Page 4 of Soulmates

“Good.” Carter grinned. “I’m going to propose after graduation.”

“That’s great, man. I’m thrilled for you.”

“Assuming she’s going to say yes, then?” Carter asked and turned away from the fountain he’d been staring at to look at Maddox. Maddox knew Lizzie would say yes. But Carter had an uncharacteristic nervous look about him. Carter was never unsure. The saying “often wrong, never uncertain” should be Randall family motto. But not tonight. Tonight, Carter was worried.

“Why wouldn’t she say yes? You’ve been together since…I don’t even know. The whole time I’ve known you. You were together since Savannah, right?” Maddox pointed out more to assuage Carter’s fears than ask the question he already knew the answer to.

“Yeah, but she wants to move back there, and I…I’m just not sure,” Carter said, not quite looking at him.

“But why? Your whole family is there. Don’t you have an empire to continue when you get home?” Maddox half-joked.

Carter looked at the ground and took a deep breath. Then another. And another. Maddox began moving toward him, thinking he was having a panic attack or something. But Carter looked up, determined. “Do you ever think maybe there are things we aren’t being told?”

Maddox’s heart jumped into his throat.

“Like, this place,” Carter said in a near whisper. “What exactly is the pur—”

A loud chime made them both jump apart at the same moment. Their phones. The next task was issued.

“Gaze at the person with you. Look closely. Reenact your origin story.” Maddox frowned at his phone. What in the fuck was that supposed to mean?

“Um, origin story?” Carter said, his voice going back to normal, if still somewhat shaky. “What origin story?”

“Uh, our story as in you and me? Like, our journey as students together?”

“But that could mean anything. It doesn’t mean how we met, because here we are.”

“How we got to know each other? We lived together. We can’t reenact that.”

“It can’t be that simple. How we bonded? Did we bond? We only roomed together in year one. We aren’t that kind of close…sorry,” Carter said with a grimace.

“No, I know what you mean.” Maddox was much closer to Lizzie than Carter. He thought for a bit. “What about in year three when we were put together for midterms and we had to knock each other out of that ring? And you kept trying to set me on fire. That was funny as hell, and we passed the class and had a good laugh. We kind of bonded over that. We even had a drink after I grabbed some unburned clothes.”

Carter smiled. “Yeah, that was a good time. Okay, so I try to set you on fire?”

“I think we should take it further than that. Maybe we reenact the whole thing? Like, make the circle. I go first, then you go, and we try to remember what exactly we did?”

“Makes sense.”

“I mean, no, it doesn’t insofar as any of this makes any damn sense,” he muttered. “What have we done tonight to prove anything about anything?”

Carter pressed his lips into a thin line. “Let’s just try this and worry about the rest later.” He gave Maddox a meaningful look, as if maybe the conversation they started earlier wasn’t over. He had a moment to wonder if maybe this night was their origin story before a gigantic explosion went off toward the west end of campus.

“Fuck, let’s just do this,” Carter said quickly as he grabbed a stick from a nearby bush and drew out a dueling circle.

Chapter 4

The fifth task issued, Jake and Santiago didn’t even question what they had to do. Reenacting their origin story was a no-brainer.

He and Santiago came from different parts of the country. Jake, along with Maddox, hailed from Seattle, while Santiago was a New Yorker, born and raised. She was from the Bronx, “back when the Bronx was still cool.” They’d had different upbringings, though were both obviously filthy rich (see immediate surroundings, he thought), different family businesses (his in finance, Santiago’s in protection for the rich and richer), and distinct skill sets. They were the ultimate fight partners, each bringing something different to the table for the betterment of the other and, debatably, the future enrichment of the magic community.

Their first fight at Reinhold occurred within months of arriving in year one. They threw punches, kicks, and spells—his a bright, gleaming amber and Santiago’s a nearly neon pink as they exploded against each other. It was a fair fight that Santiago eventually won with a combination of spelling his shoes to the ground and a high round kick to the side of the head that knocked him on his ass, sans shoes.

Since that fight, they were pretty even in wins and losses, his height advantage counteracted by Santiago’s inhuman speed. She was so fast that he once angrily accused her of potioning, which would have been disqualifying if true. She calmly explained that it wasn’t her fault he was a giant slowpoke and took off running in the opposite direction. He’d apologized, and Santiago snatched his baseball cap off his head and had it on her own before he could react. Theirs was a friendship forged in mock battles and held through the years.

She was, despite being his opposite in fighting style, clothing choice, attitude, and pretty much everything else, one of his closest friends at school. She was the only one he’d ever talked to about his obsession with his best friend. When he’d brought it up, she’d rolled her eyes and said it was the most obvious thing in the entire universe. He’d panicked immediately, but Santiago said she didn’t think anyone who hadn’t studied him as closely as she had would have picked up on his crush.

“Um, you what?” he asked.

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