Elethior’s shoulders rise, his face darkening. When he speaks again, he says each word with disturbing calmness. “I have never once partaken in the ridiculous and unfounded rivalry between our departments because I have better things to do with my time. Meanwhile, how much of your life have you wasted on useless tricks?”
My mind races over all the pranks the Conjuration Department enacted. So often, Elethior would be the first one I’d see in the aftermath, usually with a group of fellow conjuration wizards. He was there, watching whatever dumbassery unfold with that smug, self-righteous sneer.
Of courseit was him.
Wasn’t it?
I had never caught him doing anything. No one had ever caughtmeeither, though.
“Oh, right.” I knot my arms over my chest, upper lip curling. “You’resoinnocent. You admitted to laying the spell work on the Conjuration Lab door.”
“Yes, I did, because I knew you’d try something else.”
“Fuck off with this pious act, Tourael. It’s beneath you.”
“No—what’sbeneath meisyou!”
He’s damn near screaming, his face fully red, and I’m no better. It’s a wonder no one’s barged in to check what all the yelling’s about, but given the nature of this lab, I wonder if it’s soundproof? Great, Elethior and I can kill each other without being disturbed.
That sinks past my fury. The barest brush of shadow against the light.
No one can hear us in here. We’re alone.
My breath snags.
Pathetic.
Is that all you’ve got?
I’m not trapped in here. I’m not locked in.
I canleave.
So I do.
I snatch my phone off the desk and knock all my stuff into my bag in a frantic, ungraceful shove. As I walk around Elethior, I pop him with my shoulder.
“Where the hell are you going?” he demands. “Giving up already?”
I slam back up close to him, unmasking all the anger in my eyes, but I think I show a little of my fear, too. “I’m going to cool down because if I stand here much longer, I’ll fireball your ass. When I get back, you stay on your end of the lab. I’ll stay on mine. Don’t talk to me, don’t so much asbreathein my direction.”
Elethior’s nostrils flare. “We have to work together.”
“No. We have to report how conjuration and evocation overlap as we explore restricting spell energy,” I quote the instructions the grant committee sent a few weeks back. “We’ll conclude that our research topics were more different than initially thought, and we’ll present twoseparatepapers.”
He looks like he’ll fight me more. And I realize, in him tryingto get us to work together, thathe’sbeing the bigger person and has therefore claimed the moral high ground.
Gods damn it.
But he scoffs in disgust. “Fine. You’re nowhere near my level anyway. You can’t even put aside this stupid rivalry when it matters.”
“First of all, I’m so far above your level you’d choke from the lack of oxygen up here. Second—” I talk over him, and his lips shut with a snarl. “Second,I don’t want to work with you, not because of any rivalry, but because you’re an entitled asshole spawned from a family of entitled assholes, and I’m not playing into whatever Tourael jack-off fantasies you being here fulfills.”
“I earned my place here,” he says, speaking through his teeth. “And—”
“And, what, it looks good on your résumé? Like Mommy and Daddy don’t have a cushy job waiting for you after you graduate.”
The ferocity of our argument makes me physically aware of our silence. It grates against my skin like sand particles, and I realize it’s Elethior who’s stopped yelling, stopped talking, who is now watching me, his frown wilted.
