Well, I partially read the orientation materials. I got about one paragraph into the scholarship contract before calling Casey and letting them explain it.

Everything was basically what I expected. I had a scholarship that covered tuition, food and lodging, a small supply stipend, and various other services provided by the school such as legal assistance, provided I stayed on for at least six months and kept to the school advancement policy (that is, I could only continue past six months if I underwent the initiation, same as anyone else, which would bind me to the school until I reached a certain level of magical competency). My curse being dormant didn’t render me ineligible for the scholarship; technically, it meant that Instruktanto Cooper hadn’t been allowed to offer it to me until I was sixteen, but when he’d approached me everyone had thought my curse had acted up and there was nothing to be done about that now.

I was eligible to undergo the Initiation, but if I did so, the only legitimate ways out were graduation or getting expelled. Expulsion was extremely rare, according to Casey (‘most expellable offenses would land you in prison first, and you’d have rather larger problems’), but apparently it was perfectly possible to pass the magical tests with a ‘dormant’ spell if one was creative enough.

Still, I couldn’t help thinking of Talbot’s master, and how he’d sabotaged him. Being trapped in a system until someone with power over you decided you were good enough to leave was… well, there was no reason why the school would want to hold onto me, but it made me nervous.

“Okay, so I have a hypothetical question,” I started.

“I’m listening.”

“So if there was a student who, for some reason or other, decided they wanted to drop out of Skolala Refujeyo a year or so in, and went home for the holidays and just… never came back, what would the school do? Would they send mages after them?”

“Oh, no. That would be a waste of resources and diplomatically unwise. Is this hypothetical student an Australian citizen, refusing to return from Australia?”

“Let’s say he is.”

“Okay, let me check… right. Well, he’d probably get a lot of annoying letters about it for several years, and multiple attempts at organising meetings where school staff would try to talk him into coming back, but they couldn’t actually do anything without breaking Australian law.”

“Even with the rules of the Initiation and everything?”

“The way that Australia deals with contract violations, except in certain niche cases, is that if you break a contract you have to repay what you got out of it, sometimes with some nominal fines or damage recompense on top of it. So the most Refujeyo would be able to do in such a case is demand repayment for any costs and tuition fees that said student might have, theoretically, not have had to pay. However, it’s likely that they wouldn’t bother, because ‘rich mages extort child in clumsy kidnapping attempt’ is awful PR. Still, it’s a possibility to keep in mind. Other consequences would be that Refujeyo refuses to legitimise any grades attained by such a student – that is, if someone takes two years of English classes and then leaves and goes to an Australian school, Refujeyo would not count those classes as having been passed and he’d have to take them over again in Australia, that sort of thing. So any time spent in school at Refujeyo would be essentially wasted time. The student would also, of course, essentially be a pariah in the magical community until he came back and resumed his studies.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“Not a problem. Call me if you have any more questions.”

“Will do.” I hung up.

So. That was… all manageable. And Malas had, presumably, already gotten everything he wanted out of me, so what reason, really, was there not to go back?

Of course, I had my friends and family at home, but that didn’t seem nearly as convincing a reason to stay as it was six months ago. So long as I could make them understand that. So long as I could convince my parents.

I found both of them watching TV in the lounge. “Mum? Dad? Can we talk?”

They exchanged a glance.

“We need to talk to you, too, actually,” Mum said hesitantly.

“You do?”

“See, the thing is, after the past six months, well… things have been sort of…”

“We’ve been looking into selling the house,” Dad said.

I stared. “What?”

“We know this has always been your home,” Mum said hurriedly, “and we know you wouldn’t want to leave Melissa and Chelsea. If we do move, we can come back to visit all the time, and if you really want to stay, we can stay, but…”

“It’s fine,” I said. “I get it.” Whether my curse was still dormant or not, that didn’t change the fact that Mum and Dad had been outed as the people who’d hidden their cursed child from everyone for years. I could see why they wanted a fresh start. “I don’t mind. Do what you have to.”

“Really? I know it’s drastic.”

“I don’t mind,” I said, “because it’s not nearly as drastic as what I’m about to suggest.” I stood taller. “I want to keep going to the mage school. I want to become a mage.”

They both stared, stunned, for several seconds.

“This is a very fast and sudden decision,” Dad said.

“It’s not sudden. I was putting off telling you. With the trial and all. And I know I just got back, and I get that you have no reason to trust the mages, but I know that this is what’s best.”

“You’re fourteen. You don’t know what’s best.”

