“You look worried,” Saina noted, forehead furrowing in concern as I strode into her room, claimed a bed for the next 3 days, and dumped my stuff onto it.
“I’m fine,” I said with a grin. “You’re going to be fine. Everything’s fine, unless we decide to try to kill each other within the next three days, which we probably will. We have plenty of definitely unpoisoned food and nobody can open that door except the two of us and some of the staff, so unless you’re expecting to be murdered by a janitor or one of the teachers – ”
Saina laughed. “Oh, imagine the political problems that would cause! It’d be a good way to sabotage the school, actually. That aside, you do look worried. I realised, earlier, that we might not be completely on the same page about this whole thing, so I just want to make sure… you’re not plannign on putting yourself in danger, are you?”
I blinked. “The whole point is to avoid danger.”
“Well, yes. But if that fails. If somebody gets in to, to poison and hex me, or whatever… you won’t put yourself in danger, right? You won’t get in the way?”
“Are you asking me to just stand aside and let someone kill you?”
“Of course not.”
“Oh, goo – ”
“I’m asking you to run away before they kill you, too. The whole point of this is because I’m supposedly in danger if I leave your sight, so doing that as little as possible is a good thing, but if we’ve already messed up the prophecy and the assassin comes anyway, I… hope you’ll choose not to put yourself in danger. You’re not a bodyguard.”
“An awful lot of people are telling me not to protect them lately,” I said. “It’s new and weird.”
“A lot? How many people have you been trying to protect?”
“That’s not important. Saina, if someone comes for you, I’m not going to just let you get killed.”
“So what you’re saying is that I’m putting you in as much danger as I’m in.” She pursed her lips. “I’m starting to have second thoughts. I should have let my mother handle this.”
“Too late for second thoughts, unfortunately.”
“Yes, I know. If it comes down to it, I hope you change your mind, and run.”
“It won’t come down to it. We’re perfectly safe.”
“You look pretty nervous for someone who’s perfectly safe.”
“Oh no, that’s just because I’m in the bedroom of a pretty girl,” I said with a wink.
Saina laughed.
“I’m surprised that you have a bedroom to yourself,” I continued, neatly changing the subject.
“I’m surprised more students don’t. There are plenty of bedrooms. I’ve never understood why everyone bunched up together.”
“Well, that… hmm. You know, I’ve never really thought about it? Kylie and Max and I roomed together as initiates for complicated political reasons, and then we just kind of… kept doing it. I don’t know.” Nor did I really care. The important thing was, the change of subject had worked. I was actually nervous. Very nervous. Like Saina, I was having second thoughts far too late for said thoughts to be useful. It had suddenly struck me that our wonderful, neat, genius little plan was in fact stupid and insanely dangerous.
Not for Saina or myself, safe in lockdown. For Kylie.
The plan had made sense when we’d laid it out. The prophecy said that Saina was in danger after straying from my sight, so I’d stick with her. Max knew most of the people likely to be our assassin, so he’d keep an eye on that. Kylie had free access to our most likely assassination location, a good excuse to go there, and could easily make up some nonsense about wanting to test her power under the full moon or whatever, so she’d scrounge up the coven as backup and keep an eye on it during the height of the full moon to see if our assassin showed up.
Which sounded great in theory, until I really thought about the fact that we were sending Kylie out to find someone planning to commit murder, and her backup was a blind guy and a girl scrawny enough to lose a fight to a rabbit, both of whom had no idea what was actually going on. What were we thinking? Why had we done that? (Actually, putting Talbot and Hua in that kind of danger without their knowledge wasn’t great either. That was… that was pretty messed up, actually. These people were supposed to be our friends. What the fuck was wrong with us? I mean, it had been Kylie’s idea, not mine, but that was no excuse. We were all complicit.)
Of course, I knew there was very little danger. Kylie had patiently pointed this out several times. The assassin would be wanting to kill Saina, who wouldn’t be there. The only reason to hurt anyone else would be to avoid witnesses, and there was nothing to witness but an awkward tresspass. The assassin attacking Kylie, Talbot or Hua would just be causing far more danger and trouble for themselves. Most likely, if Kylie ran into anyone, they’d cop to tresspassing, apologise, and she’d verbally forgive them and invite them to stay, and simply tell us who they’d been the next day. Nobody there was in any real danger; in some ways, they were probably safer than being at school.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.
That had made sense to me. I hadn’t been worried. But now, knowing I was cut off from everyone for three days and unable to help, I couldn’t help but see things differently. This person was, by definition, capable of murdering teenage girls to achieve their ends. So if murdering Kylie instead did seem like a good idea…
I knew I was blowing things out of proportion. I knew that. But it was hard not to. Kylie had told me that it wasn’t my job to protect her, but… wasn’t it, a little bit? She was my friend. The last time we’d taken our ees off a friend fro too long, he’d gone and trapped himself in a giant spell labyrinth beneath the school. I wasn’t going to look away and let another friend risk death like that, not without help.
