“Now that you all have some base knowledge of the holding rune,” Instruktanto Animus announced as he strode across the front of the classroom, “we can start practicing the structure, the language, of runecrafting. There are several basic structures for a runic circle, and by understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each structure we can – ”

I really needed to be paying attention in this class. But y eyes kept skimming over the English translation scrolling across my tablet. I was going to have to just read through it later, I supposed.

I couldn’t stop thinking about Malas and Cheryl.

On the one hand, despite my history with Malas, I really couldn’t see him… poisoning Cheryl, or whatever else Talbot had been implying, to try to make her spell act up. He always took the health and wellbeing of his patients incredibly seriously. Doing things for a patient’s good without informing or consulting them, sure, he did that. But putting her at that kind of risk? No. No matter what stupid political gains anyone might get out of Cheryl staying bound to her vow, Malas wouldn’t do that.

But on the other hand. On the other hand, Malas had been pretty up front about his reasons for keeping the truth of my curse from me. He’d used me as a political tool for his stupid witch contact reforms or whatever, but he’d been primarily interested in making sure I stayed at Skolala Refujeyo, so that if my curse did act up, I’d have the resources to handle it. I’d be in the safest place I possibly could. Like Cheryl had been.

Cheryl had snuck out to see us. I had to assume that she’d been in Malas’ care since getting sick. If he was confident that her best chances of survival were with him, and if he thought there was a high enough chance that her curse would awaken at some point anyway, and if it only became more dangerous for it to do so after she was twenty one and released from her vow… would he push the issue, get it over with in a controlled environment?

Maybe he would. He’d never tried to wake mine up, so far as I knew, but that didn’t mean much. I’d been so useful to his little political stunt with a dormant curse, and the first time we had contact after that I was joining the school anyway, so there’d been no further reason to. Would he have tried to wake it up, in other circumstances?

Maybe. Maybe not. I suppose it didn’t matter that much, anyway; it was equally possible that Cheryl’s master had done it behind Malas’ back. Fit a nice two weeks at Refujeyo into his schedule, bring Malas a student with a mysterious fever… Malas’ diagnostic skills weren’t infallible. I’d seen him fooled by magical poisons before. Even if he was innocent, that didn’t mean Cheryl’s master was. But I didn’t know him at all; I didn’t know how likely he was to do something like that. And Cheryl had trusted him; surely she’d know best?

Talbot had trusted his master at first, too.

Apparently we were starting some kind of rune copying exercise. I pulled out some paper and followed the directions on the file Instruktanto Animus had sent, making a mental note to catch up later on what the runes meant and why I was copying them. I was the one who had convinced Cheryl to give the mages a chance, and whether that was a good idea or a bad one depended largely on whether her spell had activated on its own or had help. If she’d been poisoned or magicked or whatever, it was, ultimately, my fault. I’d convinced her to trust these people, and if Talbot was right, they’d hurt her.

I didn’t really know what we were supposed to do, if Talbot was right. Or if he was wrong. She had her magic now, the danger had mostly passed, and… well. Maybe she could sue, if we could prove it? I could call my old lawyer.

If we could prove it. An I’d be the fist to admit that I didn’t know the politics of, of anything that was going on, enough to know whether Talbot might have a point.

I knew someone who did know, though. I glanced at Max, dutifully copying out the network of runes on a sheet of paper.

“Hey, Max?”

“Mm?”

“About Cheryl. And her master.”

“Mm?”

Actually, this probably wasn’t the best place for this discussion. Definitely a private conversation. “Uh, never mind. I’ll ask when we’re not… busy.”

“Mhm.”

Huh. That was weird. This assignment should be easy for Max; I’d see him sketch down complicated runes like this without thinking, as easily as he might write a letter. But today, he was very slowly tracing out the inner layers of the circle, ragging his pen across the paper like he wasn’t even aware of the task, completely zoned out. Lost in thought.

I’d seen Max in thought a lot, but I’d never seen him lost in it. Usually, a question or interruption would have his immediate focus, a focus he could switch back to his task just as quickly when I was done distracting him.

“Is something bothering you?” I asked.

“Mm? What?” He looked up from the paper. His eyes were still tired, and I remembered that however shocking Cheryl’s incident had been for me, I hadn’t been the one who’d used my own body and magic to keep her alive on the trip to the medical ward.

“You shouldn’t be in class,” I said. “Not after what happened. You should sleep. Maybe see one of the counsellors.”

He sharpened back up at this and shot me a confused look. “I’m fine. What are you talking about?”

“You know, after the whole Cheryl thing.”

