“Let’s go work in our common room instead,” Calypso suggested a while later, when the workroom had filled with more people and gotten noisy.

  “It’s way too loud in here today…”

  “Well, your moves on me in the dining hall this morning caused quite a stir,” I smirked, helping put away the scrolls and grabbing a couple of textbooks we needed.

  “So it’s not surprising. Everyone’s buzzing about how Brandt Junior announced our relationship. They’ll be gossiping for at least another week.”

  “Quite a stir, you say… A stir is good. I love causing a stir,” Calypso nodded seriously as we made our way between rows of long tables toward the exit.

  He suddenly pulled me flush against him by the waist and without warning covered my lips with his, immediately drawing me into a decidedly adult kiss. Standing there with textbooks in my hands, I gripped the books until my knuckles turned white, frozen in place, afraid to even move. My heart was pounding wildly, threatening to leap out of my chest… What is he doing?!

  When Calypso pulled back from me, I didn’t dare look around, feeling the curious gazes of several dozen pairs of eyes on my back.

  “What are you doing?” I whispered, feeling my cheeks start to burn.

  “Everyone’s watching us!”

  “Perfect. Let them watch. That way all those Keses and other idiots won’t be eyeing you up, knowing I could rip their heads off for it,” Calypso said with a charming smile, running his fingers through my hair.

  “So you are jealous after all,” I broke into a wide, sly grin.

  “That’s… different,” Calypso answered evasively, batting his eyes innocently.

  “Mm-hmm, nice dodge. Don’t you think that…”

  “Don’t you think you sometimes think and talk too much?” Calypso cut me off.

  He pulled me in for another kiss, not letting my embarrassed self slip away. But Calypso kissed so spectacularly that I couldn’t help but relax in his arms, all thoughts flying out of my head…

  And I jumped when I heard my father’s voice from the direction of the exit:

  “Hey, you two! Can’t you make out somewhere other than the workroom?”

  I tried to pull away from Calypso, but he wouldn’t let me jerk away from him, holding me firmly by the waist, keeping me pressed against him.

  I glanced fearfully at my father, who had just walked into the room and frozen in the doorway with a mug of hot tea in his hands, glaring at Calypso and me.

  “I don’t recall the Armarillis Charter saying anything about banning kisses in the academy halls and corridors outside of class hours,” Calypso said, not looking at Zael but cheerfully winking at me and tucking a loose strand of hair behind my ear.

  “Is that so? I’ll have to ask Ilforte to revise the Charter, it hasn’t been updated in a while,” Zael said, his voice dripping with bile, glaring at Calypso.

  “I wouldn’t recommend changing a perfectly functioning Charter and introducing amendments that restrict adepts’ personal lives, as it would have a detrimental effect on their emotional wellbeing and their attitude toward you in particular. But if Your Firstness thinks otherwise…”

  “Cal, have some conscience, would you?”

  “Why have conscience when there’s a lovely young lady right here?” Calypso responded with an impassive expression, steering me past Zael toward the exit.

  “You of all people should know that’s far more satisfying and productive…”

  Zael’s tea clearly went down the wrong pipe. He started coughing, choking badly, and stared at the laughing Calypso with a look that was pure profanity. Yes, pure profanity. I don’t know how, but he managed to look at Calypso in a way that made me feel like he’d been thoroughly cussed out. Silently. That’s probably some off-the-charts level of magic, heh.

  “Hey… How many lives do you have?” I asked quietly when we’d gotten away from the workroom.

  “Because I’m starting to suspect you’ve got about ten in reserve. Judging by how recklessly you deal with my father…”

  “All the lives in the world wouldn’t be enough to savor you,” Calypso said in a lilting voice with a dreamy smile.

  I flushed and couldn’t find anything to say to that.

  ***

  [Calypso]

  Lori had gone to bed long ago, falling asleep in my arms with her nose sweetly nuzzled into my neck. It was such a tender and intimate gesture… I loved it when she did that.

  I gazed at her for a while, then headed to my study. Tonight I planned to get a lot of work done, since my conversation with Agatha had sparked several ideas about integrating shadow magic into various spells, and I was itching to get started.

