Chapter 14 Winter #4
A part of me, a big part of me, could only see one end to this situation with him, to this threat. And let’s just say that saying goodbye did actually factor in.
So me being so… needy and channeling it into sex and this barely controllable horniness… I guess it was me trying to hold onto what I had while I could still have it. To drown myself in my loves so… so I had something amazing to hold onto when… when it was taken away from me.
When I had to allow it to be taken away from me.
To protect them and my family.
To protect every fucking one.
So… there was a lot going on.
And I suppose it couldn’t all be slotted into a single box the way I wished it could be.
I gritted my teeth.
I’d thought at least telling Zayn I didn’t need to feed this morning would help to calm any concerns about that.
And now I could because of what Ruxnoth had “gifted me”—providing me the warmth for much longer.
Gifted… what a load of heavy-handed manipulation that framing was. But instead it had set off alarm bells.
I needed to keep away from feeding completely, then, so it reinforced that the escalating need had leveled off, then dissipated, that it had only been a temporary thing.
So long as what Ruxnoth had done lasted long enough and I could keep it up without experiencing side effects that would be noticed, it would also take pressure off Vax’s mission to find a solution for me.
I couldn’t tell him I now had the means to work on it.
It would expose him to Ruxnoth. And if Vax touched that living equation, Ruxnoth could find out with how close the fucker was monitoring me.
Then he’d hurt Vax—or worse. He’d already made threats as it was to harm the people I loved if I didn’t comply, didn’t keep contact, didn’t keep quiet, didn’t obey.
Ruxnoth wouldn’t be alerted to me tampering with the living equation myself because I could keep up the mask by hiding behind the Spiral Thorn connection he’d made to me. It wouldn’t be discernible from that.
I just needed time to develop the solution. Not just to the warming sensation he’d gotten me almost addicted to. Now I had his magic and I’d trapped the essence of the connection he had to me, there was a lot I could determine. There was vulnerability to be found in it—a vulnerability on his end.
Just… doing all this and not alerting anyone when I was being watched so closely in so many ways by so many people… it wasn’t exactly easy.
Thankfully, my attention was pulled from my heavy thoughts when I watched how Zayn was operating.
Huh.
He was still staring, but his magic wasn’t being impacted in the least, working instinctively, much like peripheral vision could at times.
His fuchsia blasts were hitting the magical plates dead-center even as they shifted at irregular intervals without a predictive pattern.
He’d been practicing it on and off since he’d discovered he could do this in our Synergy class and Vax had explained how incredible a feat it actually was.
Bursts of yellow sparks hitting the ceiling of the Combat Conclave space had me turning to see our professor for this Apex Magic Theory and Practical Application class, making controlled magical fireworks to draw everyone’s attention from the activity we’d all been working on for the last twenty minutes.
That activity had involved us lining up in two rows spanning the length of the mammoth space with magical apparatus between us, which the professor had set up beforehand.
A wide-spanning platform separated the two rows of us, one facing the other, and consisted of a floating array of shifting hexagonal metal-like panels.
They hovered in mid-air, rotating and sliding across invisible paths like gears in motion.
Vector Panels were what they’d been termed.
And since the start of class we’d all been striking them using controlled blasts and pulses of our magic, adjusting for the movement, focusing on precision and adequate tactile output.
If you hit too hard, the contact wouldn’t be registered, the same with hitting too softly.
I’d been using my frost, because with my mind awhirl, I’d needed to compensate.
There was an imperceptible trick I could do where, once my frost blast was in range, it would calibrate to the movement and pressure emanating from the magical apparatus—it could essentially read it.
Well, with a little spellwork on my end that I’d developed on the fly that fused my Necromancy with it imperceptibly.
Yes, I was essentially cheating.
For good reason, though.
Obviously, given how I was about much, it was distasteful to me.
But so was a lot of what had happened recently—and what I still needed to do.
I needed to… acclimate to that.
We all called our magic back and dropped our hands, focusing on Professor Rupert Wiseman, an experienced sorcerer, as he walked up and down the space, speaking.
His shaved head caught the reflection of the sparkling yellow fireworks overhead, before they began to dissipate now he had everyone’s attention.
