Malas didn’t even look up from his paperwork when we burst into the ward.

“She’s in the third bed,” he said in a bored voice, indicating the row of beds behind hospital curtains. “Don’t touch her, don’t touch the machines, and if there’s a sudden change in room temperature, step out and close the curtains behind you.”

“How did you know what we were here for?” I asked.

“You’re the sixth batch of her students this morning. I’m considering just putting up a sign. Oh, and to get the questions out of the way real quick – I don’t know if she’ll wake up, I don’t think she can hear you but I’m not sure, she’s not dying this exact moment but I can guarantee nothing, there’s nowhere to send her that can do more for her than we can right here, and yes of course I will do everything in my power to keep her alive.”

The curtain around Miratova’s bed must have had some kind of noise enchantment on it, because the instant Max pulled it back, the humming and beeping of hospital equipment jumped out at me. She wasn’t hooked up to all that much, but seeing normal hospital equipment in the Refujeyo ward was jarring. The beeping heart monitor, the drip in her arm, the tube under her nose… any of it could have come from the hospital in my hometown.

Miratova wasn’t moving, aside from taking long, slow, steady breaths. She looked so much older than when I’d met her just five months ago; more grey in her hair, more wrinkles. Maybe it was just because she was asleep, rather than glaring about with those fierce eyes.

Max held a palm out over her forehead, careful not to touch her. His face was grim.

“What is it?” I asked.

“She’s hot. Extremely hot. You feel that?”

“She’s not sweating or anything.”

“I know.”

“So she’s got a really bad fever.”

“It’s probably not really bad, or Malas would be cooling her down,” Max said. “But it’s certainly a bad sign. It’s a homeodynamic cascade.”

“What?”

“Her body’s lost the ability to regulate itself. Temperature control is usually the first thing to go. It happens when people desynchronise with their spells.”

“This is what they thought was happening to her after the lab explosion?”

“Yes.”

“But she was in here for a week that time. This is way faster.”

“The speed is variable. But I guess, after everything…” he shook his head, tears in his eyes. “She was so careful, and so disciplined. And it still got her.”

Kylie and I exchanged a look.

“Wow,” Kylie said, “you really believe that? I thought you were the smart one in the group.”

“What do you mean?”

“She means,” I said, “that there’s no way this is a homo… cascade thing. If Miratova’s lost control of her spell, I’ll eat my robe. Simon got to her.”

“How? Why? He attacked her the first time to get his uncle her job, and it worked. There’s no reason to attack her again, and there’s no way he could’ve done this to her?”

“No way to give someone a coma and a fever?” I started counting things off my fingers. “Infection. Brain damage. Poisoning. Dropping someone in ice water for – ”

“I think it would be pretty obvious if someone dunked her in ice water.”

“Well, he did something,” I said. “Under normal circumstances, sure, I’d buy that her spell played up or whatever. But let’s look at the facts. She burned her hand by accident once, and Simon starts gossipping about her losing control of her spell. Her lab blows up, and Simon starts gossipping about us making her lose control of her spell; she ends up in hospital and everyone thinks she’s losing control of her spell, but you find out it’s because of Simon’s ring. Then Simon and the Fiore go away to some mysterious event, come back and Kylie’s Eye immediately shows that someone’s in danger. And a couple of days later, she’s in hospital, looking like she’s lost control of her spell. Too coincidental to be an accident; it fits with Simon’s strategy too well.”

“Kylie’s Eye didn’t predict this,” Max said, shaking his head. “So that false alarm couldn’t have been — “

“I’m almost certain it was about this,” Kylie said. “You had a meeting with her at that time, right?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Trust me. I know how my prophecy works. Whatever this is, it could’ve struck that morning, the one right after where Simon and the Fiore returned, and it’s just luck that it struck when you weren’t there.”

“So they probably brought something back to do… this,” I added.

“Which means,” Kylie said, “that we were wrong when we assumed this was about getting the Fiore a job here.”

“Or there’s more to it,” I said. “She was still in their way somehow.”

“So what do we do now?” Kylie asked.

“I don’t know. I guess… I guess we shoud’ve been keeping a better eye on her. We knew this was a risk; we said we’d protect her, and we didn’t.”

“I’m not sure how we could have,” Max said. “We don’t even know what he did. But she’s as safe as she can be now; Malas will guard her.”

“You sure? He left us alone with her, and he said we’re not the first. Simon could walk right in, close the curtains, and kill her.”

“He’d be caught immediately. Malas is monitoring her vitals. But if whatever he did gets worse… I guess we’ll just have to trust Malas’ diagnostic abilities. He’s extremely good at his job.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m sure you’re right.” Malas’ diagnostic abilities did have their limits, but if anyone could figure this out… “We should still keep an eye on Simon, though. Subtlely, without making him think we suspect him.” No punching him and giving away what we knew this time. “Just in case he lets something slip.”

Kylie and I made for the curtain, but Max didn’t move. He just stood there, watching Miratova sleep.

“Do you want us to stay?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Go. I’ll just be a minute.”

We left him alone. We went back to our room, stopped, and stared at what awaited us.

