13. ~Kai~ #2
He was wearing that high-collared fancy coat with one of his white tees beneath, both stretching across his broad chest, his thick, muscular legs encased in a pair of brown leather pants this time.
He took a seat right beside Ariana, and flipped his long, black ponytail back as he settled and set up his textbook and interactive panel.
She looked up from typing on her own panel and tensed when she saw him there now sitting right beside her.
I glanced around to make sure nobody, including the professor, was looking, and then my magic sparked briefly under the table as I cast an auditory enhancement spell in their vicinity.
Their voices gravitated toward me in the next moment.
“Did you keep the flower? The Celestial Eclipse Peony?”
I started at the mention of that particular flower.
“Of course I did. It was stunning. I still can’t believe it reacted to your magic, too. That was really special.”
It had done what? Reacted to a dragon? That wasn’t normal. Not in the least.
“And it helped to demonstrate the similarity in our outcast, straddling-two-worlds statuses?”
“And that, too, yeah.”
She tensed up as he moved closer to her, his shoulder brushing her.
“If you’re tensing at me just sitting down next to you, we’re gonna have problems when we actually partner together today. Kai says that our magic will even have to interact.”
“I’m just trying to focus and prepare for class.”
“Yeah? That’s all?”
“What else would it be?”
“Well, as you made it clear in the Cafeteria, you avoiding me wasn’t actually about you being pissed at me for ruining our date by talking about the whole repression thing right after our kiss. It’s because you felt something and it scared you.”
“Excuse me?”
“You realized that I’m durable enough to take you. I felt you let go during the kiss. You’re not used to there not being a barrier to intimacy like that, and a part of you likes the barrier so you don’t get so close to anyone.”
“It was just a kiss. It happened in the moment.”
“As kisses tend to do.”
“It was a fun night, a good time. I got caught up in it.”
“You got caught up in me.”
“Vorzyr—”
“Like you got caught up in Kai, too. But you use that barrier to keep him at bay, to keep your own feelings at bay, too. You see him straining to hold his magic up against your power so you don’t lose control and smite him as you’re…
fornicating. And that’s a good enough reason for you to stand at a distance emotionally, while still getting what you need sexually.
You were starved from a sexual standpoint until he made a move and gave you what you needed, helped you to explore it in a safe way—you know, the degrading dirty talk notwithstanding.
But with me there’s not that fight, not the ferocity, nor that barrier or a strain for me.
I don’t need to cast a spell to hold your power at bay if we went to a carnal place.
With me, it’s easier, smoother. And that’s why you’re pulling away now.
You know you could sink into it, get emotionally attached.
And you worry it would be all roadblocks down once that happened, that you’d let go in every way.
It has already been established, even to somebody new to you in me, that letting go like that terrifies you to your core…
the ramifications of your power unleashing. ”
“You have no idea.”
“But I do. We’re alike in that powerful outcast role. I showed you that.”
“Tell me then. You said you were different. How? What is it about you that scares your father, that really sent you here to be controlled and reshaped into somebody who would conform to their liking?”
I looked out, seeing him tense right up at her pointed question. Well, more like a demand. I guess it was only fair, considering what he was putting to her.
As he went to speak, his was saved by the professor calling the start to the class.
Ariana shook her head at him, then moved her chair away as far as possible to the edge of her desk.
Hmm.
Hopefully the little manipulation that I’d put in place by having them work together during this class would ease some of that tension and have her getting a fucking clue where all of this was concerned.
The goal of our first class in Arcane Combustion & Elemental Synergy was to delve deeply into the intricacies of elemental magic through focusing on fire manipulation and elemental fusion techniques.
It was designed for those who wield raw elemental forces to interact with other magical disciplines.
Nyx stood opposite me with our desk between us and carefully pulled on his Incubus abilities to create a ball of swirling smoke. I waited patiently as he took some time to form it into a mini-cyclone.
“All right?” I asked, as his hands shook while he held it in place between them.
“It’s instinctual to call on my sorcerer side. It’s fighting me.”
“Focus and breathe, like we’ve discussed before. You’re resisting your Incubus side, but I have that spell in place, remember? So your allure won’t leak out as you draw more on the elemental nature of your abilities.”
