I SPENT afternoons in the labs, poring over Grimoires and spell books, wincing at my sore muscles and trying not to show just how much they affected me. I thought Randall wasn’t feeling anything (which led me, briefly, to subscribe to the theory that he was actually a zombie and that I probably needed to chop off his head so he didn’t eat my brains) until I found out he iced his knees under the table. He glared at me as I laughed at him, and a heavy book from the shelf behind me flew out and hit me in the back of the head. I stopped laughing at him after that.
It wasn’t a crash course, per se, that he was trying to push me through. He wasn’t my mentor. That would always be Morgan. He was trying to teach me things I’d never thought of before, trying to expand my knowledge of how magic worked. There would have been a time that this would have occurred naturally, me transitioning from Morgan to him, but it would’ve been closer to the Trials where I’d attempt to move from an apprentice to a full-fledged wizard. I gave brief thought about asking him if that’s what we were doing, but I couldn’t get the words out. Maybe I was too scared to even think that I could be going that direction already. I had plans, yes. Plans to become the youngest wizard to ever pass the Trials. But I was twenty-one years old with dragons to collect and a villain who wanted to eat my magic.
I didn’t have time for anything else.
IT STARTED at the beginning of the fourth week.
Or maybe it’d been there all along. I couldn’t be sure.
When I’d first arrived at Castle Freesias, as we stood outside in the snow, I’d felt… something in the back of my mind. A whisper like a caress. Something tugging lightly. It wasn’t strong. I’d ignored it, because I was in a place of incredible magic. Things like that were expected. For all I knew, it could have been Randall, or the effects of having teleported a long distance.
But then it happened again in the middle of the night. I was tossing and turning, my brain too full of stupid thoughts for me to be able to close my eyes and sleep. It happened every now and then. Usually I had Ryan there to curl up around me. Before him, Tiggy and Gary.
Now I was all alone.
And apparently starting to sound like Zero.
“Ugh,” I said. “This is lame. Everything is lame.”
The firelight flickered across the icy walls and ceiling. I watched the shadows for a little while, trying to force all thoughts from my mind. Which, when one tries to clear one’s mind, inevitably, the mind is fuller than it has ever been before.
Clear your mind, I told myself.
Hey, my brain said. Remember that one time when you were sixteen and you tripped and fell in front of the Prince and all his friends and they laughed at you?
“Oh my gods,” I muttered aloud. “Whyyyyy would you do that?”
Suck my balls, my brain said.
I tried flipping over onto my other side, away from the fire. The shadows were thicker on the other side of the room. I closed my eyes, counting each breath I took. I relaxed, relaxed, relaxed, and two hundred sixty-seven, and two hundred sixty-eight—
I opened my eyes.
I was wide-awake.
“I am so going to get my ass kicked tomorrow,” I said with a sigh. “It’s going to—”
Wizard
“—fucking…? What the hell?”
I sat up in the bed.
The room was empty. The shadows flickered.
“Randall?”
Silence.
Then—
We see you, wizard
A chill went down my spine.
Soon, the whisper said, and then it was gone.
“Oh no,” I said.