“Okay,” I said, “so this is about the worst timing ever, but you have to admit… that’s a good move.”

We were looking at a teddy bear. A very large teddy bear. So large that it would have been difficult for the janitors to get through the door. It had soft, brown, luxurious fur, huge black eyes, and cradled a big plush heart embroidered with the phrase “I Like You Beary Much.”

“It’s none of my business,” Kylie said, “but just so you know, if my boyfriend got me something like that, I’d dump him right away.”

“You’re just jealous that Magistus has exceptional taste in bears.”

“That may be the most nonsensical string of words even uttered by a human mouth.”

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“Jealous! Help me stuff it out of the way behind that bed.”

Kylie pretended to think about this. “Hmm… no, I don’t think I will.”

“Yeah, well, someday when you need to clear a giant plush animal out of the way, see if I help.”

“I’ll… take my chances.”

On top of everything else, I now had to find a way to top this gift. But not now. I wasn’t in the mood right now.

Casey messaged me – they wanted to see me ASAP. I finished shoving giant plush limbs behind the force field and set off to our usual classroom.

“What went wrong this time?” I asked as I entered.

“We’re four and a half weeks from your trial,” Casey said.

“I know.”

“There’s been a development. Kayden, you should sit down.”

I felt my stomach drop. “Is Matt – ”

“Mr Parker is alive. He’s developed further health complications and I am not privy to the details, but he is alive. That isn’t why we need to talk. Please, sit down.”

I sat. “What? What is it?”

“Your mother was attacked last night.”

I tried to absorb this sentence, tried to make it make some kind of sense. “What?”

“I know this is difficult to hear, but I thought you should – ”

“No, what… what do you mean, attacked?”

“Last night, two men and one woman slipped past a security detail to break into and vandalise your home. They discovered your mother and assaulted her before your father managed to drive them off. All three were caught, and your mother is in hospital.”

“How badly is she hurt?”

“Bruises and a few broken bones. She will be perfectly fine.”

“Not if lunatics are beating her up, she won’t! What if it happens again?”

“Your parents have extra security now – ”

“And my friends? They’re running a youtube channel about all this; does that make them targets? This is because of me, I assume.”

“None of this is your fault, Kayden.”

“But it is because of me.”

Casey hesitated. “It’s common, in high-profile cases like this, for some people to become very passionate and behave… irrationally.”

“So they did do it because of me.”

“I can arrange things with the school if you want to take time off to see her – ”

“If I did that, they’d all be in more danger. The press would find out about it and make a big deal and there’d be more people who might ‘behave irrationally’. I’ll just… write her a letter, I guess? Why don’t we have skype here? How hard is it to get internet?!” I forced myself to calm down, to draw up that feeling of tepid ambivalence that used to come so easily. I barely even remembered how to do it. Ever since I got to this stupid school, I’d just been… feeling things, all kinds of things, all the time. Like every minute of the day I had to be feeling some kind of emotion. I was starting to get sick of it.

I needed the calm now, and it wasn’t there.

“I have to go,” I said. “Thanks for telling me this.”

If I had to feel things, I certainly wasn’t going to do it around people. The curse… the curse might… no, no; it wasn’t like that any more. I didn’t have to worry about hurting any one with my pathetic little gust of force that I couldn’t even summon. That’s why I could let myself feel happy and angry and frustrated and all those other things, but I wasn’t going to feel this in public.

I rushed to my room, dove onto my bed, and pulled the bedcurtains shut.

Why was it that me existing just made everything worse for everyone?

Everything about me had always been a burden to my family and friends. I’d picked up the curse at six months, and I just had the worst personality, and I couldn’t even do well at school and… and anything I did try to do, I was awful at. I’d left friends and family behind to deal with my mess at home, and they’d struggled through it without complaining, and now Mum was hurt. Because of me. Even at Refujeyo, what had I done except get in everyone’s way? First day here, I’d nearly gotten Kylie killed, since then I’d just slowed down her curse training by being totally useless at my own. Everything about me stirred up strife amongst the legacy mages, and only about three quarters of that was because Simon was a dick. I’d set two missions for myself: figure out where we were, and learn to control my curse, and I’d made almost no headway on either of them.

Hell, you could even say that Miratova’s condition was kind of my fault. Simon had been blaming my curse for his the consequences of his murder plot, so if I wasn’t there, maybe he would’ve been caught before he could put her in the hospital.

I grabbed the framed picture from my desk. There they were, both of my parents, with me, smiling out of the frame. In danger, because of me. I wasn’t even there to protect them, and if I did go there, they’d just be in more danger.

The picture blurred in my vision, and soon I was sobbing. What the hell? I didn’t cry. I never cried. This wasn’t even worth crying about; Mum would heal up fine. Why was I making such a big deal over this? I’d known my whole life that my curse was going to hurt my loved ones eventually. I’d known what they were sacrificing to love and support me; I’d known –

Somebody tapped on my force field. “Kayden. You okay?” Kylie asked.

“Yeah.” I forced myself to breathe evenly. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Well that’s obviously a lie.”

“It’s fine. It’s my business.”

“Then it’s mine. You’re my friend. Come out and talk.”

