I don’t tell Edward all the details of my conversation with Robin when I see him at breakfast the next morning. Just that she’s convinced we’re dating, and I don’t want to convince her otherwise without telling her the truth.

“No,” he says. “Sorry.”

“Why not?” I ask. “It’s not something that can be used against you. Is it?”

Edward shrugs. “Not seriously.”

Plenty of historical figures have taken lovers of the same gender. It’s no more scandalous than the more usual sort of secret romance. While Edward Blackthorn being inclined that way would certainly be a source of gossip, it’s not something he could be blackmailed with.

“Then…” I say, curious.

“Sometimes you just don’t want people to know things,” he says. “Even if there isn’t a rational reason. I suppose I’ve hidden it long enough it’s become a habit. There’s marriage prospects to think about, too. Someone in my position isn’t going to marry for love anyway, but women would probably be more inclined towards a political marriage if they didn’t know I’m never going to feel that way about them.”

I hate how pragmatic he sounds about it. How perfectly acceptable it all seems to him that he has to deny part of himself and shut it away. But what else can he do? Taking emotion out of the picture, looking at life in the cold political way that Blackthorns do, he’s right.

“You shouldn’t have to think that way,” I say.

“I do have to.”

“Sorry if this is a personal question,” I begin tentatively, “but…”

“I think we’ve passed the point of having to worry about that.”

“Have you ever…” I ask. He knows what I’m trying to say.

“I told my mother, didn’t I? No.”

“Would you?”

He shrugs. “I don’t think that’s something you can know until it happens. Have you ever…”

I laugh. “I went to an all-girls’ school. Up until the last couple of months I barely saw any boys my age. I would, if I found the right person.”

Edward narrows his eyes. “Oh. That may be a problem.”

“Why?”

“Well, if you do find the right person, but they think that you and me…”

Yes. That may indeed be a problem. It’s not as if I’ve had time for romance, or that I’m particularly looking for it, though. “If it’s relevant, we’ll work something out together.”

“Thank you.”

It’s another quiet day. I appreciate quiet days a lot more than I used to. I read for a while, practice some simple spellwork for a while, talk with my friends for a while. I know it won’t last, though. And I have to be prepared for the next disaster.

“I am supposed to be teaching you defensive magic,” Edward says when I tell him how I’m feeling over lunch. “And now your leg is healed – “

“Mostly,” I point out. I haven’t needed the crutches since getting back from Queen’s Park yesterday, but I still feel the occasional twinge of pain.

“Mostly healed, you can do the more physical parts of it.”

“I had nothing else planned for this afternoon, so…”

He smiles. “Tell me. What do you know about magical combat?”

“Absolutely nothing.”

“Good. We’ll start from the beginning, then. I’m not sure I’m particularly qualified as a teacher here, it would be better if we had a proper tutor. But the Academy rules say you can’t be privately taught in magic while you’re studying here, so unless you want to ask Electra for private lessons…”

I shudder. “…maybe not.”

“…it looks like you’re stuck with me.”

There are worse teachers to be stuck with.

“Then again,” he adds, “this isn’t Magical Combat proper we’re learning. We just don’t know enough spells or have enough experience casting for that, not yet.”

“This is more so we have better chances of survival if we end up in a situation like the riot.”

“Precisely.”

I think back to it, trying to remember what Edward was doing then. What his father did. “Shielding spells,” I say. “Magical force.” They held the crowd back for a long time, and he used something of that nature before, against those police officers –

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Stars. The police officers. They were charging an illegal toll, and I think they would have tried to kill us to keep us silent.

And I completely forgot about it.

How could I have been so stupid? How many people could have been hurt since then, because of that?

I feel my heart speeding up, my breathing becoming faster. It’s all too familiar. No wonder I won’t be prepared for the next disaster if I’ve been as careless as all that. Charles First-King. Edwin the Just.

“Yes,” says Edward, and then: “What is it? Remembering the riot?”

I shake my head. Simon the Drunkard. Thomas the Defender. “Before that. The police. I forgot. I didn’t tell – “

“I did,” he says.

Of course he did. I can’t work out whether I’m relieved that at least one of us wasn’t an utter idiot or utterly unsurprised that he coped so much better than I did.

“Sorry. I should have told you, but when you were getting your injuries checked out I wrote a full report of the incident for my dad, and I added a mention of the so-called Northwest District Toll to it. He’ll have dealt with it by now.”

I don’t want to know what dealt with it means. I have to remind myself that they deserve the consequences of their actions.

“Really, though, it’s not a problem that you forgot. It was your first time going through a life-threatening experience – at least, I assume it was?”

I force a smile. “No, I had to fight my way through hordes of people trying to kill me to get to school every day.”

He laughs. “All this must be easy for you, then.”

We both know he’s not serious, but it makes me feel better nonetheless.

“Are you okay to get back to it?”

“Give me another minute,” I say. I feel more or less okay already, but I’d rather wait to be sure the episode has passed. Just in case.

