Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A lot of people were under the impression that Cater Diamond’s unique magic was simply an extension of his own self—that was to say, they were under the impression that Cater could control his clones. They were him, in essence, but separate versions of him, not just some mindless puppet he had control of. The clones listened to Cater’s instructions, did what they were told, and otherwise behaved as Cater himself would, but Cater didn’t control them, either. Once Cater created a clone, it would exist until he willed it out of existence—or ran out of magical reserves to keep it active. If he tried, he could sense how many of his clones were up at a particular time, and if he focused very hard, he could even vaguely feel where they each were and what they were doing, but that was difficult; he didn’t do it often.

At the time which the clones ceased to exist in the world—whenever Cater decided he didn’t need to keep them running—Cater would be nearly incapacitated for brief moments, as the things his clones saw and experienced seemed to ‘transfer’ to Cater’s consciousness. Typically, this wasn’t bad. He’d see a few minutes’ worth of memories in fractions of a second, maybe feel a quick jab of pain from a stubbed toe or a shoulder accidentally hitting against a doorway, but it was all gone within a few seconds. Sometimes he could hold it off, if he needed to—make the clone disappear, but prevent the influx of sensation—but it typically only made the experience worse when he finally allowed it to happen. The memories did tend to get a bit jumbled, and he usually didn’t remember much of what a clone saw or did—the spell was absolutely no help when it came to studying, for that reason.

Overall, it was a bit annoying, yes, but not a terrible trade-off for what he considered to be a fairly useful unique magic.

Cater had discovered his unique magic at a relatively young age, but it took him years to be even decent at using it. He’d first managed to create a clone at eleven years old, but it didn’t last long, and it didn’t look… exactly like him, per se.

But he kept trying. And with a few months’ work, he could make a single clone look identical to him, and last long enough to give him a few minutes relief from his sister’s attention. It didn’t really save him the experience of much of their humiliation of him, as—once the clone disappeared—he would gain the memories and experiences of what had happened, but it was nice to have something that set him apart. Something that made him special.

His sisters found out one day, when he was particularly exhausted and had very little magical reserves, so the clone disappeared right in the middle of his eldest sister braiding his hair. He’d gotten quite the scolding, and from that moment on, his sisters almost always demanded he make a clone so that there were two of him to play with. Still, he couldn’t keep it up for very long, and his sisters would end up disappointed with him every time.

After years and years, when Cater finally escaped—when he got into Night Raven College, he could develop his magical ability. Practical magic didn’t come easy, nor did defensive magic or alchemy, but he did find certain things he excelled at. Like astrology, or music, things that he never had the chance to deeply explore before. More than anything else, he was glad to form new bonds and friendships, even if they weren’t going to last longer than a few years (they never did).

With a new environment—that was at least somewhat more welcoming than home—Cater’s unique magic was finally able to thrive.

It took approximately four months into his freshmen year when other dorm members started to understand the usefulness of Cater’s unique magic. At that point, he was able to create one or two clones, and hold them for an hour or so at a time.

The requests started out small enough—harmless, really. Like covering someone’s flamingo feeding duty, helping reach something from the top shelf in the kitchen, even helping lend a hand to set up the garden for tea parties when it wasn’t his turn. Cater didn’t mind these kind of requests; he liked being useful, and it wasn’t hugely draining. All it took was a bit of magic, and a few seconds of recovery afterwards. He would have been perfectly fine doing these things forever.

It was just that the requests didn’t exactly stay that simple.

Chapter Text

Orientation was stressful. Cater didn’t know if he really fit in at this school. Yeah, he had magical ability, but he wasn’t very good at it. Like, at all. Besides, he didn’t know a single person here. Well, he didn’t really know anyone anywhere, but he hadn’t even met any of these people. And they all seemed so much better at everything than he was.

But he had received an invitation—for whatever reason. And, well, if that wasn’t an indicator that he deserved to be here, what was?

Cater knew why he was here—well, that was to say, he knew why he was allowed to go. Why he’d gotten an invitation in the first place, he had no idea. But he knew why he was here, and it wasn’t about him. Nothing ever was about him, really. It was about his sisters. Cater would only be more “fun” to mess with if he got better at magic. His meager abilities now were getting quite boring to Tiffany and Taylor, but if he went to school for magic, he’d get better, and soon enough, he’d be fun again. Fun for them, again. It didn’t exactly… feel great, to know that no matter how much he would have wanted to come study here, if his sisters wanted him to stay home, he would have stayed home. That’s how things were. That’s how things had always been. Cater knew he couldn’t change that, he just… had to be ‘fun’ enough that his magic satisfied them.

At least he was far away from them now. And, like it or not, now he had a chance to meet new people, ones that he’d get to spend more than a year or so with.

His family had moved around a lot; he’d never stayed in the same place for longer than two years—usually less. Because of that, Cater never really got… attached to anyone. Sure, he’d made friends, but never anyone that would put in the work to stay in contact when Cater eventually moved again.

But Night Raven College wasn’t some public school that Cater lived fifteen minutes away from. No matter how many times his family moved, Cater would still get to attend. There were so many students of so many backgrounds—even while all dressed identically, Cater could see all sorts of people from all sorts of places. This was finally his chance to change things up—to finally make connections worth having, and worth putting in work for.

Cater was excited for such a fresh start.

As all the new first years were herded together in the mirror chamber, upperclassmen trying to keep them in line and into their seats, but there was a certain level of excitement among all the students, and they just refused to calm down. Cater’s eyes drifted around the room, at the students all dressed identically—it was hard to even tell the difference between the old and the new—at the coffins floating in the air, at the strange mirror glowing in the center of the room, and at the seven students sitting at the front of the room, behind the mirror.

He wasn’t really sure what everything here meant; he had tried to do some research on the school before arriving, but there was very little that he could find. He’d just have to learn things along the way.

While Cater was taking in everything about the chamber he was in, he heard many whispers and rumors spread amongst the new students.

“Do you know why he’s here?”

“Is he really going to be our classmate?”

“Isn’t he like, in the top ten mages in the entire world already?”

“I thought he was top five?”

Cater was a little confused by these snippets of whispers that he caught; he had no idea what was even being talked about, until he saw one figure in ceremonial robes that stood out from all the others. Not only did he tower above all the other new first-years, but he was easily recognizable due to the two large horns on top of his head.

Malleus Draconia.

Now, Cater was definitely not up to speed with everything that went down in the magic-users community. His family couldn’t use magic, so they didn’t work to keep up with it, either. But everyone knew who Malleus Draconia was.

And they were going to be classmates?

What was Cater getting himself into, going to this school?

Well, there wasn’t much he could do about it, was there? Either Cater could exist alongside people like Malleus Draconia, or he could leave it behind and go back to his family.

One of those optioned seemed preferable to the other, that was for sure.

Cater kept a wary eye on Malleus as he sat down for orientation. Malleus sat on the complete opposite side of the chamber from him, thankfully, but he was still a bit nervous. A mage at that caliber… if he wanted, he could probably bring down the whole building if he wanted.

Soon, all the new first years were seated, and orientation was beginning.

As much as he wanted to pay attention, Cater found the room orientation was being held in to be particularly distracting. There were coffins floating in the air, and Cater had climbed out of one. The headmaster wore a crow mask, obscuring his face, eyes glowing yellow. There were potentially hundreds of first year students sitting in that room, all of them with a certain aptitude for magic.