I dried my face as best as I could on my sleeve, hoisted a calm, disaffected look onto it, and pulled back the curtain. Kylie was sitting cross-legged on the floor, looking businesslike.

“It’s really – ”

She pointed at the floor. “Sit.” She spoke so authoritatively that I found myself obeying without thinking about it. “You worried about Instruktanto Miratova?”

“What? No.”

“Then what is it?”

I glanced at the picture in my hands. “Really, you don’t have to – ”

“My brother died earlier this year,” Kylie said, silencing me. “I thought maybe, if I’d been there instead of here, my prophecy could’ve saved him, but I’ve learned more since then and I don’t think it would have. Knowing that doesn’t help, though. My family don’t grieve proper, but… I felt like I should have been there to do something, you know? Or done more here. And I will grieve with my family, after lessons are over, before the initiation, but things would’ve been better if I could talk to someone right away. You wanted me to talk, remember? But we didn’t know each other very well back then, so I wouldn’t, even though you tried so hard to make me.” She leaned forward. “But we know each other now, and you’re really upset about something. Are you gonna take your own advice?”

I shrugged. “What happened to me isn’t nearly as bad as – ”

“Does it hurt?”

“Yeah, but – ”

“Might it hurt a bit less if you talk about it?”

“I guess.” I sighed. “Somebody attacked my mum. Because of me. Because she’s my mum. It’s okay, she’ll heal, but… but it shouldn’t have happened, and at the same time, I feel like an idiot for not expecting it to happen, you know? Sorry, I don’t expect you to under – ”

“It just confirms what you and everyone else has always known,” Kylie said. “That the curse is dangerous and somehow, it’ll find a way to make things hard. You worried all your life about the curse hurting people, and you did everything you were supposed to do to keep them safe, you took it as far away from them as you could, and somehow it’s still hurting people. You’ve known your whole life that you should be grateful they took the risk instead of abandoning you, and the more they love you the less they deserve what happens to them because of it.”

“I… yeah. That’s it exactly. I forgot…” I gestured to her face.

Kylie smiled without humour. “And it’s been different here, because you’re surrounded by other people aiming to get exactly what you have, in a place where you can learn to use it and fit in with people who see it as a good thing to have. But you’ve just been reminded that the rest of the world doesn’t agree. To our families, we’ll always be cursed and dangerous, and we can walk home with top marks and every mage honour in the world and they’d just see us as finally having learned to control it. The most we can hope for, reputation-wise, out there, is that if we work hard and succeed we can very almost be as good as everyone else. We could become the best mages in the world and outside of Refujeyo it’d still be incredibly important to just pretend we were never cursed.”

“Which I can’t do,” I said. “Everyone knows. I guess we’re kind of opposites in that way, huh? Before we came here, my life was consumed with secrecy, but you never had the chance to hide what you were. After the Initiation, they’re going to tattoo right over that, and you’ll be just like any other mage… but after all the news, everyone knows what I am.”

“You get used to it,” Kylie said.

“Well, it sucks!” I leapt to my feet. “The whole thing sucks. I forgot how dangerous we were for a little while, you know? But you’re right; out there, they’ll never forget. And they’re right not to. Before I got here I was out there every day, living my life, being with my family, making friends, and I was just putting them in danger. Oh, sure, it turned out that my curse is basically useless, but none of us knew that. I could’ve set the house on fire while everyone slept, I could’ve turned them to gold with a touch – ”

“I think the Hand of Midas is a myth.”

“Point is, I have so many good memories with my friends and family, and all I can think about is how I was intentionally putting them in danger every second. So many of us are abandoned as soon as anyone finds out we’re witches and I just… I just, I wish I could say I wished for that, you know? I want to be able to say I wish my parents hadn’t taken those risks and made those sacrifices. I want to be able to say I regret putting Chelsea and Melissa and everyone else in so much danger. But I don’t. And what does that say about me? How selfish does someone have to be, to look fondly on memories of putting loved ones in danger? If I don’t wish I’d been abandoned, I guess that means I’m happy I endangered them, I’m happy that they’re dealing with this mess, I’m happy that Mum was attacked – ”

The picture slipped from my fingers, frame cracking on the stone floor. In a flash of sudden fury, I kicked it across the room. It shattered against the opposite wall, showering splinters of wood and glass against the force field holding back Magistus’ tonally inappropriate bear.

“You know what?” I said. “That’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to leave the whole damn thing behind. It’s too late to save any of them from this bullshit, but I can spare them further bullshit. I’ll sit through my trial, come back and walk into the Initiation, and after that I’ll have nothing to do with the nemagisto world ever again. The best thing I can do for anyone at this point is just have the grace to disappear.”

There was something weird in the wreckage of the picture frame. I strode over and picked it out.

A piece of plastic, about the size and shape of a quail’s egg. It had once been white, but time and use had yellowed it, and it was covered with all kinds of tiny scuffs, scratches, dents and stains that would never come out. I stared at it. Confusion overcame me. Then understanding. Then just about every other emotion in rapid succession.

And that’s why, when Max walked in seconds later, he was confronted by the scene of me kneeling in a patch of broken wood and glass, sobbing uncontrollably over my own clenched fist.