  So as usual, I poured myself a two-liter pot of invigorating ginger tea, spread my notes out on the long table, and dove headfirst into work. I’d sit in one spot writing formulas nonstop, then jump up and start pacing back and forth across the long study, mulling over information. All while munching on dark chocolate candies with salted nougat and popping caramel, and under my boots, broken flasks and beakers crunched — things I’d thrown off the desk during various fits, but hadn’t gotten around to cleaning up yet.

  Good thing my father never came into my study and didn’t see this mess, or I’d have to listen to an hour-long lecture on the necessity of maintaining cleanliness.

  Father is a stickler for order and a perfectionist when it comes to a clean workspace; sometimes I thought he arranged his papers and pencils by ruler on his desk, though I’d never actually caught him doing it. Can’t say the same about me and my creative disaster zone. I couldn’t even bring myself to call this chaos by the gentler term ‘mess.’

  My brain was boiling from complex calculations and continuous analysis; I was so absorbed in my work that I didn’t notice when at some point the door quietly creaked open and Eric walked in. I only jumped in surprise when I heard his smooth voice:

  “So, how’s your work coming along? Oh, interesting, interesting,” he muttered, brazenly picking up my notes from the other end of the table and starting to study them.

  “Let’s see, this one’s questionable, this one stays, this one’s no good…”

  The notes Eric deemed ‘no good’ he didn’t just toss aside somewhere — he simply incinerated them with a single touch.

  To say I was gobsmacked by such audacity would be an understatement. I nearly choked on my candy and hurled the first thing within reach at Eric from across the table. It turned out to be an empty flask, which Eric dodged without even looking at me or the flask, and it shattered behind him, joining the other debris on the floor.

  “Hey!! What do you think you’re doing?!!” I howled, bracing my hands on the table and glaring at Eric.

  “That’s my work!!”

  “That’s work you shouldn’t be delving into in places if you want to stay alive.”

  “I’m perfectly capable of deciding that myself!!”

  “Clearly not always capable, judging by how you nearly lost your physical form on the battlefield, if not for Lori, right?” Eric sang in a venomous little voice.

  I growled quietly in helpless rage, watching as Eric quickly moved along the entire length of the table and pulled out a couple more pages from the middle, which he instantly incinerated.

  “You don’t need to mess with these spells yet, you’ll burn alive,” Eric stated categorically in response to my furious glare.

  “Work on the rest.”

  “You destroyed those notes, but you didn’t erase them from my head,” I said with narrowed eyes, not noticing that the pencil in my hand had actually cracked.

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  “I’ll reconstruct everything later and keep pushing in that direction.”

  “Oh, that’s no problem at all,” Eric shrugged dismissively.

  “I’ll just come back and burn it all again. A hundred times if I have to. Anything for you, as they say.”

  “I hate you.”

  “Really? You’d surprise me if you confessed your love,” Eric waved dismissively.

  He glanced down at the sole of his right boot with a displeased look and peeled off a chocolate candy wrapper that had stuck to it.

  “And you’d surprise me with some tidiness too,” he sighed heavily.

  “Next time I’ll scatter mousetraps all over the study just for you,” I said dreamily.

  “You’re underestimating me. My feet aren’t small enough to be hurt by a mousetrap,” Eric sighed theatrically, carefully reading one of my scribbled pages.

  “Who said I was going to put the mousetrap at foot level?” I said in an extremely sly voice.

  “You’ve got other ‘small sizes.’”

  “You haven’t personally checked,” Eric parried.

  “Well, it’s obvious enough: when other sizes leave much to be desired, all that’s left is to stick your long nose in other people’s business,” I nodded knowingly.

  Eric snorted indignantly and flipped me off, but didn’t look up from examining the diagrams and didn’t show any other reaction. But I smiled contentedly, because for the perpetually cold and unemotional Eric, this could be counted as an extremely emotional response.

  Eric Clarkson drove me crazy with his know-it-all attitude and his habit of sticking his nose where it wasn’t wanted. Especially where it wasn’t wanted. He had this wonderful way of speaking with an absolutely impassive expression that was capable of pissing off pretty much anyone.

