Cold magic spread from his palm at first — sharp and clinical, like an ice cube sliding down your spine. I shivered, instinctively tensing under the chill.
And then… it shifted.
The cold gave way to something warmer. Softer. Tingling like a low-voltage current curling through my skin. It didn’t hurt. Quite the opposite. It felt… good.
Too good.
His hand no longer felt like a touch. More like a… presence. Something steady and commanding and uncomfortably personal. My breath hitched. My skin reacted before my brain could veto it.
Oh no.
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No, no, no.
Absolutely not.
My body clearly hadn’t received the official memo: that we don’t swoon for emotionally repressed wizards with god complexes. And it hadn’t forgotten how long it had been since anyone touched me like this. Eight, to be exact. Since I broke up with my ex. And that I was maybe — maybe — just a tiny bit touch-starved.
This was mortifying. I hated every second of it. Except the part where it felt annoyingly, absurdly, nerve-meltingly nice.
I cleared my throat — firmly, pointedly — dragging my mind (and hormones) back to reality.
“Did you finish?”
A pause.
“With the magic, I mean,” I added quickly and gestured weakly toward his hand, still doing gods-knew-what to my insides. “Are you done? With the… magical business?”
“This should hold for a while,” he said, removing his hand. “But yes — you’re still tethered to me. And yes, stepping outside the Academy is still very much a death sentence. So do try not to die again.”
I bit my lip, a rebellious thought surfacing uninvited:
Do I even want to be magically tethered to an emotionally constipated archmage?
Maybe death wouldn’t have been that bad.
It’s been one day. One. And I already want to flee — to the edge of the world, or the next one. Ideally home. No idea how. Currently feeling spectacularly awful. Somehow furious.
And deeply unsatisfied with … magical higher education.
