“I know what to do.”

Archie nearly broke into tears as he embraced Rowan. “Oh, thank you. Thank you.”

Rowan hugged back, knowing that Archie needed reassurance. But as Rowan peeled away, his face betrayed any sense of confidence.

“At least…I have an idea,” Rowan said. “Something I had planned for your grandfather.”

Rowan looked into some distant corner of the room, his mind taking him back twenty years. But Archie didn’t need memories. He needed action and needed it now.

“What is it?”

“A flower. If manipulated a certain way, it can make you forget about people. Everything you’ve experienced with them, every memory, just gone.”

“Why didn’t it work before?”

“Well, I think it just wasn’t strong enough. I gave your grandfather a small dose of it in his meal, and it just made him confused. He remembered some things about me, but not others. Ultimately, I think it robbed him of whatever love he had for me, leaving only the resentment.”

“Okay, how do we make it stronger?”

“Well, it needs to be mixed into something with a high concentration of essence.”

Archie and Rowan exchanged knowing nods. “Like kulkida risotto.”

“Exactly. I can prepare the flower, and then we will put it in the risotto. We’ll make it forget you and Nori. And me, I suppose, since I won’t let you do this alone.”

“And what about Teff?”

“The girl?” Rowan scratched his chin and hummed. “Well, I could make them forget about her too. So many memories, though. It’d have to be strong. But then where would she go?”

Archie pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows.

“No,” Rowan whispered.

Archie looked around The Gift.

“No,” Rowan repeated.

“You’ll take her,” Archie confirmed. “At least for a while. Until we know they’re not looking for her at the stables. Then she can go live with my parents. I’m sure they’ll say yes. My mom always wanted a daughter.”

Rowan sighed and shook his head. “I shouldn’t have left,” he muttered to himself.

“It’s fine,” Archie said. “It’ll work. Won’t it?”

Rowan ran his fingers through his tight white curls and offered a reluctant nod. “When is the party?”

Archie sunk his lower teeth into his upper lip. “Three, four weeks. Just after finals.”

Rowan’s fingers dropped to scratch his hairline viciously as he clenched his teeth. He exhaled as he removed his hand from his face. “Alright. I’ll start preparing tonight. What about the kulkida risotto?”

“Nori has been making it.”

Rowan shook his head in disbelief. He almost laughed. “An Orange Jacket making kulkida risotto. Of course she is. No, no. Bring it to me, I’ll do it.”

“What else can I do?”

“I guess just…” Rowan shrugged and did his best to smile. “Get ready for your exams.”

The craze of final assessments swept through the school like a fever. Aubergine’s unorthodox teaching style resulted in a chaotic abandonment of scheduling. Rather than having set classes, Aubergine made the last month a free-for-all. The Head Chefs set up around the school, forcing four years of students to scramble from room to room for extra tutoring.

Quince helped students prepare for the cultivation portion of the exam while also helping students grow ingredients for their freestyle cooking challenge.

Anise helped students push the boundaries of magic for their innovation assessment—although she frequently broke into a rant about students chasing grades rather than looking to advance their society.

Pomona wandered around various kitchens as a free spirit, offering as much emotional support as she did cooking support. Students—particularly the boys—tried to track her movements, setting up for the day in the way of her usual path.

Colby set up in the most well-equipped kitchen, but even the appeal of the best kitchen wasn’t enough to persuade students to fill his class. As forty students clamored for Pomona’s help, Colby’s kitchen rarely rose above fifteen students. But while cooking under Colby was always a trying ordeal, his undiluted focus and skill in cooking meant that the students improved tremendously under him—they’d spend a day in Colby’s kitchen and then three days detoxing in Pomona’s presence.

Tarragon oversaw conjuration practice, but having all years of students out in the same field meant that Tarragon spent more time preventing injuries than actually teaching. The exercises served as the ultimate stress relief for the ultimately stressed students.

And then there was Aubergine, wandering around the Academy. The students steered clear of him, afraid of getting sucked into one of his rambling conversations, but those that did get locked up in an hour-long talk with him ended up coming away wiser and more prepared than anyone else.

