Chapter 25
Not all wars are declared
—Vikhrostrum Akademiya Doctrine of Elemental Combat
Rozsen and Elliot corner me a few days later, forcing me to tell them exactly what sort of history I have with a certain third-year Vikhrostrum student.
I give them the short version—the one that doesn’t make me want to drown my emotions with my own tide: childhood friends and something more. Summers of lakes and dares and secrets whispered into the dark—until he vanished without a word and left me with questions too painful to ask out loud.
Elliot’s brows climb. “So let me get this straight,” she says slowly, like she’s assembling a crime scene. “He sleeps with you and then he just disappears?”
My cheeks burn. I don’t answer fast enough, and that’s answer enough.
“That bastard,” Rozsen snaps, voice going razor-thin. Her hand clenches around the strap of her bag like she needs something to do with her anger. “Want me to light his textbooks on fire?”
A laugh punches out of me—until I realize she’s not joking. My face sobers. “Rozsen—no.”
She leans in anyway, eyes flinty, protective in a way that makes my chest ache. “I’m serious, Celeste. If he ever hurts you again, I’ll make it my problem.”
Elliot exhales like she’s trying not to grin. “I’ll provide the alibi.”
“You two are insane,” I mutter, but my voice softens. Then I set my jaw. “It wasn’t like that, and it happened a long time ago now. And besides… I’m no longer his to lose anymore.”
But even saying it out loud makes something coil tight and sharp beneath my ribs.
Noa, Ryan, and Finn spend much of their downtime grumbling about the newcomers’ brooding presence in their advanced classes.
The delegates carry Vikhrostrum like a dark banner across Whittaker.
Gavrail most of all. Every glance, every silence, a reminder that I don’t know him anymore. That maybe I never did.
“No sense of humor,” I overhear Finn mutter, leaning back against the bleachers in the Training Room.
He spent the better part of that morning orchestrating a subtle prank on the Vikhrostrum wind-wielder—positioning himself just behind the practice zone and quietly redirecting the backdrafts of his own wind magick into the path of the delegate’s attacks.
Each blast meant for the dummy curled back in midair, launching sand and grit into the poor boy’s face again and again.
It took half an hour before the Vikhrostrum student realized what was happening.
He spun on his heel, shouted something furious in Russian, and stormed off the field with the wind still kicking up behind him.
Noa smirks but doesn’t comment. Neither do I.
There’s a quiet understanding between us now, a solidness that feels earned, not assumed.
It isn’t just routine—though we have one.
Lunches together in the mess hall. Potions on Thursdays.
Sundays in the Training Room. Then nights curled up on his sofa with textbooks between us—or in his bed, the rest of the world shut out.
After that night at the Steps, when we crossed that final barrier, we learned it was never really about control. It was about trust. In myself. In each other.
Since then, the heat between us hasn’t cooled, but it’s changed into something refined.
Rooted. The burn is constant, but it’s also steady—a flame that knows its shape.
I smile inwardly, replaying this morning’s fire-laced shower, his hands on my hips, the tile wall at my back, his breath against my throat.
It feels natural now—easy—but deeper too. Like we’re not just falling; we’re choosing. Every day. I don’t question his hand when it finds mine beneath the table. He doesn’t second-guess my silences.
There’s love here, growing between us like ivy—steadfast, entwined, a little wild. I can’t imagine the shape of my days without him.
Gavrail, on the other hand, remains distant.
We pass occasionally in the halls of the Logistics building, or I catch him across the mess hall. Sometimes he’ll give me a single nod. Other times not even that. And still, each time, my chest tightens like a fist.
The night of the duel he said there were things he wanted to tell me, to explain… but he hasn’t tried to talk to me since that night.
Fuck him.
I hate how aware of him I am. The way the air shifts when he enters a room—cooler, sharper, like my skin recognizes him before my eyes do. The way my ears strain for his voice even when he isn’t speaking to me.
And worse—how many others notice him too.
He’s rarely alone, always flanked by two other Vikhrostrum students: Tsvetan and Teodor.
Tsvetan Dragiev is brooding and silent, tall and broad-shouldered like most of the Vikhrostrum delegation.
But where others might carry themselves with arrogance, Tsvetan moves like a weapon sheathed in discipline.
His eyes are sharp, the kind that miss nothing.
Burn scars cross one cheek and crisscross over his hands, deep and unforgiving, a story untold etched into skin.
He rarely speaks, but when he does, his words are careful, chosen like weapons.
Teo Volkov, on the other hand, is sunlight in human form.
Golden-brown hair, warm brown eyes that sparkle with mischief, as handsome as he is infuriatingly charming.
Everything about him seems effortless: the way he leans in when he talks to you, the way he tosses out compliments like rose petals—beautiful, fleeting, and without pressure.
He flirts shamelessly with me, Rozsen, and half of the school, honestly—but never crosses a line.
It’s playful, not predatory. Disarming, even.
There’s an ease to him, a warmth that draws people in before they even realize they’ve stepped closer.
Rozsen has already fallen for it once or twice—frazzled and hurried mornings caught sneaking out of the Ivy House rooms. Something that clearly annoys Finn, though he’s never said a word to her.
The entire Vikhrostrum delegation is striking in their own way.
Intimidating. Deadly. You can practically feel the power that drips through their veins when you pass them in the halls.
But no one draws more stares than Gavrail—lethal beauty laced with shadow, tall and dark, every line of him cut sharp enough to wound.
And then there’s the element he wields—shadow itself.
Rare. Alluring. Mysterious. Darkness and secrets cling to him like a second skin, drawing you closer in the hopes that you might be able to hear their whispers as they trail after him.
The most powerful shadow-wielder of our generation. Maybe even of the last century.
Students can’t help but drift toward him in corridors and commons, laughter too loud, voices pitched just for his notice.
They pretend not to watch him, but I can feel it—the collective hitch in breath, the way magick hums differently around him, darker, denser.
He never encourages their attention. Barely even looks their way.
But he doesn’t push them off either—and that indifference, that quiet power, only makes him more dangerous. More irritatingly irresistible.
Every time I walk past him, I feel… restless.
I find myself clenching my fists so often when I’m near him that my nails have left half-moons in my palms. After History once, we had to pass each other in a crowded narrow hall, shoulders almost brushing.
I swear I could feel his shadows pressing against me for a moment, like a secret against my skin, his body turning slightly toward mine—but then he walked past, silent, giving nothing away.
The corner of his mouth tipped up just slightly, like some private joke.
I tell myself it’s his indifference that infuriates me—that blank mask, that weaponized quiet—but sometimes, when his eyes flick to mine across campus, it feels like more than indifference. Like a storm pressed against glass. Like I’m standing trial for a crime I don’t remember committing.
On Thursday, outside the mess hall line, I mutter under my breath before I can stop myself. “Do you ever smile, Gavrail? Or is that beneath you now?”
His silver eyes catch mine. Cool, impassive. He stops close enough that the space between us feels charged. He tilts his head, one corner of his mouth catching—then, quietly, in a low voice I almost don’t hear: “Give me a reason to, Zvez.”
An amused smirk tugs at his lips. Shadows gather at his shoulders, alive and waiting, and I realize it’s not only his magick that listens to him—it’s the air, the light, and the part of me that should know better.
He turns away, his childhood nickname for me a slow burn on his tongue, leaving me scorched and unsteady. Zvez, short for Zvezda—meaning Star in Bulgarian.
I watch him walk away, my pulse betraying me—racing for all the wrong reasons, and definitely for the wrong man.