“So what’s the emergency, witchnitiate?” Mae took a long drag on her cigarette.

“I need to plan the most romantic date ever for my boyfriend for this Friday, and I thought you might have some out-of-the-box ideas,” I explained.

“Why did you think we would – ” Terry began, but was cut off by a painfully high pitched whine that, it turned out, was coming from Mae.

“Ooh! Of course we’ll help. Ter-pear, we have to help. Let’s do up the cabin the way we had it for our first date!”

“You mean when you nearly burned it down?”

“Let’s not do up the cabin the way we had it for our first date. Let’s do something cooler. Oh! Cupcakes, and Inara’s violin… Kayden, do you know how to waltz?”

“It’s a date, Mae-Mae, not a wedding.”

“No, she has the right idea,” I said. “This bastard took me on a romantic picnic in a beautiful forest surrounded by flowers and I will not be upstaged.”

“In that case, we need the big guns,” Mae said. “Terry, do you think Zane would do his fire and ice flowers for us?”

“By Friday? That’s a pretty tight deadline. And he’s got a placement exam coming up.”

“Exactly, so he’ll definitely do it! Otherwise he has no excuse to avoid studying! And I’ll thank him by getting Sarah to do a fairy castle for his wake… oh, this will be great.”

“You’ve awakened a monster,” Terry told me, deadpan. “Now you are trapped in a cycle of over-the-top event planning, and only after Friday will you be free.”

“Oh, and the wine! Are you a red man or a white man?”

“Mae! Fourteen!”

“Right, right; I forgot. I guess we’re going booze free, like barbarians.” She took a drag on her cigarete. “Leave it to me, Koala.”

Koala? Better than witchnitiate, I supposed. At least she got the first letter of my name right. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Was I cheating, enlisting help? No. Magista had cooked the food for our picnic; if Magistus could involve his sister, I could involve my weird cottage friends.

I was heading back to my room when I ran into Simon.

“There you are!” he exclaimed. “You should really turn your location on on the map. You’re very inconvenient to find without it.”

“It’s almost like I don’t want to talk to you.” I tried to step around him, but he blocked my path.

“Too bad. We need to talk.”

“I’m busy.”

“You’d be amazed at how little I care about whatever irrelevant garbage you’ve got going on.” He grabbed my wrist and lead me down the hall. I considered pulling away, but then he’d probably just follow me, whining, so I let him pull me into an empty classroom and shut the door behind us.

“Okay,” he said, “you’ve made your point. The big scary witch can make life difficult. But I don’t think you want to pursue this to its logical conclusion any more than I do, so the question is: where do we go from here?”

“Can you repeat that in English?” I asked.

“You know very well what I’m talking about.”

“First, I don’t. Second, even if I did, the vague games are needlessly amiguous and a conversation takes three times as long if we’re constantly second-guessing each other. Third, I don’t really want to talk to you, so if this conversation is more effort than leaving, I’m going to leave. Now what the hell do you want?”

“The ring. Obviously. What do you want for it?”

I couldn’t help it. I burst out laughing. Simon watched me, arms crossed, lips pursed, until I was done.

“Well? What do you want for it?”

“The Guardian Ring?” I asked. “The broken Guardian Ring?”

“Yes, obviously.”

“Are you serious right now?”

“Why would I not be?”

“Why on earth would I trade anything for – ”

“Why do you care?!” he snapped. “This isn’t your fight! You never wanted to be a mage. You’re just here to solve your personal problems, so why are you so obsessed with making my life difficult?”

“Why am I making your life difficult? Dude, whatever happens to you is your own fault, not mine. I hear mage law can be pretty strict about attempted murder. Do the rest of your family know you and Fiore have broken the ring, or…?”

Simon clenched his fists. “I am trying,” he said through gritted teeth, “to be reasonable with you, you fucking barbarian. Listen. Try to get this through your reinforced concrete skull. I have a problem. You have problems. We might not be able to stand each other, but in a couple of months we’ll never see each other again, so if you would please bend your three struggling brain cells to the concept of mutual benefit – ”

“Who says we won’t see each other again? You’re dropping out of school, are you?”

Simon’s eyes widened. “You’re going through the Initiation?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“That isn’t wise. You’ll die in there.”

“Really? Because my barbarian commonfolk brain just isn’t enlightened enough to keep up with your very sophisticated rite of passage?”

“Because of your personality. You didn’t come here to be a mage; you came here to easily solve another problem. You don’t have drive or direction. You’re just taking the path of least resistance. That kind of motivation will kill you in there. You’ll walk around in circles chasing dreams until you’re too weak and hungry to walk any more, and the spells will wait for you to die and tear your soul apart.”

“Well, by your logic, passing the Initiation is the path of least resistance, so…”

“I can change that. Do you want to be found innocent for almost killing that boy?”

“How did you know – ?”

“I gave a friend your name. The case is widely known in Australia, apparently. Return the ring, and I’ll solve the problem.”

“What do you mean, solve the problem? The school’s already doing that.”

“The school won’t do anything except provide you with a lawyer. If you were so confident that was enough, you wouldn’t even consider the Initiation. I can make sure you’re found innocent.”

“What do you mean, make sure? Who do you think you are?”

“Someone with a lot of money. What do you think money’s for? It’s just a commonfolk court.”