Nori struggled to return to normalcy. She might have rid herself of the shackles of the kulkida risotto, but the iron had left a mark that needed a full week to heal. Every afternoon, without fail, she’d crash, requiring hours of napping. But eventually, she came back. Archie got his Nori back.

“First, we need to get our bearings,” she said. “Figure out where we’re at with all the different exams. Then we make a schedule.”

First, he had to consider his cooking. For one section of the assessment, he would have his choice of what to make. He weighed his specialties—pasta, candy, blueberries—and landed on a pasta with blueberries mixed into the dough. He asked Colby to mock grade it, but the Head Chef refused on grounds of being one of the judges. Instead, Archie had to settle for asking other students.

“Mmm! Man, if I could make pasta like you! Thirty points!” Oliver said.

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“The score only goes up to twenty five,” Archie corrected.

“Oh. Um. Twenty two?”

“I think this dish is a good idea,” Nori said as she chewed, ignoring the fact that it was her idea in the first place. “It does need something else to help it pop, though. Nineteen? I don’t know how hard they grade.”

“Honestly?” Julienne said, pausing to cushion the blow. “It’s good but not special. Thirteen.”

Archie would have panicked if he hadn’t already heard Julienne rate everyone’s food below a fifteen.

Archie split the difference and penciled in an eighteen.

Next up, conjuration. The assessment would require showing the ability to conjure as well as the ability to change the color of the flour on a target dummy by projecting essence. Archie conjured a twenty-foot long noodle and swung it to swipe the flour off the target. Easy twenty five.

For cultivation, Blanche gave Archie a potted plant with a mystery seed inside, which Archie barely managed to sprout. Between that and the crops in his greenhouse plot, Archie received an estimated score of eighteen.

That put him at sixty one through three sections, needing eighty total. Since they were only graded on their top four scores, he’d need nineteen points in either of the last two sections. While he couldn’t get a good estimation for his score for the undisclosed cooking challenge, he figured it’d be about the same as his freestyle cooking score—an eighteen. Just one point shy. Not good enough.

That left innovation. Just on the idea, Archie figured defying the laws of nature to grow sugar cane with acidic lemon water warranted close to maximum points. But the idea was one thing, and the execution was another. The last two months of Nori’s essence had been locked up and scheduled to make risotto. Now that she was free from that burden, they finally managed to make progress on their project, but Archie was skeptical. When he asked Sutton for a verdict, the boy suggested eighteen points.

One point short of a yellow jacket. A twenty five in conjuration was guaranteed, leaving the other four sections with an estimated score of eighteen each. He considered himself the best all-around Chef—perhaps due to teenage arrogance—but the assessment only considered the four best scores. Being good at a fifth thing didn’t matter.

Nori commiserated with him as a fellow all-arounder. They complained about their single-faulted classmates. Julienne would probably bottom out at ten points in cultivation. But it didn’t matter. Oliver would probably fail at the specific cooking challenge—unless he lucked into a drink assignment. But it didn’t matter.

But at least Archie and Nori had it better than the specialists. Yarrow couldn’t count on anything but conjuration. Sutton expected full points in innovation and would be lucky to get half points in anything else. Blanche’s perfect cultivation skills threatened to make Quince grade everyone else more harshly, but she had little else to be proud of.

Archie and Nori did their best to focus on their studies, but they couldn’t help but to worry. Every few days, they made their way down to The Gift, and Rowan would show them the delicate purple flowers growing in his rooftop garden. On other nights, Archie and Nori would go up to the attic—not to cook. Not even to talk. They just sat in silence together, full of reflection and worry.

“It is my honor as Headmaster of The Academy of Ambrosia to administer this year’s Chef assessments.”

Aubergine spoke with a smile as he stood at the head table of the great hall. Students filled the room, only half of them having the stomach to eat the food that the Head Chefs had prepared for them.

“On the eve of such an important event, I want you to be proud of everything that you have accomplished. These stripes and these colors bear great meaning to us and the outside world, but only us Chefs know the world of effort that exists between each stripe. Regardless of the outcome, I don’t know a single one of you that shouldn’t be proud.”

