“Hammond and Peter are free to meet up in the cafeteria in a couple of hours to sort out pit comp stuff,” Saina reported, setting her tablet down and returning to crushing peppercorns.

“Great.” I kept my eyes locked on the thermometer in the saucepan in front of me and carefully turned down the heat. The ingredients we were working with were temperature sensitive. “That’ll give us time to get this potion right.” I turned the heat up again, just a little. “Next time I’m doing this part in the water bath. Why did you let me think doing the temperature control manually was a good idea?”

“I’m not responsible for your bad decisions. Why do you even want to perfect Camphor’s Fire anyway? It’s just an energy booster. I’ve never even seen you drink coffee.”

“I usually don’t drink coffee.”

“But you want to get good at making the magical equivalent of coffee? Why? It’s not any more healthy for you or anything. In fact, being magic – ”

“I’m aware of the inherent extra risks of magic. It’s not for me.” I held a hand out for the crushed peppercorns and sprinkled them, very slowly, into the hot clear liquid before me, watching for a colour change. “It’s for Kylie.”

“She can’t drink coffee? Is she allergic or something?”

“No, it’s for her spell. Her prophecy is… really powerful, and Alania found her a specialised teacher for it, but the spell’s more limited than it should be. It does a lot more in high energy environments, and we don’t exactly have any of those all ready for her to train in, but her teacher thinks that upping her magical energy with potions might work and I’d rather make those myself than have some stranger sell them to her.”

Saina took a long time to respond. I couldn’t see her expression because I couldn’t look away from the pot, but her tone was tight when she said, “You need somewhere with a lot of magical energy? To empower a prophecy, specifically?”

“Ideally, yeah. But she’s not leaving Refujeyo just for fancy prophecy training. We’ve already had that discussion. So we just have to hope the potions work.” The liquid turned a pale lavender; I pulled it off the heat immediately and started stirring.

“I might have a solution. That wouldn’t involve leaving Refujeyo. I mean, not for long; it’s a quick journey.” She sounded hesitant; I glanced up at her and saw her scrutinising my expression, for some reason. She bit her lip.

I put the potion aside to give her my full attention. It started to blacken the moment I stopped stirring, but I could remake it later. “Saina, what’s going on?”

“I, uh. I’m not Saina.” She looked away, twisting her fingers in her hair and focusing on inspecting it. “I signed up to school under a fake name.”

I shrugged. “You’re a legacy mage. Half the people I know adopted new names here.”

“No, no. I didn’t take a new name. I took a fake name. ‘Saina’ is a name common to the Dara family, and I chose it so people would assume I was one of them, but I’m not. I chose it specifically to hide my identity, and I’ll drop it when I finish school.”

It took me a moment to tease out the implications of this. “Wait. You’re pretending to be a legacy mage? You’re not from a mage family?”

“Other way around. The Dara family’s not very strong or noticeable. My name is Parveen Surya.” She glanced at me, saw that this obviously meant nothing to me, and continued. “I’m the daughter of Vahida Surya, the High Crone of Politikala Refujeyo.”

That, I recognised well enough. “Your mother is the ruler of Refujeyo?”

“No, no; she just leads the Council of Politikala Refujeyo. She has no authority over the other two branches.”

“Officially. But everyone knows that’s a ‘first among equals’ kind of deal. I can’t believe you’re straightup a secret magical princess and you never told me.”

Saina glared at me. “I wasn’t trying to lie to you.”

I raised my hands. “Joking! I get it. You don’t owe me your backstory or anything, and I don’t care what your name is. Although, um. I guess I do need to know which name you want to be called.”

“Saina. Everyone here calls me Saina. I didn’t want this to be a, a big thing.”

“Seriously, you don’t need to explain. First, I don’t give a shit about political heirarchies and different mage families anyway. Second, if I could’ve hidden being a witch or a familiar so people wouldn’t assume it was the entirety of my identity just by adopting a different name at school, I would’ve done so in a heartbeat. But… nobody knows?”

“People know, but they don’t know-know. I assume some of the staff would have to know. And the students I knew before coming here, of course. And some others have clearly figured it out – Magista keeps inviting me to parties that no Dara has any business being at, and last semester Max Acanthos asked to borrow some really rare books that are in my family’s library. But nobody’s said anything, so… anyway. The whole point is, my family’s business is mostly tied up in Refujeyo matters these days, but we own some property that’s been in our hands before Refujeyo existed. Like Duniyasar. It’s one of the seven Points of Power, and it’s said to have an affinity for prophets especially, so if anywhere’s going to help your mage cast, it would be there.”

“You own Duniyasar?”

“It’s my dowry, so technically, mum owns it until I’m married. But I can get her to give it to me early, and then I can let your mage use the location. It shouldn’t be hard; we don’t use it for anything. Nobody has for a long time.”

I remembered how I’d last seen Duniyasar, an abandoned tower in the middle of nowhere, dusty and neglected. The one time we’d been there, the Evil Eye – I mean, Fionnrath’s Destiny – had given a prophecy that hadn’t yet come to pass, far surpassing its normal range of vision, and spoke to me out of rhyme.

“Yeah,” I said. “That would definitely work. I can’t thank you enough. Assuming Kylie and her teacher are interested, obviously. And, um… is this something I can discuss with Max? Not to say, I mean, well, I know you’re helping, and thanks, I just want to… I mean, I don’t really get the intricacies of how… mage stuff… works.”

I’d been trying not to sound accusatory or ungratefully suspicious of her offer, and apparently I’d gone too far, because Saina looked confused for several seconds before it clicked. “Oh! You’re worried about political ramifications. Max helps you with that sort of thing?”