“So that’s your proposal? You’ll make it so I can go home, if I promise to do so, and give you the ring?”

“I only require the ring. Don’t blame your decision to go home on me. But I can open the possibility up to you.”

“Ha. Okay, firstly, I don’t believe you can do that. Secondly, what makes you think the trial is the only problem? Even if I’m found innocent, I’m still going to be known as the cursed kid who – ”

“You want the media out of the way, too? Done.”

I blinked. “It’s that simple?”

“No; I’ll need details on what you want, specifically. Whether you want them to simply stop, or spin a story where you’re the hero and your victim was the villain. If you like, we can say they faked your curse, but that would be a lot more complicated, especially if you do something profoundly stupid and get found again in the future. But I’m sure we can come up with a passable narrative that meets your requirements.”

“For the entire media? Simon, there are thousands of news outlets you’d have to convince to – ”

“In Australia, there is one news conglomerate that listens primarily to money, a motley of others that parrot whatever it says, and another motley that parrot the opposite of whatever it says. The rest can be bought with a sensational enough story. Commonfolk civilisation isn’t that complicated, Kayden. Anyway, that’s my offer – one broken ring, for your life back. Anything else you want?”

“Can you get my family this really nice house I saw once on the seaside?” I asked sarcastically.

“Yes. Get me the address when you bring the ring.”

“You really do think that little of me, don’t you? You think I’ll roll over and give you that ring just to solve my personal problems?”

“That’s exactly what I think of you. If you weren’t that kind of person, you wouldn’t be here. It’s the path of least resistance. Come and find me when you’ve realised that.”

Then he left.

I headed back to my dorm.

“Just ran into Simon alone, all conspiracy-like,” I announced.

Max looked up from his book, raising his eyebrows. “You didn’t send him to the kuracar, did you?”

“No.”

“Do we need to take you to the kuracar?” asked Kylie’s voice from behind her bedcurtains.

“No! We just talked. Well, he talked.” I grinned. “He tried to bribe me.”

“With what?” Max asked. “For what?”

“He thinks he can fix my criminal case in my favour. In exchange for the Guardian Ring.”

“And he just came up and said that to you? Wow. Classless and stupid; you could’ve been recording the conversation for all he knew. But at least it clears me of your theory that I’m the world’s dumbest mastermind.”

“Kayden’s theory of what now?”

“Doesn’t matter,” I said quickly. “Just an inside joke, don’t worry about it.” But he was right. Simon had just demonstrated that he thought I had the ring, meaning he knew his was a fake, but didn’t know (or at least wasn’t sure) that we’d turned over the real one. Probably thought we’d been waiting for him to get desperate enough to pay us off for it. If he had been framed, he would’ve thought his fake was the real one, and if he’d figured out it wasn’t, he’d know that we’d already turned over the real one. The fact that he thought we might still have it, meant that Max couldn’t have framed him.

Is what I would’ve thought about if I were the sort of person to be suspicious of my friends. But of course I wasn’t running those numbers because Max wasn’t a suspect, so they didn’t matter.

I’d received a letter while I was out. I tore it open.

Kayden,

The youtube channel’s off to a great start! We asked people to give us messages they wanted to send you. Here we’ve transcribed a handful of them. I couldn’t do them all, there are hundreds!

Regards,

Liss & Chelsea

Kayden, good luck in your trial!

K’, Matt’s a total jerk. Don’t feel guilty for what you did. He deserved it.

Kayden, this whole trial against you is bullshit. I don’t know much about curses, but this is straight-up discrimination against you for your disability. If I were in a wheelchair, somebody became aggressive with me because of it, and I ran over his foot in self-defense, I certainly wouldn’t expect to be penalised harder than an abled person for using my wheelchair to defend myself! Nor should we stand for this. An assault case I understand, but these curse laws are barbaric. You shouldn’t have to prove it was accidental, because it shouldn’t matter! Self defense is self defense!

Kayden, you don’t know me, but I’m like you. I’ve been hiding my curse for years. I know you didn’t mean to hurt that guy; this is just the risk we live with. I really, really hope you learn to control it, and that the judge sees that this wasn’t your fault.

The messages went on for a good page and a half. I drew my bedcurtains so my roommates wouldn’t see me sobbing.

I’m not an idiot. I know the messages had been curated. For every supportive message, there would’ve been a dozen people screaming about how I was evil, I was dangerous, my very existence was a bad example for their children or a sign of societal decline or whatever. But no matter how many bad messages were out there, these good ones existed, too. The bad ones didn’t affect that.

Melissa and Chelsea were having to deal with all the bad stuff. And my parents. And everyone else in my life. I got to avoid all that, hiding out in school, and becoming a mage. Was that, like Simon had said, just more hiding?

No. No; I wanted to stay here, I wanted to keep my friends. If I left the school, I’d probably never speak to Max or Kylie or Magistus again. I was running to something, not away. I had a goal. I wanted to learn to control my spell, I wanted to become a mage and… well, I wasn’t entirely sure what mages did, exactly, aside from casting their spells. But I hadn’t known what I wanted to do with my life among the nemagisto, so nothing new there, really.

Even if Simon could solve all my problems, I wouldn’t just… well it didn’t matter, did it. Because I didn’t have the ring. And even if I had, I wouldn’t give it to him to clear him of attempted murder. So it didn’t matter.

Yeah.