Chapter Two
She expected him to do something terrible to her belongings. After all, that was what bullies usually did. Michael Matheson
had once hung her PE shorts from the falling-down eaves of their high school roof. Her life was littered with boys throwing
her books, her homework, her bags into places she couldn’t reach them.
She couldn’t imagine this would be different. She’d get to the assessment hall and find her underwear hung across it like
a banner. Or arranged on the floor to spell something out. She would almost make it through and find the words fat ass blocking her path. Then end up being decapitated by some lobbed spell, because the sight of it had thrown her.
But when she finally made it, there was nothing of the kind.
There was just a great drafty room, divided into four lines of extremely nervous-looking students. And he didn’t even seem
to be among them—though she knew he was definitely supposed to be. At Harrowhall, it didn’t matter how many years you’d been
attending, or what kind of advanced level you’d made it to, or how many perks you had attained prior to right now.
You faced the assessment, all the same.
And you risked losing every bit of privilege you’d managed to grab, she thought, as she took in all the greedy gazes, lighting on anyone who looked particularly weak.
Which, of course, only made the whole thing scarier.
Her heart was a trapped rabbit in her chest when she finally forced herself to join one of the lines.
Sweat prickled beneath her arms and over the nape of her neck.
And her head swam with everything she’d tried to memorize from the guide.
Cupped, closed, clenched, she murmured to herself over and over.
Though she wasn’t entirely sure what good that would do. There was no guarantee that knowing the names of the basic forms
would make magic happen. All she knew for sure was that so far, there was nothing. Nothing when she’d tentatively tried in
her bedroom at home. Nothing now, as she fumbled through each move.
Furtively, because nobody around her seemed to be doing the same. In fact, the girl behind her—as pretty as Mina was plain,
doe-eyed and skin glowing a deep brown, hair as lustrous as black ink from a pot—looked positively mystified by what she was
doing. Her lips parted, as if to ask. But then she seemed to draw back, embarrassed. As if it was wrong to even inquire about
it, somehow.
It made Mina nervous enough that she had to find out. “Are new students not supposed to practice?” she asked as quietly as
she could. But the girl’s frown only deepened. And she shook her head.
“I don’t even know what it is you’re practicing.”
“It was in the guidebook. The chapter on basic forms.”
“Oh. I see. We couldn’t afford anything like that.”
“But we didn’t buy it. It was sent to me. I thought it was sent to everyone.”
The girl didn’t say anything to that. She didn’t need to, however.
Mina could tell what her expression meant.
It was half angry and half resigned, as if she knew full well how brutally unfair that was but also hadn’t expected anything better from a place like this.
It was run and ruled for rich white people.
Honestly, it seemed like a miracle that she even had a guidebook.
But she didn’t intend to keep its secrets to herself. She glanced around to see if anyone was watching for illegal sharing
between the sort of students who didn’t quite fit the aesthetic, and then lowered her voice even further. “Okay, look. You
have no reason at all to trust me. For all you know, I’m a rival trying to sabotage you for a place in some advanced class.
But we don’t have time for me to prove otherwise, so you can either take this advice or not. The five basic forms are these:
cupped, closed, clenched, reached, and opened. You start with cupped—cupped hands, like this.” She made the shape the diagram
had shown her. Two curves through the air, as perfectly symmetrical as she could make them, and ending with something that
looked like she was gathering water to drink. “That’s to draw the magic to you. And then right after that move, fast into
closed. Arms together, hands together like you’re praying. Or you can do clenched too, with your fists. Those are the ones
that are supposed to be good at creating something to defend you. Does that make sense?”
No, she thought despairingly.
But the girl’s expression said something else.
She watched Mina put her arms together, hands clasped, and a spark seemed to light her eyes.
Like she’d seen something she recognized on some deep level.
Or maybe knew, in that moment, that Mina wasn’t trying to trick her.
It’s my earnestness, Mina thought. And for once in her life, she didn’t regret it.
There was no punishment waiting for her because of it.
