75
SMITH
It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.
I knew there would be challenges—antagonists, red herrings, meaningful struggle—but nothing like this. Not chaos and disgrace. They made a fool of me. How am I supposed to redeem myself?
And now him.
Hauling me around like a rag doll.
My Simon Snow chapter was over.
I’m clinging to him. He knocks my wand from my hand. （More disgrace.） （I’m the Chosen One. How do I bounce back from this? What is destiny doing?）
He drops me onto the flat roof of a nearby building. I hate to think about how good he looks doing it. Against the green hills, the castle walls. Those fucking red wings.
“Are you hurt?” he asks.
I refuse to answer.
He touches my shoulder, and I roll away. I’m not hurt. I’m just at a loss. I hide my head in my arms. “That was a debacle. ”
“I don’t know what you expected to happen,” Simon Snow says. “People were going to figure out that your spell doesn’t work.”
I sit up to face him. He’s standing over me with the sun at his back. One of his wings is pulled in; the injured one is hanging. It’s asymmetrical. It works for him, damn it. “The spell does work,” I snarl. “You’ve seen it with your own eyes, Simon!”
“Yeah, but you didn’t tell me—or anyone else—that it wears off.”
“That doesn’t matter!” （It doesn’t! It’s practically irrelevant!） “It matters to the people who lost their magic!”
“Oh, for Merlin’s sake,” I shout at him, “they hardly had any magic to lose!”
He puts his hands on his hips. He’s wearing jeans. And an artfully torn T-shirt. “Did you steal it?” he demands. “Is that what this is?”
“Did I steal it? ” I laugh, I sound hysterical—I suppose I am. Simon Snow is interrogating me. He looks like he just rolled out of bed. I’m the Chosen One. I am. “No,” I say. “I gave it to them.”
I gave them all of their magic, all at once. That’s what my spell does.
Draws their magic up, so they can reach it. And then … they run out.
Sometimes in a month, sometimes in a week. It depends on how much they started with.
（I’d never cast the spell on a Normal before. I never will again, not if it makes them immune to me.）
“No one else can do what I do,” I say. “No one. My magic begets magic.
It’s unheard of—it’s a miracle.”
“Yeah, but it’s a lie!”
“It’s not a lie!”
“Everyone was going to figure it out, Smith!”
“Not immediately!”
Not until it was too late to turn back!
I was going to give the people in the White Chapel the best day of their lives.
And then, tomorrow, their friends would line up at my door. All the weakest wands, all the weakest wills.
And the next day, more.
I’d clear them all out in the kindest way possible. I’d make some very strategic edits.
“They were going to see the truth in the end,” the boy says. “And then what?”
And then, Simon Snow, a new age would dawn for the World of Mages …
A new stage, with only the most powerful and canniest players left standing. A new era. Of adventure, of high stakes, and glory—just like in the stories Evander told me.
All the best stories are old … Why is that? When did magicians stop doing anything worth writing down or repeating?
They wrote me down.
I was foretold.
I still am.
One day at a time, Evander always says. One chapter.
There’s a scraping noise across the roof. A trapdoor opens. And the headmistress—Martin Bunce’s wife—comes through it, wand first.
（She’ll never line up for my spell. She’ll stay in the narrative.） “You’re under arrest,” she says to me. “And you…” She looks at Simon.
“… will wait for me in my office.”
I raise myself to my feet and put my hands in the air. I’m wearing white.
I’m singed and sooty. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this—but I don’t fear destiny.
76
AGATHA
The second kid slides out, just the way it’s supposed to. I catch it—I can already feel it squirming inside its bag. “It’s alive!” I shout. “Niamh! Look!”
“You’re doing so well,” she says, handing me another clean towel.
The kid kicks its way out of the membrane, while I scrub at it. The doe cranes her head back, too exhausted to reach it. I bring the baby over to her face, and she licks away the gunk. “There you are, mother,” I say. “Good work, darling.”