“Well, yeah. He’s trained to deal with it.”

“It might be faster if I approach him directly then, Surya to Acanthos. Would that be appropriate?”

“Uh, yeah. I guess.”

“That’s sorted, then. If any place is going to help someone prophesy, it’ll be Duniyasar.”

“Thanks. Again.”

“It’s no problem. We don’t use it for anything; somebody should be using a Point of Power for it’s intended purpose.”

“Well. In the meantime.” I glanced at the rapidly blackening potion I’d left on the bench. “Do you think we have time to try this one again before meeting Hammond and Peter?”

“If we’re fast.” Saina grinned. “I bet I can chop seaweed faster than you.”

“You have taken the bet of a fool, my good madam. A damned fool.”

She couldn’t chop seaweed faster than me, as it turned out. Yeah. I was the seaweed chopping MASTER.

We completed a not great, but also not toxic, potion before we had to rush off to meet the others, which I counted as a win. Peter and Hammond weren’t hard to find in the cafeteria; I didn’t know the pair particularly well, but they were visually distinctive. Peter was tiny and pale, with ginger hair that clashed horribly with his red robes, freckles and wide blue eyes that didn’t seem capable of the kind of full-on violence I’d seen him enact in the Pit during duels last semester, and almost disappeared behind Hammond’s tall frame and square shoulders.

They spotted us almost as soon as we saw them. Peter grinned and waved us over.

After a bit of small talk about the holidays, Peter got down to business with, “Saina says you can’t compete in anything with fighting. You’re a pacifist?”

I shrugged. “More through habit than philosophy. I’ve technically hit people before. But if we do anything that relies on my ability to do so, we’re going to fail.”

He shrugged. “Plenty of non-combat competitions. But nobody actually gets hurt from pit comp fighting, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I know. That’s not really the point.” How could I quickly and easily explain a lifetime of being told over and over again that if I got angry or violent, the thing in my heart might kill someone? Reacting to anything with violence without being able to psych myself up before every hit wasn’t going to come easily to me just because I knew no one would be hurt. It probably never would.

Peter shrugged again. “You do you. I’ve seen you in the gym, though, and I know you can climb and jump well. Who’s up for treasure hunting competitions?”

“Ooh, yes,” Saina said. “We should definitely do those.”

Hammond nodded. “I’m not great at climbing, but I’m good at orienteering. And I have a good sense of distance and direction.”

“How’s your distance and direction, Kayden?” Peter asked.

I thought about pacing out the shapes of giant runes in underground tunnels with no reference points. “I’m alright at it.”

“Good enough! This is going to be great. Solo competitions are fun but nothing’s as good as a team competition.”

“Didn’t you have a team already?” Saina asked.

“Didn’t work out. We need to get to work on a training schedule…”

Well, at least this should be a healthier extracurricular than looking for an attempted murderer in our midst of getting lost deep in the school’s magical runic hallways. Maybe I could get through the entire semester without doing anything illegal or near-fatally dangerous.

As I was heading for the door after our meeting, I ran into di Fiore.

“Hey. Kayden. Has Fiore spoken to you since you got that thing?” He glanced at my familiarity mark.

“Um? No? Why?”

“He says he wants to come down and check up on how I’m doing. I expect it’s probably an excuse to just happen to run into Max and speak with him, and he might try to corner you, too. You got all snippy with me last time so I thought I’d give you a heads up.”

“Oh. Well, thanks? But maybe he really is just coming to see how you’re doing?”

Di Fiore gave me a look that suggested he thought I was an idiot, and left.

Well, okay. There was another thing, I supposed.

Now I had nothing to do for the rest of the day except explain Saina’s offer to Kylie. Kylie was in a class, so I headed to the gym. Might as well get some practice in at… climbing and running and stuff. To be ready for pit competitions.

And if this happened to be the time of day that Magistus usually trained, well, that was coincidence.

He was present, as it turned out. Not lifting weights with his boyfriend or one of his friends, but spotting his sister (whom, I noticed, lifted heavier weights than me, because apparently that family just had to excel at everything). Magista set her weights down and waved me over.

“Kayden! I haven’t seen you around much. Is everything alright?”

“Uh, yeah. Just busy. How’s stuff been for you guys?”

“Less exciting than for you, I’m sure,” Magistus remarked drily, glancing at my arm. Maybe I should start covering that damn familiarity mark with sleeves. Did nobody ever want to talk about anything else?

“I’m moving into three-person duelling groups with the Amazons,” Magista said with a grin. “Just getting in top shape for my first duel.”

“Nice! Some friends and I are about to form our own team.”

“Great! Maybe I’ll see you in the Pit.”

“Depends on what events we both do, I suppose.” I tried not to eye her in an awkward way. I’d always gotten along pretty well with Magista, but now that she was dating Max I felt like I had to be absolutely sure she was a good person. Was this how she’d felt when I’d dated her brother? Maybe. Suddenly I couldn’t help but be hyperaware that this easygoing girl who loved parties was a skilled diplomat whom I’d seen put on very convincing shows of concern and friendship to manipulate people. She’d been very convincing ‘defending’ Clara when trying to get her to confess to attempted murder, and that had been over half a year ago. Was she using Max? Well, yes, obviously; they were using each other. But was she using him in some way he wasn’t aware of? Was she going to hurt him?

“Kayden?”

“Hmm? Sorry, got lost in thought for a moment there. What was the question?”

“What kind of competitions are you looking at?”

I pulled myself back to the conversation at hand. Max could take care of himself, and I didn’t need to invent yet more things to worry about.

I had plenty of those already.