“I know that this is the only way I’ll ever not be ‘that cursed guy who was on the news as a teenager’. I know that my scholarship gives me a massive opportunity that most people don’t get. If I stay here, my life is always going to be hampered by everyone knowing about my curse, but this is an opportunity to attend a very prestigious boarding school, for free.”

“And you don’t think being cursed would hamper you among mages?”

“Not nearly as much as it will here.”

It wasn’t an easy sell, but eventually, I managed to convince my family to let my try it ‘for a year’. I didn’t tell them about the dangers of the Initiation, or how going through it was an agreement to stay on until graduation. I didn’t tell them about the Initiation at all. They never would have agreed if they’d known about it.

Which was why, a week later, I got into Instruktanto Cooper’s windowless black van and headed back to the Haven.

“Look,” Instruktanto Cooper said awkwardly as we drove away from the house, “I’m sorry about – ”

“Did you know?” I asked. “About my curse?”

“No. I swear, if I’d known, I would have told you.”

“You seemed to be working pretty closely with Malas on the whole thing.”

“We were working together to get a bill passed. You weren’t supposed to have anything to do with it. If I’d known about your curse, I would have told you right away, and if I’d known he was going to pull a stunt like that I never would have agreed to convey him on the stand.” There was a quiet anger in Instruktanto Cooper’s voice.

Could I trust him? Probably. I was pretty sure he wouldn’t have agreed with Malas’ whole ‘let Kayden think his curse is dangerous so he sticks around’ thing; Instruktanto Cooper had taken me to talk to Cheryl, so he clearly knew I thought a dormant curse was still better trained than untrained. And he wasn’t the type to use me for a publicity stunt like that, not when it could have backfired. Probably.

It didn’t matter much anyway. Acolytes got to pick their own surveyanti, so if I decided later on that I couldn’t trust him, I could just replace him with someone I could trust. Assuming I could trust anyone.

Back at school, Max and Kylie were pleased to see me. Well, Max was pleased to see me. Kylie looked up from her tablet long enough to give me a tiny nod.

“Kayden!” Max shook my hand warmly, which was probably his version of a hug. “Instruktanto Cooper said you weren’t coming back!”

“There was an issue. I got over it.”

“Your trial went well, then? I was so worried for you.”

“Well, I didn’t go to prison or anything.”

“I wouldn’t worry about things like that. If the commonfolk ever try to put you in prison, you can just call on my family.”

“Sometimes I forget how creepy you rich people are, and then you go and say something like that. I’m a bit surprised that you’re still here, though.”

“… Why? You know my life plan.”

“Yes, but if you’re afraid – ”

“Even if I did have some ridiculous phobia of magic, Kayden, that wouldn’t change anything. Fear is ephemeral; do you really think I would let a bit of apprehension about the trial rule my entire life? All of us are strong enough to pull through such things.”

“Good,” I said, making a mental note to look up ‘ephemeral’ in the dictionary later. “I’m happy for you. And happy for me, because I’m going to graduate a lot faster if I have to listen to you talk about your hobbies for the next few years.”

“I’m glad I’m so helpful. I’ll be sure to do it a lot more.”

I didn’t see the Magistae until the next day, walking into the large theatre that contained the Pit. They were standing in the bottom row of seats with Simon, very close to the giant rainbow vortex engulfing the entire stone stage. Clara was nowhere to be seen.

Nor were that many adults, come to think of it. I’d expected parents seeing their children off, but only a handful of surveyanti wandered among the horde of bewildered teenagers, giving last-minute advice. Just as I noticed this, Instruktanto Cooper jogged up.

“Last chance to back out,” he told us.

“Yeah, I don’t think so,” I said.

“Anybody who isn’t certain shouldn’t have stepped into this room,” Max said.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Kylie said.

“Alright. So you all understand how this works?”

“We go in,” Kylie said, “and come back out, and try not to die in the meantime.”

“Pretty much, yes. The space inside the portal is deceptively large, and the environment and trials within will be unique to you. The chances of meeting another student inside are very low, so there’s no point in looking for each other. The Pit won’t let you out without a spell, so you, Max, have an additional task.”

“Is that going to be a problem for us?” I asked. “I mean, if we get another one? Isn’t that dangerous?”

“The chances of that are extremely low. The spells used for this are very tame, and generally won’t enter someone already carrying a spell.”

“Generally?”

