The thing no one tells you about magical university is how much of it is just as much of a grind as regular university.
I still have to write essays. I still have to show up to lectures on time and take notes and raise my hand when I have a question, which is constantly, because I'm months behind everyone else and half the terminology still sounds made up to me. There's still cafeteria food that ranges from acceptable to genuinely concerning, with the added bonus that for all I know it was magicked into existence. There are still group projects with people who don't do their share, except here the slackers can literally make their pen write for them while they nap, which feels like it should be cheating but apparently isn't.
Magical History with Professor Robertson is on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 8 AM, which is a crime against humanity regardless of what world you come from. Robertson is ancient—Brittany swears he was alive during the Schism, though she admits that might just be how he looks—and he lectures in a droning monotone that could put a caffeinated squirrel to sleep. But I take detailed notes anyway, because the history of this place is the only thing that might help me understand it better.
Tuesdays and Thursdays also mean I share a hallway with the Sanguis students heading to their Blood Theory seminar. I see Ren Ashford sometimes, always surrounded by a quiet cluster of crimson-and-black clad students who part around him like he's the calm center of a slow-moving current. He never looks at me. Not once. I've started to wonder if he even knows I exist.
That anonymity should be comforting, but it only makes me more wary. For all I know, a blood magic user as powerful as him can control me with my blood just like Brittany controls Herbert with his.
Wednesdays are Magical Theory with Warrick, who still watches me like I might explode at any moment, and Elemental Studies with Professor Parker, who is new this semester and seems completely unaware that I'm the campus freak show. I like Parker. She assigns homework based on sensory observation—describe what lightning feels like before you see it, catalog the temperature shifts when death magic enters a room—and she doesn't seem to care that I can't do any of it on purpose yet. "Awareness precedes control," she says, every single class, until the phrase starts appearing in my dreams.
Fridays are the worst. Fridays are combat training.
The Proving Grounds sit underneath the east wing of the main academic building, down a stone staircase that smells like sweat and iron and maybe a little bit like fear and pain. The room itself is cavernous—vaulted ceilings disappearing into shadow, stone walls that are scorched and gouged from decades of students throwing magic at each other, and a floor of hard-packed dirt with fresh sand scattered on top, like someone's trying to cover old bloodstains.
They might actually be covering old bloodstains. I've decided not to ask. If I get too many answers, I might never come back to class.
Professor Marigny runs combat training with the enthusiasm of someone who genuinely loves watching eighteen-year-olds throw each other across a room with their fists. She's short, built like a fire hydrant, with grey-streaked hair cropped close to her skull and a voice so worn and enough from use that it could strip paint. Her discipline is Tempest—she wears the blue and yellow—but she trains students from all four fraternities, and she doesn't play favorites.
Well. She doesn't play favorites with anyone who's actuallyina fraternity.
"Grey! You're late."
"I'm three minutes early."
"For an experienced student, that's early. For someone who needs as much training as you, it's late." She points at the equipment rack along the far wall. "Grab a practice staff. The padded one. I don't want you impaling anyone."
I grab the staff—it's essentially a broomstick wrapped in leather padding—and join the loose circle of students on the sand. There are about twenty of us in this session, a mix of fraternities, though the colors separate like oil and water. Tempest blue clusters on one side, Mors silver on the other. A few Sanguis students in crimson hover near the back. The only Tumult purple belongs to a girl named Dahlia who seems to exist in a permanent state of mild confusion, like reality keeps shifting on her and she can't keep up.
I can relate.
"Today we're working on your defensive capabilities," Marigny announces, pacing the circle. "No magic allowed. Physical forms only. You get hit, you go down, you get back up. Simple."
A few groans from the students who clearly joined magical university expecting to never have to do a push-up.
"I know, I know. You all came here to throw lightning and summon ghosts, not learn how to block a punch. But magic fails. Wands break. You run out of blood to fuel your fancy knife tricks." She looks directly at a Sanguis boy who's trying to hide behind the girl next to him. "When that happens, the only thing between you and the floor is whether you can take a hit and keep standing."
She starts pairing us off. I watch the assignments like a poker game, trying to read the odds, to figure out if I’m getting scarred today or just bruised. Marigny usually puts students of similar experience together, which means I should get someone from the lower ranks—another first-year, maybe, someone who's also still learning the difference between a block and a flail.
"Grey. You're with Miranda Voss."
My stomach sinks.
Miranda Voss is Tempest. Third year. One of Atlas's inner circle—I've seen her at his table in the dining hall, laughing at his jokes, glaring at anyone who comes too close. She's tall and lean with platinum hair buzzed on one side and sharp dark eyes that are already cutting into me as she steps forward.
"Great," she says, twirling her staff with the casual ease of someone who's been doing this for years. "The scholarship kid."
"Great," I say back. "The one with the personality of a wet sock."
Her eyes narrow. But Marigny is watching, so she just smiles—thin, sharp, not reaching her eyes—and takes her position across from me.
"Begin on my whistle," Marigny calls. "Defender holds the line. Attacker advances. We swap in five minutes."
I'm defending first. Which means Miranda is coming at me, and from the look on her face, she's planning to enjoy it.
The whistle blows.
Miranda doesn't ease into it. There's no warm-up, no testing jab, no courtesy of pretending this is a fair fight. She comes at me full force from the first second, her staff whipping through the air in strikes that are way too fast and way too hard for a training drill.
