Chapter 2

Magical people were, as a rule, completely incapable of basic problem-solving.

Give a warlock a locked door, and he will spend forty minutes chanting high-tier evocation spells to blast it off its hinges, accidentally setting fire to the curtains and blinding three bystanders in the process. It never occurs to him to just look on top of the doorframe for the key.

This inherent mental block was why Arithmancy was the only class where I didn’t feel like a walking target. Arithmancy was the mathematics of magic—the rigid, structural code that kept reality from collapsing whenever someone cast a spell. And as it turned out, the universe’s source code ran entirely on standard calculus.

"The variable for the defensive kinetic dispersion is fluctuating," Professor Vane announced, her voice echoing off the stone walls of the amphitheater. She tapped a glowing chalk grid on the blackboard. "If a high-grade fire hex impacts a standard crystalline barrier at a forty-five-degree angle, how do we adjust the atmospheric dampening to prevent shattering? Anyone?"

Around me, the scions of the magical elite were sweating. A pureblood warlock three rows down was staring so hard at his parchment that it literally began to smoke, trying to brute-force the answer by channeling raw magical energy into his quill. To my left, a Fey girl was softly weeping into her velvet sleeves. They were all trying to feel the magic. They were trying to predict the outcome using intuition and bloodlines.

I sighed, picked up my cheap ballpoint pen and graphing calculator—human artifacts that drove Professor Vane absolutely insane—and worked through a quick equation, factoring in the friction of the salt air and the mass of the barrier.

I raised my hand.

Vane looked at me, her sharp eyes narrowing beneath her pointed spectacles. "Yes, Miss Hunt?"

"You don't adjust the dampening at all," I stated. "You just tilt the barrier's focal point by three degrees to the left. The kinetic force will slide off the curve naturally. Standard geometry. You don't need a single drop of arcana to do it."

A collective, irritated groan rippled through the classroom. The pureblood warlock’s parchment finally burst into actual flames. Professor Vane stared at my equation on the board, sighed a deep, spiritually exhausted sigh, and nodded.

"Correct. Five points to... well, five points to Miss Hunt. Class dismissed."

It drove them crazy that a human was outperforming them in a core discipline. I caught a few venomous glares as I packed my bag, but I simply smiled my most infuriating, customer-service smile and headed for the exit. They couldn't touch me, and they knew it.

An hour later, I was buried under a mountain of leather-bound texts in the academy library. The Spire's library was a massive, multi-tiered labyrinth where the books on the upper shelves frequently tried to escape their bindings, requiring the librarians to patrol the aisles with butterfly nets and silver-plated tranquilizer darts.

Kiana, my best friend, and I were huddled over a massive mahogany table, working on a grueling Evocative Summoning project that was entirely our own misery. Her cousin Logan was sitting directly across from us, but since he was a senior and a full year older, he had already passed the class with flying colors. He was strictly there to act as our tutor, or more accurately, our emotional anchor.

"If I have to draw one more inverted summoning circle, I’m going to set this entire table on fire," Kiana hissed, her green skin flushed with irritation as she aggressively rubbed her temples. Her silver hair was tied back, and a stray smudge of black ink was plastered across her cheek. "Layla, tell me you have a shortcut. Use your weird human math logic to save me."

"Math doesn't apply to demonology, Kiana," I said, squinting at a fading chart of elder runes. "If it did, Satan would be an accountant."

"She's not wrong," Logan murmured, a soft, low chuckle escaping him.

I looked up, and my brain instantly did that embarrassing, traitorous flip it always did whenever he looked directly at me. Logan was... distracting. He had that easy grace awarded to him by his half-Fey blood, long, silver-gold hair that somehow never fell in his eyes, and a sharp, clean jawline that belonged on a classical statue rather than a stressed-out academy senior. He smelled like old parchment, rain, and the faint, clean scent of cedarwood.

He leaned forward, placing his hands flat on the table. His long, pale fingers were inches away from mine, and I had to actively remind myself to breathe.

"Look at the third glyph, Kiana," Logan said, his voice patient and infuriatingly gentle. He tapped the page of her notebook. "You forgot to anchor the base. If you try to cast this in the practical exam next week, the circle will collapse inward."

"I hate this school," Kiana groaned, dropping her head onto the open textbook with a dull thud.

"You love this school," Logan corrected, a small, genuine smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. Then, his eyes shifted to me. The easy, relaxed expression vanished, replaced instantly by that heavy, intense look of concern that always made my chest tighten. "Are you doing okay, Layla? I saw you in the courtyard this morning. I heard about what happened with Dread."

"Oh, you mean the resident alpha skyscraper?" I shrugged, trying to sound completely unaffected. "He just reminded me that I'm a fragile little human who doesn't belong here. Standard Tuesday morning orientation, really. I barely even cried into my enchanted lunchbox."

Logan didn't laugh. His jaw set in a hard, rigid line, and his shoulders squared beneath his uniform jacket. The protective instinct radiating off him was almost physical. "He shouldn't have put his hands near you. If he crosses the line again, you tell me. I don't care what his pack status is."

