by J B Black
“You’re right, cousin. A chastity belt is enough to keep you off. After all, he should concentrate on caring for our child and graduating after he births the first,” Nicholas replied, completely unbothered by the waves of magic which spiked and clawed at the stone hall around where Ælfweard stood.
“He isn’t some broodmare.”
With a pitying smile, Nicholas laughed. “Oh, Ælfweard, say that as much as you want, but given half the chance, you’ll breed him up — fat and round. You’d make him stupid for cock and cum, drunk and desperate until you surpassed those idiot parents of yours.” Ælfweard lunged forward — first raised, but Nicholas froze him in place with a simple, “You’ll get kicked out if you strike another student.”
The blond trembled, barely restraining the hatred coursing through his veins. “You’re disgusting.”
“I’m honest,” Nicholas replied smoothly. “You can keep lying, but there are two types of people in Aelion Academy. Those who want to stuff William Belmont with children, and those who want him gone. I’m just honest about which one I prefer.”
Ælfweard shook his head, backing away as his eyes remained honed on his cousin. “I won’t let you.”
“Lucky for me, your opinion doesn’t matter,” the other wizard drawled, and with one last patronizing smile, he swaggered away.
As the blond wizard’s mind warred, Ælfweard stood frozen in place. The desire to strike his cousin down remained. It itched at the back of his head. An urge he hated resisting. If he didn’t need Aelion — didn’t need the future he could achieve after mastering alchemy, then he would. He would beat the bastard bloody, leaving him unable to beget a snooty heir on his betrothed or William or anyone else. The urge only grew at Nicholas’s accusations.
Because it wasn’t true. Whatever he wanted from William, it wasn’t that. Though other wizards might have used William as self-gratification fodder, Ælfweard hadn’t. He wanted to help the warlock. To protect him and make sure he ate. Everything stemmed from being an older brother with no siblings to care for after so many years doing just that — doing only that. None of this was sexual. Was William handsome? Undoubtedly beautiful — yes. Smart and sarcastic — and obviously had no interest in anyone in that way despite the patient, indulging smile he had given Nicholas that one time. None of this spoke of anything but a desperately friendly person trapped by the prejudice of the place where they stood. If he had friends, William wouldn’t get close to Nicholas. Surrounded by friends, William wouldn’t have been starved for attention, and he would have seen right through Nicholas’s play. Would have seen the snake in the grass.
Not that Nicholas or Ælfweard would end up anywhere near William’s bed. Even if they did, warlocks held full control. As long as his will was his own, William would only conceive if he wanted, and nothing about the warlock indicated he had any interest in that.
Which — was none of Ælfweard’s business. He didn’t want William like that. Didn’t imagine pinning the warlock beneath him and filling him until it took. Never dreamed of waking to the warlock’s arms about him or warm kisses and a bright smile. He never thought about that before — so why did Nicholas have to shove those images into his mind now? If he had continued, he could have repressed them. Shoved them down and let them rot away. Now, every action he took — every attempt to become friends would be tainted because he could no longer pretend he hadn’t considered the taste of William’s lips.
Swallowing, Ælfweard rubbed his hands over his face. “It’s fine. I can keep this to myself.”
William never had to know. The warlock deserved someone he could trust. A friend in his corner, and if no one else was smart enough to rise to the task, Ælfweard could restrain the disaster in his mind. Could hold himself to friendship when his heart drummed so fast at the thought of something more. Just because he considered it once when prompted didn’t mean that was what he wanted. Was the idea tempting? Sure — but so was punching Nicholas, and he hadn’t done that.
Nodding to himself, he forced his feet to obey, walking away from that place. Running interference would be easy. Even if William never wanted to be friends, Ælfweard could keep Nicholas away from the warlock. It might cost him Workneh’s interest, but if his cousin who used and abused those around him caught Workneh’s attention, perhaps Ælfweard didn’t want it after all.
Chapter Nine
“Blood is iron-heavy, which means I need to separate a purify first,” William murmured, following his notes in the pocket-dimension he created in his wardrobe.