It does pass, and Edward and I discuss the theory for a little while. It’s not really much of a discussion, just me listing every idea that comes to mind and then when I’ve exhausted everything Edward giving me hints that make me wonder why I didn’t see what suddenly seems obvious.

Then it’s time to practice. We go to the gardens, since it’s a nice day and we’re less likely to get weird looks there. Edward teaches me a simple shielding-spell which can block a single physical attack – its main advantage is that it can be cast extremely quickly with sufficient practice.

And he’s determined that I’m going to get that sufficient practice. I manage to cast the spell correctly after only a handful of attempts, as Edward confirms by throwing more of his marbles at me and watching them bounce off. But I need to be faster.

I cast again and again, the movements becoming repetitive and my chosen incantation of stop ceasing to sound like a proper word. Still not fast enough, Edward insists.

“You’re getting there,” he says. “But you’re still having to stop and think for a second before casting, and – “

“In a real fight, I won’t have that second. I know.”

But I’ve never trained for anything like this before, never needed to have quick reactions rather than having time to think. It’s disconcerting. Edward’s pelting my shields with marbles doesn’t help, and after three or four successful-but-slow casts my concentration slips and one of them hits me in the chest.

It hurts a lot more than you’d expect it to hurt. If Edward threw them with real force, his marbles would make pretty good improvised weapons.

“Sorry,” Edward says at once. “I didn’t realise – “

“It’s my fault. I lost focus.”

“Don’t worry about it. Maybe we should stop for today.”

It feels a little like giving up, so I hesitate, even though stopping sounds quite nice.

“We’ll need to keep working on it, though. Every day, after lessons.”

Not giving up, then; just postponing and extending the suffering. More acceptable. “All right,” I concede.

I read a little more that afternoon, and then go over my notes from the last week’s lessons so that I’m completely prepared when classes start again the next morning. Well, as prepared as I can be when my first lesson of the new week is with Electra, anyway.

Electra has a little speech for us at the start of the lesson. Now that we’ve been studying magic for nearly two months and have made so much progress, the Academy needs to see how much we’ve learnt. So in three weeks’ time, shortly before the end of term, there will be a set of tests.

Several people audibly groan. Elsie slumps forwards over her desk, and Edward sighs.

It’s fine. I’m a competent magician. I understand everything I’ve learnt in classes. I can do this.

That’s not the last mention of the tests that day. Every one of our teachers mentions them, mostly to set out how they’ll work for each individual subject. Just like our real exams in late spring, the ones that’ll determine if we’ve qualified as magicians or will have to repeat the year, there will be both a written theoretical test and a practical test for nearly all our subjects, with the obvious exceptions of Magical Law and Culture and Magical Theory.

I don’t want to hear any more details, especially not after the second time I’ve been told that our results don’t matter, it’s just a way for us to know how well we’ve been doing and where we need to improve. At least Electra didn’t try to frame the tests as anything other than what they were.

It’s at the beginning of Alchemy, our fourth lesson of the day and the fourth time I’ve heard the speech, that I feel the first signs of a Malaina episode. Stars, what’s wrong with me? After everything I’ve been through, just a mention of tests is enough to make me spiral right back into Malaina.

Edward knows me well enough to notice something’s wrong, but there isn’t enough time between Alchemy and our final lesson of the day, Magical Law and Culture, for us to talk in private.

I get through Sam’s version of the speech about tests, which is annoyingly optimistic, with the help of the first twelve kings of Rasin, and then he announces the day’s topic: Malaina.

It had to happen at some point. And better that it’s now: I’m not half-broken to begin with, Mildred is gone from our class, and I’m well-informed enough to be able to back up my points properly.

“I know this is going to be a controversial topic,” Sam says, “particularly when some of our students are themselves Malaina. But it is a topic that needs to be discussed. So I’m just going to remind you all to be respectful, and to take care before saying anything likely to offend your classmates. Is that clear?”

There’s a chorus of yeses from around the classroom.

“Let’s begin with focusing on how the law treats Malaina. Can anyone give me an example of a law relating to Malaina?”

I can give several examples, but I keep my mouth shut and my hand down. I want to see what my non-Malaina classmates come up with first.

Edward and Elizabeth seem to have the same idea, so it’s Robin who gives the first suggestion: a requirement for Malaina to register their addresses with a government board. She seems to be deliberately starting with the least controversial thing she can think of.

“What is the purpose of this law?”

“Public safety,” Robin says. “So if there’s a major destructive incident, the responders will know who’s likely responsible and what they’re capable of. Or if there’s a disaster unrelated to Malaina, responders will be aware that they could encounter someone in the midst of an episode as a result.”

I don’t particularly like it, but I have to admit that’s a sensible justification.

“Do you believe it is a fair law?”

“Yes.”

“Does anyone disagree?”

Silence.

Sam laughs a little. “Well. Glad we can all agree on some things. Does anyone have another example?”