Page 81 of Harbinger

“Far too nicely,” Kai added.

Yeah, the two of them together was definitely a whole thing.

I just wasn’t sure whether that was going to be proven to be a good thing or a really fucking bad thing.

13

~Kai~

Arcane Combustion & Elemental Synergy.

It was one of the advanced courses only available to fourth year students.

Well, officially.

There were ways around the sorts of constraints that the Academy posed on student access to certain knowledge.

Namely, obtaining access to applicable texts ourselves and exploring the subject matter in our own time and under the radar. And that was what I spent a lot of time doing, learning and acquiring knowledge at a rapid rate. I didn’t like waiting until it was deemedappropriate. I didn’t like being at a disadvantage.

Knowledge in our world was the key to everything. Power was second to that.

As it was, I was more than ready for the course material ahead.

This would just be about me perfecting what I’d already learned, while also gauging what others around me were capable of, and picking up on any workarounds that my self-taught approach may have missed.

As I took a seat at the far right of the room at the back, I watched Professor Edris Caelum stroll on in, dressed in his usual way with a form-fitting black shirt and dress pants, a silky red tie over the shirt that matched the color of his magic. He pulled his messenger bag off his shoulder and it brushed over his blond crew cut in the process. He was a towering figure who gave off an imposing air. Par for the course with a lot of sorcerers. He smiled at me as he passed on by. Yeah, I was one of his favorites, because of mystaggering potential,as he called it, and he knew I’d been looking forward to finally reaching this advanced class in my fourth year.

I gave him a chin lift, then my attention was drawn to Nyx walking in amongst the throngs of other students. He had his usual swagger about him, but I knew it wasn’t how he actually felt right now. That fucker, Sorin, had undercut his confidence and wellness. He’d been off-kilter for the last few hours since that bullshit had happened in the Cafeteria. We didn’t share all the same classes, but I’d been keeping a secret eye on him via aholoscreen. It was basically a spelled screen that could follow the subject in question anywhere without the need for cameras everywhere.

“Hey!” he greeted me brightly. Too brightly. He was definitely overcompensating.

And there was also the obvious visual cue that something was definitely off in that he’d headed back to our dorm room and grabbed a black hoodie from the back of his closet, an oversized one that went down to his thighs and covered him in a shapeless way. Nyx not dressing in his usual sexy way was definitely an out-of-sorts thing.

I smiled out at him and patted the chair beside me.

As he took a seat, I pressed my palm to the back of his hand on the tabletop.

He jerked as the warmth of my magic infused him, my rose-gold glow emanating for a moment, before I completed the spell I’d just put in place.

“You don’t need to worry now. You can relax for the rest of the day, take a beat, and enjoy the peace.”

“Why? What was that?”

“Let’s call it a wider-spread version of the resistance I use with you when we’re getting carnal. This will shield everyone around you from the effects of your allure. At least, for the rest of the day. It’ll give you a necessary reprieve.”

His ice-blue eyes widened, and he started shaking his head vehemently. “No, Kai. Undo it. Undo it right now.”

“Do you deny that it’s a weight off? And one that you really need after what happened earlier?”

“Of course it’s a weight off. Hell, it’s an amazing gift. But I can’t allow it. In theory, it’s all good, but in reality it’s dangerous. Toyou.”

“I’m fine.”

“Something this massive, impacting and shielding so many people… it could drain you.”

“I wouldn’t have performed the spell if I wasn’t sure I could handle it.” More or less the truth.

“What about classes? Especially this one, where you’ll have to draw on more of your power?”

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