“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.