  Actually, this was the first time he’d interfered with my notes in a way that disrupted me. The previous couple of times he’d dropped by my study, he hadn’t said a word to me or interrupted my work at all. He’d just silently walked along the table, silently scanned my notes with his prophetic gaze, and silently left. I was extremely grateful for that, to the point where I’d stopped complaining about Eric’s oversight of me. Because if his oversight consisted of silently stopping by once a week, looking at my work, and leaving — I liked that, always welcome, let him oversee all he wants.

  Today was the first time he’d so brazenly interfered with my work. Fortunately, he hadn’t burned my notes with the ritual I’d worked out for Lori — I actually breathed a sigh of relief about that. What he’d burned were actually a couple of genuinely questionable formulas that I wasn’t sure about myself, but I wasn’t about to admit that to Eric. Still… it was annoying.

  Eric continued reviewing my notes, being particularly thorough today. Then again, I really was on a roll today.

  Eric was holding a cup of coffee — his favorite coffee concoction with ice, vanilla syrup, coconut milk, and a ton of sugar. I don’t know how he constantly drank that stuff, but he was sipping it through a straw with great enjoyment.

  “By the way, isn’t there something you want to tell me?” I said, pouring more ginger tea into my cup.

  “Should there be?”

  “Yep.”

  “About what?”

  “Why did you lie to Lora that I withdrew her teleportation exam application?”

  I’d been wanting to ask our local Mr. Prophet about this for a while, but somehow never managed to. Either he wasn’t at the academy for long stretches, or he was rushing somewhere and had no time to talk, or he’d silently dart out of my study before I remembered I wanted to ask.

  “Wait, you didn’t withdraw the application?” Eric asked with exaggerated surprise.

  “Of course not, and you know that perfectly well.”

  “Really? Hmm, well, maybe I got something mixed up…”

  “You never get anything mixed up,” I smirked.

  “And you always do everything with a purpose. You lied to Lora so she’d get mad and come to me, right? Why?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Eric said in an even voice, then slurped his coffee from the cup very loudly with the most innocent expression on his face.

  No, just look at those honest little eyes.

  “You’re quite the actor,” I shook my head in admiration.

  “Oh, how sweet of you to call me an actor!” Eric said breathlessly, pressing his palm to his chest.

  “Usually people call me a scoundrel, a bastard, and a sly know-it-all fox. Nice to have some variety.”

  “One doesn’t preclude the other. You’re a scoundrelly-theatrical sly know-it-all foxy bastard.”

  The corners of Eric’s lips twitched in a suppressed smile. Coming from him, that meant our local Mr. Prophet was practically dying of laughter.

  Generally speaking, he was always very reserved and serious, not one for jokes. And actually, I’d never once heard him genuinely laugh. I wasn’t sure he even knew how to laugh, though people assured me this miracle occasionally happened. I guess I’m just not the company in whose presence Mr. Prophet deigns to laugh his ass off.

  “Still… Why did you deliberately lie to Lorelei? You can feed me all the ‘got mixed up’ excuses you want, but I know you well enough to understand that our local Mr. Prophet never gets anything mixed up. And if he does something, he does it for a reason. So why?”

  Eric clicked his tongue and rolled his eyes.

  “Why are you so hung up on this? Why, why… Did you and Lorelei work everything out? Had a productive talk, yes?”

  “More than productive,” I smirked.

  “Well there you go, what other questions could there be?”

  I snorted indignantly and shook my head.

  Meanwhile, Eric finished surveying my notes and switched to cleaning up my creative debris on the floor. In a couple of minutes he’d cleared the floor of broken flasks, scraps of paper, candy wrappers, and other junk, applying a couple of cleaning and freshening spells. The study practically sparkled with unfamiliar cleanliness.

  “There, much better,” Eric said, sipping his iced latte.

  “You should take a break from work sometimes to tidy up your workspace, or we’ll start losing you in this mess.”

  “Maybe that’s my devious plan,” I smirked.

  “Listen, how do you drink that stuff?” I nodded at his coffee cup.

