We all stared in silence for a little while while everyone, individually, grappled with what Malas’ statement meant.

Then Casey spoke. “H… how long…?”

“I’d estimate that that curse has been dormant for Kayden’s whole life; I don’t think it’s ever activated at all. But there are limits to my analytic capabilities, and I can only tell you with confidence that it’s been dormant for at least a decade.”

“How much confidence?”

“I’d stake my career and reputation on it.”

Mr Spline stood up. “Impossible! He used it against Mr Parker; everyone saw it!”

“Everyone saw two children yelling at each other on a roof about curses. Everyone saw them fall off, which is what I’d expect to happen on a windy day when two kids are throwing things at each other. Nobody’s suggested any indication of magic, other than their own assumptions.”

Mr Spline stared, seemed to choke, and turned to the judge. “Your Honour, I move for a mistrial. This is critical evidence that cannot be struck from the case, and the prosecution wasn’t made aware of it in advance.”

Judge Eagle nodded and slammed his gavel on the desk. “I rule a mistrial. We will reconvene at a later date. This is no longer a court.” He banged his gavel again, stood up, and simply walked away.

That was… that was it? It was over? At least for now?

And Malas…

What?

I sat there for a little while, numb, trying to figure out what the hell was going on, until I felt Casey’s hand on my shoulder and looked up to a much emptier courtroom.

“Come on. We’ve got to get you past the vultures outside and drive around a bit to make sure we aren’t followed before going to your parents’ hotel.”

Outside was chaos. Cameras, microphones, yelling… but most of it was centred around Instruktanto Cooper, still staring at his phone, and a giant kuracar Malas, addressing the crowd.

“… For months, Kayden and his family and friends were hounded, harrassed, put under stress. He was vilified in the media, his home broken into and his parents attacked, death threats sent to those close to him… over, it turns out, nothing. This is what we are putting our children through, for no reason, when we deny them the right to proper curse diagnosis, monitoring, and education. This is why Richard Dyson is proposing the Children’s Magical Health Bill, allowing expert care and guidance for cursed Australian children as young as twelve…”

As soon as we stepped outside, we became the focus for cameras and microphones. Casey put an arm around my shoulders and used their other hand to shield my face, barrelling through the reporters and repeating, “My client has no comment. My client has nothing to say at this time,” as we headed for Casey’s car. They stopped only to tap Instruktanto Cooper on the shoulder and snarl in his ear, “Tell that self-important circus clown on the other end of your call that his lawyers will be hearing from me!” before shoving me into the car and following close behind.

“Drive!” Casey barked, slamming the door. We drove, leaving the courthouse, and its drama, behind.

“Did all of that actually just happen?” I asked.

“I’m afraid so.” Casey pulled out a tablet and started tapping away. “I really must apologise. That was not what he was supposed to do. The kuracar made fools of us both today, as well as the very concept of a court of law.”

“So, what… what happens now?”

“Well, after a mistrial, a new jury is gathered and the case is heard again. However, given the nature of this evidence, the police don’t really have a case against you, so I suspect they’ll send their own curse diagnostician to verify Mr Aksoy’s claim and quietly drop the case.”

“But… but they’ll find the curse. And they’ll know he lied. And then we’re back to square one.”

“Mr Aksoy is unlikely to – ” Casey was interrupted by their phone ringing. “Ugh, it’s him. I’ll turn it off.”

“No,” I said. “I want to talk to him.”

“If you insist.” They picked up the call and put the phone on speaker.

“Dr Pearson, about Kayden’s – ”

“Hey Malas, what in the actual fuck was that?”

“Kayden. Hello. How are you?”

“How am I? Confused, mostly. I mean, thanks for getting me off there, but they’re going to check, you know. They’ll send someone else to look at my curse and realise you lied in court and make me look even worse, so – ”

“I would never lie in court, Kayden.”

“Uh, you just told them my curse has been dormant for years.”

“Indeed.”

“We both know damn well it hasn’t.”

“Really? Those lessons with Alania have paid off, then? You managed to cast it?”

“Well… no, but… but I did against Matt, which is what this whole thing’s about in the first place.”

“Are you sure?”

“What do you mean, am I sure? I was there! I felt it!”

“What did it feel like?”

“You know what it feels like!”

“I know what mine feels like. What did you feel, up on that roof? Try to be as accurate as possible, now.”

“You know. It just… came out of me. I was up there, and he pissed me off, and I just had this surge of energy and clarity all at once, like I knew what I wanted and there was nothing else. And I yelled at him and I pushed the energy out. And when it was gone, when it pushed him off the roof, I was just… drained, and dizzy, and sick. And my muscles wouldn’t stop shaking, so I fell off the roof.”

“So essentially, you experienced the exact symptoms of an extreme adrenaline rush?”

“I think I know the difference between casting a curse and an adrenaline rush!”

“Do you? Because that’s the sort of thing I would expect somebody like you not to know.”

“Are you saying I’m stupid?”

“I’m saying that you’re inexperienced. Let us imagine this hypothetical scenario: a boy is growing up with a curse in his heart. His commonfolk parents are terrified of it, but do their best, raising him as well as they can while teaching him to fear it, too. He is taught: do these things, or the curse might come out. He is taught: don’t do these things, or the curse might come out. Specifically, he is taught from a very young age that he must have control over his emotions, because if he allows himself to exercise the right of feeling his own feelings, people he loves might die, and it would be his fault.

