23. Tobin
Tobin
The morning air bites with leftover ward-cold from the lockdown.
SilverGate is recovering, but it isn’t happy.
I can feel the academy’s magic running under the stone, irritable and alert.
Students give us a wide berth as we head towards the east wing, where Advanced Elemental Magic is taught to people with actual control and at least two functioning brain cells.
Professor Straz is already in the room when we arrive, which tracks.
He treats punctuality like a religion and students like sinners.
The lecture chamber is circular, tiered, and built around a sunken practice floor etched with elemental channels in silver and basalt.
Fire pits sit dark at four compass points.
Water runs in thin, controlled streams through grooves in the stone.
Suspended crystal rods hum over the centre. Air and earth anchors.
Asha stops in the doorway and looks down at the floor with open disdain. “This is advanced?”
I set her bag on the back bench. “Try not to insult the room before we start. It’s fragile.”
“It should be.”
Straz lifts his head from the attendance slate. His hair is pitch black, his robes severe, his patience famously non-existent. His gaze lands on me, then shifts to Asha. He doesn’t hide the immediate assessment.
“Mr Tobin,” he says. “You’ve brought a guest.”
“A student,” I correct.
“For now.” His stare pins Asha. “Name.”
“Asha.”
Straz waits.
Asha gives him a slow smile that promises nothing good. “That’s all you’re getting.”
Straz doesn’t join in the laughter, bouncing nervously around the room. “Take a place, Miss Asha, and try not to embarrass yourself.”
“She’d have to care first,” I murmur.
Asha shoots me a look and drops into the seat beside her bag. I sit next to her because I enjoy making my life difficult.
Straz flicks the attendance slate shut. “Today we test precision under constraint. If any of you set the channels ablaze, flood the floor, or crack my anchors, you will spend the next month polishing ward-runes with a toothbrush.”
Someone in the second row mutters, “Again?”
Straz’s eyes cut to him. “Thank you for volunteering a memory, Mr Cale.”
I settle back and study the floor. The room is cleanly built, but the ward-lines under the silver are running a fraction too hot after last night, which most students won’t notice.
Asha does, which tells me her knowledge isn’t suppressed, only her power.
Her attention tracks the channels with irritation, as if the whole setup is wasting her time.
Straz steps down into the practice circle.
“Elemental binding is not spectacle. It is obedience. You are not here to prove how much raw force you can throw at a problem. You are here to demonstrate that your will can shape power without being consumed by it.” Asha snorts beside me.
Straz hears it. “Do you disagree, Miss Asha?”
“I disagree with the word demonstrate. It sounds tedious.”
“Excellent,” he says. “Then perhaps you can demonstrate tedium for us all by succeeding.” He gestures to the benches nearest the floor. “Pairs. One invokes. One stabilises. If your partner fails, that failure belongs to both of you.”
The room breaks into motion. Students shuffle, mutter, posture.
I remain seated because this is clearly going to resolve itself in my favour.
Asha turns to me. “Don’t even fucking think about it.”
“Too late.”
“I’m not doing a partnered exercise with you.”
“You are if you want to avoid turning this room into a crater.”
Her eyes narrow. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“For everyone else, it is.”
Straz’s voice cuts across the chamber. “Mr Tobin. Since you seem settled, you can stop preening and come down here first.”
I stand and move forward.
Asha rises with a look that promises creative violence. “If you embarrass me, I’ll set your books on fire.”
“You’d need flames for that.”
“I’ll improvise.”
We head down the steps into the practice floor. The silver channels hum under my boots. Straz watches us approach with the expression of a male who has either engineered this on purpose or intends to enjoy the fallout.
“Since you are so eager to supervise the education of others,” Straz says to me, “you may invoke first. Miss Asha will stabilise.”
Asha’s eyes go wide. “That seems unwise.”
“Then rise above unwise,” Straz replies. “The invocation is basic compression. Air to spark. Spark to sustained flame. No spillover. No surge.”
I glance at Asha. “Easy.”
“For you.”
“For us,” I correct.
Her blue eyes go sharp. “Don’t include me in your confidence.”
As I brush past her, I whisper. “I’ll do it all; just pretend you know what you’re doing.”
