Page 3 of Soulmates

He didn’t like being separated from Maddox. At least he was paired with his friend Martina Santiago, who was as aggressive as warriors got. Nothing subtle about Santiago. She wore her warrior flag proudly, walking around in bronze bracers, for fuck’s sake. Enchanted, but still. He thought it looked ridiculous. At six feet tall and muscular, she looked like she ate small children for breakfast with her punk clothes and spiked hair. The funny thing was, Santiago was incredibly kind, if you ignored her somewhat murderous tendencies. She took one look at his “hoodie of the night” and acted like he was a blight on their people, though he knew she loved him like a brother.

Santiago bounced on her toes, waiting for the next challenge, their fifth of the night. Jake was less enthusiastic, just wondering if everyone was still alive.

She swore student deaths were a rumor. “If students didn’t return to the world after fifth year, wouldn’t it be, I don’t know, newsworthy?”

“Not if the graduates run the news,” he said.

“Oh, here we go…”

“I’m just saying Maddox isn’t wrong. It’s weird that we know so little about this mysterious, potentially deadly challenge that’s some sort of secret-not-secret requirement of graduation.”

Santiago paused in fixing the laces on her boots. “Well, I mean, it’s not really required, right?”

“I don’t know, Santiago. Do you see anyone sitting out?”

She didn’t have an answer for that.

The tasks had gotten not only harder but weirder as the night went on. And more dangerous. It also turned out that the tasks were not identical for each student or maybe each specialty or dorm or who-knew-what other criteria they were using? No one knew how the tasks were being meted out after the first because they kept getting split up. The third task had some students making advanced and very dangerous potions and some scaling buildings without rope. The clues became vaguer and the tasks more interconnected. During the fourth challenge, students who didn’t make potions in the third had to drink them. This proved especially difficult as four options were presented. Two marked poison and two marked antidote. Pick wrong on either and…well, no one knew what would happen. What potions were made? What kind of fail-safes were in place, if any?

In the chemistry room, Jake had stared down at the potions in front of him and pondered the meaning of all of this. He took out his phone to text Maddox, but just like during end-of-year exams, the signal was gone. Not low, but as if the setting didn’t exist at all. Fucking Reinhold.

Maddox was never far from Jake’s mind. Had Maddox already done this? Was he drinking poison while Jake stood there, staring at the ridiculous pewter-embossed glasses? Or was he off doing something worse? Scarier? Deadlier?

If something happened to Maddy, he would burn the entire school to the ground. Raze it to ashes like some mythical monster. It sounded like an exaggeration even in his own head, but he knew it to be true like he knew the shape of Maddy’s eyes when he squinted against the sun reflecting off lake water. Like he knew the tone of Maddy’s voice when he was losing his patience talking to his father on the phone. Like he knew the person Maddy loved most in the world was Clarissa, his little sister.

He didn’t even pretend to be rational about Maddox. At least not to himself. Maddox knew Jake wanted to protect him, but he saw it as a friendly thing. It was, but it wasn’t. He was completely in love with Maddox and had been since they were kids. He had loved Maddox before romantic love was something he comprehended, since before his memories began. And Maddox had no idea.

He didn’t know how to broach the subject or if he even wanted to risk it.

Jake ended up managing the potions fine. He studied each one, ran through tests and scenarios, noted the way each hit the light, viewed them through various instruments found around the room, and took a leap of faith that would have given Maddox a heart attack. Jake was never great with potions. The one marked “poison” burned him all the way down his chest, and he doused it with the one he chose as the antidote. Even through his alarm, Maddox would have been proud. Jake survived with a mild case of heartburn and a continued impatience with the entire night.

The fifth challenge began simply enough. “Join your first sparring partner in the place of your first encounter.” First sparring partner—that had to be Santiago. But the first encounter? Where they first met? First sparred in a literal sense? First sparred for testing? And what had the other factions’ challenges said?

Another leap of faith led him to find Santiago in the rec room of their dorm. They had quite literally run into each other with their luggage racks full of a year’s worth of supplies on their first day of first year. Santiago had guessed the same location, and they’d settled to wait while, he assumed, the other students paired up.

Jake pulled himself back to the present, ready to continue theorizing about the challenge.

Santiago opened her mouth to make another comment that might have sent him into the actual ceiling with pent-up frustration, but the dual chimes of their phones stopped her.

Chapter 3

Maddox stood facing off with Carter Randall, a fire elementalist he’d known most of his life, having attended the same boarding schools.

Carter was a good guy, though being solely in tune with fire made a person somewhat testy. He liked Carter, but he was so anxious about Jake that he didn’t want to be around another person. What if Jake had to do something with the potions the others had made? Jake had no patience at all for potions and would probably rush through them and turn into a damn frog or something. Even he had to admit that sounded more like a kid’s movie than what was more likely—that it eliminated the students who chose wrong. Or killed them. Gods knew there were enough magic users to lose a few hotheaded ones, according to the blogs he read in secret.

Carter was…Carter. Only really interested in himself, hyperfocused on his specialty, and very much in love with his longtime girlfriend, Lizbet, a void and one of Maddox’s closest friends. Lizzie’s location was currently unknown, though Carter didn’t seem worried. The only message so far on task five was to “reenact your first encounter with your first sparring partner.” He had rushed toward the square near his first dormitory.

“What’s up, roomie?” had been the first thing out of Carter’s mouth.

“Hey, man. Have you seen any others?”

“Not since challenge two. You?”

“Same.” Maddox twisted his fingers together. Jake would have pulled them apart and told him he was going to give himself arthritis, no matter how many times he’d explained that you can’t give yourself arthritis since it’s hereditary. To which Jake would remind him it never hurt to be careful, since Maddox’s Grandma, Rosette, had arthritis. Which would inevitably lead to him reminding Jake about statistics regarding heredity and generations, and Jake would smirk that smirk of his until Maddox would lose patience and throw his hands up while Jake pointed out that at least he was no longer cracking his knuckles.

How much history was contained in two people? He’d shared every moment of his life with Jake, whether because Jake was physically present or in the telling and retelling of every story. He loved that man more than anything in the world.

“How’s Lizzie doing?” Maddox said.

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