Chapter 8 #3
Those days in our forest were the last time I ever willingly touched my magick. Between his and my father’s warnings, I locked it away once more, caged so carefully I almost forgot how it felt as it pressed against the bars.
Sometimes it stirred. A flicker, a breath against the cage. I always forced it still.
Until the day the cage broke.
That day… The day I found my father’s body in the lake.
Just a warning of blue against the churning waters as the rain swirled around us, chaotic and charged.
I don’t even know what I did. All I know is my mother found us together at the shoreline, me sobbing into his chest as I held him, water spooled out around us in a curved wave.
Hovering above us, dripping soft tears from its edges like it was crying too.
* * *
Noa and I talk all through the night.
I tell him about my family. I tell him about Gavrail—the tangled history woven between us. I tell him about how I grew up burying my magick beneath layers of silence because of my father and Gavrail’s fear, how hiding it became second nature.
He listens—really listens. He doesn’t try to fix it, just pulls me closer, kisses the top of my head, and threads his fingers gently through my hair.
Aside from Gavrail, I have never told another living soul some of the things I now lay bare to Noa. It feels like stepping into sunlight after years underground—freeing, and yet terrifying in its exposure.
But even in that moment of raw honesty, I keep some pieces to myself.
I don’t tell him about shadowmire or my ring. I don’t tell him how far Gavrail pushed me—or how far I went willingly. I tell him I’m Magick, yes… but not what I am capable of. Not the things we did. Not the things I became.
Some secrets still feel tangled in shadows too deep to reach. Some of them don’t feel like my secrets to share. Some of them I still don’t understand myself.
But still, I feel lighter than I have in a long time.
And when the first light of sunrise starts to peek over the garden wall, casting the room in soft pink hues, he kisses me. Slowly. Unhurried. And with quiet intention. My hands slide into his hair, my sapphire ring shimmering like mist caught in the light, as he pulls me close.
I can feel every hard line of him through his T-shirt. But he doesn’t go further than the kiss. “Sleep, Celeste.” A gentle command.
I don’t want to, not while I can feel his heat seeping into me through his clothes, but he sees the yawn I try to stifle.
I must fall asleep, because the next thing I remember is waking up, wrapped in his sheets and his arms. He is beautiful like this, especially in sleep—dark lashes soft against perfect cheekbones, his lips curving with the hint of a smile.
Carefully, I slip out from under his arms, wanting to get back to the Blue Dahlia to change and get ready for the day before the rest of the campus wakes up. I get dressed quietly, pressing a kiss to his sleeping lips, and slip out the door.
As I pass through the common room, I hear the door to the right open—and see Rozsen being swept into a kiss by Finn. She laughs and pushes him back into his room, shutting the door in his face. When she turns and catches my eye, we both burst out laughing.
“That was one hell of a night,” she says with a crooked smile, looping her arm through mine before dragging us out the front door. Walk of shame be damned.
* * *
I spend the weekend practically living in Noa’s dorm room. His roommates, Ryan and Finn, acknowledge me with wry smiles and overly polite hellos—equal parts amused and resigned.
Ryan Halloway is all quiet intensity: broad-shouldered, steady-eyed, with a voice that rarely rises above a murmur. Earth magick suits him; he doesn’t just wield it—he is it. Grounded. Unmoving. Honest to a fault.
Finn Rourke, by contrast, is all free-fall and swagger—lithe, sharp-eyed, and always halfway to a grin that makes you wonder what he’s just done or is about to do.
There is wind in him, even without his magick.
Where Ryan is the rock, Finn is the whirlwind circling it—loud, loyal, and never afraid to stir the air.
Noa is careful with me. Too careful. After what happened in the Cavern—after I nearly drowned us both in my own magick—he’s determined to make sure I can control it before we take things further.
So he kisses me. Gods, does he kiss me. Long, heated presses of his mouth that leave me dizzy, touches that linger just long enough to set me shaking—but his magick is always coiled close, ready to smother mine if it flares. His control is iron. Mine is paper-thin.
I slip constantly. Leaning in too far. Letting a kiss stretch into hunger, into teeth, into something he cuts off with a groan and a hand braced against my back as my magick flares uncontrolled around us both.
It’s excruciating—having this much of him, feeling the desire and the promise, but never all of him.
One night, I test him on purpose. He steps out of the shower, steam curling around the room.
I tell him to leave the water on for me as I step into the heat of him, close enough to touch.
I make a show of undressing, dragging the straps of my top slowly down my arms, letting the fabric pool across my chest and stomach, thumbs hooking on the waistband of my pants as I slide them slowly down my legs.
His eyes track every motion, the turquoise in them glowing gold at the edges.
Once I’m completely naked, I lean up on my toes to kiss him, purposefully brushing against the rigid shape of him beneath his towel.
“Fuck, Celeste.” His laugh comes out strangled, a grin tugging at his mouth even as his fists clench at his sides. “You are going to be the death of me.”
The worst part? I want to be. As long as it means he’s finally mine.
He’s started teaching me how to ground myself.
To keep the water from answering my emotions instead of my will.
But it’s painstaking work. Every kiss he draws from me makes my magick stir in ways I’m not ready for—sinks flooding, water pooling, rain slicking down from nowhere.
I think about the phrase carved into the Whittaker archway—the one that warns about not heeding the elements’ call, “for the longer it is caged, the wilder it returns.” Because that’s what it feels like—a wild thing prowling beneath my skin, ready to lash out at the smallest crack in control.
After years of being locked away, it’s no longer content to sit silent and secret.
One exercise involves a candle set in the center of a deep bowl.
Noa shows me how to use my magick to pour water into the bowl slowly, carefully, until it laps high without drowning the flame.
But the higher it rises, the faster my heartbeat climbs, my anxiety spiking, the current inside me surging, nervous and wild.
We practice in his bedroom, the bowl on his desk. The water climbs higher and higher. I feel the exact breath where want becomes will—
And miss it.
The flame sputters with a hiss.
Shit.
“Steady,” Noa murmurs, his hand firm over mine as the water quivers, his gold heat caging my tide. “Don’t try to fight it, Cel. Guide it.”
Smoke curls sharp against my face as the fire goes out, and my chest seizes. Because in my head, it isn’t just a candle I’ve drowned—it’s him, smothered by my lack of control.
Right now, I can barely fill the bowl halfway on my own before the flame dies by an errant splash. But I keep practicing. Centering myself. Determined to prove to him that I can do this—even when the temptation of him makes me want to lose control entirely.
To distract me from my failures, Noa takes me to some of his favorite spots around campus: a picnic in a secluded bay by the lake, a hike through the winding trails of the Mirewyn Mountains, a secret party in the lantern-lit clearing of Ashfen Grove.
It feels like our own little world—removed, suspended in time.
But by Sunday night the spell breaks and reality creeps in. I slip back to my dorm with Noa’s taste still on my mouth and a knot in my stomach—because tomorrow, Whittaker will ask me to prove I belong.