“You dragged Alania out of a fire last semester. Did you need a counsellor?”

“That’s different.”

Max rolled his eyes. “I’m fine, Kayden. Just tired.” He turned back to his work, filling out the remaining lines of the runes with the lightning-fast, practiced movements I’d come to know, while I struggled with the basic skeleton of mine. Should’ve let him stay zoned out. At least then I’d have had a chance to keep up.

I didn’t get a chance to talk to him after class, as he apparently had other last-minute stuff he needed to do, so I explained the theory to Kylie instead. “Well. What do you think?”

She tapped her lip thoughtfully. “I’m not sure I’m the best person to offer an opinion. I haven’t had the same bad experiences with mages as you and Talbot, so…”

“So you’ll balance us out a bit. We’re probably biased. I just… I mean, it is too much of a coincidence, right? I’m not… overreacting and chasing nonsense, like last semester?”

“Hey, that nonsense eventually lead to catching Clara.”

“And in the meantime took a detour where I got to punch di Fiore, which is hard to regret.”

“You bring that up a lot.”

“It’s a treasured memory. Anyway. Cheryl?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know any more about Malas than you do, and I don’t know Cheryl’s master. We do have a lot of rich kid friends who might know him. But even if you’re right, what do you plan to do about it?”

“Sue him. Or advise Cheryl to sue him. It’s got to be illegal, right? Endangering someone with their spell like that? If we can prove it, Casey will know the best way to make him pay for it.”

“And then Cheryl can get caught up in all this debt and favour nonsense, too.”

“She got caught up the moment she took that vow.” My fault. “I’m sick of people jerking us around like this, pulling us in, telling us nothing, and then taking advantage of our ignorance. I’m not going to just…” I can’t make Malas pay for what he did to me, but… “if someone did this to her, she deserves justice.”

Kylie nodded. “If I can help, let me know.”

“Huh. I sort of expected you to brush this off as not being any of your business.”

“If Cheryl doesn’t want it to be, it isn’t. But otherwise, the whole point of the coven was to deal with things like this, right?”

“You’re not going to stop calling it that, are you?”

“The Curse Victim Support Group?”

“Ew. No.”

“Hmm. Maybe I can make COVEN a backronym. The Cursed – ”

“I am leaving. I am refusing to be complicit in this exercise.”

“We should get membership t shirts printed!” Kylie called after me as I fled for my sanity.

She was right about one thing, though. If someone caught Hua up on the situation, and Talbot probably would, then Cheryl would have the whole, ugh, coven behind her. It was a nice thought. I’d never been lacking in support in my life, but aside from Kylie, nobody around me had really been in a position to understand when the whole school rooftop and criminal trial thing had happened. Any conversation about it was like we were having two different conversations. Kylie getting us together had been a good idea. Even if it turned out nobody had hurt Cheryl, even if no new witches showed up to the school before we all graduated. It was still nice.

Ugh. Refujeyo was making me soppy.

I considered going to do some meditative rock climbing for awhile, but that meant going back to the dorm for gym clothes, and I didn’t want to hear how horribly Kylie was mangling the English language to get an O or V word for her backronym. I let my feet guide me to the library instead. The long lines, gentle, swooping curves and oddly angled corners of the halls of Refujeyo were more comfortable than walking under an open sky these days, which was… worrying. Max would probably gravitate to the library when he was finished with his stuff, and I could quiz him about his thoughts on Cheryl’s situation.

He wasn’t there. Magistus was, reading something big and bound in leather, and I briefly considered asking him what he thought about the Cheryl thing, but getting the Magistae involved in any of this seemed… iffy. Max was one thing, but this wasn’t… getting our little legacy mage circle involved seemed like a bad idea. Talbot and Cheryl, at the very least, definitely wouldn’t appreciate it.

As I watched, Trevor approached Magistus from behind and surprised him with a forehead kiss. Magistusput his book down and took his hands gently, brushing his lips across the knuckles of each. Well, that definitively answered that little question, not that it was any of my business. I quickly turned to look at the nearest shelf of books.

“Oh, hey! Kayden! Hi!” Magistus called. I grabbed a book at random and shuffled off, pretending not to hear him, pretending to be absorbed in the book’s title.

Hmm, that was mature of me.

Now I felt like I was coming down with a fever. Maybe it was my curse, which would just be a fantastic capper for this wonderful day, and it would be just like me, wouldn’t it, to catch fire in the library of all places, and probably destroy hundreds of expensive books and fill the place with smoke. It had never occurred to me to really wonder how the network of confined tunnels that made up the school were ventilated, but setting the library on fire would probably screw up whatever system they had going on. Trust me to be an overdramatic complication for everyone else even in death.

