CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The worst day I had at the academy started quietly.

Which, in hindsight, should have been a warning.

For the past week everything had been improving. Control sessions lasted longer. My elements cooperated more often than they fought. Professor Elijah had stopped looking at me like I might accidentally dismantle a mountain.

Even Raven’s training drills had begun to feel… manageable.

So when I walked into Elemental Theory that morning, I expected another normal lecture. A few notes, some historical case studies, maybe a pointed reminder from Dr. Vasile not to set anything on fire inside the classroom.

Instead, there was a stranger standing beside the board.

He looked older than most academy professors. Not fragile-old, but the kind of age that came with sharp cheekbones and silver hair pulled back neatly at the nape of his neck. His robes carried the deep indigo stitching of another academy.

Dr. Vasile tapped the edge of the desk once.

“Class, today we’re fortunate to host a visiting scholar from the Eastern Academy.” She gestured politely. “Professor Halden will be discussing documented psychological profiles of historical Primes.”

A quiet murmur moved through the room.

I sat still.

The professor didn’t look at any of us when he began speaking. He opened a leather notebook and adjusted his glasses slightly, like a man about to review agricultural reports instead of living people.

“Throughout recorded history,” he began calmly, “Primes have demonstrated highly volatile emotional architectures.”

The word ‘volatile’ landed somewhere behind my ribs.

I kept my eyes on my notebook.

“Unlike standard elemental practitioners, Primes operate as multi-channel conduits,” he continued. “Which means emotional instability does not remain psychological.”

His pen tapped the notebook.

“It manifests physically.”

Someone in the room shifted uncomfortably.

“Historically,” he went on, still reading from his notes, “this has made Primes destabilizing factors within structured magical environments.”

‘Destabilizing.’

I gripped my pen a little tighter.

Professor Halden turned a page.

“Most academy records describe early-stage Primes as containment risks until sufficient discipline is imposed.”

A quiet laugh from someone two rows behind me broke the silence.

Not a mean laugh.

Just nervous.

But it still landed like a knife.

Containment risk.

My chest tightened slowly, the way it always did when something old and ugly started crawling out of memory.

Jake’s voice slipped in without asking permission.

‘You’re too much sometimes, Ari.’

I stared at the page in front of me.

Professor Halden continued speaking with the detached tone of someone analyzing distant weather patterns.

“Emotional intensity tends to correlate with destructive output,” he said. “Which is why many early academies implemented strict containment protocols when training Primes.”

Containment.

Protocols.

Like I was a cracked dam someone had to reinforce.

I kept my head down and wrote something in my notebook that I didn’t read afterward.

My hands stayed steady.

My breathing stayed even.

From the outside, I looked perfectly calm.

Inside, the pressure kept building.

****

The lecture lasted forty minutes.

Forty long minutes of hearing myself described like a structural hazard.

Professor Halden never looked directly at me once.

Which somehow made it worse.

When the bell rang, the room emptied quickly. Chairs scraped. Students gathered their books and hurried into the hallway, voices low and uneasy.

I stayed seated for a moment.

Just long enough to breathe.

Then I stood and walked out with everyone else.

The hallway outside Elemental Theory filled with students moving between classes. Conversations overlapped. Someone complained about the assignment Dr. Vasile had given for next week.

Normal noise.

Normal movement.

And then the floor beneath my feet turned cold.

At first I thought someone had spilled something.

I looked down.

Water spread slowly across the stone tiles.

Not rushing.

Not exploding from pipes.

Just… appearing.

The thin layer crept outward from where I stood, filling the grooves between the stones like a rising tide.

I froze.

“Oh—”

Someone behind me stepped back quickly.

“Where’s that coming from?”

The water climbed over my shoes.

Then my ankles.

A quiet ripple moved through the crowd as students began noticing.

“Is that—”

“Move back.”

I tried to breathe.

The water kept rising.

It slipped between the stones in a steady, unstoppable flow, spreading outward in widening circles. Not dramatic enough to look like a disaster, but relentless enough that people were already stepping away.

I could feel the water element inside me responding to something I couldn’t push down anymore.

The shame from the lecture.

The old voice in my head.

The sick twist of remembering Jake standing in my parents’ kitchen looking apologetic and tired.

‘You’re a lot sometimes, Ari.’

My throat tightened.

The water reached halfway up my calves.

“Someone get a professor,” a voice said sharply.

“I didn’t—” I started.

But the words didn’t help.

The water kept coming.

Students moved farther down the corridor, leaving a wide circle around me like I was the center of something contagious.

My eyes burned.

Not from the magic.

From the humiliation.

Thirty seconds later, someone stepped into the water.

The crowd quieted immediately.

Raven Blackwood stopped directly in front of me.

His boots disappeared beneath the shallow water without hesitation. The dark fabric of his uniform didn’t even shift when it soaked through.

He didn’t look at the water.

He looked at me.

Then he moved half a step closer, positioning himself between me and the rest of the hallway.

Blocking their view.

His voice stayed low.

“Look at me.”

I did.

Not because I wanted to.

Because his tone left no room for anything else.

“Tell me one thing that is only true right now,” he said evenly.

