Chapter 3: Thermodynamics and Floor Plans

The Great Hall smelled of scorched cedar and Dorian’s insufferable peppermint-scented cologne. 

It was a scent that shouldn't have carried across a room designed to house four hundred students, but the air in the makeshift faculty lounge was currently an atmospheric battlefield. On the left side of the long, obsidian-topped table, my instructors sat with their robes loosened at the collar, their skin flushed with the low-grade thrum of internal embers. On the right, the Glacies faculty looked like a row of pale, carved statues, their posture so rigid I expected their spines to snap with a musical chime.

Dorian sat at the head, his fingers steepled. He didn't look like a man who had just surrendered his sovereignty to a merger. He looked like an apex predator waiting for a smaller creature to wander into a snowdrift.

"The seating chart is a minor grievance, Mira," he said, his voice a low, resonant cello note that usually made me want to scream or throw a chair. Today, it merely made the fine hairs on my arms stand up. "The structural integrity of the north wing is the priority. My mages cannot exist in a state of perpetual thaws. It wreaks havoc on their internal focus."

"The North Wing is the only part of this castle that gets decent southern exposure," I countered, leaning back and letting a flicker of flame dance between my knuckles. I saw his eyes track the movement—blue-grey eyes like a frozen lake under a winter sun. "My students need the sun to prime their channels. You’re asking them to live in a cellar."

"I am asking them to live in a controlled environment," Dorian corrected. He tapped a stack of vellum scrolls. "If we don’t install the thermal dampeners by the weekend, the heat bleed from your fourth-years’ dorms will cause the structural mortar in the adjacent corridors to expand and crack. We’ll be buried in rubble before the first trimester ends."

"And if we install your dampeners, my students will be suffocated. Fire needs to breathe, Dorian. You’re trying to turn a living academy into a meat locker."

One of my senior instructors, Aris, grunted in agreement. Across from him, a Glacies mistress of frost narrowed her eyes, and a thin layer of rime began to crawl across the obsidian table toward Aris’s coffee mug.

"Enough," I snapped, the word carrying a sharp pop of heat that evaporated the frost instantly.

Dorian’s expression didn't change, but the temperature in the room plummeted five degrees. "If we cannot agree on the environment, we cannot discuss the curriculum. I’ve reviewed your syllabi. 'Spontaneous Combustion and Kinetic Flow' is not a course; it is an invitation to arson."

"It’s called improvisation," I said, my voice dangerously sweet. "Something your faculty wouldn't understand. Can you even cast if your feet aren't perfectly parallel and your breathing hasn't been timed to a metronome?"

"We value precision. Results that can be replicated."

"We value power. Results that actually win wars."

Dorian stood up, his height casting a long, cool shadow over the map spread between us. "Come here, Mira."

It wasn't a request, but I didn't move because he told me to. I moved because the way he looked at the map—at *my* map—suggested he was about to do something colonial to it. I stepped around the table, the heat of my body clashing with the colonial chill radiating from his robes. 

He didn't flinch as I approached. Most people did. Fire tends to make people instinctually step back, mindful of their eyebrows. Dorian just watched me with that infuriating, glacial calm.

"Look at the blueprints," he said, pointing to the central junction where the two wings met. "You want open-air skylights and conduits here, in the heart of the library. If the temperature rises above sixty-five degrees, several thousand ancient scrolls belonging to my order will begin to degrade. The vellum becomes brittle. The ink runs."

"And if we seal it off like you’ve drawn here," I said, leaning over the map and stabbing a finger at his heavy, lead-lined walls, "this becomes a pressure cooker. You’re trapping the thermal output of fifty fire mages in a space with no ventilation. The air will turn to plasma. You’ll have a bomb, not a library."

"Not if we use the kinetic sinks," he argued, his hand moving to the same spot on the vellum.

"The sinks will fail within a week under that kind of load. You’re underestimating the sheer volume of energy my people generate."

"And you are overestimating the necessity of 'wild' casting."

Our hands were inches apart now, hovering over the intersection of the Great Library and the West Forge. I could feel the cold coming off his skin, a sharp, metallic sensation that set my teeth on edge. It was strangely exhilarating, like standing on a cliff edge in a gale. 

"I won't let you cage them, Dorian," I whispered.

"I am trying to keep the roof over their heads."

"Then move your scrolls. Move your faculty. Stop trying to make us adapt to you."

"We are the ones providing the stability, Mira. Without us, you’re just a beautiful, flickering disaster."

*Beautiful.*

The word hit me harder than the insult. I looked up, my eyes snapping to his, and found him already staring. He wasn't looking at the map anymore. He was looking at the way my hair had started to lilt upward in a heat-haze, the way my chest was rising and falling with my breath. 

"I am no one's disaster," I hissed.