"Logan, relax," I said, my voice dropping a fraction as a warm, ridiculous flutter bloomed in my stomach. His protectiveness was a dangerous thing; it made me forget the massive, yawning chasm between a high-ranking magical student and a non-magical anomaly. It made me feel like I actually had a place here. "I have the invisible shield of faculty nepotism. Dread is terrifying, but he's not stupid enough to risk getting expelled because he shoved a human."

Before Logan could protest, a loud, violent CRACK echoed from the neighboring table.

A group of third-year Evocators were messing around with a volatile kinetic orb, and one of them had lost control. A sharp, brilliant arc of blue magical electricity snapped off the orb, sizzling through the air directly toward the side of my head.

Before I could even register the danger, Logan moved.

With the lightning-fast reflexes of a high-tier practitioner, he lunged across the corner of the table. He didn't use a spell; he physically threw his upper body directly into the path of the errant magic, his broad shoulders completely expanding to shield me from the line of fire. He caught the stray spark right on the heavy wool of his uniform jacket. The fabric crackled, absorbing the energy, and the blue light fizzled out against his back.

Logan didn't even flinch. He stayed hunched over me for a second, his chest rising and falling, his hands gripping the edge of my chair. He was so close I could feel the heat radiating off him.

"Are you hurt?" he demanded, his eyes scanning my face with a desperate, frantic sort of panic. "Did it touch you?"

"I'm—I'm fine," I stammered, my voice suddenly failing me entirely. My heart was hammering against my ribs, not from the magic, but from the sheer, suffocating proximity of him. "Logan, you're blocking my view of the terrible Symbology charts."

He blinked, realizing how close he was, and slowly drew back, though his eyes remained locked on mine, heavy and dark with an intensity that made me want to look away and stare at him forever at the same time.

"Watch it, you idiots!" Kiana yelled at the Evocators, her fiery pixie temper flaring as she slammed her fist on the table. The third-years frantically gathered their orb and scrambled down the aisle before the librarian could descend upon them.

"You guys are making way too much noise for a library," a cynical, drawling voice cut through the tension.

I looked up. Walking down the aisle, a stack of heavy demonology texts balanced effortlessly under one arm, was Jessalyra Claw.

Jessa was a fourth-year who looked like she had been birthed directly out of an indie record store. She had sharp, calculating dark eyes, a permanent expression of profound boredom, and a reputation for being completely unimpressed by the academy's prestige. She stopped at the edge of our table, dropping her books with a heavy thud.

"Hey, Jessa," Kiana said, her anger instantly evaporating into a familiar, easy grin. It was clear the two of them ran in the same cynical circles; they’d spent half of last semester protesting the academy’s familiar-labor policies together. "Logan just took a kinetic bullet for Layla. Standard romantic drama."

"Thrilling," Jessa replied lazily, sounding entirely un-thrilled. She leaned her hip against the edge of the table and looked down at Kiana’s notebook, then shifted her gaze to the floor beneath our feet. Her brow furrowed slightly. "Speaking of structural collapses... have either of you felt the floorboards today?"

I frowned, looking down at the heavy stone tiles. "Felt what?"

"The resonance," Jessa said, her voice dropping to a quiet, conspiratorial murmur. She tapped the toe of her boot against the floor. "The Spire’s undercurrents are acting completely weird this week. The low-frequency vibrations are entirely off. It’s like the foundations are shifting toward the east."

Logan adjusted his jacket, his academic mind instantly engaging. "The castle is built on ancient Ley lines, Jessa. A little bit of seasonal shifting is normal before the autumn equinox."

"This isn't seasonal," Jessa replied, a sharp, cynical edge cutting through her boredom. She gave a dry, humorless chuckle. "It feels like something is actively draining the baseline arcana from the lower wards. Honestly, I bet the administration is trying to hide a massive structural collapse just so they don't have to pay for external magical contractors. Standard bureaucratic cheapness."

"If the school collapses, we won't have to take the Evocation midterm, right?" Kiana asked hopefully.

"One can only dream," Jessa said, picking up her texts and giving Kiana a sharp nod. "See you at the rally tomorrow, Kiana. Try not to let the seniors die for you in the meantime."

With a parting, unreadable glance at me, Jessa vanished into the shadows of the reserved section.

I watched her go, the lingering warmth of Logan's protectiveness suddenly cooling. I looked back down at the stone floor. I couldn't feel the vibrations Jessa was talking about—I was human, entirely blind to the invisible currents of arcana humming through the stone. But as I looked across the table at Logan, who was already turning back to his notes, a faint, uneasy prickle settled at the base of my neck.

Jessa was brilliant, cynical, and rarely wrong about the castle's mechanics. And for the first time all day, the heavy stone arches above us felt less like solid architecture, and a lot more like an unsupported ceiling. I could only hope it wouldn't crush us.