I blinked at him.

My brain felt scrambled, like someone had shaken every thought loose and dumped them on the floor.

“Not yesterday,” Raven continued calmly. “Not in that classroom.”

His eyes held mine.

“Right now.”

I searched desperately for something.

Anything.

My gaze dropped to the water around his boots.

“Your boots are getting ruined,” I said hoarsely.

For a second his expression shifted.

Just slightly.

The corner of his mouth moved in something that might have been the beginning of a smile.

“They’re waterproof,” he said.

The tension in my chest loosened half an inch.

“What else is true right now?”

I swallowed.

The water stopped rising.

I felt it before I saw it.

The pressure behind my ribs eased just enough for the element to lose its grip.

The surface around us trembled.

Then slowly, quietly, the water began slipping back down between the stones.

Raven didn’t move.

He stood there while the corridor drained around us.

Students watched from a distance, whispering.

He ignored them completely.

By the time the floor was dry again, the hallway had mostly emptied.

Raven finally stepped back.

“Come with me,” he said.

It wasn’t an order.

But it wasn’t really optional either.

****

He walked me back to my dorm.

Not touching me.

Not explaining anything to the professors who glanced at us in passing.

Just walking beside me in silence.

My hands stayed shoved deep into the sleeves of my sweater.

The corridor outside my room was quiet when we reached it.

Raven stopped a few feet from the door.

For a moment neither of us spoke.

Then he said, in the same calm tone he used during training,

“The scholar was wrong.”

I looked up.

“He was using a framework developed two hundred years ago,” Raven continued. “Based on Primes who were isolated during training.”

His gaze stayed steady.

“You are not.”

The words settled slowly.

“He described instability,” Raven added. “What he meant was lack of support.”

I leaned back against the door.

“You’re saying the problem wasn’t them.”

“I’m saying the problem wasn’t ‘only’ them.”

The distinction mattered.

Raven shifted slightly.

“His conclusions don’t apply to you.”

He said it like a fact.

Not comfort.

Not encouragement.

Just reality.

Then he stepped back.

“Rest,” he said.

And left before I could think of anything to say.

****

I sat on my bed for a long time after that.

At first I didn’t cry.

I just sat there staring at the wall while everything that had been held together all day finally started loosening.

The lecture.

The water.

Jake’s voice.

My parents’ kitchen.

The way Emma had stood behind him that night with her arms folded like she already knew what was going to happen.

Eventually the first tear slipped down my cheek.

After that, it didn’t stop.

I curled up on the bed and let it happen properly.

Not quiet crying.

Not the controlled version where you try to stay dignified.

The messy kind.

The kind that made my chest ache and my nose run and my throat feel raw.

All the old memories mixed together until I couldn’t separate them anymore.

Jake laughing at something stupid in my parents’ living room.

Emma stealing fries off my plate.

The moment everything shifted and I realized I had somehow become the wrong person in my own life.

It lasted a long time.

Long enough that the sun disappeared completely outside my window.

Eventually the tears stopped.

I sat up slowly and wiped my face with the sleeve of my sweater.

The room was perfectly dry.

The air felt cool and balanced.

My elements had settled back into quiet equilibrium beneath my skin.

Strangely, I felt lighter.

Not happy.

But… clean.

Like something that had been stuck for a long time had finally moved.

****

A knock sounded on the door much later.

I assumed it was Imara.

Or Sage.

Maybe someone who had heard about the hallway incident and decided to check on me.

I opened the door without thinking.

Lucian stood in the hallway.

Perfect posture.

Perfect composure.

Two cups of something steaming in his hands.

He took one look at my face.

The redness around my eyes.

The exhaustion I probably hadn’t hidden very well.

He didn’t say anything sympathetic.

Didn’t ask what happened.

He simply held one of the cups out toward me.

“The archive can wait,” he said.

His voice stayed quiet.

“But you shouldn’t be alone right now.”

I stepped back automatically.

Lucian entered the room without another word.

We sat on opposite ends of the window seat.

The mountain outside was a dark shape against the night sky.

For a while neither of us spoke.

I stared down at the cup in my hands.

“What is this?” I asked eventually.

“Tea.”

“That’s very specific.”

“Herbal infusion,” he corrected.

I took a sip.

It tasted warm and slightly bitter.

“Did someone tell you about the hallway?” I asked.

Lucian leaned back slightly against the window frame.

“I have been alive long enough to recognize the signs of a difficult day.”

I huffed a quiet laugh.

“That obvious?”

“Yes.”

Another silence stretched between us.

Then, without planning it, I said,

“His name was Jake.”

Lucian didn’t interrupt.

“He wasn’t a bad person,” I continued slowly. “That’s the complicated part.”

I stared out at the moun

tains.

“He was just… tired of me before I realized it.”

Lucian listened.

Completely still.

No interruptions.

No advice.

Just attention.

So I kept talking.

Not about the betrayal.

Not about Emma.

Just the before.

What it felt like when everything still worked.

What I thought I had.

Lucian stayed there the entire time, listening with the quiet patience of someone who had all the time in the world—and had decided, very deliberately, to spend some of it with me.