Thornhill Academy. Chapter 65

I head straight to the academy's main library, and when it's thankfully empty, I enter. The grand vaulted ceilings hum faintly with the wards that keep curious students from creeping in after hours. The lamps are half-dimmed, but I don’t bother turning them up. I know this place in the dark better than I know my own classroom. My boots echo against the marble as I head toward the restricted wing. One quick touch of my sigil ring, and the heavy runed doors whisper open, exhaling centuries of dust and secrets. Rows upon rows of tomes glare back at me from their iron cages: books that shouldn’t exist and scrolls bound in magic older than the academy itself. I don’t stop until I reach the lower shelves: **Forbidden Bloodlines. Mutations. Magical Anomalies. *Siphons.***

Even the word looks dangerous, the ink looks like it was etched in a trembling hand as if the scribe feared writing it. I pull every volume that even hints at it — The Consuming Gift, Hybrid Arcana: A Study of Containment, The Soul as Vessel.

My arms ache by the time I stagger back toward the exit, the pile stacked high enough to block my view.

My cabin sits just beyond the training fields, a lonely little stone house meant for faculty who never quite learned to socialise. Perfect for hiding things. I drop the stack on my table, order a bottle of red and some food from the night kitchen, and uncork the current bottle of wine I have before I even unbutton my coat. The first text I open is brittle with age, its edges burnt like someone once tried to destroy it.

“A siphon is not born of one element, but of none — a void given will. They steal to survive, they devour to become.”

I take a long sip of wine, frowning.

*Devour to become.*

She hadn’t looked like a devourer. She’d looked...terrified.

Another book speaks of early experiments, where siphons were created as weapons, living conduits of magic. Most were killed in infancy or driven mad by overload. None were permitted in academies. None should even exist anymore, as what was left in this world was sent to the front lines of war. And yet… one is sitting in my classroom. I push aside the plate of food I’ve barely touched and flip through more pages, my mind spinning faster than I’d like. The more I read, the more contradictions I find. Some accounts describe siphons as unstable parasites. Others call them the “missing link” — beings meant to unite magic, not destroy it. I drag a hand through my hair and stare into the fire. She’d channelled my magic before, who knows how many times. She's trying to pass off my power as her own. Trying to blend in here like she's an everyday magical. Which makes her both dangerous and utterly untrained.

If Scorched learns what she is, he’ll report her straight to the Council. And the Council won’t see her as a student. They’ll see her as a weapon.

I pour another glass, leaning back in my chair as I mutter to myself, “Brilliant, Cassian. You’ve got a siphon in your classroom." And from what I saw in her mind, a half-mad dragon claiming her as his mate, a hellhound with an anger problem sniffing around her like a dog with a bone and a bloody obnoxious warlock who might just find himself drained like a prune if he can't learn to control his tongue. The fire crackles in reply. I sigh, dragging another book toward me. The wine is half gone now, and the night outside the window has folded into silence.

The next book is older than the rest, its leather cover cracked from overuse, but the binding is still intact. **Arcane Pairing: The Theory of Magical Bonds.**

I flip through until a heading catches my eye.

***“The Siphon’s Paradox.”***

*“When a siphon bonds to a wielder, their fates entwine irrevocably. The siphon becomes a mirror of the mate’s element, and the mate becomes the vessel through which the siphon feeds. To sever the bond is to starve one and break the other. Unlike traditional fated pairings, siphons rarely anchor to a single partner. Their nature demands multiplicity; they require several conduits through which to feed and stabilise the energies they absorb. A siphon with only one mate will eventually drain them to exhaustion. Balance lies in the many, not the one. Historical accounts suggest that the rare few who formed all bonds successfully could wield the combined magics of their mates, an impossible harmony of elements said to echo the first creation of magic itself.”*

The words wouldn’t stop echoing through my head.

"Balance lies in the many, not the one."

Every time I blinked, the paragraph burned behind my eyes like an afterimage. On paper, it sounded poetic, destiny and connection and balance. But I’d been alive long enough, seen enough blood spilled in the name of “balance,” to know exactly what people would read between those lines. They’d call her a weapon. The Council would see “the rare few who could wield the combined magics of their mates”, and their mouths would water. They’d see control, war, power, another thing to twist into their service. But Allison Rivers isn’t a weapon. She’s a girl. A scared, stubborn, infuriating girl who tries to hide the fact that she’s drowning under everything she carries. And Evander Drayke, he’s not some chosen conduit for her hunger. He’s a student. A good one. A boy I’ve taught for years, who’s never once abused his power, never let his dragon temper make a mess of this place. The thought of the Council separating them, stripping her away, calling their bond unnatural and destroying something sacred, turns my stomach.

I pace my cabin, running a hand through my hair as the fire burns low. I can still feel mind from earlier, the brush of her consciousness when I’d reached in. It had been brief, a flash of instinct, but it was enough to show me what she is. What she’s terrified of. Power like that, if anyone else had felt it, if any of the other professors had been in my place, she’d already be chained. No. That can’t happen. Not to her. Not to Drayke. Her mistake this afternoon, that flicker of uncontrolled magic in front of me… it can’t happen again. Not near anyone else. They’d use it against her before she even understood what she’d done. If she’s going to survive here, if they’re both going to, then she’ll need to learn control. I let out a long breath and glance back at the book, at the neat, unfeeling ink that’s doomed countless others before her.

*Balance lies in the many, not the one.*

“Then I’ll make sure she learns balance,” I murmur to the room. “Before anyone else learns what she is.”

The decision settles into my bones like a vow.

Tomorrow, I’ll speak to her again, carefully, quietly.

Not as her professor. But as someone willing to protect her from everyone who’d destroy her for it. Why? Because it feels right.