Page 52 of The Entanglement of Rival Wizards (Magic and Romance #1)

It’s coming for Thio, his future, as unavoidable as mine; but his is the precarious column on which his mom’s care is balanced.

I can’t fix that for him.

But I can do this.

I can do this.

The day before our presentation, I’m due to meet Thio in our lab so we can officially submit our paper to the university’s online portal. He had a breakfast meeting with Arasne, and I left his place early this morning to hit the library again—and it paid off.

Because now.

I stumble into the lab, letting the door shut behind me, and he’s at his workstation with his laptop open. Lesiara U’s assignment website is pulled up, and I know he has our paper loaded into the submission window already.

Around him, his hurricane of stuff is in semi-neat piles, his notes and clothing and food. We have to be out of here by next week, before graduation.

Thio looks up at me with an exhausted smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. His smiles haven’t, not in weeks, especially not on days when he meets with Arasne.

That ghost of a smile immediately breaks off when he sees me, and he launches up from his chair. “What’s wrong?”

“I figured it out.”

My eyes burn, I haven’t slept since… yesterday? I know I tossed and turned all night in his bed. I’m shaking from an excess of coffee, my stomach aches, but I’m smiling, gasping; did I run here from the library? Maybe.

Thio frowns. “Figured what out?”

I push past him, pulling stuff out of my bag as I stumble to the whiteboard.

It’s my turn to make a distracted, chaotic mess, and I leave a trail of highlighters and loose papers.

But I find the notes I’m looking for, unhook my bag and let it splat on the floor, and grab a dry-erase marker from the tray.

“Your mom’s project,” I say to the board and uncap the marker in my mouth, spit out the lid to the side. I copy the notes I scrawled in a twisting spiral around an already crammed paper—I’ve been spending too much time with Thio, he’s all over me.

He steps up to the board. “My mom’s—”

But he stops talking. Watches me write, scribbling out the theory I nailed down this morning.

It’s my theory. Well, his theory, the measuring cup theory.

His mom was trying to disconnect a conjurer from their conjured item. But the energy has to come from somewhere, and since conjuration demands that energy come from a conjurer, the conjurer is, in theory, the component.

I don’t absorb that. Don’t let it affect me. It’s different from what happened at Camp Merethyl, and this? This solution? Would keep conjurers safe.

I keep writing, sketching out the runes I altered to fit this idea.

“The safety net runes? Instead of protecting any material component, they could also act as a cap on the conjurer . Once a threshold of energy has been drained from a conjurer, we can set it up to trigger the spell to disconnect, and the item will return to where it came from, protecting the conjurer.”

I all but drop to my knees when I turn to Thio.

It isn’t a perfect disconnect between a conjurer and their conjured item, but it’s something . Something for him.

Thio reads over everything, his brow furrowed.

He takes the marker from me and rewrites one of the runes I made, adding other elements.

I see it, and frown.

“Or,” he says, “the safety net runes could be adjusted to spread the energy draw among multiple conjurers, so it isn’t reliant on only one person.

The limits would still be in place; Conjurer A would be connected to the conjured item until they hit X threshold of energy drain, then it’d shift to Conjurer B, and so on.

The conjured item wouldn’t vanish, and—oh gods, Sebastian.

This could work. This could— oh my gods. ”

He scrawls out test equations next to the rune.

“Wait.” I scrub my eyes under my glasses and splay my hands out. “That would—you can’t force another conjurer to take on your spell. That’s not—” I point at the board. At my original rune. He’s not looking at me. “This is about protecting conjurers.”

Thio mouths something to himself as he writes. Absently, he says, “My project’s about the energy connection between a conjurer and their item. This way, the energy connection is dissipated among a group, and the item remains. It isn’t—”

“It isn’t about keeping the item; it’s about protecting the conjurers.”

“They would be protected. Once the threshold is reached, it’d shift to a different conjurer.”

“But people could get hurt.”

He turns to me. Excitement had been building in him, but it pauses now. “Hurt how?”

“You’d force other conjurers to take on the energetic responsibility of your spell.”

“Of course not. They’d be willing . It wouldn’t be through force.”

“For now.”

Thio sets the marker in the tray and faces me fully. “We’d work it into the rune that there’d have to be reception on both ends. It wouldn’t be one conjurer doing the spell; we’d make sure it’s fair.”

I’m so sleep-deprived. Stretched thin over the past few weeks.