“There is a chance for even the most well-trained dog to bite, in the wrong circumstances. But that particular danger should be a lot lower on your list of priorities than the more certain dangers that await you in there.”

“Oh, well, that sounds very encouraging. Thanks.”

“After you emerge, you’ll be mage acolytes, and entitled to your own mage mark. We have tattoo artists standing by for that. Your elemental nature will be determined by how you face your trials and tattooed in, and if the nature of your spell is known, that will be added to the design, too.”

“What do you mean, if the nature of the spell is known?” Max asked.

“Usually, a spell integrates with its host quickly and is easily identified, especially one of these tame, preselected spells. But sometimes it can take days or even weeks before we can reliably identify a spell, so there’s a small chance you might have to wait for that part of your tattoo.”

“When you say our element’s going to be determined by how we do,” I asked, “does that mean you guys can see us in there?”

“No. Nobody can see what you see, except you. But there are monitoring spells in the Pit that can be used to divine your elemental nature without humans really needing to be involved.”

“What’s an elemental nature?” Kylie asked.

“An old, outdated tradition based on old, outdated magical theories. It’s basically a personality type. But it’s part of the tattoo design, so we keep doing it. Anything else?”

Kylie and Max shook their heads.

“Excellent. Good luck.” He left.

“You guys go on ahead,” I told Max and Kylie. “I just remembered something. Be right back.” I caught up with Instruktanto Cooper. “Hey. About the tattoo thing.”

“Ah. You’re afraid of needles?”

“No. It’s just, my curse is on my chest.”

“Yes, I – oh. Do you want me to make sure you get a female tattoo artist?”

“No, I don’t care about stuff like that. I just don’t want them to be surprised, if you know what I mean? I don’t want it to be an issue for anyone.”

“It won’t be, but if you like, I can take your tattoo artist aside and quietly ensure they are forewarned.”

“Thanks.”

I headed back to my friends, who were chatting with Dorm Magistae (sans Clara). Simon looked me up and down and raised an eyebrow.

“Oh,” he said, sounding supremely disappointed. “You’re back.”

“Of course. You’d have too much fun training to become a mage without us pathetic witches parasitising time and resources from your education, so Kylie and I both decided it was our solemn duty to come back, just for you.”

“Was that a five-syllable word, Kayden? It seems like you did manage to get some education this semester after all. Keep working hard at it, and in a year or so you might be able to understand a full conversation.”

Magista crossed her arms. “Do you two really have to be like this for the rest of our education?”

“Hey,” I said, “you’re the one who wanted to share a room with him.”

“Ah, yes,” Simon said. “Clearly, I am the problem.”

“Look at that; we can agree on something. So nobody’s seen Clara, I’m guessing?”

“I doubt we’ll ever see Clara again,” Magistus said.

“For her benefit as much as ours,” Simon growled. “She destroyed our ring, she framed me for her crimes. If I ever see her again…”

“It really was awful, what she did,” Magista agreed. “And I thought we were friends! I suppose my judge of character is poorer than I thought. To treat a friend how she treated you… why, that kind of disrespect alone would permanently ruin her social life even if Instruktanto Miratova did let her near us.”

“Yes, I’m very angry about her disrespect,” Simon said drily. “That’s what offended me about the whole situation; a lack of respect.”

“Where’s Kylie?” Max asked.

“Getting on with things.” Magistus pointed to the Pit, where Kylie was just walking into the vortex. “Not a bad idea, really.”

“Indeed.” Simon stepped toward the pit. “I hope you all survive,” he said, and stepped into the light.

“Hope we all survive, huh? Because he’s just so good that he’s not in any danger?” I crossed my arms.

The Magistae stepped up to the Pit together, tightly holding hands. They looked at the light, then at each other.

“You remember what we agreed?” Magista asked.

“You think I’d forget?”

“That’s a question, not an answer. Do you remember what we agreed?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not a woman who breaks her word. Are you?”

“No, I’m definitely not a woman who breaks her word.”

“Magistus!”

“Sorry, sorry. There’s nothing to worry about, sis. I remember. You’re not allowed to die, okay?”

“Neither are you.”

“Great. So we’re both perfectly safe, then.”

They released each others’ hands and stepped forward.

“So,” I said to Max.

“Remember, Kayden. Fear is ephemeral, action is permanent.”

“Yeah, I forgot to look that word up.”

But he was already gone.

Just me, now. Well, dozens of other kids, too. But it felt like just me.

I took a deep breath and stepped forward, into the light.

And found myself walking on soft green grass.