

That pulls him back. Settles him, one slow blink at a time, until he frees a palm to cup my jaw.

“Shit, I’m sorry.” He kisses my cheekbone. Lingers with his nose pressed alongside mine. “I’m sorry, baby. What do you need?”

He believes me.

That’s all I need.

I lock my lips with his, licking into his mouth, and it isn’t healing, it doesn’t erase what I told him, what truths I shared. It just makes them bearable.

That’s what I’ve done since those summers. I can’t erase the trauma; I find what makes it endurable. I learn to live around it.

And kissing Thio? Being with him?

Is the most riotous kind of living.

“Take me to bed,” I plead.

Dinner’s mostly uneaten next to us, gone cold, and I wince at it. My appetite’s shot to hell now, but… he made me dinner.

“I mean, after we finish—”

Thio hauls me to my feet. “It’ll keep.”