He rubbed at his goatee, and his moss-green turtleneck pulled taut across his broad torso as he walked with a confident glide, navy jeans tucked into a pair of scuffed boots that clapped on the stone floor.
“Now we move to fusion coordination,” he spoke.
“Tactical synchronization, modulation and aligning your magic with others under some light pressure generated by the apparatus dictating your timing and positioning. This will mirror the type of controlled and precise coordination required in real-world combat scenarios.” He smiled.
“While having the benefit of a safe environment in which to learn, practice, and evolve as needed.”
In the next moment, he flicked his magic at the apparatus, and the panels shifted into a formation that enabled them to be shared by two students now.
“Assemble into pairs,” he instructed.
A musical whistle reached me through the noise that erupted as everyone began finding a partner, forty-odd students pairing off quickly.
I swung my head to see the whistle had been directed at me, and Zayn was signaling me.
“With me, Win?” he called over across the apparatus and the aggravating noise all around interfering with my thoughts.
“We agreed at breakfast that we’d work together. Didn’t need the whistle. I’m not a dog.”
“Are you my puppy, though?” he asked, grinning.
Little—
“Nah. I’m fucking with you. I’m all for being yours, though. If you want.” He held up his hand. “Not in that… kink sense. Not my thing. Not our thing, right?”
I gave a nod. “Right. Besides, you already are my puppy, and you know it. You’re all of ours, fireball.”
The fact he was uttering any of this, that we could have this discussion in a room full of people, was a huge thing for him. He was no longer ashamed of his sexually submissive nature, of any of his needs. He was all in. And I loved this for him. I loved it all.
“Looks like my girl borrowed yours,” I heard River say.
Zayn and I looked to see him talking to Vax and partnering up with him. Vax was two students down from me on my side of the room.
Evira was a few down on Zayn’s side with Octana now with her, the two of them partnered.
I had to blink as Octana’s pink and silver shimmering pant suit caught in the light of the room in a blindingly-bright way.
As if her mermaid hair didn’t already do a great deal of that.
I smiled. Thanks to Evira’s efforts with Exalt, it wasn’t just outward, performative boldness for Octana.
She was coming out of her shell. She and River had even made their relationship known through the halls of the Academy now.
Zayn and I exchanged a look as we took in Vaxan contending with River’s so-called arrogance in certain situations.
“Oof, he’s gonna get a lesson there,” Zayn said. “Vax won’t stand for that bullshit.”
No, he certainly wouldn’t. Although, River Leroux might not technically be arrogant.
That was the misunderstanding some people had about my dad too.
River was well learned and just liked to put that out there—unlike me.
Well, him being a sorcerer prodigy wasn’t a threat to the entire supernatural world like with my situation.
Zayn and I jolted as we watched River go in too hard with a mammoth blast of his taupe power hitting the plate, looking on the verge of shattering it.
Vaxan reacted swiftly, though, and smothered it with his petrification, the precision incredible as he turned just enough of River’s power to chalk that fell off in pieces, then left the rest remaining so that their joined power against the plate balanced perfectly.
“Nice,” River breathed.
Vax smiled, his tone firm yet understanding as he rumbled at River, “You don’t need to impress me with displays of noteworthy power.
Your feats are already well known to me.
And to be clear, those that impress me have nothing to do with magical might.
It’s your skill, your creative thinking.
Moreover, you joining Exalt speaks a great deal to your true character.
” He waved his free hand at him. “Not the showy persona you give to most.”
River flicked his black wavy hair off the collar of his dress shirt—this one a bold tangerine color. “Apologies, it’s something of a reflex.”
“As it often is for somebody with a difficult legacy to live up to. Your mother casts a long shadow as modernist Maven Coven Head.” Vax winked. “Something I am rather familiar with myself.”
Zayn and I exchanged a look. Vax rarely spoke about his parents. This was… interesting.
“Win,” Zayn spoke.
I looked to see him gesturing at Professor Wiseman. He had his eye on us because we hadn’t started the exercise yet.
I shot a quick glance over at Evira who was having fun using her glacial magic alongside Octana’s magenta blasts, and then I took position with Zayn to get down to the task at hand.