I reached out to snatch the blueprint away, to end this ridiculous posturing, but his hand moved at the same time. His fingers clamped down over mine, pinning my hand to the enchanted vellum.

The world exploded.

It wasn't a sound, but a sensation—a violent, jarring "thrum" that vibrated through the floorboards and up my spine. The physical contact was the catalyst. My internal heat, always surging, met his absolute zero in a space of a millimeter. 

The reaction was instantaneous: a localized thermal shock. 

A deafening *crack* echoed through the room as the obsidian table split down the center under the jurisdictional stress. A massive, blinding cloud of white steam erupted from where our hands met—the moisture in the air flash-boiling and then instantly crystallizing. 

"Mira!" someone shouted, but the sound was muffled by the roar of the pressure.

The force of the expansion threw the instructors backward. I felt Dorian’s arm wrap around my waist—not a romantic gesture, but an anchor. He hauled me against him, his sheer mass keeping us from being blown apart as the steam turned into a violent, swirling fog that obscured everything. 

The room went white. Hot and cold lashed at my skin in alternating stings. I buried my face in his shoulder, the wool of his robes smelling of ice and winter air, while his hand remained locked on mine on the table.

"Don't let go!" he shouted over the hiss of escaping energy.

"I'm not letting go, I'm trying not to melt you!" I yelled back, though the truth was I couldn't have pulled away if I wanted to. The magic had formed a temporary vacuum between our palms, a bridge of pure, screaming entropy.

The ceiling began to groan. High above, the stone started to sweat, great droplets of condensation raining down like a tropical storm in a blizzard. I felt Dorian’s heart thumping against my ribs—steady, rhythmic, even in the chaos. My own was a frantic bird caught in a chimney. 

The air was thick, humid, and charged with static that made my skin tingle. His grip on my waist tightened, his fingers digging into the silk of my tunic. For a second, the world was nothing but the roar of the steam and the solid, freezing-hot reality of his body held against mine. It wasn't just a clash; it was a fit. Like two jagged pieces of glass snapping together.

Then, with a final, wet thud, the pressure equalized. 

The steam began to dissipate, heavy and sluggish, coating everything in a layer of fine, grey dew. The faculty had already fled the room or were huddled in the corners behind magical shields. 

Dorian and I remained. We were the only ones at the center of the wreckage. 

The obsidian table was ruined, a jagged fault line running its entire length. The blueprints were soaked, the ink a blurred mess of black and blue. My hand was still trapped under his, but as the mist cleared, I realized neither of us was pulling away. 

I looked up. His face was inches from mine. A single bead of condensation rolled down his temple. The usual mask of icy composure was gone, replaced by something raw and startled. His eyes drifted down to my mouth, then back up to mine. 

The silence was heavier than the steam. 

"Your hand," he said, his voice husky, stripped of its scholarly bite.

"I know." 

"You’re... you're burning me."

"You’re freezing me," I countered, though it wasn't a complaint. The sensation was terrifyingly addictive—the way his cold seemed to sharpen my heat, making me feel more alive, more luminous, than I ever did alone.

I pulled my hand back slowly. The skin of my palm was bright red; his was marked with the pale, white lines of a frostbite that was already fading into a flush. 

"The structural integrity of this room has been compromised," Dorian said, finally releasing my waist and stepping back. He straightened his robes, but his hands were shaking—just a fraction, but I saw it. "As has our ability to conduct a civilized meeting."

"Civilized?" I wiped a smudge of soot from my cheek, my legs feeling like they were made of wax. "You almost blew us through the rafters because you couldn't handle a little heat."

"A 'little' heat? You were trying to incinerate the floor plan."

"I was trying to save it from your sterile, lifeless vision!"

Dorian looked around the room—at the damp walls, the cracked table, and the faculty members peeking through the doors with expressions of pure terror. He turned back to me, his jaw set. 

"This merger is a necessity, Mira. But make no mistake: if you continue to push your 'wild' influence into every corner of this academy, we will both be consumed by the fallout. Secure your wing. I will handle the library. By myself."

He didn't wait for a rebuttal. He turned on his heel and strode out, his boots clicking on the damp stone. The air seemed to follow him, the temperature in the room rising back to a dull, stagnant warmth as soon as he crossed the threshold.

I stayed where I was, the moisture on my skin slowly evaporating. My instructors began to filter back in, whispering, casting mending charms on the furniture, but I didn't see them.

I walked to the edge of the ruined table. The vellum was a loss, but I looked at the spot where we had touched. The wood beneath the broken obsidian was scorched black in a perfect circle, but at the center of that circle was a delicate, intricate pattern of frost that refused to melt.

I pressed my hand to the wood where his palm had been, and for the first time in my life, the heat of the room wasn't coming from me.