Chapter 10
“Magic isn’t limitless.”
The tip of my pencil scrapes the letters over my fresh workbook.
“But that does not mean it’s finite.” Master Wealdwine lightly fingers a sleek, black pointer at the head of the classroom. “The power that courses through you—” she runs her narrow stone eyes over the rows of students “—is the most valuable element in the universe.”
My mouth turns down at the corners.
Doesn’t feel all that valuable to me, since I can’t tap into it, but ok.
My thoughts are shared among some of the others. Glances scraping down my cheek, some students twisting around in their seats to sneer and snigger at me, whispers that turn into scoffs and choked laughter.
The pointer comes down on the desk at the head of the large classroom, and it cracks loud enough to silence all the derision aimed at me.
I drop my head to my notebook.
Every single senior is crammed into this classroom, as big as the study hall. Masters line the walls, watching us, watching their print students.
But we all suffer the stare of Master Wealdwine.
The Master of Magic.
All prints fall under her authority. The lassitude limit is tested by her, and the exams, too.
“Whether your power is of the elements,” she pauses to look at Master Novak, robed and standing by the wall, then she flicks her gaze to the next teacher over, Master Milton, “or of the stars,” she grips the pointer tight, her gloves creaking, “or of prediction, of artificery, alchemy, transformation, mentalism…” her gaze snags on Dray Sinclair, two rows in front of me, relaxed in his chair, “or all, there is something you share in your magic. Limit.”
The heavy pause is disturbed by a faint cough, the rustle of someone shifting around in their chair, the scribbling of pencils on paper.
“As many of you know, my print,” Master Wealdwine says, “is enhancement. Yes, it is rare,” she adds with a slithering look over at Mildred who sits up a bit straighter, “and a great advantage to any coven. But not even my ability to enhance power can stop the lassitude limit.”
Elbow planted on the desk, I drop my chin onto my palm and slump in a way that would bring Grandmother Ethel’s cane down on me.
“No matter how powerful you think you are,” she goes on, but I just stare at the back of the head in front of me; Piper, whose hair is in dire need of deep conditioning and is wrangled back into a braid, “lassitude limit will affect you. It wears on the body with overuse, and the results range from seizures and excessive bleeding to complete dissociation, migraines, and, in the most severe cases, death.”
I write that down.
Death.
I don’t know what notes I should be taking.
I shouldn’t even be in this class.
It ends with the examinations, and unless I’m supposed to pull magic out of my ass, I don’t know what the point is of my being here to prepare for it.
“The most effective way of avoiding early lassitude limit is to exist with other witches. There might be some of you who fall to ego, who forget that magic is most powerful when united in covens, and become rogues. It is imperative that you remember you are weakest alone.”
Don’t have to tell me twice.
It’s the story of my life.
“Rogues continue to pose a threat to our world, but not due to their prints. It is the potential to reveal the existence of the Videralli that is the risk. Covens maintain the order and prevent the rogues from exposing us.”
Beside me, Courtney shifts in her seat, and as I throw a dull look at her, I see it, the frown starting to crease her face.
A crumb of understanding.
Rogues, lone witches, whatever name is slapped onto them, they are a problem, and they are dealt with by the covens who rule the jurisdiction.
The only rogues who seem to make it out there are the ones whose prints are of shielding, or the ones who know a shield witch. It’s said the only way to break through the shield spell is by absolute will of the mind. But if one doesn’t want to be found, they won’t be.
Courtney is no shield witch.
Maybe she is starting to realise that she is as trapped here as I am.
It shouldn’t curl my mouth with a snarky smile that I try to hide against my shoulder.
I shouldn’t take pleasure in her disappointments, her gradual realisations.
But honestly, I get so tired of her, I get tired of her optimistic and unrealistic ideas about this world, about what we can and can’t do.
The smile is gone by the end of class, but my mood stays light to my favourite lesson, all about the bloodlines.
It’s a class we only take once a month, absolutely mandatory, and it’s easy for me since we are expected to study the family trees and histories at home anyway.
Grandmother Ethel beat most of this information into me over the years with that damn cane of hers.
This month, we go over what Master Joha calls the ‘spilling of great blood’—and it’s offensive enough to stir scowls and huffs through some of the half-breeds.
Joha’s stance on bastard offspring and cheating is pretty clear, since his mouth curls around the words, he spares horrid looks over the half-breeds, which doesn’t make any sense at all, since the half-breeds are just from krum and witch marriages, not cheatings and affairs.
Doesn’t matter though, Joha’s face softens as he considers the right side of the room, the rows of benches here, no tables, no desks—
Oh.
Assigned seating.
Master Joha assigned all the elites to the right side of the room and all the made ones and half-breeds to the left.
He’s a bit of a prick.
A younger male version of Grandmother Ethel.
She would pull stunts like this, no blush about it.
I settle in, prim on the bench, and actually listen to the lecture, unlike Oliver who’s leaning into me the more tired he gets and I have to keep pushing his head off my shoulder.
The others—Dray, Serena, Asta, Mildred—are all behind us in the rows of benches.
Landon is just beside me, the alphabetical sorting of our surnames, and though he whispers to me throughout class, I snub everything he says—because this is the one lesson I’m actually interested in, and good at.
And this lesson is about the “spill”.
Nasty way to say it.
But it sheds a new light on cheating.
I always thought the essential ban on cheating was meant to promote loyalty within the family units, strengthen them, and that would have a knock-on effect within the coven, then aristos and elite, then all classes within the Videralli.
Family first.
Leading by example.
But the work that goes into these curated bloodlines, the failed ones, the mismatched ones, the lame prints, the stronger ones, the hope for a child to grow into manipulation, but instead, like Asta, grew into flimsy illusion...
Now, I wonder if maybe loyalty is promoted because gods forbid anyone outside of the family unit got a surprise print.
Like... Oliver and Mikhail are the only alchemists at the academy. Mikhail's grandfather two generations removed, if I recall his family tree correctly, had alchemy, and his mother before him.
So that makes sense.
Prints can dim for a few generations, then pop up again.
A happy surprise for some.
But if another alchemy student was running around the school who's bloodline consists of artificery and agronomy, and yet that student could inexplicably perform alchemy, well... that wouldn't be great for us.
Not only would it mean my father has been disregarding his loyalty to the family, it would mean he is also spreading out one of the most powerful prints to other bloodlines.
And the entire time at Bluestone Academy, we take brews for contraception, every single one of us. No drop-outs here, no pregnancies to pull us out of the studies, or out of the race.
It's all so controlled.
Infidelity isn't frowned upon because loyalty to family is most respected.
It's so that bastard children don't extend the powerful prints outside of the elite aristos.
Imagine if all the gentry had access to our prints? Commonised them?
I don't know how that would go, but it wouldn't go anywhere pleasant. Not for the Coven of Europe, anyway.
It makes me think of Uncle Aldo—and perhaps the reason my parents loathe him so much.
He is married, of course, but with no children.
I’m not immune to the gossip in the family that he strays from his wife, and I wonder if he has children out there, maybe raised in the Home for the Misplaced.
That would be dreadful.
Living in the Home for the Misplaced, believing yourself to be a made one or an orphaned half-breed, never knowing your true family.
Though, sometimes, maybe those witches have something I don’t have.
The reality of never having parents to disappoint—and resent.