Chapter 43 Drecken
drecken
. . .
Quarter two ended like an abrupt arcane ritual. The syllabus insisted that three months had passed. My notebook insisted it was four. What was even odder to me was that I’d been teaching here for six months now.
I made a final notation in the margin of my notebook about the tincture I was failing to create.
Hypothesis: “Butterflies” (thoracic flutter; coronary arousal) is a reproducible euphoric pattern caused by proximity + intention + perceived safety → can be captured in a side effect.
Beside it, I’d written a less tidy line:
Unrelated: for the first time in my life, I’ve experienced envy. Unhelpful emotion.
Progress demanded a live trial, and if I was correct, I could push intent into the tincture to recreate the way Rune Bloodwyne made me feel.
I fell back into a portal and teleported to collect what was becoming my favorite variable.
Teleporting into Rune’s room without knocking had been a genius plan since I was efficient, but I immediately discovered a flaw.
She was asleep. Naked. Between Zuko and Slater.
Morning light slid down the line of her back, caressing the swell of her ass, and that image seared into my brain like a long equation I didn’t know how to solve.
There was a sharp, unfamiliar compression in my chest.
I reached through another portal and grabbed my notebook. Quickly I jotted down:
Note: heart rate increased, limbs…numb. The feeling is not pleasant. It is sharp. Painful. New.
Zuko peeked under his forearm at me and grinned without moving. “Hey, old man,” he said with a sleepy voice.
“I’m not old, asshole,” Slater mumbled from the other side, bending down and gripping Rune’s ass cheek and pulling her up over his dick, impaling her on it.
She moaned loudly, waking up and instinctively rocking back and forth on it. “Fuck, Slater…”
The discomfort had turned to brutal pain in my chest. I rubbed at it and wrote that down, too.
“Good morning,” I said roughly. I couldn’t avert my eyes even though I wanted to.
She…swallowed his dick with every movement.
She let out a surprised gasp, jumping off Slater and hitting the wall with her back. Her naked breasts bounced as she hit, and I gulped.
Magic popped and pulsed off me erratically.
“Drecken! How long have you been there?” She hurried out of bed and threw on her suit. Zuko chuckled and zipped it up for her.
“Just before Slater put you on his…appendage.” I glowered at the demon, but he just smiled back. “I need you.”
Zuko laughed into the pillow. “Join the club.”
“No kidding.” Slater pouted, gesturing to his erection that was glistening with a wetness that filled the room with an aromatic scent of midnight orchid.
“This early?” she asked, throwing her hair up into a messy bun.
“I progressed a tincture I’ve been working on,” I explained, trying to remember how to breathe and push the thoughts of Rune naked and moving on top of another man.
A man, I corrected my thought.
I was not flustered.
“Oh? Okay, let’s go, then.” She nodded.
“Fantastic.” I crossed the room, caught Rune by the wrist, and pulled her against me as I stepped us through the air.
The room folded.
My classroom awaited us. My desk held a neon green vial catching its own light.
“I have been…confused,” I admitted to her. “Around you I register something akin to butterflies and recently envy.” I shuddered. “Those feelings are not within my usual range of tolerable inputs. But the butterflies, those are good. I would like to bottle them.”
“Um,” she murmured gently. “Drecken.”
“I just need you to take a sip. It’s a micro-dose. It should induce benign thoracic flutter without nausea.” I handed her the vial, and she took it.
She brought it to her swollen lips and sipped.
Her face twisted in disgust, and she handed it back to me. “Okay. Ew. Gross.” She pressed a hand to her sternum and winced. “That…hurts. Ow. That has to be what humans call heartburn.”
I stood still.
I still have it wrong.
“Noted,” I said in a flat voice. “Butterfly 893 fails to map the feeling. It maps the ache.”
“That wasn’t an ache. It was a burn,” she corrected me, and her expression softened. She stepped into my space slowly. “Drecken,” she said, softer. “Do you…like me?”
My breath stalled.
A hundred thoughts battered my mind.
“I’ve never liked anyone,” I admitted. I wasn’t ashamed of it; it was simply true.
“There’s a first for everything,” she told me, tilting her head. “Do you want to test something with me?”
A sigh of relief escaped me.
Experiments were my forte. I nodded. “What do you have in mind?”
“This.” She lifted both hands, cupped my face with a gentle touch.
My heart pounded so hard against my rib cage I thought I might’ve cracked a rib.
Her lips curved into a teasing smile as her hands slid over my cheeks and around my neck, and she pulled me into a hug.
The feeling detonated under my sternum.
It didn’t burn. It ached.
“Yes,” I said, startled laughter in my tone as I carefully let my arms wrap around her. She was so warm. “That’s the feeling I’m chasing.”
She leaned back, but not enough to where my arms fell off her, and I couldn’t bring myself to pull back.
Then, she leaned in and kissed me.
It was not experimental. It went way past theoretical. It was…something different. Something I couldn’t put a name on.
My brain paused.
I was completely taken aback for precisely one heartbeat before instinct took over. I kissed her back because my soul understood something my research had only ever described.
Her lips were petal soft, and it made my annoyingly common erection strain against my pants.
She moved back, her golden eyes twinkling with shock and desire. “How do you feel?”
“That’s the feeling,” I said with reverence. “Butterflies. My heart’s pounding. Happiness is too simple of a term.”
“Drecken,” she murmured, smiling like she knew something I didn’t, “that means you have feelings for me.”
“Feelings?” I repeated, and the word ricocheted off my skull. “I’ve…never had feelings before.”
“Sure you have,” she giggled. “Just maybe not these kinds of feelings.” She tapped the spot over my sternum, and my body buzzed at her touch. “You can’t put this in a bottle.”
My mouth opened to argue, but I closed it. I’d never found a feeling I couldn’t replicate, but this kind of feeling wasn’t just new. It was unreliable. The only thing that could cause that feeling in me was Rune.
“…Maybe not,” I conceded. “But I can try.”
“I’d be happy to help you try,” she told me.
The door swung open as Rune’s squad arrived for their final.
I stepped back, my hands stuffed into my lab coat.
Slater had his chaos manifestation wrapped around his neck as he winked at me; Zuko smirked at me with knowing eyes; Koa raised a brow at me; Dimitri frowned as he noticed Rune in front of me; the rest of the class was oblivious.
“Final,” I snapped as Rune moved from me and found her desk with the rest of her squadmates. “Essence Craft capstone. You need to weave a ward under hostile interference. Begin.”
I was in an objectively good mood. It did not lower my standards; it did, perhaps, raise my patience, though.
The next hour, squad one passed their finals.
I teleported back to the comfort of my lab, wondering why Rune Bloodwyne seemed to have such a magnetizing effect on me and why I kept replaying the memory of her kissing me.