“What business do you have with my father?”
The question is out of my mouth before my mind can even answer it.
Me.
I’m the business.
I don’t know much about how these arrangements are done, not from the business side of it. I don’t know how many contracts are passed back and forth, edited and re-edited and renegotiated until they fit both parties.
But I bet my lovely new leather backpack that I am what this meeting is all about.
Without another word, Dray turns on his heels and follows the administrator out of the nook.
I watch them go.
And still, I sit on the edge of the table, like I’m stuck here, trapped in the whirl of my mind.
The fact that my father is in the school right now, but not summoning me, not saying hello, and instead doing everything he can to put the absolute finishing touches on my engagement to Dray, it’s infuriating.
I haven’t seen Father since the morning of New Year. He didn’t even come to say goodbye the morning we left for the academy.
Mother said goodbye, but it was cold and stiff, without a hug or a kiss on the cheek.
But Father being here, it explains why Oliver was not in the mess hall after class.
Father would have summoned him first, and this is how Oliver learns—learns how to one day sell his own daughter to another aristos.
I’m practice.
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, “orall, 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.