This was just… unthinkable.

So… maybe Cater’s mind had drifted off, and he missed a lot of what he was supposed to be paying attention to. But everyone around him seemed to know what they were doing. So when they stood up, started to line up, facing the large mirror set in the center of the raised stage, Cater followed suit.

He knew vaguely what was happening… sort of. Hopefully.

And then dorm assignments were happening, and once students were sorted into their respective dorms, they went to different seats, with the rest of their new dormmates. Cater watched the first student get sorted into Savanaclaw, the next into Ignihyde, then Pomefiore, then Diasomnia, and so on and so on, until it arrived at Cater’s turn. He nervously stepped up to the mirror, staring at the face within.

Per the instruction he’d been given (and the pattern he’d noticed so far), Cater stated his name.

“I’m Cater Diamond…”

The mirror was silent, contemplating, studying Cater, until the mask-like face came to a decision.

“The nature of your soul is… Heartslabyul.”

If Cater was going to be honest, he didn’t know if that was particularly good or not. What he knew about Heartslabyul (or any dorm for that matter) was supremely limited, but hey, the all-knowing magic mirror must be right about which dorm was the right fit for him.

Cater stepped off the stand that the mirror floated above, making his way towards the far side of the chamber where the other Heartslabyul students were sat.

So far, there’d only been one other student sorted into Heartslabyul—a boy with short, dark green hair, striking orange eyes obscured behind dark framed glasses. He smiled when Cater came and sat down beside him.

“Cater, was it?” he greeted. “I’m Trey.”

Nodding, Cater took Trey’s outstretched hand and shook it. Part of him figured that he should at least try to pay attention to the rest of the dorm assignments, but he also had a lot of questions, and felt that Trey might be able to answer at least a few of them.

“Do you come from a magical family?” Cater asked, after a few moments of silence, another student being sorted into Ignihyde.

Trey sort of nodded, sort of shrugged. “I’ve got a fair few family members that can do magic, some even attended various arcane academies. I wouldn’t say it’s common, though.” He glanced at Cater. “What about you?”

Blowing a puff of air out between his lips, Cater replied, “I’m the first that I know of. Don’t know a thing about what’s going on here.”

Chuckling, Trey adjusted his glasses slightly. “Hopefully the housewarden and upperclassmen can help answer some questions, then.” He looked back up towards the mirror as a student was sorted into Scarabia. “If not, I’ll help you research,” he offered, now looking at Cater.

“That’d be great,” Cater breathily replied after what he thought was a much too long silence.

Speaking of silence, the whole chamber ceased their whispering; no one dared to even breathe, as Malleus Draconia stepped up towards the mirror.

And then he spoke, supposedly the first words anyone had heard him say since stepping out of the coffin.

“My name is Malleus Draconia.”

His voice was deeper than Cater would expect of a freshman—but then again, Malleus was fae (royalty, at that), and Cater had heard that most fae had very different lifespans and development from humans. Even with as little as five words, his voice held much dignity, commanding respect. Cater wondered how one could do that, just by stating their name. Like, he didn’t even give a full royal title or anything, just first and last name.

Was it something he did on purpose? Or did it just come naturally with being royalty? Maybe it was the horns, or how he towered above all the other students? Or maybe even just a certain aura of magic around him?

The mirror did not take long to deliberate.

“The nature of your soul is Diasomnia.”

The other six dorms seemed to breathe a sigh of relief, while it seemed that many Diasomnia students expected this, although they were still apprehensive as Malleus moved to join them, students practically jumping out of his way as he walked.

Cater cast a sideways glance at Trey, who happened to be looking his way, too.

“Can you believe we’re going to be classmates with someone like him?” Cater said, once the same dull noise—and with it all signs of life—returned to the room.

Trey slightly shook his head. “Not quite sure why he’d even need to come to a school like this.”

“Right? He could probably get like, tons of personal tutors or something.”

“If he even needs them,” Trey added, and Cater nodded in agreement. “I’m sure we’re unlikely to cross paths, though, being in different dorms and all. No need to overcomplicate our schooling experience if we don’t have to.”

Before long, many more students were getting sorted into Heartslabyul, quickly filling up the seats that had been laid out for the freshmen. There were probably upwards of thirty new students to the dorm, all other dorms likely getting a similar number. Cater was rather unsuccessful at paying attention for the rest of the dorm assignments after Malleus, although there had been another interesting one—Vil Shoenheit, already a world-famous actor at sixteen years old, getting sorted into Pomefiore.

The brief bit of research that Cater had been able to do about Night Raven had included that it tended to draw in some rather famous mages to become students there, but Cater had been utterly unprepared for just how famous those mages could be. Everything from royalty to actors to just plain rich. How could someone normal, like Cater, be expected to just go to school with these people?

Well, maybe Cater wasn’t normal. This was a school for people who could use magic, and had the potential to use it well—at least, that’s what he understood. Not many people in the world could do that, so Cater probably couldn’t be considered ‘normal.’ Still, he didn’t feel like he would really belong with the other students that he saw around him.

Did Cater actually belong here at all?

Cater quickly had to shut down those nagging thoughts as the dorm assignments wrapped up, and orientation had officially ended. The upperclassmen that had been seated behind the freshmen began to leave, aside from a few that urged the freshmen to stay put. At that point, the seven students that had sat behind the mirror all stood, a few exchanging words, others silent and stoic, then they began to walk towards the still-seated freshmen.

“Hello, new Heartslabyul students!” One of the seven students greeted them. “My name is March Hayes Greyvale, and I am the current housewarden of Heartstlabyul.” He was not particularly tall, just a bit above most of the freshmen, with dark skin, freckles, and pale blond hair that fell past his shoulders, almost spilling out the front of the hood. He had a small but clearly happy and excited smile. When he lowered his hood, Cater saw that he had large rabbit sticking out the top of his head, a similar pale yellow color to match his hair, which raised up into the air once the hood was out of the way. “I’m looking forward to getting to know all of you this year!” He then stepped to the side and motioned to the person who had come up to stand beside him. “And this is your vice housewarden, Matteo Hartly.”

Matteo was taller, with angular features and short, dark purple hair, and a small spade marking drawn right beside his right eye. He didn’t wear his hood up at all, instead wearing a miniature top hat. His ears were slightly pointed, with multiple piercings in each ear. He smiled, waving at the new freshmen.

“You are all quite lucky to have a housewarden like March,” said Matteo. “This school has not often seen one so dedicated to the students in their dorm as he is.” He motioned to March, who quickly waved them off, taking hold of their hand.

“Matteo likes to say things like that, but what they should be saying is how lucky we are to have such incredible students in our dorm. Now, he’s going to go and check on preparations for this evening’s official Heartslabyul welcome party, and I have the honor to give you a quick tour of campus!” March and Matteo briefly smiled at one other, before Matteo departed, and March began the tour of Night Raven.

“So,” he started, eyes glancing around to the other dorms, all departing on their own tours rather quickly, “you’ve officially made it through your first orientation. What a relief!” His smile seemed genuine as he looked over all the new students. “I hope you all realize that even just standing here, as a student, is a huge achievement. It means you possess great power, and you have the potential to accomplish great things, with the right training. You all should be very proud of yourselves.”

The tour began soon after March had congratulated them, the group leaving the mirror chamber and walking through the halls of the literal castle that was apparently their school building.

