After agreeing to meet another day so they could have a mini-orientation, Eunny left. It was too late for any of the administration offices to be open, but first thing tomorrow, she’d get her name on a list at housing. She wasn’t thrilled at the idea of living at the school again, but a real bed sure beat Auntie Yerina’s floor.
It was silly, but Eunny fought the urge to skip as she descended the stairs. Sure, guilt was still a leaden mass on her soul, but this felt like progress. A baby step in the right direction. Redistributing her mountain of atonement with a toothpick, perhaps, but now, she was armed for the process.
Eunny made her way toward the main road, passing by the greenhouse at the farthest edge of the Grove’s complex. An overgrown patch of nondescript plants spread alongside the rear corner of the building, their long, strappy, grass-like leaves sprawling across the narrow path.
She walked by, brushing the leaves with her leg?—
“Whoa!” The touch set off a flurry of twitches in her eye, making Eunny stumble sideways. In the gloom of the off-hours lighting, she missed how the stones of the path were slightly elevated above the overgrown plot. Off-balance, she tripped and fell to her knees amidst the grassy clumps.
“Gods all fucking… break.” She gasped as the minute spasms in her eye immediately stilled, replaced by the oddly familiar sense of restlessness that had plagued her all summer. The pulling sensation revived, emanating from her center. From the little sphere next to her heart, the inner well where her magic used to dwell.
Except, not used to.
“Oh, shit,” she moaned. “No, no, no.”
Eunny could declare magic was dead to her—and mean it—but saying it was so and making it so, well… With great, grudging reluctance, she’d have to admit those weren’t the same thing. Six years ago, magic had betrayed her. In the face of it, Eunny had willfully left the idea of her magic behind, excised all trace of it from her mental being as best she could. But conflating disuse and death, that was just her own wishful thinking.
The grass-like leaves clung to her hands. When she tried to shake free, something pulled at her. The horrible sensation of her magic being dragged from beneath her skin, just like the day she’d lost control. That same feeling of slipping, careening toward a crash. And that brief moment of icy clarity right before impact, knowing she couldn’t stop.
Eunny ripped her hand back and staggered onto the path. A trail of golden sparks rippled in her wake and fell to the mounds of grass. The sparks didn’t wink out so much as sink into the leaves, absorbed like water into blotting paper.
“What— What the…?” Eunny stared at her hands, then the plants, head whipping back and forth. Her eye was calm, the imperceptible feelings of restlessness, of being called to, gone quiet. Eunny didn’t dare look inward at the hole that was supposed to be the only remnant of her magic.
Panic rose in her throat as the realization of what had happened struck. She looked around. No witnesses. Her gaze landed on the clumps of grass sitting there all benign and giving the impression of just being bland foliage. Eunny hurried away, not stopping until she reached the campus’s main courtyard. Only then did she pause and glance back in the direction of the greenhouse complex. The distance and the darkness didn’t matter—the image of the grassy clumps sitting there, as if they were no more than bland foliage, immediately came to Eunny’s mind.
“Never again.” She spat on the ground. “You’re not getting shit from me.”
Chapter Four
“I’m confused,” Gransen said. “Shouldn’t your new valet be doing this part?”
“Don’t call her that,” Ollas muttered, glancing up and down the hall, but Eunny was nowhere in sight.
Which was to be expected, seeing as they hadn’t planned on meeting to familiarize her with the greenhouse complex until later in the afternoon. No reason to expect to find her in the university administration building.
“I thought the whole point of her becoming your personal aide was to provide, you know, aid.” Gransen lifted Ollas’s bag of books and amendment samples in one hand, and the stack of papers that hadn’t fit amongst them in the other.
“Only once classes start.” Ollas reached for the papers destined for turn-in at the registrar’s desk. “I said I could manage.”
Gransen skipped out of reach. “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re broken. What kind of person would make his critically injured best friend haul his shattered?—”
Ollas poked Gransen in the shin with his cane. “There’ll be a statue of you in the courtyard any day now, I’m sure.”
Gransen heaved a dramatic sigh. “I wish they wouldn’t. Sculptors never get my hair right.”
Ollas continued down the hall, but Gransen easily kept pace with his limp.
“Give me the truth, though. Why are you being so weird about this?” Gransen asked. “It’s ideal. You, injured, and Eunny nursing you back?—”
“Me being injured is your version of ideal?”
“Are we really going to pretend that this isn’t the perfect opportunity?”
“For?” Ollas said, voice stubbornly neutral.
Gransen tipped his head back and made an exasperated noise. “You save her life. She saves your job. You’re hurt, she’s helping. You’re going to be in the greenhouse. A lot. Alone.” He gave Ollas a sidelong look. “Are you going to make me say it? This is your chance, Olly.”
“We’re… you know, friends. And I feel bad about it.”
