But out loud I only said:

  “Well, look, I actually know that feeling very well. You’ve met all my relatives, right? It’s a nightmare! Every single brother and sister is such a powerful mage that I was always openly dying of envy that I couldn’t do magic the way they could. Even at a third of their power! The eldest, Eric and Agnessa, are the Second Arma, and they’re very powerful supreme mages. Eric is literally our local Lord Prophet… My sister Felicia is an amazing twilight wanderer who’s a master of dream travel. Celestia wields wind magic… Lucifer and Gabriel are also each brilliant in their spheres of magic… And don’t even get me started on my parents…”

  “Yeah, you didn’t have it much easier in that sense,” Calypso smirked, sitting down across from me with his legs crossed so our knees were touching.

  “Right. The only thing that makes it easier is that everyone’s used to Elza and Zael always having powerful supreme mage children. I have six brothers and sisters, and they constantly hog all the attention, so I kind of disappear in their shadow, which is actually not bad in my situation… But you’re the first and so far only child in your family. All the attention is focused on you. Come to think of it, after so many years together, you’re still the first and only child. Do you know why?”

  “Well, I tried asking my father about it once,” Calypso shrugged, pulling off his short white gloves and tossing them on the grass nearby.

  “But from his vague answers I gathered it’s some personal issue of his, and I didn’t push. If he doesn’t want to talk about it’s fine, I don’t need to know. If he wants to tell me, he’ll bring it up himself.”

  “Yeah, fair enough. Maybe he just got sick of running around with all the kids at the academy and wasn’t ready to babysit his own on top of that,” I laughed.

  “Yeah, very possible. Or maybe my parents had some health issues and don’t want to talk about it… Anyway, it doesn't matter. What matters now is getting down to business. So let’s get to it.”

  He asked me to take off my gloves, and I froze in terror when Calypso immediately covered my bare palms with his.

  “What… What are you doing?” I whispered, barely moving my lips, staring in horror at this man with a death wish.

  Oh, I mean — at my warden, that’s what I meant to say, of course.

  “Holding your hands,” he replied with an innocent little smile.

  “Are you kidding me?! No, seriously, Cal! Just because you got lucky once and weren’t hurt by my touch doesn’t mean it’ll always be that way!”

  “And I’m quite sure it will be.”

  “How can you be so sure?!”

  “Calm down, Lori, breathe. I’ll explain everything, but first calm down. And rest assured you won’t hurt me right now.”

  “Is it… because of the oppressive atmosphere of the cemetery?”

  Calypso shook his head.

  “No, that’s not relevant here. Only our magic matters… Lori? Are you okay? You’re breathing strangely.”

  Breathing strangely?! It’s a miracle I’m breathing at all, damn it!!

  I shrugged vaguely. My heart was pounding somewhere in my throat.

  “I’m not used to…”

  “To what?”

  “Touching people directly, skin to skin, without gloves…”

  “Your heart is beating like a caged bird,” Calypso noted, stroking my palms.

  “Even though I’m not really doing anything special enough to make you this nervous.”

  A nervous laugh escaped my lips.

  “You just can’t imagine what it’s like living without being able to touch anyone. The last time I touched someone like this was in childhood, and I barely remember what it felt like. What’s ‘nothing special’ to you is an incredible, vivid sensation for me. I… haven’t held someone’s hands without gloves in so long that I’d forgotten what it’s like. Forgotten this warmth and the velvet of skin.”

  “Seriously?” Calypso’s eyebrows rose.

  I couldn’t find the strength to answer because I was truly being torn apart by very conflicting emotions right now. Fear that something would still go wrong after all, and Calypso would get hurt. Euphoria from the gentle touch.

  Calypso softly stroked my palms with his thumbs, and I actually held my breath.

  He probably had no idea how intense the sensations he was giving me with these simple touches were. I had especially thin gloves, of course, designed specifically for me, feeling like a second skin. But touches through them were still completely different. And now they were a thousand times sharper and more pleasant.