Archie moved his blueberry pasta around with a fork. He had made the same pasta the day before. And the day before. And the day before. He had second-guessed himself constantly, wondering if instead he should submit lemon candies or blueberry muffins and even taking a shot at the dark by making Nori teach him how to make sushi—just in case he had some hidden genius talent that he hadn’t discovered yet.

He didn’t. So blueberry pasta it was.

Even though he made the dish every day, he knew he lacked the focus to really improve. Each passing day was just one day closer to the Rathbond party, his errors getting worse and worse as his nerves frayed. Each time he made the pasta, he squashed one fault only to discover another. Each new mistake was more frustrating than the last. Archie forgot his ambition. He just wanted to get the finals over with. How could an exam matter when in a few days they would be attempting to kidnap from and wipe the memories from some of the most powerful figures in Ambrosia City?

“Hopefully you already know your schedules—they’re posted in the main kitchen,” Aubergine said with a laugh. “As a reminder, you’ll require eighty points from your four best sections in order to advance a color. Seventy points will earn you two stripes, and sixty will earn you one. And of course, next week, we’ll be having our final feast of the year!”

The students that weren’t going through existential crises cheered. For the first-years, that meant Julienne, who had no doubts, Sutton, who lived for his books and couldn’t be hurt by a bad grade, and Oliver and Cress, who weighed the joy of a party heavier than the dread of an exam.

Oliver had taken his duties as drinkmaster very seriously. He knew he was just a good cultivation score away from a guaranteed yellow jacket, but instead of spending late nights in the greenhouse, he helped his fellow students cope with a healthy—and sometimes unhealthy—dose of new drinks that he wanted to master for his job, not for the exam.

Nori’s nervousness came from eagerness and self-ambition. She wanted to prove herself for herself. Throughout the week, she even joked that in the worst case scenario, she’d at least have the positive of making her family ashamed of her.

Everyone else had their own version of anxiety. That night, Archie’s roommates subjected him to theirs.

“Uuuuuugh I’m gonna be sick,” Benedict complained from his bunk, his loudness breaking the decorum of the dark.

“Wait, I didn’t give you the purple drink, did I?” Oliver asked with alarm.

“No.”

Oliver sighed with relief. “Oh, good.”

“If I’m a Yellow Jacket, Blanche will let me help her prepare for the midterm assessment next year.” Benedict sounded like a lovesick puppy—something his roommates had gotten used to over the year.

“Oh?” Oliver said. “She told you this?”

“Well…no. But I’ll make it happen.”

“Benny boy, you know I love you. But you’re probably not getting a yellow jacket.”

“Oh, shut up. I’ve been working my ass off.”

“Work doesn’t matter. Only results. And your conjuration score is gonna weigh you down like an anchor.”

“I’m a lock for twenty plus on cultivation though. And I’ve been getting better at cooking! I bet I score higher than you!”

“Hey, I’m probably not getting that yellow jacket either,” Oliver said without a care in the world. “Archie’s the only one here that I’d bet on.”

“Barley, is Oliver right?” Benedict asked. Barley had become the arbiter of their late-night conversations, called upon to settle the ultimate truths of matters.

“Yes,” Barley said simply, his roommates recognizing an undue amount of profoundness to his single-syllable answer.

Oliver laughed as Benedict threw a pillow through the darkness.

“Ooooooh Archie,” Oliver crooned. “Are you awake?”

“Yeah,” Archie said.

“You’re so quiet. You stressed about tomorrow?”

Archie snorted. He wished that was all he had to be stressed about. “Yeah, but…you know. Thinking about…the year. Everything I’ve been through. The future.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Oliver said with the insensitivity of a true friend. “Well stop. We’re trying to stress out about test scores and girls and your matters of life and death are really making our stuff seem insignificant.”

Archie appreciated the juggernaut that was Oliver’s sense of humor. It always had a way of ruining a bad mood.

“Insignificant…” Archie said, letting the word linger for comedic effect before leaning in to the punchline. “Isn’t that what they’re calling Benedict’s conjuration?”

Even Barley laughed.