Chapter 21
To command power is not enough. One must know when to unleash it and when to hold it in reserve. When the strike comes, it must be final.
—Vikhrostrum Akademiya Doctrine of Elemental Combat
December arrives, bringing most of the fourth-years back to campus. Everyone except Noa and Finn.
“Special assignment,” Ryan mutters one morning behind me, equal parts envy and awe curling through his voice.
Illogical bitterness fills me for a moment, because of course the Service would want to keep Noa and Finn close—to show them exactly what they can expect come graduation. Whittaker’s top two students already being recruited, no doubt.
December also brings something else—news that the prestigious European school of magick, Vikhrostrum Akademiya, is sending a delegation of its elite students to spend the semester at Whittaker.
But more thrilling than their arrival is the announcement that a series of elemental duels will take place between their finest and ours throughout the term.
Headmaster Thorne calls it “an effort to improve foreign relations”—but to the students, it sounds like a challenge.
The first real snow comes the week the delegation is due—light at first, a powdering over roofs and bare branches, then thicker, settling like icing into old grooves in the stone walkways.
I tell myself I don’t care.
I tell myself that none of this has anything to do with me.
And that is almost believable—until the faculty unveils a ranking board in the center of the quad, names and numbers flickering constantly as it updates in real time.
And the entire campus starts to hum.
Students crowd it at all hours—I can’t cross the quad without getting trapped in the press of bodies, watching names rise and fall like empires of the past. The Training Room stays lit well past midnight. Classes sharpen. Tempers shorten.
Because now, it’s not just about being the best.
It’s about making the list.
Top five. That’s all that matters.
Each student is ranked within their element first—fire against fire, water against water, air against air. Then those rankings collapse into a single class standing.
One list.
The list.
The one that decides who represents Whittaker.
When Vikhrostrum arrives, their first will face ours, second against second, third against third. No substitutions. No second chances. If you’re not at the top, you’re a spectator and nothing more.
First-years are barred from competing, much to Ian, Nate, and Sawyer’s deep and ongoing outrage.
They spend the week complaining about it at full volume—and then promptly start an unregulated war of their own, ambushing each other from behind corners with bursts of air and water or badly controlled flames, in what they insist is “training” for next year.
Occasionally, Rozsen and Elliot join them. Amelia, Peter, and I learn to recognize the manic, mischievous glints in their eyes and wisely vacate the areas they are in, not wanting to chance losing an eyebrow or being doused in freezing water.
Noa, of course, takes first in fire and overall.
Finn claims air, ranking second.
Neither announcement comes as a surprise to anyone.
A water-wielder named Luana slides into third place. A second-year, Jin Feng, shocks everyone by having already mastered metal, and lands just behind her. And earth, held by a fourth-year who also happens to be Amelia’s mentor, rounds out the top five.
Their names are already being whispered like they’ve won something. Like they’re already legends.
The day the delegates are meant to arrive, Whittaker doesn’t feel like a school anymore—it feels like a throat held tight before a scream. Even the sky looks different. Cloudless and sharp, the sort of blue that turns towers and gutter lines into clean, angular cuts against the world.
I’m in the mess hall, organizing my Elemental Theory notes—color-coded, neat, obsessive. Rewriting last week’s lecture in my own words, as if rephrasing can be a banner of productivity.
Work. Focus. Anything that isn’t—
The room shifts.
Heat passes behind my eyes like a match struck in the dark.
I don’t turn.
I don’t have to.
I know without looking that Noa is here.
The air changes around him—subtle, like the room has suddenly remembered fire exists. A few people glance up automatically. Someone clears their throat. Conversation stutters for half a beat, then surges again, louder, pretending normalcy.
My stomach tightens anyway.
“Finn!” Rozsen jumps up, rushing over. “We didn’t know when you two were coming back—or if you’d be coming back at all.” She punches his arm.
“Ow, and hi. We got back late last night,” Finn says, rubbing the spot where she hit him.
I can feel eyes on me, heat flicking over my skin.
I don’t look up, forcing my focus to stay on my notes, rewriting the same stupid sentence a second time, but my traitorous hand trembles slightly.
Footsteps echo on the polished floor, heading toward me—
“Officer Gallegher.” Headmaster Thorne’s voice booms through the hall. The entire room looks up as he enters.