“Most of your classes will be in this building. You’ll also find the cafeteria in here as well. There are a few classes held in other places, such as alchemy and physical education. Tomorrow, you’ll get to go around to various classes, meet your teachers and get a brief idea of what you will be studying this year. It’s not an actual class day, but you’ll get to learn more about the school and your classmates.”

Cater’s gaze drifted to the portraits hanging on the walls that they walked past. He could’ve sworn he saw them moving, watching him just as he was watching them. He turned his gaze away with a slight shiver, looking towards March as he led the group through twists and turns within the school.

“Tomorrow you’ll get your class numbers, which will determine your class schedule, and who your classmates will be for your required classes. Those schedules will give you the room number of each of your classes, although the numbers themselves may not help much,” March chuckled to himself. “Some have described Night Raven as a maze, and they’re absolutely within their rights to do so. If any of you have trouble locating a classroom, feel free to ask me. I think I’ve got a pretty good grasp on this building by now.”

Eventually, the tour made its way outside, and onto main street.

Despite it being incredibly late at night, it wasn’t dark at all. The moon was huge, reflecting eerie light across the entire campus. It was a magnificent sight; Cater felt like he was seeing every detail of the moon up close. Shadows from surrounding trees were long and stretched far across the campus. The street was paved with stone, some feeling more wobbly than others, and lining the street, almost leading the way from further parts of campus up the grand staircase into the school, were seven statues.

After a few seconds of surveying the statues, Cater was able to recognize them as the Great Seven, famous mages of the past that had each left a huge impact on the magical world, shaping it into what it was now. Cater knew that their influence had been much of the inspiration for Night Raven itself, especially how it had been organized.

As the students followed March down the street, he talked about the statues, and the history behind the street itself, stopping when they all stood in front of one particular statue.

“Heartslabyul is one of the best dorms at the school—and I’m not just saying that because I’m biased,” March smiled, his gaze turning towards the statue as he stepped to the side to give the students an unobstructed view. “Our dorm is based on the traditions and spirit of strictness of one of the best rulers in our history: the Queen of Hearts.” He motioned to the statue as he continued. “She led her kingdom single-handedly, with strict rules to keep people in line and keep her land thriving.”

Cater started to notice a slight chill in the air, the wind starting to pick up. The loose fabric in his robes began to pull against him. It felt strangely fitting for an arcane academy like Night Raven. Not only did the moon seem to create its own light, rather than just reflecting the suns, but the wind, the trees, the shadows, everything seemed to be perfectly tailored to the school.

He wasn’t here just to think about the weather, though, Cater reminded himself. He was on a tour, he should be listening to what his housewarden had to say.

March was still talking, the wind pulling at his robes and hair, somehow none of it getting in his face. Even as the wind roared, March seemed unbothered, simply enjoying his lessons on the school and its history.

“In the spirit of the Queen of Hearts, we do have many rules,” March had now begun to talk about Heartslabyul itself, “but they are there to help each of you along your way to success. It is valuable to learn these rules and to obey them; there is much that can be gained from listening to the advice of our greatest historical figures.”

There was definitely a lot to learn. Cater looked around at the other new freshmen standing around him, and they all looked much more sure of themselves than Cater felt. A lot of them probably came from magic, had grown up surrounded by it, and had their sights set on a school like Night Raven.

Not Cater.

No, when he first discovered he had a certain aptitude for magic, he thought something was wrong with him. And when neither of his sisters could do magic, he felt guilty, as if he'd robbed them of their own opportunities. And when he’d received an invitation to attend Night Raven, he thought that it didn’t matter anyway; he’d never get to go. But to his surprise, here he stood.

Somehow, Cater was going to find a way to prove that he actually did deserve to be here. And hopefully he’d get to learn a lot a lot along the way.

“Throughout your time at this school, you will learn many things, improve yourself and especially your magical abilities in many ways, but, most importantly, you should learn how to be successful in whatever career you wish to have.” At March’s beckon, the students started to follow him back down the street and up the steps into the building. “You’ll soon notice that Night Raven does not have any of its fourth-years on campus. This is because they are all learning off-campus in various internship opportunities. Not all arcane academies have the respect that Night Raven has earned from world leaders and high-end mages. That can give our students a distinct advantage, but it is important to realize that that respect is not a given. That respect is earned, through hard work and dedication to your magical development.”

Some students seemed particularly excited about the thought of those fourth-year internships, whispers spreading amongst the group of freshmen as March listed examples of some of the most popular and most prestigious internship opportunities.

Night Raven only became more and more interesting to Cater the more he learned.

Finally, the students arrived back in the mirror chamber, where orientation had begun, although they entered a more secluded section of the room, containing exactly seven mirrors, each decorated in widely different ways.

“Quite possibly the most important place on campus, the mirror chamber not only houses all school-wide assemblies and official events, but also contains the doorways to the unique dimensions that house each dorm.” As March motioned around to the seven mirror portals, everyone’s gaze turned to Heartslabyul’s, just as Matteo happening to be stepping out of it. March continued to elaborate on the mirror chamber and the doorways themselves until Matteo had gotten close enough to interrupt.

“Perhaps now the tour task falls to me,” Matteo grinned, looping his arm around March’s as he approached.

“Yes, of course,” said March, briefly smiling to greet Matteo before turning back to the freshmen. “Matteo is going to finish with a bit of important information about our historical dorm, and I will see you at the official Heartslabyul welcome party.”

March dismissed himself, going through the portal, and Matteo began to address the students.

“I hope March’s tour far exceeded your expectations and properly informed you of the history of our prestigious school.” He received a few nods before he continued. “Now, you are mere moments away from first stepping foot into the unique dimension that you will call home for the next three years.” Matteo’s words only made the students more anxious to do so, some pushing past one another to get closer to the mirror portal. “Patience, patience,” Matteo laughed. “You will all enter soon enough.” His words didn’t seem to ease the excitement at all, so he quickly prepared them to walk through.

“Our dear Heartslabyul is a wonderful dorm, which I’m sure you have learned already, and I’m sure you will spend the rest of the night and the following years learning our values and what we hold dear. And so, it is my honor to guide you through.”

At last, they entered through the portal, but they couldn’t exactly see very much. Only a pathway through a garden, a large building in the distance. There was a table set up off to one side, teacups filled with tea placed on top. Matteo instructed them each to take one.

“Ensure it holds tea, not a dormouse,” he added with a wink. A few students chuckled; Cater didn’t understand the joke.

Once the students had all selected their teacups, Matteo held his up in the air.

“Cheers to you, on the day that is furthest from graduation. I think that deserves some celebration.”

Each student lifted their teacups to their lips, drinking the tea given to them. Cater, for one, was surprised by the taste. While a few students grumbled that the tea was too bitter to drink, Cater much preferred it as it was. Other students moved to put their teacups back on the table, Cater following suit.

“Heartslabyul has many traditions that we do consider important to the community we build within our dorm. You will begin to experience them tonight, at our welcome party. Heartslabyul throws many parties and events throughout the year, and you’ll all soon find out your own responsibilities in preparing for those events.” Matteo began to elaborate not only on the welcome party itself, but on many other events and traditions. “But for tonight, you have no responsibilities, save for celebration.”

He smiled, moving to stand in front of the large red gates that closed off the rest of the garden from where they stood.

“Welcome, students, to Heartslabyul.”