  “What do you feel, Lori?” Calypso asked me quietly.

  “When I do this… Tell me.”

  As he spoke, he raised my open palm to his lips and gently kissed it. He never took his eyes off me.

  What do I feel, what do I feel… Fireworks just went off in my head, that’s what I feel.

  Do you know what it’s like — to feel another person’s warmth on your skin for the first time in years? Hot breath on your open palm?

  The tender touches weren’t just pleasant — they were hitting my nerve endings, literally short-circuiting my brain. I was actually trembling from the intensity of these seemingly simple touches.

  “Mmm, what an interesting reaction you have,” Calypso said with a sly squint.

  “I’ll definitely have to use that tonight, mmm… So what do you feel, Lori? Tell me.”

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  It was very hard to put my feelings into words, but I honestly tried to describe them.

  “That’s why it’s hard for me to understand you and your hang-ups about gloves and not liking to touch people,” I finished.

  “I don’t understand how anyone can voluntarily deprive themselves of such pleasant things…”

  Calypso smirked, and was quiet for a moment. Then spoke softly:

  “I was being a bit evasive. It’s just my excuse for everyone, so they don’t ask uncomfortable questions I don’t want to answer.”

  I looked at Calypso with interest.

  “And really?”

  “Really, the gloves are just another artifact of mine,” Calypso smiled.

  “Only where you hide your hands in gloves to avoid accidentally hurting someone with bursts of your magic, I need gloves so that someone doesn’t accidentally hurt me.”

  Calypso thoughtfully interlaced our fingers, squeezed my hands. Added:

  “Working with shadow magic strongly affects a mage’s aura and their perception of others’ magic. Everything becomes many times more acute, and contact with someone else’s unpleasant, incompatible magic can actually hurt. Not critically, it just irritates me and sets back my magical development. And since a mage’s hands are the most important conductors of energy, everything is felt very sharply through them. So it’s easier for me to minimize touch while I’m figuring all this out and stabilizing my aura.”

  “So if other people’s magic can hurt you, then I definitely shouldn’t touch you,” I said with concern.

  I tried to pull my hands away, but Calypso held my palms in place, gripping them tighter.

  “Don’t worry about that. Your magic doesn’t hurt me.”

  “How can you be so sure? Maybe you’ll just feel it later!”

  Damn it, that danger really did still exist, didn’t it?

  Calypso shrugged.

  “Look, let’s be real: we’re both dark mages. Darkness literally pours out of you like a fountain, and I’m just extremely interested in and drawn to dark magic, especially shadow magic. I see a huge field for my personal development and the development of magic in general. I dove into deep study of this sphere even ignoring my father’s bans, even though he’s definitely not someone you want to cross,” Calypso smirked crookedly.

  “But this turned out to be way more important to me than the approval of the people closest to me, as you can see.”

  “You love risky experiments, huh?” I smiled.

  “Love them,” Calypso answered seriously.

  “I think it’s also because any sphere of magic comes pretty easily to me in general. Whether it’s fire or water magic, or anything else… Even complex dream magic is generally manageable for me. My skills are universal, and that’s… boring. But working with shadow magic is hard. Actually hard, because I’m not a shadow-born. My nature isn’t connected to the spirit world. And developing this, constantly coming up with new things that’s totally my thing, I love challenges. I can even develop new spells and rituals, and combining that with shadow magic, mmm, my brain practically boils from the strain, and I get an incredible rush from it… Anyway, what’s my point? My developed dark magic is compatible with yours, so I don’t feel any dissonance. And also…”

  He hesitated, pressing his lips together as if not daring to say something important.

  “And also?” I pressed.

  Calypso looked at me strangely. Moved closer, ran his hand across my cheek.

  “I sense you as a potential battle partner,” he said, looking into my eyes.

  “And it doesn’t matter that we may never actually become Arma. But I sense you. And that means you can’t hurt me. Just as I can’t hurt you.”

  “What?” I was stunned.

  No, I wasn’t just stunned — I was absolutely floored. My eyes were probably about to pop out of their sockets, and my jaw was dropping.