“Sir?”
“You’re needed in the Training Room.” No explanation.
I glance at Noa from under my lashes as he speaks quietly with the headmaster. It’s a mistake.
He looks formidable. Untouchable. Beautiful.
He glances back at me one last time before the two of them exit the mess hall together.
My pulse is ricocheting off the walls like it doesn’t understand what rhythm is. I swallow the lump that’s gathered in my throat.
He’s back.
I’m simultaneously relieved and terrified.
By last period, none of the student body is even attempting to pay attention. Elemental Theory is our last class of the day. Professor Barrows is almost through his lecture on dueling when a commotion outside forces him to stop mid-sentence.
“Vikhrostrum—just came through the northern gate!” someone blurts from the hallway.
Everyone lifts their heads in unison. Barrows pauses, chalk frozen in midair. His eyes widen, as though he already knows what’s about to happen.
For half a second, the entire classroom holds its breath.
Then the room detonates.
Benches scrape. Pens clatter. Someone actually whoops like they’re at a stadium. Ian, two rows over, leans across his desk, eyes bright and feral. A few students surge to the windows, craning for a glimpse.
“Noa’s dueling today,” Ian whispers, like he’s savoring it.
So that’s what Thorne wanted with him earlier. I sink lower in my seat, my stomach drawing into a tight knot.
“Can’t believe they’re throwing one of them in the pit with the fire king the same day they arrive.” Ian’s excitement is palpable.
Rozsen’s grin is all teeth. “That’s not a welcome. That’s a threat.”
Barrows tries to regain control of the room, but it’s almost impossible. Nobody sits properly. Students hover. They vibrate. Barrows takes one look at our faces—wild, buzzing—and dismisses us five minutes early.
As everyone packs up their bags, the whispers start—fast and hungry.
“Don’t they all get recruited straight into Krovya after graduation?”
“I heard they only duel to the death.”
“Shut up—who do you think will win today?”
“Do you think Noa will—”
The name pricks hot under my skin.
I lower my gaze to my notebook, but the words blur. I can’t see the pages anymore. I can only see stone and blood and the Caldera’s ancient ring waiting like an open mouth.
Outside the classroom, Whittaker becomes a current.
Students flood the corridors in a roar of footsteps. Coats whip. Boots skid on stone. Someone casts a tiny spiral of wind down the hallway just to watch papers lift like startled birds.
I’m swept along past the windows where the grounds stretch under the light dusting of snow.
Out on the lawn, a few of the visitors move between buildings under escort—dark uniforms, different crests, different postures.
Even from a distance they look… sharper.
Like the air around them is trained to be obedient.
A cluster of students press against the glass, faces smeared into reflections.
“Is that them?” someone breathes.
“I saw them come through the gate. Gods, they’re—”
Her friend squeezes her arm to quiet her as a professor walks past.
But the girl is grinning too hard to stop. “—beautiful.”
“Well,” her friend hisses, gleeful, “then I’ll be happy to help improve foreign relations in any way I can.”
Another girl makes a strangled noise. “Shhh. Someone will hear you.”
“Let them,” the first girl says, practically giddy. “Let them know Whittaker’s been starving all term and they just walked in looking like the main course.”
A pair of visiting students pass directly beneath the window. On their shoulders: a black shield stamped with a silver three-peaked mountain—the Vikhrostrum crest. Uncomfortably close to Krovya’s in shape, even if the details differ.
Their gazes rake the campus walkways with the casual assessment of predators.
The girl beside me goes quiet. Her smile falters.
And that’s when I feel it—under everything, beneath the excitement and the hunger and the spectacle: rivalry.
Not friendly. Not playful.
Real.
Whittaker likes to pretend we are civilized. But the Caldera is older than our rules, and every student here knows it exists for one reason: to remind us what we are when the leash comes off.
As the rest of the student body bounds off toward the Caldera, I turn the other way—toward the second floor of the Logistics building.
Professor Ching is waiting in the doorway, sleeves rolled up, expression tight with purpose. His hair is slightly wild, the way it always is when he’s been thinking too hard. I promised that I’d help with a particularly tricky compound today.
Inside, the air is thick with the scents of rosemary, metal, and something sharp like crushed stone. Across the benches, reagents sit arranged like offerings.