Page 5 of Two Who Live On

Frustration festered in her head, but her cheeks tightened as she smiled because she was incapable of holding onto rage. It clogged the happiness she found for everything in life, and knowing how fleeting it all was, she refused to give energy to things that didn’t utterly delight her—a sentiment I never understood. Yet she forced smiles and positive thoughts until they became her reality.

So, an email sent far too late for her to handle, threatening to steal the joy from her successful academy launch simply wasn’t allowed. Not when she’d dedicated most of her vacation, weekends, and late nights ensuring everything went perfectly.

I puffed on a cigarette in the parking lot, leaned against one of the brick pillars lining the entryway to the campus, and drifted alongside her telepathically as my smoky exhale wafted.

Since my near-death experience, my telepathy had magnified tenfold. Even without summoning a manifestation, I could easily link onto another person’s mind, unweave their inner thoughts, and follow for a short radius like a ghost trailing alongside them. Something that used to take much more applied effort, I now slipped into this enhanced state as naturally and unknowingly as breathing. Ironically, though, I hadn’t been able to summon an actual manifestation since the attack on the academy. No deep dives into any minds or memories like I’d done with Caleb, Kenzo, and Tara.It was frustrating losing that skill while gaining another, but I had too much on my mind—quite literally, other people’s minds included—to make it much of a priority. When life slowed down, I’d figure it out.

I’d need to gain more control over this shift in my telepathy especially before mentioning it the next time I renewed my enchanter license. I took a sharp inhale and grumbled. This improvement would likely increase the yearly cost for my license, or they’d tax the hell out of me because while having great magic didn’t cost a thing, the right to freely cast it was expensive.

It wasn’t something I had to consider for months, though. The only thing I needed to focus on now was Chanelle’s current location so I could dodge whatever early morning meeting she’d scheduled for staff.

Not that I planned on avoiding Chanelle forever, but until she eased the brakes on her academy position, it was the easiest way to keep tabs on her so I didn’t get dragged into an extra workload. I hated it. I often got my best work done for classes by arriving early and spending some time alone in a quiet classroom undisturbed by the bustle of the building with only faint thoughts trickling in. She knew that and used my productivity to her advantage.

“Dammit, Dorian.” She reached my darkened room and huffed. “I know you’re here.”

“Not today, Miss Hotshot.” I took another drag off my cigarette while she trailed down the hall and further from my over-the-shoulder view. I didn’t require a reminder on the tech we were presenting to the students, its importance to ranking our first years, or how it tied into new security measures.

“Good morning, Mr. Frost.” Gael waved a spiked hand from across the parking lot.

I’d kept their stats close at hand all year, and soon, I’d have to update them based on the new and improved ranking system the academy wanted to roll out. I chuckled to myself, which invited a smile from Gael, but in truth, it was Gemini’s old ranking system that they’d brushed off and tweaked and poured way too much funding into without a second thought that almost brought a smile to my face.

Gemini—like too many academies—cut the old ranking system because it was a strong determining factor on incoming enrollment, and they all wanted to increase their roster influx due to the state’s new rollout on increasing licensed witch proficiency to eighty percent. Of course, now academies were worried about impressing guilds for extra funding and sponsorship, so they’d created this new and improved system.

Except it wasn’t. That was how education worked for the most part—someone disliked a system already in place and removed it without something new, or someone had a half-assed idea that sounded great in theory, but they impatiently tossed it out tothe world and expected teachers to figure it out through trial and error.It’s not as if these errors affect the kids or anything.

Gael’s sharklike teeth beamed brightly as he flaunted his new hairdo. The first day of February was official, and he’d dyed his black roots a deep red to commemorate the upcoming holiday. His long, gelled spiky hair, emulating Enchanter Evergreen’s style, was dyed a light pink with frosted white tips. Admittedly, I rather enjoyed Gael’s festive looks. New spikes continued blossoming as his augmentation increased, so the occasional rips were to be expected. But without the blazer, his overly wrinkled short-sleeved dress shirts were highly noticeable. It was irksome that he wasted so much time on his hair and not nearly enough on his overall presentation or his studies.

Dropping my cigarette, I squished the ember beneath my shoe along with the invasive thought—I certainly didn’t concern myself with Gael’s somewhat aloof behavior. Oh no, that honor belonged to the student walking alongside him.

Gael had spent more time with Kenzo since the end of the first semester, training to improve his abilities and academics. I was grateful Kenzo had taken an interest in Gael’s success, but his tactics involved early mornings and late-night study sessions. Hence why they were always the first to arrive on campus.

“Better be doing something useful today.” Gray static coursed along Kenzo’s temples, surging across his forehead, and running through his short, jet-black hair. It added a shimmer.

“I’d say today’s going to be pretty eventful.” I grinned, which only intensified Kenzo’s frown.

“Dammit.” He ground his teeth and stormed aheadinside.

Of all my homeroom students, Kenzo took the warlock incursion on campus the most seriously. He’d added to his already rigorous training routine, and with the added benefit of his fledgling permit, he spent all his time working on perfecting his disruption. We’d even turned it into a little game. Well, I’d turned it into a game, deluding myself into believing this was some type of bonding exercise for us, but his constantly irritated thoughts about me made it clear this was strictly a way for him to improve.

To hex another person’s magic, Kenzo either had to directly strike the user or the magic itself when cast in the atmosphere. However, psychic magic such as mine proved harder to pinpoint. He needed precision when obscuring his thoughts from my magic. Nine out of ten times, he floundered at blocking his thoughts. If it were any other student, I’d let them think it was seven out of ten, but Kenzo would take a considerate curve to his success as a slight, so here we were practicing at every opportunity when our paths crossed.

“Hurry up, porcupine!” Kenzo growled.

Gael rushed past me, tightening the straps of his book bag as he trotted beside Kenzo. I followed them, casually making my way to my classroom while they turned off and headed toward the library.

I sat alone in my room, unboxing the biggest academy investment I’d seen thus far. Partly because it helped bring back the ranking system and partly because Chanelle pitched it as a way to streamline our security in new and improved ways. I sighed. Our administrators had ordered these specific to each of the students’ branch magics but hadn’t bothered with much else, which meant I had the ever so enjoyable headache of dealing with errors while syncing them to my homeroom coven’s specific channeling frequencies.

These overpriced hunks of junk our administration team called state-of-the-art devices got rather temperamental if not calibrated just right. They’d crash and require a time-consuming reboot. Thankfully,I had a lot of data on my classes’ particular frequencies for casting and spent what remained of my morning setting them up.

The bell rang, and I stood in the hallway, awaiting my homeroom coven’s arrival. Students flooded into the building, and Gael boldly cut through the crowd, walking beside Tara.

“It’s gonna be the event of the year,” Gael said loudly. He continued riding the wave of success my homeroom coven had before winter break and flaunted his honorary Cerberus emblem on full display, pinned above a colorful pocket square on his academy jacket.

“Is it, though?” Tara raised a questioning eyebrow, resisting a desire to comment the contrary.

They’d become an inseparable duo—well, trio, with King Clucks plodding between the two as they walked into the room—since the warlock incursion. Their friendship had blossomed somewhere before but had continued increasing this semester.

“I just wish we could go.” Gael held his phone close to his face like it had a secret invitation. The bright light of the screen illuminated his bronze complexion.

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