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Liesel woke to the unease that always greeted her, and then she threw up in the floor drain. That was less ordinary, but under the circumstances, not unexpected. It was just bile and spit, thankfully. She didn’t have the food to waste.
You didn’t become a relentless taskmaster by being unfailingly kind to yourself, or accepting of your failings. In general, kindness to anyone wasn’t how you survived the Scholomance. So she rebuked herself viciously for this manifestation of her anxiety, and then cast a cheap spell to clear out the smell.
It was the end of term. She’d taken a blistering course of seminars and squeezed out perfect grades in all of them. It was enough. It had to be enough.
If she hadn’t made valedictorian…
But she must have. She did. There was no point thinking otherwise.
***
She met Ravi for the walk to breakfast, as usual. She didn’t let her steps falter or her hands shake or her smile fall.
And–it didn’t matter. There her name was, at the top of the list. She’d won. A guaranteed spot was hers. New York, probably, since Magnus had been so accommodating lately, but London remained a distinct possibility.
And then she saw the name above hers, in a special little box. Galadriel Higgins, Algernon Dandridge Sinnet Prize for Special Achievement in Sanskrit Incantation .
Liesel had never given any thought to Galadriel before this year. Tall, sullen, and probably a budding maleficer, though not talented enough at it to cover up the anima corruption. Liesel had known her name–because she knew everyone’s name–but hadn’t bothered to learn more than that. Anyone competently evil would be able to hide their negative aura.
She’d gone down with the group that fixed the graduation hall machinery at the end of last term, but anyone sensible took that as an extension of her status as aggressive hanger-on to Orion Lake. No one knew what Orion Lake, self-assigned hero of the Scholomance, saw in her, but the rumor mill assumed it must be something perverse. Liesel had heard about the phase control auction last term, though she hadn’t attended. She wasn’t going to be building any enclaves.
Galadriel hadn’t seemed worth more of Liesel’s attention.
Not until–drunk on eldritch gasses–Galadriel had spelled a classroom wall out of existence with la main de la mort –nearly killing herself, Leisel, and everyone else nearby in the process.
Magnus Tebow had been happy enough to do an information exchange about Galadriel–she preferred El actually–over lunch, not that there’d been very much to be had.
“Chloe says she’s strict mana,” he’d said, a bit dubious.
And yes, that was another thing–she had snagged Chloe Rasmussen in one of the year’s earliest alliances.
Magnus seemed more thoughtful than alarmed to hear Liesel’s news, which meant there had been signs, but he hadn’t put the pieces together yet. Clearly, he had some rethinking to do now.
It still made an incomplete picture, and not even a hint could be found as to her affinity. But, to anyone who thought twice, it all suggested significant power. Of course, so few people ever bothered to really think of anyone outside of their immediate circle.
Then of course, El fixed the gym on field day and everyone spent the rest of the semester slinking around her like she was a quattria about to pounce. Clearly, she was not to be messed with. Who knew what other horrors she could inflict–on enemies and bystanders alike–if she was trifled with.
***
And now El had somehow gotten herself a special prize. The school did offer a number of prizes for specific, outstanding achievement. They were all instituted when the school was first created–when the hopeful founders thought the Scholomance would be a safe haven for education rather than a slaughterhouse–largely as a sop to major individual donors. These days, no one spent time on a long and complicated academic project when they could be building mana for graduation, or practicing with their allies, or writing a shield incantation, or learning a major offensive spell.
Except El, apparently.
It was almost too much to bear.
The condescension in the bathroom was what upgraded Liesel’s simmering resentment to flat-out rage. As if it wasn’t enough that this girl disrupted what should have been the offer of a guaranteed spot from New York, but to high handedly share that information with Liesel, as if she was too stupid to find out for herself…
She hardly thought twice before pouring the rest of her lipstick on the floor and casting a hex to trip the next passerby.
She walked a little slowly back to her room, and then once she got there, she pressed her ear to the door, listening. And she heard what she was expecting–a fall–but she didn’t hear the sound of someone getting up.
And it wasn’t her problem. El was an obnoxious meddler with no sense. If she couldn’t pick herself up and get inside before the cleansing fire then that was her problem.
It was. It was.
But Leisel’s feet didn’t agree. She came out of her room and was hurrying down the corridor before she could stop herself.
She cursed herself a little–less for her bloodlust than for her lack of followthrough. Which in all likelihood was going to get her killed right alongside El. The second warning bell had already rung, and El was crawling down the corridor like a dying animal, with painful slowness.
She got her up and moving, but the final warning bell was ringing and they were going to die, both of them.
But it turned out, to Leisel, that wasn’t the worst thing that could happen.
Leisel had thought revenge was all that mattered to her. That anything else could be set aside, ignored, or traded away.
But it turned out Leisel didn’t want to be like her father and his wife. She wasn’t going to kill a girl who’s only crime was rudeness and an unfair helping of power. And Liesel wasn’t even going to leave her to die to save herself when it looked hopeless to do otherwise.
So she was never going to get revenge for her mother, because Liesel didn’t have what it took. All this, and Liesel didn’t have the ruthlessness she’d thought she’d been cultivating for three and a half years. She was going to die here, and it was all going to be for nothing, even her mother’s horrible bargain to survive until Liesel’s induction day.
But knowing that didn’t change anything. She still kept her shoulder under El’s and kept them shuffling forward.
There wasn’t anything else to do.
And then a door opened, with Orion Lake behind it, and they were saved after all.