The gates to the garden opened. Cater’s jaw fell open as he saw rows and rows of tables, each with unique table settings and tons of different dishes laid out in the center of each table. The upperclassmen were all there, most already seated and waiting for the freshmen to arrive so that they could eat. Beyond just the food, Cater’s gaze was caught by the décor. Not only was the garden decorated beautifully, in a way that seemed to combine the elegance of Night Raven itself with the whimsy of the dorm. The clearing was completely surrounded by rosebushes, with both red and white roses in full bloom. It was unlike anything Cater had ever seen.

The feast was only the beginning of the welcome party, it seemed, with more traditions to follow. Most interestingly, the new students had to receive their card assignments.

Following the traditions of the Queen of Hearts, the housewarden acted as the queen, and the students became the queen’s card soldiers—and the rules stated that each card soldier needed their suit. There were four options: heart, spade, club, and diamond. These assignments were not exactly ‘random,’ but they didn’t seem to follow any particular order either. At least, Cater couldn’t figure out the pattern.

Whatever order there was, Cater received the suit of diamond. He made a joke about how fitting it was, given his last name, which, luckily, made the other dorm members in earshot laugh. It didn’t seem he was the only one, as the student he’d met at orientation—Trey Clover—had received the suit of club.

Another Heartslabyul tradition was to keep the mark of your suit on your face—drawn either around the eye or on the upper cheek. They were supposed to redraw the marking each morning, as a part of their routine. The sophomore that helped Cater draw it on the first time informed him that most days, he’d paint it on in red, but when in ceremonial robes, it was to be black. As Cater looked at the small diamond on his cheek, he figured this was a dorm tradition he could easily get used to. The small marking looked super cute.

“Man,” Cater said quietly to no one in particular, “This dorm must really be the best one. All this food, all these fun traditions, all the nice upperclassmen…” He began to trail off, as he realized someone was listening to him.

“It’s really great, isn’t it?” Trey agreed, catching Cater off guard a bit. “I’ve heard a lot about the other dorms, but I’m really glad I’m in Heartslabyul. It does have a lot of rules, but it’s a lot easier to do the right thing and not mess up when you have a whole guidebook telling you how to do things!”

Cater nodded. “Oh, yeah. Do you know how many rules there are?”

Trey hesitated. “I’m not exactly sure. It can’t be too many, though. I mean, it has to be possible to know them all.”

At that moment, the housewarden came walking by to check on their table. He sat down across from them and asked how their day had been so far. Cater and Trey both responded positively, but Trey brought up their concerns about the rules that Heartslabyul was known to follow.

“It’s good to have new students that are willing to ask questions and receive help from others,” March said. “A lot of students in other dorms would simply never ask. Still, I wouldn’t want our dorm’s reputation to cause any stress,” he laughed. “I know that the idea of following lots of rules can be kinda intimidating. So, let me just ease your worries.” He leaned back in his chair before continuing.

“Back when the Queen of Hearts ruled, she put in place many laws, some of them somewhat nonsensical, but it was her land, and she was a good queen, so most of her citizens found it just fine. Well, in the years since, many of her rules have lost their value, and there isn’t really any reason to obey them. We are a dorm full of rule-followers, which is very important to our traditions, but I hope that we also understand that not every rule is incredibly important to follow.”

March was making somewhat large gestures as he explained. Cater found himself enthralled by the information.

“There are many rules that, if you break them, you will receive a fair consequence. Things like breaking curfew without a valid reason, or skipping classes, or any behavior that puts yourself or your fellow students in harm’s way,” March counted on his fingers as he listed off a few examples, “those with all receive different punishments based on the situation. But those are all serious rules.”

“But how many rules are there in total?” Trey asked, adjusting the way he sat so he could lean more over the table.

“Well, if you look at a list of all the Queen of Heart’s rules, you’ll find eight hundred or so of them.”

“Eight hundred?” Trey and Cater exclaimed in unison. March chuckled and nodded.

“Yes, eight hundred. But it’s not so bad as you’d think,” he insisted. “Many of them we do still keep to honor her legacy, even if they don’t seem super important. We do have students wear pink to feed the flamingos, and we have a tea party on the fifth day of every month, and we paint the garden’s roses to match the type of event. We do all those things, but they don’t have any real punishment if it doesn’t happen exactly according to the Queen’s rules. These things are important to our traditions, but they are not more important to me than the wellbeing of our students.”

The more March explained, the more Cater grew to like him. When Cater had seen him up on the stand, sitting beside all the other housewardens, he’d definitely been intimidated. But March didn’t seem to be as strict or scary as a lot of the other housewardens looked to be. Maybe Heartslabyul would be a good place for Cater to be.

“I hope this has eased your worries a bit.” He smiled. “Just know that Matteo and I are always available if you need anything. Now,” he put his hands on the table and stood up, “I need to go finish my rounds and talk to the other students. Enjoy the rest of the party!”

Cater watched him leave, feeling more at ease and like he belonged than he had felt all day.

“Our housewarden seems nice,” Cater said quietly. He assumed he was still talking to Trey, but he wasn’t sure if Trey was still listening. “He’s… different from what I thought a housewarden here would be. All the others were… kinda intense. And all they did was sit there.”

Trey nodded, his gaze focused on something in the courtyard behind Cater. Or maybe he was looking at nothing in particular. He didn’t respond, and Cater wasn’t sure what else to say.

The party lasted hours—long enough for Cater to be completely exhausted by the time all students were herded inside and to bed, which meant it was way too early in the morning to still be awake when the freshmen finally got their room assignments and managed to find their way to their bedrooms. Having orientation begin after it was already dark, then a tour, followed by a whole-ass party meant a very long night for Night Raven students.

Freshmen, for the most part, shared a room with three other freshmen. Those room assignments were made based on the card suit they had been assigned at the welcome party, with one of each suit in each bedroom.

Cater, of course, represented the diamond suit, and Trey the club, but Cater had yet to officially meet his roommates that represented hearts and spades, respectively. He and Trey worked together to find their assignment roommates, and managed to find them standing together and searching for the two of them in turn: Quinn: spades, and Nova: hearts.

Quinn had tan skin with a long, dark braid that he had draped over his shoulder, while Nova had much darker skin and long, curly hair of multiple shades of blue. They each had their marks drawn on their cheekbone, Quinn on the left, and Nova on the right. With not much to go on besides first impressions, Nova seemed to be more extroverted, getting to know all the new freshmen he could, while Quinn was content to sit and talk with the couple of people that had sat around him.

Nova came from the Queendom of Roses, as did Trey and many other Heartslabyul students. Cater had been there before, lived there for a year or two, but his family never stuck in one place very long, and it had been a few years since he'd visited. Quinn grew up in the Land of Dawning, along the coastline that was closest to Sage's Island. Cater had lived there for a time as well, a bit more recently than the Queendom, though he had spent the last few years all over the Shaftlands.

Both came from magical families. Quinn’s father had gone to Night Raven, as well as a few other family members. Like Trey, most of Nova’s family members could use magic, but he was the first to receive an acceptance to the school.

The bedrooms themselves were not huge, but large enough for all four of them to have at least some individual space, with a bed, desk, small closet, and dresser. The beds had curtains hung around them, as did the closets, and there was a bathroom connected to the bedroom. There was only one window in the room, looking out over the gardens. The rooms were not decorated, but they had been provided with basic bedding for the night, and school and dorm uniforms hung up in the closet.

