15. Lily
LILY
As Chant said “partners,” Lily watched her fellow students immediately engage in the silent chaos of picking teams before he was done speaking. Vis and Beaumont started a game of Rochambeau, quite literally behind Allsaires’s back. Lily counted swiftly and sank deeper into her desk.
Eighteen students—an even number. Inevitably, part of her classmates’ urgency was avoiding pairing with her, which she confirmed as she caught several poorly concealed glances.
The likelihood of Chant allowing her to work alone seemed near nonexistent.
She’d used that tactic several times freshman year with great success, but Chant had already indicated that he wasn’t letting her off easily anytime soon.
Gemma was the most likely to willingly work with her, but she was already frantically trying to get Violet’s attention.
Braithwhite, he of “being above sex with lepers,” turned in his seat, scanning the room.
Lily’s insides curdled at the thought of spending an entire year working with one of Hawleyhurst’s cronies.
“You can all stop whatever it is you think you’re doing right now.
” Chant’s voice, aided by a blanket of spontaneous casting, stilled the room.
“Your partners will be chosen for you.” Ignoring the groans that followed his pronouncement, he placed a small, three-legged cauldron on top of his desk.
With no evident casting, blue fire flared to life beneath it before subsiding into yellow.
Something about it eased Lily into sudden contentment.
Chant moved around the room, passing out slips of lavender paper.
“Write your name on both papers. Each of you will come up and add a drop of blood to your paper—” Violet, her distant cousin, raised her hand.
They’d never properly met, and Violet had never bothered her, so their non-relationship suited Lily just fine.
Without looking at Violet, Chant continued, “Not optional. You will keep one, and the other you will cast into the cauldron. When everyone has made their contribution, the spell will pair you by best fit. Mr. Braithwhite, if you please.”
Lily watched with growing nausea as her classmates went up one by one and used a finger prick, then deposited it in a sharps container held by a glove-wearing Chant.
Braithwhite made a show of it being nothing, Gemma gasped theatrically, Vis grinned, Beaumont frowned, and Allsaires’s gaze was bored and unreadable.
With each paper dropped into the cauldron, it hissed and steamed, and a facsimile of each student’s name appeared on the board in their own handwriting, which was some masterfully tricky spellwork.
When her turn arrived, Lily found herself frozen to her seat.
“Last, but not least.” Chant ushered her up. Braithwhite sniggered.
She knocked her thigh into the desk as she stood, and somehow, despite crushing terror, found herself moving to the front of class.
Lily accepted the finger prick with a clammy hand and completed the task with mechanical jerkiness.
She was so preoccupied with the awfulness of standing in front of everyone that she barely registered the sting.
Once she was back in her seat, Chant added several jars—each containing a pre-measured substance—to the cauldron, his lips moving with inaudible incantation.
With the last addition, sparks—sizzling black, then yellow, white, and red—shot from the cauldron with firework intensity toward the distant ceiling.
Gemma shrieked once more, and Lily hid a snicker as the other girl rocketed upward in her seat, slamming her knee against the desk. On the remaining slip of paper before her, her blood began to move. It twisted itself into a new form, the process mirrored on the blackboard.
Next to Gemma’s and Braithwhite’s names, identical sigils appeared.
Lily exhaled. The same thing happened with two different students and a new sigil.
Again and again until, with four names remaining, the cauldron paired Vis and Beaumont.
They smirked at each other before whipping to look at Allsaires, still partnerless.
Time seemed to slow in the classroom as half the heads turned toward her, and half toward Allsaires.
She stared, unblinking, at the blackboard as twin symbols, intricate as lace, appeared beside their names.
Several rows ahead of her, Beaumont whispered, “Seven curses.”*
Minor chaos erupted in the room, which Chant attempted to quiet before realizing the futility of the task.
He shouted briefly about partners and assignments, students already moving for the door, but Lily heard none of it.
As soon as he gave up, she gathered her books in a daze and hurried from the room.
* In AEtheric tradition, the casting of the Seven Curses—now lost to time and the Great Purge of 1802—represents the advent of a cataclysmic magical event.