I told myself to stop being so stupidly dramatic. I was just a bit worked up from seeing Magistus… it shouldn’t matter. I shouldn’t care. I broke up with him.

I faked interest in my completely random book all the way up to the borrowing counter, decided I sure as hell wasn’t going to go put it back while Magistus was still there, and borrowed it. What the hell. Then I turned around and there he was, leaning casually against a shelf with that perfect poise of his, arms crossed loosely across his chest He met my eye, and it was impossible to pretend I didn’t see him this time. Dammit.

“Kayden. Hey.”

“Hi,” I said, trying a smile. At least he hadn’t brought Trevor. I gave him a wave and brushed past him, into an isolated little aisle devoid of students, and he followed. The bastard.

“Have you been avoiding me?” he asked.

“What? No!” There was nothing remotely convincing in the false cheer and disbelief that had hijacked my vocal cords. I gave him another fake little smile and tried to ignore my heartbeat pulsing through my entire skeleton as I looked for somewhere even more isolated to lose him.

“Have I done something to upset you? Because I’d rather just talk outright if – ”

“Why?” I snapped. “Oblique social nonsense is what people from families like yours are so good at, isn’t it?”

“When have I ever subjected you to ‘oblique social nonsense’?”

“Do we have to have this conversation right now?”

“If we don’t, will we ever have it? Look, I get that… I don’t know what made you go so cold on me all of a sudden. You didn’t want to date me any more, fine; but you were pretty clear that you wanted to be friends, and ever since we got back you’ve done everything in your power to avoid me, so what the hell?”

“It’s not about you, Magistus.”

“From my end it sure looks like it is.”

“Well, it’s not. So just go back to your boyfriend and leave me alone, okay?” I tried not to sound petty or bitter. I’m pretty sure I failed.

“Oh. This is about Trevor?”

“No!”

“Because so far as I remember things, you broke up with – ”

“I know that! But I’m not the one making a big deal out of this, you are!” My breath was catching in my throat; I could feel pressure building in my sinuses. Oh fuck, I was about to start crying. In the school library. In front of my ex-boyfriend.

As if I hadn’t dealt with enough today.

Magistus put a steadying hand on my shoulder. “Hey. Calm down.”

I managed to get a hold of myself. His touch was incredibly reassuring, which was kind of pathetic in its own way, really, and helped to steady my breathing and relax my trembling muscles. In a much more even tone, with more thought, I said, “I have not had a very good day. One of my, I don’t know about friends, but someone who trusted me had a bit of an incident and… honestly, the details aren’t any of your business. But there are things going on that are bigger than, than nonsense in our little group, and I shouldn’t be so bothered by stupid teenage relationship bullshit.”

“But we’re teenagers,” Magistus shrugged. “That’s what stupid teenage relationship bullshit is for.”

“Yeah, well, there’s other stuff going on right now and I don’t have time for it. I broke up with you because of things I still don’t want to talk about, but they’re not your fault. I’m not mad that you’ve moved on; you have every right to, and I’m not going to be jealous or hurt or petty about it, I just… I have a lot of messy bullshit feelings and they’re not your problem, okay? You don’t need them complicating what you’ve got going on. Neither does Trevor. I’m not avoiding you, I’m just… trying to keep my bullshit to myself until I get a handle on it.”

“Do you regret it?” Magistus asked. “Us breaking up?”

“No. I miss you sometimes, but I still think it was the right decision. Do you regret it?”

“No. I like you; I want to hang out with you more. But what we had…”

“Was fun, but unsustainable?”

“Yeah.”

“You like Trevor, though?” I asked.

“Yes. I’m sorry, I – ”

“Why be sorry? That’s good. He seems like a nice guy. He deserved someone who’ll appreciate him. If he was some rebound whose heart you were going to break, I’d have to kick your arse.”

Magistus laughed. “How do you know if he’s a nice guy? Have you ever actually had a conversation with him?”

“You chose him, so he must be.”

“I chose you, too.”

“Proving that you have excellent taste. I’m fucking amazing.”

“Yes, well. Not quite as amazing as me.”

“You keep telling yourself that.”

“You’re only doubting because it’s been too long since you’ve seen my perfect form at the gym,” Magistus said. “You should come spot me again.”

“Not… not yet.”

“Alright.” He dropped his arm. “Catch you around, Kayden.”

“Yeah.”

As he walked away, my agitation caught up with me again. I leaned back against a shelf and let myself freak out for a bit about everything until the adrenaline wore off and calm weariness started to set in.

Why had I come back to this school, again?