Cater found the trunk and backpack he’d brought with him already on one of the beds, one of the two closest to the window. He already liked his room situation quite a lot, and he was looking forward to decorating it to make it truly his own. He’d never been able to do that before.

It took almost all of Cater’s remaining energy (which was very little) to avoid collapsing into bed right then and there. He was still in the ceremonial robes, after all, and while they were cute, they were not going to be particularly comfortable to sleep in. He managed to change into pajamas and brush his teeth before falling into his bed and drawing the curtains closed around him.

Had it only been a few hours ago that Cater had arrived at Sage’s Island, at the famous Night Raven College, to study magic? It still seemed like some kind of dream, some kind of twisted version of reality. Cater didn’t believe his family would have let him go that easily. They never had before, and yet here he was.

Cater couldn’t believe it.

He laid awake, curtains drawn around the bed, staring up at the ceiling. The room was silent. Cater was almost certain that all of his roommates were asleep by now (they had all be exhausted, after all). Deciding to trust the unholy hour and the stillness of the room, Cater pulled back the curtain and got out of bed, walking towards the window.

No, he wasn’t going to try to open the window. It would probably be noisy and let in cold air that could easily wake someone up, but Cater had to look at the stars.

The night sky was something Cater often looked to for comfort. No matter where he was, the sky remained the same, stars twinkling down at him, the only friend that remained constant, that stuck with him no matter what. The stars had seen Cater through the worst times of his life; hopefully know they would lead him to something better.

Chapter Text

Cater didn’t remember getting back into bed, but he woke up underneath the provided comforter on the bed, watching a slight breeze move the curtains around his bed. One of his roommates must have opened the window when they had woken up. He pulled back the curtains as he sat up, swinging his legs over the edge of the mattress. Yawning, Cater stretched, then glanced around the room. He caught Trey’s gaze, who smiled at him and wished him a good morning.

“It’s technically still morning, after all,” he joked. Cater glanced at the clock; it was getting pretty close to noon. Still, he probably did not get enough sleep, since the welcome party had lasted hours past orientation.

The day after orientation wasn’t a day of actual classes (impossible, considering the start time). Rather, it was a chance for new first years to figure out their way around campus, and to get a brief introduction to their teachers and their expected coursework.

“What time do the things start today?” Cater was still groggy, rubbing his eyes, unable to figure out exactly how to refer to the “things” that were going to be happening.

“You mean the whole schedule walk through, meeting professors and whatnot?” Cater nodded. “It starts at one. But we’re supposed to go get lunch before then.”

“Oh, I’d better get up, then,” Cater laughed. It took a second or two after standing for him to feel awake and balanced, but he was pretty quick to get dressed and ready for the day afterwards. He’d found his school uniform hanging in the small closet beside his bed, comprised of a white button-up shirt, black dress pants, red waistcoat, striped tie, and a black suit coat with gold trim. He took a quick shower, putting on the shirt and pants, before brushing his teeth and doing his hair. Knowing that he didn’t have much time, he didn’t do anything particularly special with his hair, simply brushing it and tucking it behind his ears, then he quickly did some basic makeup, finishing with a red diamond marking on his cheek.

Trey had elected to wait for him, sitting on his bed when Cater exited the bathroom, crossing the room to where he’d set out the rest of his uniform. Cater quickly put it on, struggling slightly with his armband, then grabbing his magic pen before they both left their room and headed down the stairs towards the dorm lounge.

When they arrived in the lounge, their housewarden was quick to notice them, waving them over to where he was sitting in the middle of the room. Cater glanced at Trey, before moving towards March.

“Trey, Cater,” March greeted, smiling at them as they approached. “I hope you slept well, though I’m sure it wasn’t for long enough.” He grinned, Cater and Trey agreeing. Cater wondered how March seemed so confident in knowing their names already. It hadn’t even been a day—did he already know the names of all the Heartslabyul freshmen? How had he managed that? “I have your class assignments here, give me a second.” March dug through a folder filled with papers, accidentally dropping a couple as he searched through them. “Ah, here you are.”

Trey happened to be standing closer, so he grabbed both papers from March’s outstretched hand as Cater crouched down to pick up the pages that had fallen from the folder. He handed them back to March, Trey then passing him his class assignment paper. Cater glanced at it. Right at the top, near his name, his class assignment and number were listed: Class 1A, number 7. He glanced over at Trey’s, also in class 1A, number 5.

"Hey, we're in the same class!" Cater exclaimed, Trey nodding.

"That's sure to be helpful," he said. As he looked at the page further, he started to go through what the schedule contained. "So our homeroom is with Professor Crewel, then we'll have alchemy with him right after..." he trailed off, reading the rest of the list internally.

"Crewel's not a bad option for homeroom," March chimed. "I wouldn't say that any of our professors are the most kind and forgiving, but they know their stuff. You both are in good hands at this school." 

"I'd hope so," said Trey, folding his class schedule and putting it in the inner pocket of his suit coat. "Night Raven is far too distinguished to have incompetent teachers."

March laughed. "We do have quite the reputation. I hope you find it to your liking." He glanced around, noticing other freshmen starting to congregate at the bottom of the stairs. "Looks like I need to start passing out the rest of these." He tapped the pages on the end table beside where he sat, straightening them out. "The two of you might want to start heading to the cafeteria,” he told them. “You should grab some food before your class walk-through. Matteo should be in the mirror chamber if you need anything."

Cater and Trey thanked him, before exiting the dorm and walking through the gardens towards the Heartslabyul mirror. As they walked, Cater began to fold his class schedule page, tucking it into a pocket of his suit coat. He was a bit scared to admit that he was rather excited for the day ahead. A first "taste" of Night Raven without immediately jumping into the deep end, starting the full-length classes, getting homework, and the like. He'd never been one for school, never been a model student or anything, never enjoyed sitting still for eight hours a day, forced to listen to the boringest people on the planet prattle on about something that no one cared about, but he had a feeling this would be different. It wouldn't be easy, but it would be different. He'd have to hope that was enough.

The two of them managed to travel through the mirror, briefly greeting Matteo as they passed through the mirror chamber, and then found their way to the cafeteria. Cater remembered briefly seeing the room on the campus tour they'd had the previous night, but it looked vastly different, light pouring in from the large windows spanning the length of the room, hundreds of students conversing and enjoying their meals at the dozens of tables spread throughout the room. Tile floors, brick walls, an unimaginably huge fireplace, and above it all, an enormous chandelier that appeared to be made entirely out of tree roots and balls of light.

He couldn't help but stare at the chandelier as he and Trey moved together towards one of the various lines that led to a few different food choices. He saw a few stall-like areas that held desserts, drinks, and smaller, self-serve selections of things like ramen, salads, and sandwiches. The line they were in appeared to have a specific menu for the day, including chef-prepared meats, vegetables, and breads. When he eventually reached the front of the line, he grabbed a small spread of a few different items, and walked with Trey to a table, where they found their two other roommates—Nova and Quinn—already sitting. They had left the dorm earlier, and appeared to be most of the way through their meal when Trey and Cater arrived.

"Hey!" Cater greeted cheerfully as he sat down across from Quinn. "How did you guys sleep?"

"I never sleep well in unfamiliar beds," said Nova, shaking his head. "But it should be better tonight."

"Yesterday was so draining, I couldn't not sleep well," Quinn joked, Trey chuckled and agreed.

"We were up until what, five?"

"No clue," Cater shook his head. "But it was entirely too late. Or early. Not sure which." 

