Chapter One
We’ve come all this way to get stopped by adoor.
I recheck the runes I scrawled in chalk around the frame. I accounted for any fail-safe we might trigger, and even padded in unnecessarily complex runes for anyfail-safefail-safe; I would not put it past these assholes to have traps on traps just to fuck with me.
But Seb,Orok had said,isn’t it egotistical to think the Conjuration Department beefed up their security to spite you and not to, say, protect the thousands of dollars’ worth of spell components in their lab?
To which I’d responded with a deadpan stare. The protection ward currently keeping me out of the second-floor Conjuration Lab might as well haveTo Sebastian Walsh, With Lovewoven into the fabric of the barrier that glimmers an ethereal blue every time I try to break it.
I roll my shoulders, shake out my hands, and start the incantation. Again.
“You get one more shot,” Orok interrupts from where he leans against the wall behind me, “then I’m climbing the side of the building.”
“They’ll have wards on the windows, too.”
“Not ones this intense. Theyexpectthieves to come through this way—”
“Thieves.” I snort derisively.
I can feel Orok’s eye roll as strongly as I can feel his next words coming, and I mouth along with him—
“And puny evocation wizards.”
Only I don’t add that descriptor, and I flip a glare back at him. “Puny?”
Orok eyes me head to toe, then holds his arms out in an unspoken comparison.
He’s got the height and bulk from his half-giant lineage, whichhas made him broader and taller than I am at every stage of our lives. My family had been thrilled when we glommed on to each other in grade school, exclaiming what agood influencehe’d be on me—right up until he opted into academia, and it turned out Orok Monroe wasn’t a good influence on me; I was a bad influence on him.
Lock up your kids, Sebastian Walsh might come along and tempt them to fall upon the sacrificial altar of student debt.
Orok lets his arms drop. “I meant that they probably only have simple locking wards on the windows. I can break those mid-jump.”
“All the more reason to get through this,” I say. “Prove to these dickheads that I cannot be stopped. I cannot be contained. I am inescapable, damn it, and I will not—”
“Your villain victory speech would be more impressive if you hadn’t already been at this for twenty minutes.”
I check my phone—ignoring texts from my mom—and sigh. Security only walks the upper levels a few times a night, but they could be due for their sweep soon.
I grab the little vial hanging at my side.
Orok groans. “No.”
“I need the boost. It’ll be quick.”
“If you’re that desperateover a locked door,I’m climbing the building.”
I elbow him back into place as he tries to pass me. “You gave me one more chance. Stand down, Monroe.”
“You know I hate your fox familiar, Walsh.”
“Because you’re heartless. Nick’s adorable.”
“He’sinvisible.”
“And when he wasn’t invisible, he was adorable, ergo, he’s still adorable. Now—” I bat Orok back to the wall and he goes with a resigned sigh.
I spill the spell components into my hand. With a whispered incantation they disperse, and the air at my feet grows hazy before clearing.