I’ve been feeling more than I ever have before, too.

Where I usually tamp that shit down, I’ve been swimming in nonstop waves of happiness.

I let those waves carry me, wash me out to sea until I’m here, so far from shore, shaking my head.

Thio grabs my wrist. “Sebastian. Talk to me.”

“This was for you,” I say to the whiteboard. “Not—not something we’d release. It’s just for you.”

His head cocks until I look at him, and his confusion is clear. “Why? Why wouldn’t we release this? Not with our project, I get that, it’s too late; but after. Your idea would work. If we can distribute the energetic demands of a conjuration spell, we—”

“Do you think it’d stay willing?” I twist my arm to my chest. He doesn’t let go of my wrist, so we’re pulled closer, his eyes locking on mine.

“Do you honestly think if we released this, even in theory, that people like your family wouldn’t figure out a way for a conjurer to select people at random to serve as their energy drains? ”

Thio’s face collapses in horror. He glances at the board.

“Shit. Shit .” He releases me to rub a hand roughly over his face. “You’re right. It’s—that’s what they’d do.”

My throat swells. “I wanted to give you some piece of what your mom was working on. Some result for her, for you. But any bit of this is too risky, isn’t it? Gods, even trying to do it to keep conjurers safe, and—”

“And I immediately figured out a way to make it dangerous,” Thio whispers.

He’s staring at the board. At the runes that would, in theory, let a conjurer dissipate energy to other conjurers. It’s the barest dregs of an idea, not fleshed out at all, but it’s a seed.

And Thio’s staring at it, his eyes tearing, and my heart cracks.

This isn’t what I’d meant to do with— fuck .

“Thio—”

“Do you know what Arasne said to me this morning?” he asks, a brush of sound.

I don’t. Of course I don’t. He never tells me what she talks to him about beyond assurances that he’s not spilling our project’s secrets; and he never lets me come to those meetings with him. I’ve offered.

He rubs at his cheek, scrubbing away emotion, so when his eyes meet mine, he’s almost composed.

Almost . “She said the same shit she’s been saying for too long.

That the reason my mom had her accident”—Thio’s breath is harsh—“and the reason she had so many failures in her career was because she isn’t a real Tourael.

And if I leave, I’ll end up just like her.

I’ll waste away in obscurity because I have nothing substantial to contribute to this world. ”

His words, his posture, the empty, shell-like look in his eyes—it’s agonizing, and I move toward him, arms lifting.

Only I stop.

Because—I’ve heard those words before. Why do I know them?

Thio keeps on, facing the board again, his eyes burning with ire, and passion, and pain .

“This could work,” he says, gesturing at the runes.

“I’ve read my mom’s research. I’ve read all the research my family did on this topic.

And this idea? They never came close to anything like this.

” His jaw bulges by his ears, cheeks reddening.

“For all their resources, for all their finely honed methodologies, for all their torture, they couldn’t come up with this solution. But we did. We’re better than them.”

“I know that,” I whisper. Then, louder, “I know we’re better than them.”

He only half hears me. “We could… we could buffer it with protective spells. We could lock in the need for the spell to be willing, for it to work from two ends, not just one.”

My lungs swell, refusing oxygen. “We’re not releasing this idea. This isn’t why I worked on it. I did it for you . To pay homage to your mom. Isn’t it enough to know we have this theory? Why do you need to release it, especially if you know it’s dangerous?”

He frowns, incredulous. “You thought you’d solve my mom’s project and I’d be okay doing nothing with it?”

I wheeze at my own stupidity, the blinders I’d had on for him; but also, because he’s pushing this. Because he did immediately figure out a way to make it dangerous, and he’s still digging at it.

“I thought I’d give you a way to keep conjurers safe, and maybe we could work on it more, just us.” I wrap my arms around my chest. “But if it means giving people a way to force others to be their components in conjuration spells? Then yeah, we shouldn’t do anything with it . ”

“ Fuck .” Thio rips his hand through his hair but doesn’t close the space between us. Doesn’t touch me, and that choice widens the distance, pulls at the already taut energy of the room. “I’m sorry. That’s—it isn’t the same, though. It’s not the same.”

“I came up with a way to protect conjurers. That’s what I thought the purpose of your project was—to keep magic users safe . Was I wrong? Is that not what you care about?”

“Of course it is,” he says, teeth gritted. He’s trembling, holding himself restrained.

“Then this shouldn’t be—”