With his thinning white hair and red-rimmed eyes, he reminded me of an elderly rabbit. He didn’t even bother to magnify his voice with magic before, in a barely audible monotone, he launched into a lecture on the copper-to-tin ratios of early 3rd century BC bronze enchanted effigies in the eastern Mediterranean.
I inwardly groaned, head in hands. Maybe I could’ve learned something if I’d been in a better mood, but the last thing I needed right now was a glorified history lesson. Other students were bringing out their phones or napping on their desks; I took out my share of the drawings I’d made with Darshan.
Meeting Darshan properly had made me even angrier at Cly. I liked him, damn it. He had ideas, and passion, and graceful long-fingered hands that drew beautiful things. Talking to him had felt like a ray of light after a long imprisonment in the darkness. It pissed me off that Cly had taken one look at him and seen a loner, a nerd without a fancy last name to back him up, and decided he was easy prey. It pissed me off that I had to meet him wearing Cly’s face.
The tip of my pen dug hard into the paper as I drew new runes. Even if Darshan couldn’t do a thing to help me, I wanted to see him again.
But that was the problem with being a prisoner. I only got to be a student, wandering the campus and attending classes, for as long as Cly felt like it. Once she got bored of staying in her room all day, I’d be put back into the box again. I’d lose everything.
And my morning of freedom had reminded me just how much there was to lose.
#
After a lunch of grilled chicken on absurdly fancy salad, Aegis and I headed to the final class of the day.
Well, Practical Education could barely be called a class. Its initials summed it up nicely—it was basically gym class with a pragmatic twist.
Mage society hadn’t dragged itself out of the medieval age on a lot of areas. See: the obsession with bloodlines, bastardy, and honor. Dueling was another sticking point. Mages still thought it perfectly acceptable to settle disagreements by punching each other really hard in front of a roaring audience, and a mage could expect to end up in a duel at least a couple times across the course of their lifetime. Practical Education was meant to teach students how to protect their honor—in mage society, a highly practical thing to know. The Nightfelds’ decline as a family had begun after Priam Redbriar’s brutal and highly publicized duel victory over Deneb Nightfeld twenty years ago.
Wraithwood University had a huge gym for the purpose, brightly lit with sunlight through the soaring glass ceiling. The hardwood floor was marked with white lines, but not ones for any mundane sport; they divided the space into dozens of rectangles arranged in a neat grid.
The professors were twins, two muscular women dressed like goth yoga instructors. “Gather ‘round, students. I’m Professor Sarva, and she’s also Professor Sarva,” said the one to the left, completely deadpan.
“We don’t expect you to be able to tell the difference,” said the one to the right. She made a series of complicated gestures, and then abruptly there were a few dozen Professor Sarvas, lined up neatly at one end of the gym, one copy of the professors for every two students.
“Pair up with a fellow student and find a dueling ring. We’ll come by and help you get started in person.”
I looked around, but didn’t see Darshan anywhere. There were fewer students here than had been at the lecture-based classes, so the odds were probably against us sharing a time slot. Who else to pair up with, then? It might be educational to practice fighting against Aegis under the guise of dueling, but I supposed he wasn’t technically a student. I was pondering which classmate to approach when I heard footsteps.
I turned, and caught Acubens Nightfeld sneaking up behind me.
Disappointment flashed Acubens's eyes; he’d clearly been hoping to make me jump. But he covered it up with an exaggerated bow. “Fancy meeting you here, Redbriar.”
I crossed my arms. “I didn’t expect you were a freshman too. I’d have thought upperclassman, given the way you act like you own this place, or preschooler, given your sense of humor.”
Acubens narrowed his eyes. Very pretty eyes, I had to admit. His irises were the color of quicksilver, contrasting vividly against the black