The girl grabbed her hands instead. “Thank you,” she said in a tone Mina recognized all too well. It was the same one she
would have used upon realizing someone was actually doing right by her.
Instead of the usual.
“Don’t thank me. It’s only fair,” she said. Then before she could offer her name, the girl lurched forward. Someone pushed
her from behind, she pushed into Mina, and finally Mina stumbled, half turning, and almost crashed into the professor waiting
at the front. The bored-looking one, with the clipboard and the pen that definitely wasn’t fueled by anything ordinary.
No ink flowed from the tip.
Only a kind of silvery light.
“Name?” he asked. Because apparently this was it.
“Mina Morrow,” she replied, the words barely out before he started in on the same spiel she could hear all the other register
takers spinning out.
“Wands and other magical aids go in the lockers provided; none are permitted during the assessment. Flying spells are prohibited,
and attempts at performing them will be punished. Other than that, there is only one rule: Make it as close to the center
of the maze as you can before the clock strikes midnight, to secure your place in any of the classes. Good luck,” he said
in the flat drone of someone who had been forced to say it a thousand times.
Then he pushed her through the door behind him before she could ask any of the million and one questions she had.
If you don’t get there in time, do you get expelled?
she thought frantically, as she stumbled from a well-lit hall into whatever was out there.
And after that, she had no time to think at all.
She barely even managed to register the grass under her feet, or the towering walls of a hedge maze on either side of her, or the fact that there was an inexplicably night sky somewhere above them.
Cool air and cold darkness slapped her in the face, and a second later it was followed by heat. A searing, blazing heat that
actually seemed to singe her hair as it flew past her face. She smelled burning. Her cheek was suddenly hot.
But it was only in the aftermath that she grasped what had happened. She shot a look down the narrow alley behind her, and
saw the blazing glow of it as it disappeared into darkness. A fireball. Someone had hurled a whole goddamn fireball at her
head.
And if she didn’t move fast, they were definitely going to do it again.
She glanced back at the direction it had come from and saw them there, at the end of this shadowy lane. Hands already cupped
to try a second time. Confidently, too. Like they’d done this a million times before. Like they’d been coming here for years
or understood everything about the place before they’d even walked in the door, and finally they were going to get access
to the elite classes they belonged in. That they were entitled to. How is this fair? she found herself thinking for the thirtieth time. Though this one definitely had a keener edge than all the others. Now
she wasn’t just sitting in her bedroom, reading that new students were assessed alongside old. She wasn’t just thinking about
what an advantage people would have if they could pay for the information early or came from families who already understood
and taught and practiced all this.
She was about to be murdered by that deranged level of inequality.
Unless, of course, she did something about it.
The only question was: What?
She glanced behind her and saw nothing but a dead end. In front, the next turn out of this lane looked to be a good thirty
feet away. This guy was going to reduce her to cinders before she covered half that. And there was nothing to use as protection
just lying about. No bin lids, no big rocks, no tree branches to use like a cricket bat.
The only thing she had was magic.
But she shook when she tried cupping her hands.
The curves through the air came out juddering, awkward, not as symmetrical as they needed to be. The sides of her hands met
in the middle offset. One slid awkwardly over the other. And after this first failure, she made the mistake of looking up,
down that narrow lane, to her tormentor.
She could see him grinning now.
All teeth, in the electrically bright light that was gathering in his palms.
It made her even clumsier. For a second she couldn’t even remember what she was supposed to do. She stood there, paralyzed,
hearing the word cupped in her head but not the action that went with it. Then she finally tried, and it was too frantic. It was too fast. Her hands
smashed together, hard enough that it hurt. A little sound of pain escaped her, even as she went to do it again. And again.
And again.
Like someone trying to make a flame spurt out of a faulty lighter.
Worse than that, really, because she wasn’t getting so much as a spark.
There was nothing happening, nothing at all—as if there’d been some mistake.
She didn’t have any magic in her after all.
She was ordinary, and now she was going to die for it, courtesy of a fireball so big and bright she could see it without even looking up.
It lit the whole of this dark lane. It bloomed through her eyelids when she squeezed them tight shut. She could almost feel