Sebastien

Month 1, Day 28, Thursday 1:45 p.m.

After the unsatisfactory conversation with Tanya, Sebastien went to see the overall mid-term results openly posted on the library notifications board. She was accompanied by Damien, Ana, and the other Crown Family group members, who she didn’t exactly want to call friends but seemed to be spending more and more time with.

As they entered, she noticed a group of upper-term students blocking off a lounge alcove near the entrance, their eyes darting around in obvious, nervous glee, occasionally using their hands to cover immature giggles.

Sebastien ignored whatever mischief they were up to, moving on to the notifications board. She was closer to the front of the rankings than she had feared, having gotten about ninety percent of the available points across her six classes. She had done quite well in Practical Casting, Natural Science, History, and Modern Magics, modestly well in Sympathetic Science, and about average in Defense. Out of the three thousand students who had started the term, they had already lost about a hundred. Sebastien was ranked in the low three hundreds, which Professor Lacer wouldn’t find particularly impressive, but should satisfy his minimum requirements.

At the very least, it was a stronger performance than her entrance exams. As opposed to facing a comprehensive test of anything and everything the professors felt appropriate, the mid-terms had only covered what they’d already learned. Additionally, she’d been better prepared for how they would be graded, which had paid off especially well in Pecanty’s class.

Sebastien threaded her way back out of the crowd teeming like minnows around the board, and the others joined her after a few minutes.

“I still beat your score, Sebastien!” Damien announced, preening like a little rooster. “I got rank one hundred twelve.”

“Congratulations,” she said, making sure not to seem frustrated. She didn’t always have to be the very best. And besides, she’d had many other projects taking up time she might have otherwise spent on studying. Sure, Damien was taking one more class than her and had still managed, but surely she was busier than him?

“We are all in the top five hundred,” Ana announced.

“Except for me,” Alec said, giving the girl a look of mixed anger and shame, his hands stuffed deep in his pockets. “But I still did pretty good, compared to normal. My father won’t have any reason to be angry. He doesn’t expect much at this point, as long as I don’t embarrass him. I guess all that tutoring with Newton actually did help.” He rocked back and forth on his feet during the couple of awkward seconds that followed, looking at the floor.

“Sorry,” Ana said with a reconciliatory smile.

Alec shrugged. “No harm done.”

Ana slipped her arm through his, giving a little tug. “You worked hard. Cheer up, Alec. We’re now all one-eighteenth done with our higher schooling.”

Alec snorted. “So encouraging. One-eighteenth already?” He tightened his voice to give a high-pitched imitation of Ana. “Guys, that’s basically nearing the end already!” He gave his nonexistent long hair a dramatic flip and fluttered his eyelashes.

Ana punched him in the arm, and he stumbled away from her, but both were grinning.

Sebastien was too aware of the people whispering about her to get drawn into the banter. At first, she thought the whispers were because of the incident with Newton, but when she scowled at a group of particularly obvious women, one returned Sebastien a bold, flirtatious smile.

Thrown off, Sebastien looked away. ‘Either the attention has nothing to do with the rogue magic incident at all, or these women are somehow attracted to men who’ve recently had a close brush with death. How foolish can you get, that something like this could make me seem like a more viable partner.’ She wasn’t sure if it was better than being a pariah, which at least would have been a more rational response from the other students.

“They’re drawn to the idea of danger,” Rhett said, as if reading Sebastien’s mind. He clapped Sebastien on the shoulder and leaned in to murmur in her ear. “Apparently there are some extra benefits to being associated with you.” With a wink, he turned toward the girls with a sad look on his face. “My friend Sebastien is so brave… Have you heard what happened?”

The women cooed and simpered, drawing Rhett into their midst.

A quick flash of irritation that he would take advantage of her situation to flirt with vapid women bloomed inside Sebastien, but instead of slicing him to ribbons with her tongue, she turned to leave. ‘It’s not a big deal. I’m just on edge. I’ll consider this his repayment for organizing my notes.’

Brinn hurried to catch up with her. “Sorry about Rhett. He doesn’t mean anything bad by it, that’s just how he is. I can say something to him if it’s bothering you.”

Sebastien gave the taller boy a small, strained smile. “No, it’s okay. I’m just feeling a little…off.”

Brinn nodded easily. “Anyone would be. You can’t expect to go right back to normal after such a traumatic event. Be kind to yourself.”

Sebastien’s smile relaxed and grew a little bigger. “Be kind to myself, huh?”

“Well, you can’t count on anyone else to be.”

She eyed Brinn for a moment, until he ducked his head shyly, a quick blush rising to his cheeks. ‘He’s the most likable of the entire group,’ she decided, ‘except maybe for Ana. But Ana is likable to everyone, like a bright light. Brinn is like the last cookie in the jar, a little stale but still sweet—a surprise.’

