Page 23 of Too Many Beds

Relentless

Adelaide Blaike

From the moment Asher Larsen stepped across the ancient, boot-worn threshold of Gannon Academy for the Elemental Arts, the powerful scent of another mage’s aura became his entire world.

The cinnamon-infused trail was thick in the Academy’s courtyard, lingered faintly in Principal Everett’s office as Asher dutifully endured his induction lecture on academic integrity and mage honour, and weaved through the various classrooms and training areas he was shown on the ground floor.

“So that’s the serious stuff out of the way,” chirped Bonnie, the sprightly, auburn-haired student who had been assigned to show Asher around. “We don’t get much free time, and I expect you’ll have even less with being a trimester behind, but when youdo, everyone hangs out in the Attic.”

The Attic turned out to be a low ceilinged room on the top floor of the old building. It was an informal space, softlylit, with mismatched lounges and low tables dotted across the floor. Asher couldn’t see any professors amid the thick crowd of gathered Academy students.

The mage cohort groups were indicated by the number of pips on the uncomfortably high, starched collars of their black uniforms. Three for the senior year. Two for the junior. And one for the first-year recruits to which Asher now belonged: raw with magical potential but no formal training.

Although, as Bonnie had reminded him with inexplicable cheer, at least the rest of them had spent their first trimester studying at the Academy. Asher’s attendance had been delayed by the rains coming early to his family’s farm, and judging by the lengthy admonition he’d just received from Principal Everett, helping to plant the crops that would keep his kin alive through the next winter wasn’t an adequate reason for turning up to Gannon late.

Asher, despite the scowl he’d worn throughout the lecture, couldn’t find it in himself to argue. He was dreadfully,hopelesslybehind the rest of his cohort, and already despairing at how he’d possibly manage to catch up. He had spent the two-day journey to the Academy wet, miserable, and wondering if it was even worth the attempt.

What if he spent most of a year buried in books and gruelling exams, only to wash out?

Only half of the first-years graduated to the second, and half ofthemwouldn’t make it to the third. Gannon Academy didn’t give second chances, and a failed, uncertified mage was as good as no mage at all.

He should direct his efforts into woodworking or tanning instead, Asher had been telling himself as he stumbled wearily up the stone steps to the school. Spend the time earning a trade instead of wasting it on a fool’s dream.

But that was when he’d smelled the cinnamon. It was more than a pleasant scent: it was anenergy, utterly intoxicating and mesmerisingly magnetic. It overwhelmed his senses even now, making it difficult to concentrate on Bonnie’s chatter and impossible to smell the mug of mead she was waving under his nose.

“Asher. Asher, are you listening?”

The aura was actuallystrongerhere than it had been downstairs. Rich and exhilarating, and making Asher’s mouth water with need. He felt himself being pulled deeper into the room, drifting through the crowd of students and sensing Bonnie’s bemusement as he left her behind.

The cinnamon-tasting aura wrapped itself fondly around him and offered gentle nudges towards the back of the Attic with an insistent compulsion that was impossible to ignore. Eyes watched him pass: the second and third-years with curiosity, and the first-year mages with a wary assessment as they sized up their new competition.

Asher was no competition. He was tired from his journey, overwhelmed and weary, and already feeling woefully inadequate against the confident, competent students who surrounded him.

A man near the far end of the hall glanced up with an irritated expression as he passed, his hand lifting as though to touch Asher, and then aborting the movement just as abruptly. Asher swayed like he’d been hit, the invisible force locking down each of his muscles to prevent him from walking past.

Thiswas the source of all that delicious energy.

He was a first-year around Asher’s own age, with thick dark hair that framed a pale, scowling face. His eyes were piercing and violet, his nose thin, and he was the type of handsome often termed brooding or tortured. His was an aloof beauty, the kindthat would be ruined by a smile, but he certainly wasn’t doing anything as soft orhumanas smiling now.

The man—Asher’s soulmate, the energy in the air between them could be nothing else—looked Asher up and down where he stood frozen in front of him.

Asher waited for the mage to acknowledge him. To greet him, to embrace him, to...kiss him. This stranger had stirred a desperate need within him, one that eclipsed even the necessity of air. And that inexplicable force that had drawn him in, overriding all of his senses and sensibilities and making him yearn for someone he’d never even met…surelyhe had to feel the same?

But the dark-haired man’s mouth twisted in distaste and he tossed a handful of red sparks in Asher’s direction, making him flinch.

“Fuck off, recruit,” he said disdainfully.

Then he nodded farewell to his companions, pushed past Asher with an unnecessarily vicious shoulder check, and disappeared into the crowds of the Attic.

“Oh,” Bonnie said with a long sigh, appearing at Asher’s side. “Oh, dear.”

His name was Xem Whitlock, Bonnie told him. She pronounced it ‘Zem’, and it was only much later that Asher realised it was spelt with a X in the exotic way of the other mage’s native icelands. But Asher was more bespelled by the sound of it, and how it wrapped around his tongue in the same way Xem’s aura tangled itself around him in tones of cinnamon spice, heat, and need.

Bonnie also told him Xem was out of his league,by a thousand times, honey. Asher would have been offended, except she’d multiplied the number when cataloguing her own chances with him and pulled a disappointed face when explaining that Xem favoured men. “But even as adorable as you are,” Bonnie had added, eyeing Asher’s pale curls and the biceps that were more pudgy than toned, “neither one of us should expect to warm that particular mage’s bed anytime soon.”

“Why?”

“He barely tolerates anyone but the highest ranked third-year mages. The prick is insanely powerful.”

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