Also, Kylie was my mage. Whether we liked it or not, our lives were linked. Our futures were linked, by the simple fact that being apart for too long was simply untenable. Her spell, a piece of her, ran through my veins, and I helped her support it. That didn’t mean anything, necessarily; it didn’t change our friendship in any way or help us to understand each other, but it did mean that it was simply impossible for me to put her out of my mind for any length of time. Every minute, I was either adjusting for the magic running through e or, if she were out of range, keenly aware of its absence. I couldn’t avoid thinking about Kylie for too long and my than you can avoid thinking about a cat in your arms; it’s there, and needs a small amount of attention just to carry around. So knowin she was about to put herself in danger, no matter how small, and I might suddenly wake up in the middle of the night to Fionnrath’s Destiny etching words in my mind that I’d never forget, describing Kylie’s death…
Or even worse, that there wouldn’t be a prophecy, because the Destiny only prophesied preventable deaths. Maybe I’d just wake up, and the link would be gone.
I tried to put it out of my mind. I tried. Kylie could look after herself just fine, she’d been clear that she didn’t want me following her about and protecting her, and I was needed here. I shouldn’t obsess over her safety. I shouldn’t.
The magic continued to curl slowly through my veins. I had to find something to take my mind off it. I’d be chewing through the stone walls by the end of the day otherwise.
Saina broke into my thoughts. “Want to see a secret?”
“Hell yes.”
“You have to promise not to tell anyone.”
I hesitated. “Is it dangerous?”
“No.”
“Alright. Promise.”
She reached under her pillow and pulled out a laptop. A chunky, electronic, metal-and-plastic laptop, looking ridiculously clunky compared to the thin transparent tablets I was used to. I raised an eyebrow.
“Want to know what this can do that a Refujeyo tablet can’t?”
I did want to know.
“This… has USB ports.” She dragged a box out from under her bed, about the size of a shoebox. It was full of little external hard drives. “What languages do you speak?”
“Uh, just English. And enough Ido to get by.”
She pulled out four drives with little stickers of the English flag on them. “What are you in the mood for? Movie, TV, podcast, radio play?”
“Are they all… how… how much media do you have?”
She shrugged. “I like TV. You can’t tell me you don’t miss it.”
I eyed the box. I didn’t know much about computers, but even I could tell that those drives could hold more media than she would physically have the time to consume. “There is a rule against electronics here,” I pointed out, just because I felt that someone should say it.
“Too late. You’re an accomplice now.”
“Oh no. Guess I have no choice but to binge television with you for three entire days. I guess the real question is, do we start with something good, or something terrible? A stretch of time this long feels like we should focus on something terrible and break it up with good things when we start to flag.”
“Oooh, good strategy. I agree, starting with something too good would wear us out and make us less interested in terrible stuff while not leaving us with the mental energy for more good stuff. What’s a sitcom you hate, but in a ‘I’ll still watch it’ way, not an angry way?”
“Do you have Everybody Loves Raymond?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Bold choice. Are you sure we can handle something that bad right out of the gate.”
“Hmm, good point. We should start with something actually funny that takes longer to wear on you.”
“Becker.”
“Yes! Perfect! I mean, we could watch something made this century, but…”
“Old stuff only for the first day. It’ll make the modern bad stuff look a bit fresher on day two.”
“You sound like you speak from experience,” I said.
“Oh, I do. I’m an expert TV binger.”
“Wait, do you have Star Trek? My friends at home keep pushing me to watch Star Trek.”
Saina looked at me very seriously. “Yes, but be warned. First, if we start watching Star Trek, we’ll end out only watching Star Trek. Second, there is a small but nonzero chance that Star Trek will consume your entire soul, hollowing you out and leaving you unable to do anything but think about and obsess over Star Trek. Trekkies are at once a terrifying, pitiful and awe-inspiring breed, and if you watch it… you may join them.”
I shrugged. “Isn’t that true of any TV show? That you can get obsessed with it?”
Saina shook her head. “Only somebody who has never witnessed an obsession with Star Trek can say that. But if you want to take the risk, that is for you to decide.”
I did want to take the risk. We settled in and started watching it from the start, and honestly? I didn’t really see what the fuss was about. It was interesting enough, I supposed. I probably would’ve been able to pay more attention if I wasn’t thinking about Kylie.
Hopefully, in three days, Max or Kylie would’ve found something we could use in finding this assassin, and this would all be over. I’d be able to relax, and nobody would be in danger – and everyone would just be in the other kinds of danger we were dealing with, without having to worry about this one, too.
Hopefully.