“Yeah,” he breathed, nodding. “You’re right. Okay… hold on.”
He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and sucked in a couple of deep, soothing breaths.
The swirling baby tornado stabilized, holding there steady between his hands even as it continued to create a mini windstorm all over the desk and over me, my hair and trench coat flapping about because of it.
When his eyes snapped open, they were glowing brightly with his blue fire mixed with flecks of shimmering black.
“Well done,” I said, smiling out at him. “You’re controlling both sides of yourself.”
This was a major deal for him.
And it was all because he’d let go of his worry about infecting people around him.
“Impressive,” Professor Caelum said, coming up to our desk and taking in what Nyx had created.
Nyx beamed out at him. “Thanks.”
“Now, can you replicate the vortex? Make two identical ones?”
Nyx shifted his weight, his eyes blazing, but his hands remaining steady, as he pulled some elemental energy from the swirling blackness and used it to form another right beside it.
“Very good,” Professor Caelum told him. “Hold it steady first, then grow it to match the first creation.”
Nyx took his instructions in, and I smiled as I watched him stabilize the new one first, before then weaving his fingers to grow it into another swirling mass of shimmering black.
“Perfect,” Professor Caelum commended. He eyed me.
“Now, you’ll use your arcane reserves to energize one, while incapacitating the other.
It will take great skill and concentration, as well as some unique problem-solving to achieve both simultaneously without creating any blowback in the process.
We’re using this exercise both to show how different approaches between elemental magic and sorcerer magic can interact, and to learn how to counter one another’s without any collateral damage.
The latter issue is why we’re creating the elemental magic on such a small scale. ”
I nodded, letting him know that I was taking his words in.
As I called my power to both palms and readied myself, an explosion near the front row jolted everyone in the class.
I looked over to see one of the Light Fae student’s ball of moving earth that they’d created now sprayed all over them after the sorcerer they’d been working with had pushed too hard and annihilated it with a magical blast.
The professor rushed over to assist and advise.
I focused on Nyx and then created tiny lightning sparks with the magic live on my left palm, feeding it toward one of Nyx’s cyclones.
“Whoa,” he breathed as we watched my lightning sparks imbue his cyclone and bolster it, making it grow and swirl wilder, its power increasing.
A groan escaped me as I felt the delightful sensation of our power connecting.
“I know, right?” he breathed, eyeing me knowingly.
“Control yourself,” I jested. “The next part isn’t going to feel so great.”
“Tell yourself that first,” he said, gesturing at the semi I was now sporting.
“You know I like my magic connecting with others. I don’t get to experience it often.”
“Well, I told you that I’m looking to push the envelope this last year, so I’m hoping we can remedy that.”
“I’m looking forward to it.” I shifted my weight. “Now, hold on. This is going to be… unpleasant. For the both of us.”
“Hit me,” he said, all confident now.
I loved seeing that from him.
I focused, then with my right palm, I went for the other cyclone, creating shimmering rose-gold fire that licked the underside of it, then filled it up, where it then began swirling against it in the opposite direction, essentially working to unravel it from the inside.
“Damn,” Nyx grunted, trying to hold it steady against my assault.
A wave of lightheadedness beset me as I pushed harder and I stumbled into the desk.
It was only by sheer force of will that I managed to keep my magic flowing and steady.
“This is the spell you’re working for me. It is draining you,” Nyx worried.
“I’m fine. I’ve got it,” I told him.
Although, that assurance was cut into quite a bit when the impact of it had my left palm with the sparks snuffing out.
Nyx swung his head around the classroom, making sure that the professor hadn’t seen.
He hadn’t, he was busy assisting the other students, fortunately.
In the next second, he snuffed out both his cyclones, then came to me and eased me onto my stool, where I pulled my other magic back and sucked in a deep breath.
“Just take a beat while he’s distracted. Please, Kai.”
“Fine,” I acquiesced. “But I’m not stopping the spell.”
“I know better than to even suggest that at this point.” He sat down with me, stroking my hair with one hand, while he played with his elemental magic with the other, this time creating a small ball of water.