The equipment took a while to shape from what he had brought with him, but he managed decently enough. Collecting the fumes, the warlock watched the red liquid boil. Spots danced in his vision. In the side dimension, the only light which existed came from William’s magic, so he easily lost track of time, but it likely wasn’t too late. He could keep going. If he repeated the transmogrification again and again, he would figure out what he had missed. The answers would lead to a better score. All he needed to do was get two points. Make up the distance and slide past Ælfweard.
While he waited for the blood to process, he turned back to the damn spinning wheel. Straw to gold seemed absurd. Around and around, the straw went, breaking to pieces with every spinning of the wheel. Wetting it did nothing. Binding the straw together before failed too.
“Come on — heat and water — chaos…”
The steam turned pink — bright and almost neon in appearance, drawing his eyes away from the wheel as he leaned over to add the powdered aluminum into the mix and shifted the fire. In the small pan, the boiling fluid greened, and an alarm set off in the back of William’s sleep-deprived mind. Stumbling, he threw himself back from the table, racing out of the dimension and leaping out of the wardrobe. His hand summoned his bag, and ducking underneath the bed, he overturned it just in time as the pocket dimension exploded, taking the wardrobe and the wall behind with it. Glass shattered as the window broke, casting shards along the floor.
The instinctive sirens in his mind matched the pitch of the activated runes as smoke billowed out, and the cold night’s air blew straight into the room.
“Thank god I moved the wardrobe next to the window,” William grumbled, wiping his hands over his face as he caught his breath and sent a wave of magic over his shoulder to send the smoke out the new hole in his room.
“Warlock Belmont,” a voice called from the hall, and the door vanished as the Wizard Workneh stepped into the room with a shield held high. His dark eyes scanned the area, finding William still behind the bed which stood on the far wall to the left of the door. “Warlock Belmont, are you injured?”
Standing on trembling legs, William shook his head, listing to the side as the room spun. “Fuck!”
Workneh caught him, helping him over the upturned bed and out into the hall. “Warlock Belmont, what happened?”
No wardrobe meant no sign of the pocket dimension. All the smoke cleared, and there was no evidence that William had done anything. They could only kick him out if he confessed, so William held fast to Workneh, struggling to keep himself from fainting as exhaustion grabbed hold.
“I was studying and then…” he groaned, glancing down as a sharp pain traveled up his left shin. Splinters stuck out in all directions. “Oh my god, what the fuck!?”
Eyes dropping to see what caused the warlock’s exclamation, the wizard blanched. “You’re injured.”
“My leg!” William screamed as the wizard lifted him into his arms and teleported them to the infirmary where the warlock blacked out.
***
Hours later, William awoke. Sunlight cascaded through the curtains surrounding his bed, and for a moment, he wondered if they had brought him to a modern hospital. However, the scent of lavender in place of sterilized cleaning chemicals squashed that thought.
“Glad you’re up,” Workneh drawled, and William shifted, glancing to his right where the older man sat, toying with something between his fingers.
William frowned. “What happe
ned?”
“Hmm…” Workneh’s dark eyes rose, and he held up the item in his hands. It was a single thin piece of gold at one end, and at the other, there was straw. Half and half, perfectly down the center. “I found this stuck to your shirt.”
Swallowing, the warlock glanced around. “I — I don’t -”
Workneh shook his head. “We have a student in your class who is in what should have been a shared room. You’ll be put with him. I expect there won’t be another incident like this, Warlock Belmont.”
Relief flooded William’s exhausted body, and sinking back into the bed, he stared at the white of the infirmary’s ceiling, wondering where they were in the castle that the ceiling was anything but stone. Only as he almost drifted back to sleep, exhaustion and the slight ache of his leg bringing him under, did the thought strike him.
Bolting upright, he ignored the dull throb in his head at the sudden movement. “Who?”
“Ælfweard.”