  What battle partner? Me and Calypso? Together? Seriously? Or is this some kind of joke?

  “You’re just making fun of me,” I shook my head in disbelief.

  But Calypso was completely serious and continued to blow my mind:

  “I’m absolutely sure you would be my Guardian if we were both Arma. The way we worked together against the kernals pointed to that very clearly. The way we exchanged power, transforming it into new energy that says a lot…”

  He talked, and I found myself thinking that I felt like I was in some strange dream where all my wishes had come true at once, with the bonus of a potential battle bond on top… Am I even awake?

  Forming a new battle pair is a very important chapter in a Fortemin’s life. Your battle partner can only be one person, and changing them later is impossible.

  “It’s believed that a potential battle partner’s magic can’t just be sensed in advance. And therefore, it can’t be developed because the bond is latent. But I was able to sense you… I think it happened precisely because I’ve developed my shadow aspects so much and greatly enhanced my perception of others’ magic.”

  “Is this somehow connected to that rune that appeared on us?” I asked excitedly.

  “Polly said she saw some rune on us in the shape of a golden spiral…”

  “Directly connected. I’m not going to overload you with information about the runes themselves for now I need to verify my assumptions before I can explain it clearly. But there’s one thing I’m certain of: combining concentrated dark magic with shadow magic creates a new type of magic. That golden flame we burned the kernals with, remember? I reviewed everything. No such spell exists in nature. I sat last night breaking it down by power formula… And concluded that you and I managed to create a completely new spell. Because the formula has a structure atypical for any other sphere of magic.”

  “Do you think that surge happened because of our potential battle bond?”

  “Not quite,” Calypso shook his head, still pleasantly stroking my palms, his thoughtful gaze fixed somewhere in the distance.

  “I think this could actually be used by all dark mages who can concentrate darkness in a certain way, like me, or who by nature can’t dilute it like you. So theoretically this could be used by everyone in the future, once I figure out exactly how to do it. It’s just that our bond significantly facilitates the process and amplifies our magic.”

  “And that kind of ability would be useful for others to develop in general,” I said.

  “Well, for those who can and want to, of course. Like us, and I’m sure there’ll be plenty of mages like that.”

  “Such mages could feel comfortable in anti-magic zones, am I right? And experience has shown that can be quite a rare and necessary quality.”

  “Right, this could generally be used for a separate track at the academy in the future. But to establish such a track, it needs to be thoroughly studied first. And I’m thinking, given this situation since I’ve sensed you as a potential battle partner… Maybe we can develop our paired magic even without Arma status? I’ll tell you right now that the Mentor won’t be happy if he finds out we’re not just working on stabilizing your magic, but digging unsupervised into places no one’s dug before. We’ll be pioneers, so to speak.”

  “Sounds a bit scary and dangerous,” I admitted honestly.

  “And… Ve-e-ery tempting. I’m in.”

  Calypso smirked.

  “I had no doubts about you. Let’s try, Lori, I have a lot of ideas about this. We’ll practice different types of spells, getting aura merging down to an automatic response in any circumstances, so that ultimately we can work as a full-fledged battle pair in real combat. I’m sure that through this I’ll be able to figure out your internal imbalance too.”

  “You think you can figure it out through these practices?” I said doubtfully.

  “I think that during these sessions of ours I’ll be able to understand the structure of your magical Spark more deeply and develop a personal formula for some kind of spell-ritual that will help you. So I’m planning to kill three birds with one stone: calm your raging magic, develop your magical level, and develop us both so we’re on par with the Arma. Except for the stupid number marks on our wrists. I’m sure we can be not just no worse, but significantly better.”

  My head actually spun for a moment from the possibilities opening up. Too many emotions and information have been dumped on me lately…

  “I will definitely help you stabilize your magic,” Calypso said firmly.

  “No matter how hard it is. After all… It’s in my interest for you to be a stable battle partner. Stable and whole.”

  ‘And alive,’ I thought to myself.