  “It’s an abomination coffee with that much sugar, vanilla syrup, and half a cup of milk…”

  “And how do you drink your stuff?” Eric nodded at my half-empty glass teapot.

  “Ginger tea without sugar, honey, or lemon?”

  I shrugged.

  “I like it.”

  “And I like mine. So which of us is the bigger weirdo?”

  I smirked and didn’t argue. Instead I turned back to my notes and said carefully:

  “I want to try performing a ritual on Lora… One that involves shadow magic. It’s quite delicate in its structure, with a long chain of spells,” I tapped my pencil on the formula I’d written on the page.

  “But based on my calculations, this ritual could have a very serious positive effect. If it works, it might not completely solve Lorelei’s problem, but it would at least make her life much easier.”

  I said it carefully because I was afraid Eric would look at my paper, crumple it up, and incinerate it on the spot, deciding the experiment was too dangerous. And honestly, I was really counting on performing this ritual; I’d spent a ton of time working it out. It would be a shame not to even try.

  Eric picked up the page covered in my small, elaborate handwriting and studied it for a long time. Silently, without the slightest emotion on his face. Eric had always been able to control his expression; I was nowhere near his level. His gaze went slightly glassy — a sure sign he was looking with his special, prophetic sight.

  “What do these runes mean?” Eric asked, pointing to the middle of the complex magical formula.

  “Shadow runes for releasing dark matter. They need to be inscribed on oneself.”

  “Shadow specifically? Are they even applicable to ordinary mages? Won’t they cause harm?”

  “According to my calculations, they should actually help.”

  “Test the ritual on yourself first,” Eric said after several minutes.

  “If there’s any glitch, it’ll be easier to understand and adjust on you than on Lora.”

  I nodded hastily, trying not to betray my excitement.

  “Actually, that’s what I was planning to do. Especially since I haven’t decided yet how best to inscribe these runes on myself, draw them with something specific or carve them directly into the skin with a ritual knife…”

  “A ritual knife would probably be more effective,” Eric nodded.

  “Even a single drop of blood will trigger a more powerful energy release than just a drawing on the surface.”

  “So you approve?”

  “I’m more like… not forbidding you to experiment.”

  “Coming from you, that’s the same thing,” I smirked.

  And mentally rubbed my hands together, anticipating the fascinating work ahead.

  “Your eyes are literally burning with a fanatical gleam,” Eric smirked.

  I shrugged.

  “I really love studying shadow magic, I love trying new things and getting the results I want. Or getting unexpected new results. Since my father lifted his ban on experiments, I’m especially fired up. Plus I feel like I’m getting close to solving a big problem, and that’s fueling my excitement like crazy.”

  “Be careful with that excitement, Calypso. You need to learn to sense when to stop. Darkness is greedy and has a tendency to feed on you… Be careful. Protect your heart from any darkness.”

  “Should I wrap it in barbed wire and lock it up?” I asked sarcastically.

  “A chastity belt, but for my heart? And give you the key to keep?”

  But Eric answered seriously:

  “The best protection against greedy darkness is having a lot of warmth in your heart. Warmth is different for everyone… Some people are warmed by the love of close ones, some find warmth in their hobbies or even their work. All of it can be called by one word: love. Love for something or someone… Fill your heart with love, Calypso. For something or for someone… Anything works, though combining them is better, of course. But the main thing is for your heart to be filled to the brim with warmth, and then no greedy shadow magic will be able to touch you. Warm emotions are the most powerful protection against any darkness. Think about what and who can warm you.”

  “Well, the ‘what’ is easy it’s my work studying shadow magic,” I smirked, spreading my arms wide to encompass the mountain of tomes covering my desk.

  “I really am fanatically passionate about this work, I love the process itself. It’s like the most complex puzzle, like countless such puzzles, an infinite number of them. And solving these problems brings me incredible satisfaction.”

  “And what about the ‘who’?” Eric asked.

  “Is there a warming ‘who’ in your heart, Calypso?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer and left the study without another word.

  And I sat there, surrounded by piles of papers, trying to get back to work… but my thoughts kept returning to Lori.