Chapter Ten
Excitement and anxiety mixed together in Ælfweard’s mind. After clearing the second bed of his things, Ælfweard made it up, preparing to share his room for the first time since he came to Aelion. It would be so much easier to protect the warlock with him at his side, but the rumble of the explosion haunted his mind. The entire tower felt it. Timothy raced away, screaming his head off until Natasha slapped him in the hall dressed in her nightgown and standing in bare feet.
“Bloody warlock,” Gilroy had hissed. His copper tresses fell in his face as he glared out over his classmates in only sleeping slacks. His scrawny pale chest was nearly blinding, and the sharp black runes across his right collarbone drew all their eyes. “What?” he had spat, and the roar of his magic about him directed all their gazes away. “I swear — if he doesn’t get kicked out for whatever -”
Ælfweard had cut him off, “Kicked out for what? We don’t even know what happened.”
“Could have been an attack,” Elizabeth murmured, tugging on the end of her braid.
Natasha rolled her eyes. “An attack? By what?”
“Oh gods — what if it’s a dragon!” Timothy cried, and Natasha slapped him across the face again, leaving a second vivid red mark as she descended the steps of the tower.
“Whatever it was, it came from the lowest room across from the baths, which is the warlock’s,” Gilroy stated, crossing his arms over his bare chest. “It would be safe to believe he’s involved.”
Glaring up at the other wizard, Ælfweard frowned. “And how do we know it wasn’t an attack on him? You all have been less than welcoming.”
“If I intended to kill him, I would use poison, you utter moron,” Gilroy drawled, rolling his eyes. “I swear — Grey, you don’t use your head at all.”
When the professors came through, they ordered everyone back to their rooms, claiming nothing was wrong. However, in the early hours of the morning, a knock awoke Ælfweard from his troubled sleep. Workneh stood on the other side of the door in his dark robes.
“You’ll have a roommate for the remainder of the semester,” he announced, and without waiting for a reply, Workneh teleported away.
Of course, a slim chance existed that the two incidents weren’t connected. Perhaps a student transferred into the alchemy course. Unlikely, but Ælfweard hated to exclude it. The slight possibility made it easier to not pace the short length of the room, wondering how he would be able to share the space without suffocating the warlock in his attempts to care for the dark-haired man. William obviously loathed being coddled. Every once of attention given to him ended up turned over and inspected as if he assumed everyone in the castle wanted to take him down a peg. Perhaps he wasn’t wrong. Nobody knew yet what caused the explosion. For all Ælfweard knew, it might’ve been an attack on the warlock. His stomach lurched at the thought.
“It’s fine,” he assured himself. “If we share a room, I can make sure he eats and sleeps — and I won’t let Nicholas harrang him. This could be good.”
Or it could end horrible. William already hated him. Choked by Ælfweard’s attempts to protect him, the warlock had as much of a chance of lashing out as he did of anything else. Also — after winter break, would they still be sharing a room? If the explosion merely made William’s room uninhabitable, magic could fix that in a single day, so whatever happened, the move signified something greater. Something larger at stake.
A knock rattled Ælfweard’s door, and the blond wizard jumped, opening it quickly. “Hello, I -”
Except instead of William, Gilroy stood on the other side. Dressed entirely in black with fitted trousers and a high-collared top instead of his usual robes, the copper-haired wizard crossed his arms over his chest and sighed as his eyes trailed up and down the other wizard.
“Expecting someone?”
Ælfweard sunk in on himself. “What do you want, Gilroy?”
“I happened to hear that you’re getting a roommate,” the wizard drawled, ducking under Ælfweard’s arm, and the shock of his audacity kept the blond from stopping him as the other wizard strutted about the room, exploring books and trinkets on Ælfweard’s side before sitting on the bed Ælfweard prepared for his future roommate. “I’d warn you that the warlock might seduce you, but we both know that’s a lost cause.”
Gritting his teeth, Ælfweard demanded, ‘What do you want?”
A small smirk twitched the other’s lips up at one corner. “What if I told you — out of the goodness of my dear, overly kind heart — I offered my room to Belmont and agreed to move in here with you for the rest of the semester?”
