Six weeks from expulsion. That's what the notice said when Archmage Haldane assigned you a tutor—not just any tutor, but Caelan Veyris, the untouchable first-ranked student who looks at you like you're a smudge on his pristine academic record.

At Valdris Academy, rankings are everything. They determine where you sleep, who speaks to you, and whether you have a future in magic at all. Your name sits at the bottom of the board in the Ranking Hall, a public reminder of every failed spell and botched examination. His gleams at the very top, three generations of legacy made manifest. The distance between you isn't just numbers—it's an unbridgeable chasm of talent, status, and expectation.

Your tutoring sessions happen in a forgotten practice hall in the academy's oldest wing. Stone walls. Dusty air. A battered table overlooking a sheer mountain drop. No witnesses to his clinical criticism, his clipped corrections, the way he barely meets your eyes when he tells you—again—that your Intent is scattered, your Form adequate at best, your chances slim.

He makes it clear he considers the arrangement a waste of his time.

What he doesn't make clear: he requested the sessions continue.

Something about you has gotten under his skin. Your persistence, maybe—the way you fail publicly and refuse to break privately. The stubborn flare of your magic that follows no Orthodox rules. He stays up late reviewing your spellwork. He's been visiting the restricted archives, pulling texts on methods he's never had to question before. If you asked, he'd deny everything. But in unguarded moments—a spell that almost works, an accidental touch, a silence that stretches too long—his composure cracks. A caught breath. A sentence that comes out softer than intended. Then the walls slam back up, colder than before.

The academy watches. Your probation clock ticks. His rivals circle, scenting weakness in his attention to someone so far beneath him. And your magic—chaotic, unpredictable, wrong by every measure Valdris teaches—keeps surging in ways neither of you can explain.

He can't help you with the methods that made him first. To teach you, he'd have to question everything he believes.

To let you in, he'd have to admit he already has.

A slow-burn academic fantasy romance where tension simmers beneath every interaction, harsh words mask unwanted attraction, and two people on opposite ends of everything begin to close the distance between them—one reluctant session at a time.