A brief moment of silence passed, Cater taking a drink out of the water he'd grabbed on his way to the table, until Trey asked, "So, what classes are you two in?"

"One C," said Quinn. "Trein's homeroom."

"One B, Vargas's homeroom," Nova quickly followed. "I'm gonna have flight lessons first thing in the morning every other day, and plain old PE on the others."

The rest of the table groaned, empathizing with Nova. Cater was rather physically fit, if a bit on the thin side, but that still sounded like literal hell.

We're both in class one A, with Crewel," Trey eventually continued, "so we start with alchemy."

"That's awesome that you guys are in the same class," said Nova. "I'm jealous. I haven't heard of any other Heartslabyul students in my class, and I've been asking everyone I see." He let out a huff. "Oh, well. Maybe I'll end up being study partners with some great students from Pomefiore or something."

"What clubs are you thinking of joining?" Quinn asked. "I wish they'd give us a list; I've only heard of a few from the upperclassmen last night."

"Oh, I haven't thought about that yet," said Cater. "What have you heard of?"

"Mostly sports things," Quinn pushed his long braid off his shoulder as he sat up straighter. "Like spelldrive, track, basketball, stuff like that."

"I heard of an equestrian club," Nova supplied, "but I don't know about anything else."

"So, if they exist, what would you be looking for?" Cater asked, soon realizing that he'd left his food untouched so far. He was quick to remedy that as Trey, Quinn, and Nova responded.

"Something with cooking or home ec," said Trey. "I do a lot of baking at home, so I probably want to keep doing that."

"Smart," Quinn hummed. "I'll probably look for a literature club, or maybe some kind of acting."

"Oh, you do theatre?" Nova asked, Quinn nodding. "Nice! I'm also interested in a theatre club, but I'm more into behind-the-scenes stuff."

The three of them soon turned to glance at Cater, who soon realized that he had absolutely no idea what he was interested in.

"Oh, I'm not sure," he eventually found himself saying. "Clubs are a requirement, right?" Trey nodded.

"Everyone has to join at least one, but I think you have about a month after the club fair happens to select yours. You know, in case someone wants to form a new club or something."

"Ah, okay." Unfortunately, that didn't help Cater's current predicament at all. He simply had no idea what he was really interested in. But they were all still looking at him, waiting for at least some kind of an answer. "Photography, maybe?" he supplied. "Or maybe music. Something like that."

Well, it wasn't something that he necessarily had to commit to, but it was an answer. And it was enough. According to Trey, he'd have a month to think it over and come to a decision, if he needed.

But maybe something would truly catch his attention at the club fair. Maybe he'd come across something that just screamed his name, something that was made for him. Or maybe he'd just find something that looked enjoyable enough, and easy enough to make the club participation requirement as simple as possible.

No matter what, first he had to get through the next few hours of walking through his classes, of meeting his professors, before he could even begin to make a decision.

Nova and Quinn ended up staying at the table and talking while Trey and Cater finished their meal, all four then parting ways to find their homeroom classes before everything was supposed to start.

They arrived in their homeroom, and were promptly greeted by Professor Crewel, who wasted no time in sharing his expectations for his classes, and the requirements and equipment necessary. He surely felt like a no-nonsense type of teacher, so Cater wondered what the “worse” teachers would be like. They didn’t spend much time in that classroom, soon moving towards the next: History of Magic with Professor Trein.

Things were much similar in that class, expectations and requirements, while although there was no necessary equipment, there was a textbook each student needed. Trein seemed just as strict as Crewel, though in a much different way. As he lectured them on the expectations, Trein simply sat at his desk in the front of the lecture hall, his cat familiar prowling across the entire room. With that cat around, it seemed that no student would be able to get away with anything in that class.

Physical education and flight instruction were where things went a little differently, with a slight tour of the gymnasium, fields, and changing rooms, where each student would find a locker already containing their gym clothes and the equipment they would need for the classes. Professor Vargas mentioned that, unlike most other required curriculum, physical education classes were often combined with students from other classes and levels, so they would often be working side-by-side with their upperclassmen.

Hearing from the teachers, Cater only felt more wary about the year to come. First-semester freshmen didn’t even get to pick elective courses—all of them required to follow the schedule already decided for them. In future semesters, they’d have at least a little bit of freedom in which courses they took, but that was months away. How was he going to get through this?

One day at a time, Cater supposed. So long as he didn’t think too much about finals, or about going back to his family over the break, or even about what might happen next week, he could handle this.

Besides, since that portion of the day was over, now it was time for the club fair—which immediately eased at least some of his worries.

Well, at first.

Looking at all the different clubs was enjoyable—they all looked interesting, but that was part of the problem.

A lot of things seemed fun, but nothing felt right for him.

Maybe it was just that Cater didn’t really have much of a chance to explore things he actually did like, rather than just things that his sisters wanted him to do. He had interests, yes, and talents, too, but this seemed different. In all his years, Cater never gotten to like, choose his own hobbies before, and there was just so much to choose from.

He'd long gotten separated from Trey, but they probably weren’t going to be interested in the same type of clubs anyway. Nova and Quinn were nowhere in sight, either. As Cater had walked through, observing all the stalls to different clubs, he greeted Matteo at the board game club booth, and March at the track & field club one. But before long he’d gone through every stall, looked over the list dozens of times, and still nothing stood out to him.

“Unsure of which club to join?” A deep voice sounded from behind him, Cater turning around just enough to see that the person who spoke was hanging upside down in the air.

Cater jumped, a short, high-pitched shriek slipping out. He immediately covered his mouth with his hand as the person hanging upside-down turned right-side-up and put their feet on the ground.

“Hello, I’m Lilia Vanrouge, nice to meet you!” Lilia held out his hand, which Cater warily took.

Lilia had short, choppy hair, mostly black but with bits of pink throughout, very pale skin, and somewhat uncanny red eyes. When he smiled or spoke, Cater could see fangs. He was wearing a green waistcoat—what dorm was that again?—and had his suit coat draped over his shoulders, instead of wearing it “correctly.” He was short and small, but had some kind of presence to him that Cater couldn’t quite describe, but it made Lilia feel somewhat larger-than-life. Cater also noticed very pointed ears poking out through his hair.

“Cater Diamond,” Cater finally replied. “Um, can I ask why you were upside down?”

Chuckling, Lilia replied, “Scaring people is a favorite hobby.”

Yeah… Cater had nothing to say to that. Luckily, Lilia was quick to change the subject.

“So, you seem to be having a rather difficult time in selecting a club to join, am I correct?”

Cater nodded, his arm reaching up to scratch the back of his head. “Yeah, nothing’s really standing out to me yet.”

“Hmm,” said Lilia, tapping his foot and resting a hand on his hip. “How should we solve this problem?”

“What?”

There was barely a moment for Cater to process before Lilia was asking him question after question.

“Do you enjoy video games? Or perhaps sword fighting? Fashion? History? Music? Juggling? Woodworking? Su—”

“Woah, woah, go back two.”

“Juggling?”

“No, the one before that.”

“Ah, music,” said Lilia, nodding. “That seems much more likely. I happen to also enjoy music, but Night Raven has an unfortunate lack of any clubs that include it. It seems that we ought to remedy that.”

There was a brief pause, the dull roar of the busy courtyard becoming more apparent to Cater’s ears when Lilia was no longer speaking.

“Would you like to start a new club with me?” Lilia eventually offered; Cater blinked in surprise.