She wasn’t stupid enough to say this out loud, because she’d learned that people didn’t appreciate mixed compliments, but the whole thought was wiped from her mind when an unfamiliar alarm cut through the building, followed shortly by screaming.

Sebastien’s blood chilled as she stumbled through the panicking crowd, looking for the source of danger, her fist tight around her Conduit.

Her mind went blank when she saw it, stuttering as she struggled to comprehend.

A sky kraken, so huge that even one of its eyeballs matched her in height, had descended upon the library building and was looking in through a window, its glistening, chameleon-like flesh rippling with every twitch of the giant eye. A tentacle pressed against the window, seeming to tap on it inquisitively.

Near the window, the upper-term students she’d seen earlier were standing frozen, staring up at the creature in awe and fear.

Sebastien’s eyes narrowed. No. Not awe and fear. Excitement and poorly-suppressed glee? She had seen similar expressions on people playing cards with her father when they got a particularly good hand. ‘Did they summon that creature?’

Outrage flushed her with heat so suddenly she grew faint, the sensations of her body falling away. But then the kraken tapped again, its eye twitching. The image blurred just a bit with its movement. “An illusion,” she said aloud. Then even louder, “It’s an illusion!”

Some of the students near her caught her words and calmed, inspecting the window more closely.

“There isn’t even a window on that part of the wall,” she said louder.

The whole prank dissolved at that point, with library and administration workers descending on the group of upper-term students who had cast the illusion like the hammer of judgment. The wall went back to normal, the pranksters were told off and assigned punishments, and Sebastien left; she had better things to do than stand around gawking.

She flexed her fingers, shook out her arms, and rubbed the back of her neck to release some of the painful tension her body had accumulated in those few initial moments of panic.

“That was amazing!” Damien yelled, running up behind her.

“It could have gotten someone trampled to death,” she bit back.

His smile lost its exuberance. “But it was impressive, right? Even better than some of the illusion plays I’ve seen when the big troupes are in town. Very convincing.”

Sebastien had to admit he was right, though she’d never seen a professional illusion play. “Even so,” she grumbled, leaving Damien to roll his eyes.

The next day, Sebastien struggled to rise from her bed, feeling as if a great weight were pressing her down under the safety of her warm blankets, until Damien brought her some coffee from his morning study group. The concern on his face alone was enough to get her out into the harsh reality of morning without delay. ‘The last thing I want is more questions about if I’m okay.’

In Modern Magics, Sebastien’s first of only two classes on Fridays, Professor Burberry followed up on their project of the week, a scouring bath alchemical concoction. Sebastien had missed most of the lessons on theory, as well as their preliminary introduction to brewing, but she would make the actual concoction today.

While Modern Magics was not the most difficult class, it gave students a good grounding in many of the basic thaumaturgic crafts, which was the point of a practical class. Still, at times Sebastien wished it were a bit more challenging.

This was not one of those times.

Sebastien stared blearily up at the board while Professor Burberry spoke.

“We have a special opportunity today,” Burberry said. “We are going to be brewing this scouring bath with a more potent component than you might normally have access to. The University’s Zoology section is providing us with a few dozen bini frogs in their male form, which have a corrosive skin. You will be killing them, dissecting them into their useful parts, and then using a couple of strips of their skin in your concoction. If you feel queasy or lightheaded at the thought of killing and dissecting a frog, I have some anti-anxiety potions at my desk. See me for a dose.”

As the student aides for the class passed out jars with the large, bubble-skinned frogs inside, Burberry introduced them. “The bini frog is a magical creature commonly found in northern peat bogs. What makes them interesting is that they are both mother and father to their offspring, not through asexual reproduction, but through a hormone change that allows them to lay eggs as a female and then fertilize them as a male. They’re a good example of how hormones can affect and regulate gene expression, as only their male forms have the caustic skin. The same frog not only looks different, but also behaves differently, and has different magical properties.”

Ana leaned over to Sebastien, murmuring, “Bini frogs are being used in some interesting research to allow same-sex couples to have children.” She sighed. “I would love to invest in it, but it’s beyond the Gervin Family’s domain, and Father isn’t interested.”

Sebastien replied absentmindedly, a little worm of a thought wriggling distractingly in the back of her mind. “Can’t you decide to invest on your own, separate from the Family? The law doesn’t state that you can’t, as long as the domain isn’t controlled by another of the Crown Families that opposes your entrance, right? What you might consider small sums of pocket money could still be significant to the researchers.”

Ana replied, but Sebastien couldn’t concentrate on her answer, because the worm of a thought had crawled up and made itself known to her consciousness. ‘Could the bini frog have been a component in whatever spell the amulet casts on me to create Sebastien?’ She had been researching how the brain worked for her developmental sleep-proxy spell, but for some reason, despite seeing how important hormones were over and over, she had never really applied that understanding to her own situation.

Hormones affected not just the body, but the brain.

Sebastien stood abruptly, cutting off Ana’s words with a muttered, “Bathroom,” before hurrying from the class.