Page 24 of Too Many Beds

Asher wasn’t surprised. The sheer strength of the aura that continued to draw him into its thrall was akin to the tornados that would sweep through his family’s farm every couple of years. Capable of rattling doors and hurling livestock and tearing Asher limb from limb.

Disappointingly, there wasn’t a trace of it in the cramped, draughty room he’d been assigned to share with Dawson, another first-year. Clearly Xem had never been in there, and while his scent drifted faintly through a couple of the other student bedrooms, it was strongest behind the door at the furthest end of the corridor to Asher’s own.

“Swap with me,” Asher begged Bonnie at the end of his first week at Gannon, unable to take the desolation any longer. He’d been tossing and turning for hours each night, feeling like a man dying of thirst and knowing all the water he could ever want was sleeping a handful of beds down the corridor. Bonnie might not have been the lucky student who shared Xem’s room but at least she was closer, and gettingcloserwas all Asher could think about.

The addiction had weaved its way into his soul. It gnawed at him, eroding his interest and attention in anything else until his whole world had becomeXem.

What time the mage woke each morning. That he shared a room with Pippah Shae, another first-year student. What he liked to eat for breakfast down in the main dining hall and how he always finished his eggs prior to starting on his bacon, each type of food neatly polished off before he began on another. Xem’s impressive mastery over the four elements: not just the fire he’d thrown at Asher that first day in the form of sparks, but also the rich strength of earth, the deceptively gentle caress of air, and the hungry demand of water.

And how his presence made everything…better.Being near Xem was soothing and satisfying and the only time Asher felt he could breathe freely. The distress he suffered whenever they were separated wasn’t painful, exactly, but it was like an itch that couldn’t be scratched. A cough that wouldn’t leave. An urge that wouldn’t ease.

A distracting, agitatingneed.

“Swap rooms with you?” Bonnie repeated, confused. “Why?”

“I just...”

Asher trailed off. He had no good reason to give her: identifying any objective merit of her room over his would hardly give her the incentive to agree. And while his friend was unhappily aware of his obsession with Xem—she could hardly fail to be, considering how mindless it made him—telling her that being a few yards closer to the other man each night would make him feel better seemed...pathetic.

It was pathetic.Hewas pathetic.

Yet from the pitying look she was giving him, Bonnie had already figured it out.

“I can’t,” she said. “You know the beds are ranked.”

“What?”

An exasperated sigh was breathed his way. “Asher, have you been paying any attention at all?”

No.

“Yes?” But it came out hesitant, a question he hadn’t meant to ask, and he winced as he said it.

“Our rank within our student cohort grants us proportional entitlements at Gannon,” Bonnie explained with a patience Asher didn’t deserve. “The higher your rank, the fewer shifts you’re assigned to work in the laundry. You’re permitted longer bookings in the training rooms. You get the better bedrooms.”

She waved a hand up the corridor towards the window that overlooked the Academy grounds, where the door to the room Xem shared with Pippah was firmly shut. “Top of the year reside down there: larger rooms, comfier beds, fewer rats trying to gnaw on your toes.”

Then Bonnie rapped her knuckles on Asher’s open door. “Bottom of the year—and new recruits who haven’t yet been ranked,” she added hastily, catching the crestfallen look on his face, “sleep all the way over here. I hope you took my advice about the vermin?”

He’d completely forgotten what she might have told him to do, but coming from a farm, rats didn’t bother Asher.

No, what was concerning was the number of beds between him and the mage who had quickly become his entire focus. The one who hadn’t even bothered to speak to him since that first day, perpetually haughty and unapproachable, and sending Asher into a confusing state of miserable delight. Or delightful misery. The two made an impossible combination: the mere taste of Xem in the air could invigorate Asher in a way he’d never felt before, but not being able to get closer was absoluteagony.

The blood on its whiskers and claws suggested that the huge black rat was the same one Asher had spotted in his roomlast night when he’d woken to use the privy. A vicious, ugly beast, as were its two companions, but that didn’t mean any of them deserved the fate their professor had just described.

“You’re making the second-years practice their air magic by suffocating innocent creatures?” Asher repeated in disbelief, straightening up from where he’d been inspecting the cage on the desk. The three murine occupants scurried frantically within the confined space. “That’s fucking barbaric!”

“Language, Mr. Larsen,” Professor Allarie chided, as though swearing was worse than the literal torture she’d so casually tossed out as explanation for the captive rats. “What would you have the students do, practice on eachother?”

“At least mages can consent!” he argued stubbornly, feeling hot fury spark up his spine. The rest of the first-year class watched on silently with wide eyes and gleeful intrigue.

“Does that mean you’re volunteering as my next class’ test subject?” The professor’s voice was laced with dark threat.

Asher set his jaw and folded his arms. He tried not to imagine what being deprived of his air might feel like. “Yes.”

But she dismissed him with a contemptuous glance, turning to face the rest of the class. “As I said before that pointless interruption, you’ll be doing single element casts with your partners today. Use the techniques we went through yesterday to disable-”

“They’reterrified,” Asher pointed out, still bristling with horror. “You have no right to do this!”

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