“We can do that?”

“Of course. I helped one of my dormmates fill out the paperwork earlier today. It’s not all that complicated.”

Lilia grabbed his hand and practically dragged him through the courtyard, until they reached a table that held forms to fill out for new clubs. Everything from meeting Lilia, all the way until doing the paperwork, had happened so quickly, but Cater was relieved. He always had a hard time really choosing what he liked or what he wanted to do; it wasn’t like Lilia was forcing him to do anything, rather, Lilia was just giving him an easy out of actually choosing a club to join.

Plus, they were forming it around music. Cater learned that Lilia knew how to play a lot of different instruments, and was hoping to learn even more. As for himself, he enjoyed singing, and he had enjoyed playing guitar in classes he’d taken in public school (although he didn’t own one). He really did like music, and having an opportunity to get better at it seemed like a great idea.

After the club fair had ended, and the paperwork to start their new club had been completed and turned in, Cater returned to Heartslabyul for the evening; many students already had. He went up to his bedroom, knowing that he would typically be expected to wear the Heartslabyul dorm uniform around the dorm, particularly in the evening after classes had ended for the day.

His dorm uniform was a fair bit fancier than his school uniform, though it had many similar pieces. Instead of black dress pants, they were white, with a gold satin stripe down the side. He had another red waistcoat (though other students had black ones), with a more detailed pattern on the fabric. Below that he wore a white t-shirt, and then a striped sash around his waist. The final piece was a jacket, mostly white, with one black sleeve and one checkered, with red cuffs. The lapels and front of the jacket had many patches and designs, a few of them that were unique to Cater. He thought it looked quite dashing, and wondered what the uniforms of other dorms looked like.

Cater managed to reunite with Trey in the Heartslabyul lounge after changing into his dorm uniform. Trey was sitting on a red and black checkered stool beside a few other chairs, stools, and a couch, all situated around a small coffee table. While a few other students were sitting there, the stool beside Trey's was open, so Cater approached and sat beside him.

Most of the other students gathered there seemed to be upperclassmen, as Cater didn't recognize them from the events after orientation the day before. One or two of them were talking to Trey, while most of the others were silent, or having their own private conversations.

"—takes a few weeks to figure out special assignments for the freshmen," one of the upperclassmen was saying as Cater approached. "Usually you just paint roses for the first year, sometimes exceptions are made, but not often."

Trey was nodding along. Cater glanced between him and the other student, silently wondering just what they were discussing.

"Oh, I understand," Trey assured. "I'd love to have the opportunity to cook for the dorm, but rules and traditions reign supreme in Heartslabyul." He chuckled slightly, the upperclassman shrugged.

"It all depends on the housewarden, honestly. If you want to cook, say so. With March, you might have a chance."

Their conversation stopped briefly as Trey greeted Cater, introducing him to the other student he was speaking with: a junior by the name of Basil.

"Do you like March as a housewarden?" Cater found himself asking. He was really starting to like March, but wasn't sure if the sentiment was shared by other students, especially those who'd likely had other housewardens in the past.

Basil waved his hand. "Yeah, I guess so. He's much more of a softie than the last one we've had, but that makes some students think they can just get away with anything. Sometimes I feel like he drifts too far away from the spirit of Heartslabyul, but I think that's better than being too strict about it."

"Do I hear whispered conversations of our great Queen?" Cater jumped at the voice sounding from behind him, but Basil—who could see who the voice belonged to—didn't seem too concerned. 

"It wasn't exactly a 'whisper,' Matteo," Basil said dryly, leaning back in his chair.

"True, but I was across the room, and it is difficult to pick up individual voices from that distance." Matteo moved to sit on the arm of the couch beside Basil, their eyes scanning Trey and Cater. "Eager to learn about March, now, are we?" he asked. Cater wondered if he'd done something wrong. "I don't believe he would be upset to answer any questions if you asked him directly, but I hope my own answers might suffice, as he is not presently available."

Cater exchanged glances with Trey. He knew that he had a lot of questions, and he had no doubts that Trey did, too, but what were they meant to ask?

"How—" Trey began, somewhat unsure. "How did he become housewarden? And when, I guess."

"This is March's second year as housewarden, although it was his first orientation," Matteo began. "Only a few weeks into last year's fall semester, March challenged the previous housewarden for his title, and won. He has gone nearly unchallenged ever since."

"Nearly?" Cater found himself asking, leaning slightly forward in suspense.

"A pair of juniors last year came to the conclusion that March was not powerful enough to be housewarden, so they challenged him for the role." Matteo closed his eyes, leaning against the wall behind him. "And they quickly learned that he was most certainly powerful enough to lead. No one has challenged him since, although every Heartslabyul student has the right to if they desire."

They spent the next few minutes talking with Matteo. Trey and Cater asked questions about March, the dorm, professors, anything else that entered their minds. Occasionally, Basil or other nearby upperclassmen would chime in.

As Matteo talked, Cater noticed that their dorm uniform was slightly different from everyone else's. Much of it was the same, white dress pants, black waistcoat, jacket—which he wore his on his shoulders—but instead of a plain white t-shirt, he had a long-sleeve, turtleneck shirt, with a silver necklace, symbols of all four card suits dangling from the chain. They also wore a small top-hat, though it looked different from the one they'd been wearing at orientation and the following welcome party. Cater had previously noticed the multiple piercings he had in each ear, but also had one in his left eyebrow. Whenever they spoke or smiled, Cater could see that they had some semblance of fangs, almost similar to Cater's own—though really Cater didn't have fangs, just unusually long and crooked canine teeth.

Cater had made a habit of observing the people around him. He wasn't sure when it started; it felt like he'd always done it. He got to pick up on a lot of things that no one else noticed that way. 

Like how often Trey adjusted his glasses, or took them off to clean them on the hem of his shirt, or how Matteo's smile seemed wider when he was talking about March than when he was answering a question about the dorm as a whole. Or, back at home, he could tell by tightening of his dad's jaw that he was getting fed up with something. Or that his mom was about to ask him to do something dumb for her entertainment when she started to pick at her nails or run her fingers through her hair. And, of course, his sisters took all their cues from his mom, so their thoughts were pretty easy to read, too.

But he had spent a lot more time around his family, so he had learned what certain things meant. Cater didn't know yet what the "tells" of these new people were, what their small actions and expressions revealed about them. He wondered if he'd get to that point with these new people—but, more importantly, he wondered if that would be necessary. Maybe he wouldn't need to walk on eggshells in Heartslabyul, at Night Raven, not like he did at home.

He wasn't sure yet, but it sure felt like he had a long way to go.

Somehow, the conversation shifted to Heartslabyul's traditions, and Matteo mentioned that they had one of their first happening in but a few days.

"Unbirthday parties are one of the most beloved traditions in Heartslabyul," Matteo was saying. "Each year is slightly different, but we tend to do them monthly, on a day that no one has a birthday." They laughed at Cater's obvious confusion, but offered no explanation. "I'm sure March will explain more to you in the coming days, just know that, in Heartslabyul, there are always events to be looking forward to." He winked, before excusing himself from the dorm lounge, claiming they were needed elsewhere.

From that point, they didn't see Matteo for the rest of the night, nor did they ever see March. Cater assumed that, with the start of the semester, things were going to be hectic for them both. Cater couldn't even imagine, being in charge of so much, ensuring that everything went smoothly, and still making space for the new students? Being housewarden already seemed to be such an ordeal, and Cater had barely even seen his.