Her eyes narrow, but she truly has no idea who she is dealing with.
Can I do both of these things at the same time with the same magic?
No. But I can do both of these things at the same time with separate magic.
That’s the thing that only two people in this entire academy know about me. Blackridge and… well, me.
I take my place in the inner ring and let my expression settle into bored confidence.
Straz stands just outside the silver line with his hands clasped behind his back. Asha stops opposite me, shoulders tight, fury sitting right under her skin. Good. She works better when she’s pissed off.
“Begin,” Straz says.
I raise one hand.
The room quiets. Most of them expect a show because they always do. They think power has to announce itself to matter. Amateurs.
I draw first from the current under the floor, the one everyone here can touch if they’re trained enough. Air gathers in a narrow spiral over my palm. Controlled. Clean. I compress it until the pressure changes and the crystal rods above us answer with a thin hum.
At the same time, I reach elsewhere.
In.
The second current slides through me in a colder line, hidden under the first. I keep it buried behind my ribs and thread it through the air spiral in increments so small that no one but Straz might catch the discrepancy. He probably won’t. He likes outcomes more than methods.
A silver-white spark snaps into existence over my hand.
“Stabilise,” Straz says to Asha.
She doesn’t move for half a beat, her eyes on mine. I give her a slight nod, and she raises her hand.
Trust me. I try to convey this with my gaze, and I think she gets it because she gives me a slight nod back.
She doesn’t have to do anything but stand there and pretend she did what was required.
Meanwhile, it will all be me; she will save face; the academy will finally stop treating her like a pariah; and I will have done something to benefit myself and her.
Asha extends her hand with all the enthusiasm of someone being asked to shovel her own grave.
The flame over my palm steadies to a narrow, white core.
“Stabilise,” I murmur, but I do it myself, channelling my magic through her body to make it seem like she is the one doing it.
Asha grunts as she feels my magic penetrate her blood. She breathes in deeply, her eyes going wider. This is intimacy on a level that neither one of us has ever experienced before, and we are doing it in front of a lecture hall full of creatures.
The contact slams through me harder than I expect. The residual magic in her new body tries to rise above it, but it can’t. She is as useless as a newborn kitten.
She knows it and hates it.
I’ve got you.
Her expression turns grim, but she nods again as if she heard me.
“Miss Asha, stabilise,” Straz says.
I do it for her, stabilising my own magic with a different thread that appears like it is coming from her.
She breathes out, playing along, grateful and pissed off at the same time as the lecture hall falls into a hushed silence. They are seeing ‘her’ power, and they respect it.
I feel only a little bit smug as I drop both threads and step back.
Straz’s stare moves from the dying flame to Asha, then to me.
He didn’t miss the discrepancy entirely. He just can’t prove it, and he doesn’t enjoy being unable to prove things in his own classroom.
“Mr Tobin, Miss Asha,” he clips out. “Return to your seats.”
I smile at him with my most respectful expression, which usually makes teachers want to throttle me.
“As you wish, Professor.”
Asha turns before I do, stalking up the steps with that violent little stride of hers that says she’s imagining murder in great detail. I follow at a leisurely pace and reclaim my seat beside her.
The second my arse hits the bench, she murmurs, “Do that again and you won’t like the outcome.”
“Aroused, Saga Minima? I know I am.”
“You shoved your magic into me.”
“I had to, or you would’ve failed and been humiliated again.”
She knows I’m right but won’t admit it in a thousand years. Her eyes narrow as she plots a different tactic. “Do that again while I’m riding your cock,” she murmurs, leaning closer.
“So you are aroused,” I whisper back, my lips inches from hers. My cock hardens so fast it’s almost insulting.
She notices and slides her hand up my thigh before she presses it against me.
I keep my face composed because I am a genius with priorities. “Careful,” I murmur. “You’re doing very interesting things in a room full of witnesses.”
Her mouth curves with wicked satisfaction. She squeezes once before letting me go. “Good. Suffer.”
“Already am.”
Straz claps once, sharp enough to crack through the muttering around us. “If the pair of you have finished whatever deeply unnecessary exchange that was, perhaps the rest of the class can continue.”
