seize every opportunity I could find.
Chapter 7
One perk of pretending to be an actual student at Wraithwood was breakfast.
We were running late, so I only had time to grab coffee and a pastry from the ridiculously nice food hall, dashing past cafeteria tables carved with dragons instead of graffiti, rainbow light showering down from stained glass windows set high overhead. The pastry was still warm from the oven, its buttery, flaky crust perfectly balancing out the tart-sweetness of the jam inside. I didn’t recognize the exotic orange-colored berry it was made of, but whatever it was, it tasted face-meltingly delicious after days of cold, squashed leftovers.
I wished I could take the time to savor the food, and the route through campus, but our headlong rush didn’t give us time for either. Just once, I thought ruefully as I wolfed down breakfast with one hand and tried not to spill coffee with the other as I ran. Just once, I’d like to have a nice leisurely stroll through the school gardens or something. Someday.
I skidded through the doors of the lecture hall just as distant bells tolled out nine o’clock. Here was my first class: Introduction to Higher Magic.
I slipped into an aisle seat; Aegis remained standing to my side. “You can find a seat too, you know,” I said quietly, turning in my seat. “Stop blocking the aisle. Even the Nightfelds wouldn’t try to jump me in the middle of class.”
But Aegis remained unmoving, staring ahead stubbornly. I sighed and turned my attention to the front of the classroom, trying to ignore the weirdness of having him in my peripheral vision.
I’d picked up a lot of cool tricks with magic, between reading random books and living in Redbriar Manor, but I’d never really studied the theory to string all those bits together. I knew a lot of whats and hows, but not the whys. This class looked like it aimed to fill in that gap.
I was probably one of the few students who looked forward to the class. The other students’ conversations faded from chattering to whispers when the professor showed up, but they didn’t stop. Beside me, my neighbor yawned into her hand, clearly wishing she were still in bed. Theoretical stuff just wasn’t as appealing as punching holes in walls with your bare hands.
To be honest, given my sleep deprivation, I’d probably be less than attentive too, if this weren’t the first time I’d been inside a classroom in more than a decade. As one of the skeletons in House Redbriar’s closet, I hadn’t had much opportunity to interact with people outside the manor grounds. Sitting in a lecture hall with nearly a hundred students was fresh and exciting. And the professor was very exciting.
She was a small, plump woman with a beehive hairdo nearly as tall as she was, which swayed mesmerizingly atop her head as she strolled across the front of the classroom. She wore a fuzzy blue bathrobe over a darker blue ball gown, both of which rippled oddly as she walked, as if she were underwater.
“Welcome, welcome!” she called out to us, her audience, throwing her arms wide. “I am Professor Bayes, and this is the most important introductory course you’ll take here at Wraithwood Academy. Here, you will be learning the fundamentals that you’ll rely on for the rest of your years here.”
“So what is higher magic, you may ask?” Professor Bayes continued grandly. “To explain, it’s easier to first demonstrate what lower magic is.”
Mages didn’t need projectors or screens; they tossed up illusions. Professor Bayes showed us an ancient-looking wall carving, worn and pitted, that nearly spanned the classroom. On it, crude but recognizable humanoid figures leapt over trees, wrestled giant beasts, and seized birds in mid-flight.
“Lower magic is our birthright. Any untrained mage child knows how to make themselves stronger if they’re angry, or faster if they’re being chased. It’s automatic. Instinctive. Just like we’re all born knowing how to move our arm, we’re all born knowing how to use magic as an extension of our arm. For millennia, our ancestors made themselves great through lower magic.”
“Lower magic is more flexible than this carving makes it appear, of course. It’s not just giving yourself superhuman physical abilities; you can use it to augment anything your body already does. Your body already knows how to see, so magic can make you see better, across great distances or through the dark of night. Your body already knows how to grab what’s in front