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 Irecall 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.