All gazes turn to us. They are staring at Asha now with a different kind of interest. Respect, curiosity, wariness. That was the point. I don’t enjoy that they are looking at her, but I do enjoy that they are reconsidering their assumptions that she is powerless.
Asha sits back and fixes her attention on the floor with deliberate boredom. I know better. Her body is still reacting to my magic. I can feel the imprint of the contact in my hands, in my soul, in the part of me that wants to do that again in private and with fewer clothes.
The next pair head down and make a mess of a water binding. Straz humiliates them efficiently. By the fourth pair, half the room is too tense to breathe properly, and the other half is pretending not to watch Asha every time Straz calls a name.
Fear is useful. Reputation is better. We need to do this again but with higher stakes.
Asha rests one ankle over the other and stares at the practice floor like she’d rather salt it. “Stop looking pleased with yourself.”
“I’m trying, but it’s one of my strongest expressions. Would you have preferred I let you fail?”
“I would’ve preferred having my own fucking power.”
That wipes some of the smugness off me.
I look back at the floor before my face gives too much away. “Working on it.”
Her attention flicks to me. Sharp. Suspicious. “That sounded sincere.”
“Tragic, I know.”
Straz spends the next twenty minutes dismantling everyone else’s confidence.
He does it with precision. Wrong hand position.
Sloppy compression. Weak stabilising current.
One witch sends a burst of steam into the ceiling, and he makes her explain exactly how she managed to reverse pressure and fracture her own control node.
He makes her do it twice.
I should feel bad for her. I don’t.
Misery is educational.
By the time the final pair finish setting half the west channel smoking, the room is strung tight. Straz lets the silence sit, then gestures once at the class.
“Pathetic overall,” he says. “A few of you may yet avoid becoming public hazards. The rest of you are one lapse in concentration away from setting your future spouses on fire. Mr Tobin, you are the exception to the rule, as always.”
It’s the biggest compliment he will ever give anyone.
I accept it.
“Dismissed. And do try to take on board that this is an advanced magic class next time. You are Upperclassman for pity’s sake.”
A rumble goes around the room, everyone suitably cowed, and they shuffle towards the door.
“I have a free hour,” I say to Asha.
“Me too,” she says, eyes ablaze.
That could mean several things with her.
Given the way she is looking at me, only one of them is likely to happen first.
I rise, collect her bag before she can object, and jerk my head towards the side exit rather than the main doors where the rest of the class is bottlenecking itself into a herd. “This way.”
We slip into the corridor that curves around the back of the elemental wing.
It’s quieter here, lined with tall windows and old stone alcoves that hold cracked busts of witches nobody remembers unless they’re on an exam.
The academy current still runs a little hot under the walls. I can feel it prickling along my skin.
“Where are we going?” she asks.
“Somewhere private.”
“That has never sounded less reassuring.”
I push through a narrow door near the end of the corridor and lead her into one of the old preparation rooms attached to the elemental wing.
Half storage, half overflow study space, entirely ignored by anyone with options.
Shelves line the walls with dead crystals, cracked practice bowls and old warding sand in sealed jars.
The second the door shuts behind us, she gives me a look that finally reveals the heat running under her skin.
“That was intimate,” she murmurs.
“It was.” I move into her space and cup the back of her neck.
She tilts her head back to look at me. “Are you bothered that Hale has already fucked me?”
I smirk. “No, Saga Minima,” I whisper against her lips. “If you want all of us, take all of us.”
“Progressive.”
“Facts.” I crush my lips to hers, and she opens up, fierce and filthy, her hands fisting in my shirt as if she means to drag me deeper by force.
I shove her back against the nearest shelf hard enough to rattle dead crystals in their trays and kiss her until that vicious little sound breaks out of her throat again.
It goes straight to my cock. Her body is still carrying the echo of my magic.
I can feel it in the way she arches into me, in the way her pulse jumps under my palm at her neck.
I deepen the kiss as my other hand drops to her waist, then lower, hauling her flush against me. She’s warm and wound tight. I grind into her once and feel the sharp catch of her breath.
“Yes,” she purrs. “More of this.”