“This boy grows up. When situations happen that cause grief, or fear, or anger, he gets an unpleasant lurch in his chest – a normal symptom of these feelings – where his curse is, the curse he’s been warned about his whole life, and as he’s learning to recognise his own feelings he teaches himself, ‘that’s the curse, restless’. When he calms down, the feeling subsides; the curse hasn’t woken up. He has very little experience with extreme emotions and very little experience with adrenaline in general.

“One day, the boy is up high on a roof with somebody he absolutely hates. That person is screaming insults at him about his curse, bringing the knowledge of the curse to the forefront of his mind and telling everyone below what he is. He feels angrier than he’s ever felt before, a totally new sensation that most people would recognise as extreme, but fairly normal – the trembling, the clarity, the feeling of power, and of course the pounding of his heart. He screams, the feeling fades; the boy who was yelling about his curse falls of the roof. He falls off the roof as well, and is surrounded by students and teachers yelling at him over having cursed someone, calling the police because he cursed someone, calling an ambulance to see what damage he did when he cursed someone. What conclusion is the boy likely to draw?”

“But… everyone was so sure.”

“Everyone was so sure that you’d been cursing random residents your whole life, too, as soon as that lawyer suggested it. Does that kind of prejudice still surprise you?”

“But what about Miratova’s lab? I cast it in there, too. The curse shielded me when I pushed through her door – ”

“An unlocked door.”

“ – and dragged her out of the fire. I mean, yeah, adrenaline gives you strength, but the fire barely burned me. Explain that.”

“So you didn’t notice, then, that the fire barely burned Alania, too? Most of her injuries were shrapnel-related, and she was in the fire longer than you were.”

“Well, she was… wearing more layers than me…”

“Berthold’s solution is very flammable, but burns at a very low temperature. It’s simply not as hot as the wood or gas flames you might be used to. Your burns were about what I’d expect on somebody running through such flames for as long as you did… without magical protection.”

“So… the whole time…?”

“To my knowledge, you’ve never cast that spell. It is possible that you did as a toddler and then it was bound by one of your many binding practices later, but I doubt it. Your GP would probably have noticed.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Tell you?”

“That my curse wasn’t awake! You analysed it on my very first day, right after the lake thing! You’ve known for six months, and you let me believe I’d hurt Matt, you let me think I might be endangering people at the school, you let me think I was doing something wrong when I couldn’t cast it in Miratova’s lessons! Why would you keep that a secret?!”

“Because I didn’t want you to leave.”

“I – what?”

“The reason you agreed to attend our school was because you thought your curse was a danger, and you believed that it had already caused harm. You came to learn to control it and get legal representation. If I’d told you that you hadn’t attacked that boy at all, you would have gone home. You would have believed that you didn’t need to learn to control it – and that’s completely wrong. Because someday, it is going to break out. Someday, it is going to cause problems. And if you don’t know how to control it, those problems are going to be a lot worse.”

“You lied to me to trick me into going to your school?”

“I never lied to you. But I refrained from enlightening you, yes.”

“Yeah? Well, guess what. Maybe I wouldn’t have quit if you’d told me the truth, but I definitely am now! Did you really think I’d stick around if you jerked me around like this?”

“I thought the chances were higher, now that you understand how the system works and have formed so many ties. I’d prefer you to come back, but I respect your decision. Anyway, your attendance is no longer so vital – you have a better understanding of control and casting now, so if that curse ever does wake up, you have a decent chance of controlling it. And if you can’t, you now have a lot of people that you can contact for help.”

“So lying to me worked out great for you, then?”

“I did not lie.”

“Yeah, well, it doesn’t matter now. I guess one thing I can look forward to in my future is not having to deal with people like you jerking me around any more.”

“If you – ”

I snatched the phone from Casey long enough to hang up on him, then handed it back. Casey didn’t even look up; they were focus on their tablet.

“Do you want to sue him? We should have a case. He released your private medical information today without your permission. It’d be a small thing, but – ”

“I’m not mad at him for saving my butt on the stand today. I’m mad at him for keeping my private medical information private from me. Everything that happened in the past six months is completely pointless, and all of it only happened because of him. Can we sue him for that?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Why not? His job is to tell me this stuff, right?”

“Actually, his job is to safeguard your health. If keeping this information from you is better for your health than telling you, he’s within his duties to keep it from you. And while what he did was wrong, and he definitely should have told you, it would be impossible to convince an arbiter of that. Malas is the expert you call in to testify about the judgement calls of lesser kuracisti. But the case of him violating your privacy here today… that’s fairly clear-cut. We can get him for that.”

“I’m not objecting to that, though. I would’ve given my permission. If he’d told me about this in the beginning, I would’ve announced it to the world myself.”

“Do you want to take him to task for how he treated you, or not?”

“You know, for a lawyer, you don’t seem to have that much respect for justice, or the law.”

“My job is not to respect justice or the law. My job is to understand it and utilise it to support my clients’ interests. And in this case, I’m none too happy that he made a fool of me up there today, either.”

The car stopped. We were at the hotel.

“Thanks,” I said. “For everything.”

“If you change your mind about the Aksoy case, call me. Refujeyo student or not, I’ll do this one for free.”

“… Goodbye, Casey.”

The street was silent as I walked up to the door. The silence itself seemed to be judging me. After everything… I hadn’t attacked Matt. I didn’t have a curse that I could cast. Everything – the court case, qualifying for my scholarship, all the stress and fear and hard work at Refujeyo – all of it was based on an incorrect assumption and a whole lot of hype.

I had nothing, I’d done nothing, and the past six months of my life amounted to nothing.

So what now?