Dread pooled, cold and thick in Ælfweard’s stomach. As much as the thought of sharing a room with William pulled him in multiple directions, a single feeling settled firmly in place when that new roommate might be Gilroy. He wanted nothing to do with the other wizard. The image of his slim form offered nothing, which would be easier than the way his heart raced when he remembered William’s naked body, but even the spiteful way the warlock spoke failed to be nearly as scornful and cruel as Gilroy’s mannerisms. If the two wizards roomed together, only disaster resulted.
Laughing, Gilroy fell back onto the bed. “Oh, your face, Grey! As if I would ever help you or that bloody warlock!”
“How would you be helping me?”
Gilroy propped himself up on his elbows, and a single copper brow rose in disbelief. “Frankly, you’ll make a mess of things. You’re absolutely desperate. Everyone sees it. Even your cousin isn’t as willing to bend over to get into Belmont’s pants as you.”
Falling back to sit on his own bed, Ælfweard stared at the floor. “You know about Nicholas.”
“Everyone with any sort of connections knows about your mother, Grey. Matilda Blythe runs off with Domnhall Grey — ‘an Irish wizard of no talent and no fortune,’” Gilroy stated, but somehow, the words didn’t come across nearly as unkind as the tone the other wizard usually adopted. “Scandal of the century if you hear about it in certain circles. You know, she was betrothed to my father.”
Ælfweard’s head snapped up as his eyes widened. “No, I — I didn’t know.”
“Yes,” Gilroy affirmed, running his hands over the bedsheets. “They courted for a time, and when a magical relic was unearthed at a dig-site in Dunfanaghy, the curse attached led to three men being gravely injured. My father — as you know — is a renowned healer, and your mother trained a bit, so he invited her to accompany him.”
From there, Ælfweard remembered the tale. His father had woken to his mother nursing him, and the two had almost instantly fallen in love. When they kissed in the corner of a recovery ward, they realized their mate bond, but nowhere in the story had his mother told him about how she got there. Either way, it changed nothing. Betrothals chained people together without consideration. Fate interceded.
“I suppose you’re happy that didn’t end up working out,” Ælfweard replied.
Humming softly, Gilroy ran a hand through his copper hair. “You were born less than a year late
r, but I’m two months older than you.”
Almost choking on his own spit in surprise, the blond wizard coughed. “What?”
“My mother was my father’s fated mate, yet despite that — I’m an only child,” Gilroy said, leaving the obvious jab at Ælfweard’s parents unspoken. “Unfortunately, she died in childbirth or shortly thereafter, so most people don’t remember that fact. Most just assume my stepmother gave birth to me. I think she likes it that way.”
“Why are you telling me all this now?” Ælfweard asked.
Gilroy shrugged, humming before he put his vague intentions into words. “You have a chip on your shoulder, Grey, and I don’t mind using it to my benefit ninety-nine times out of a hundred, but I know what it is to be the odd duck out. You came to Aelion Academy to improve your family’s fortune, and I respect that. I came because I recognized my talents didn’t align with my bloodline. Alchemy wasn’t my first choice, but it was the option my father preferred.” His eyes sparked with some hidden humor. “He’s rather put out that you’re besting me. I think it hurts him more than knowing a warlock has snatched the second place, so I’m not even fighting tooth and nail for that either.”
“And how is any of this helping me?”
With a sigh, the copper-haired wizard leaned forward. “I’m not your enemy here, Grey. I’m doing my best to keep the wolves off your back, but wizards — in the end — are pack animals. Given half a chance, they’ll tear you to pieces.”
“Then I won’t give them a chance,” the blond retorted, but Gilroy merely rolled his eyes. “You can pretend to be helpful all you want, but all you’ve done is stoked the fire.”
“All I’ve done is ensure the target isn’t you,” Gilroy snapped.
Ælfweard scoffed. “I hardly think that’s all your doing. If William ever left, you’d be at my throat in an instant.”
“Hardly,” Gilroy laughed.
Narrowing his eyes in disbelief, the blond wizard frowned. “Why should I believe you?”