It didn't take long for a few students to turn in for the night, and Cater knew he should follow. It was strange: he didn't find it difficult at all to fall asleep this time. Like things were finally turning around.

Like he was finally where he was meant to be.

Chapter Text

The classes went by pretty much how Cater had assumed they would. Each one started out with a brief repetition of the syllabus, pretty much everything they'd gone over in the day prior, but they leapt into actual content not long after. They only had three classes in the morning (in addition to the shorter homeroom class period), followed by a lunch break, and then their final class of the day. The following day they would have homeroom again, and then their other four classes. He'd never been all that great at school, and paying attention for long periods of time was always difficult, but it felt much easier this time around. Maybe it was because everything was new. History of magic, flying, potions—everything.

Cater had been told that freshmen didn't get into the application and use of magic for a few weeks, which was alright. Some of his fellow students seemed upset about it; Cater supposed that he vaguely agreed. He'd like to dive into spellcasting as soon as possible, but the more he thought about it, the more he realized that it was smarter to wait. He'd get to learn how to do things the correct way, instead of rushing into everything and end up doing it wrong.

After homeroom with Professor Crewel, their first class was Alchemy, and since it was with the same professor in the same classroom (at least, at this point in the semester) they didn't have much of a "break" between classes, aside from a minute or two to let the upperclassmen of class 2A or 3A leave. After that was flight lessons with Professor Vargas. They were instructed to change into their gym clothes and meet on the field, although they were specifically told to not touch the brooms. There would be no actual flying for at least a couple weeks. This class was combined with a few other classes of all the grades. No one was flying today, it seemed, but the upperclassmen would get to it far before the freshmen would. Following an 80-minute block of stretches and exercises (which seemed to fit better in the "physical training" class they would have the following day), the students were given a few minutes to shower and change back into their school uniforms before their next class.

The final class Cater had before lunch was Astrology. They wasted pretty much no time in jumping into the content for the course, the only thing prior to a lecture was taking roll and passing out a printed syllabus—which was the same things they'd gone over the day prior.

Night Raven's way of doing the first day of classes was very different from any school Cater had previously attended. Usually, there was no homework, and not even any classwork for at least the first couple days of classes (besides math homework and the occasional least-favorite teacher), but Night Raven was nothing like that. Cater had only been to three classes so far, but the homework was already starting to stack up.

With each new class, Cater's school bag felt heavier and heavier—even if it had gained no physical weight.

When it was finally time for lunch, Cater felt more relieved than ever. During the lunch break, he had walked in with Trey as they had come from the same class, but they had gotten separated while picking out their meal. The cafeteria was huge, and it took Cater a few seconds to scan the entire room and figure out where to sit. He started to walk towards many of the other Heartslabyul students, and noticed an empty seat right next to Trey, and immediately moved towards there. He set his lunch tray down at the table, then sat beside Trey.

The empty seats across the table from them didn't stay empty for long, as it only took an additional minute or two for their housewarden and vice to approach, March sitting across from Cater, and Matteo across from Trey. They were quick to inquire about how classes had gone so far, and if they had any questions.

"Yes, actually," Cater replied, "I'm still confused on how the dorms work, and how you tell who's in which dorm."

"Alright," March began, resting his arms on the table, "how familiar are you with the Seven?"

Cater shrugged. "I did some research, but I hadn't heard much of them before getting an acceptance letter." It felt that he was in the minority of students at NRC, having come from a non-magical family. He didn't think he'd even met another mage before coming to Night Raven, and now he was constantly surrounded by them, all of which knew so much more than he did. 

Based on Cater's response, March gave a quick overview of the Seven. He didn't say much that Cater hadn't found in his research, but learning information from another person was always easier than trying to read tiny words on a bright screen.

"And really," March continued, "once you know the Seven, it's simple from there. The dorms are each based around a quality of one of those seven. Heartslabyul is based on the Queen of Heart's spirit of strictness, and each of the other dorms follow the same pattern." He then offered to walk with Cater down to the statues in front of the school after classes, if he wanted a better explanation, which Cater eagerly accepted.

"As for your other inquiry," Matteo eventually took over, "there are many obvious indicators to distinguish between students of each dorm. The color of the waistcoat, namely, as well as the band that they wear around their arms. Or... elsewhere," he added quietly, as his own band was tied around the small top hat that sat off to one side of his head. Cater was about to ask about it, but Matteo continued his explanation.

"Our waistcoats are a vibrant red, Savanaclaw's are yellow, Octavinelle's grey, Scarabia a dark red, Pomefiore a deep purple, Ignihyde a blue, and Diasomnia a bright green. The armbands include those colors as well."

After Matteo's words, March asked if they had any other questions (which they didn't), and then inquired after the club fair.

"I joined science club," Trey said. "There were a lot of options though, lots of things seemed interesting."

"I started a new one, I think?" Cater honestly wasn't sure. That whole experience with Lilia had been... confusing, to say the least.

March and Matteo looked surprised, March's ears standing straight up into the air. "Really?" Matteo asked.

Cater nodded, mindlessly twirling his fork in his hand. "Yeah, it was kinda weird, honestly, but a Diasomnia student—" Lilia had been wearing a green waistcoat, after all "—just like, came up to me and asked if I wanted to. I didn't really have another one in mind to join, so I agreed."

They looked amused and asked him to elaborate more.

"It was Lilia Vanrouge who asked, and he was the one who came up with the idea. I think we're calling it 'Pop Music Club?' I played guitar a bit in public school, and he plays a lot of instruments I think, so that's what we decided to do."

Did people not start clubs very often? Or was it just odd for a pair of freshman to start one? He didn't get why March and Matteo seemed so surprised, especially when he mentioned Lilia's name. They had glanced at each other when hearing it, and Cater had to wonder if he'd said something wrong. Then March started to talk.

"One interesting thing about Night Raven is the makeup of the student body," he began, hands beginning to subtly point out specific students around the cafeteria. "We've got all sorts of students from different backgrounds here. Leona Kingscholar, for instance, the second prince of the Sunset Savannah." He pointed towards a table filled with Savanaclaw students. "Or a new student this year, the actor Vil Schoenheit," he added, motioning to a group of Pomefiore students.

"There's also, of course, many regular people from all over, too," Matteo took over. "Many of Heartslabyul's students come from the Queendom of Roses, and most are human, but there are always a few exceptions," he said with a sly grin. "Like both March and I."

"Obviously, I'm a beastman," March motioned to the rabbit ears atop his head, "but I do come from the Queendom of Roses like many others in our dorm." He looked at Trey while saying so, since he also came from the Queendom. "Matteo here—"

"My father is fae and hails from Briar Valley. I myself have only been there on a few occasions."

"There are students from the Shaftlands, from the Coral Sea, and any other nation in the world. Some are royalty, some are famous, and some are just regular old people." March smiled, leaning further forward towards the center of the table. "And at Night Raven, we are all brought here as equals, and it is those that manage to take power that ever truly gain it." His voice suddenly became quiet and subdued, and his pleasant expression dropped almost entirely. "But this year, there is a student that stands out far more than any other." His eyes drifted towards where most of the Diasomnia students sat.

Cater still didn't know what any of this had to do with him starting a new club. He was starting to wonder if March had just decided to completely change the subject with no rhyme or reason.

"We are sure you already know about Malleus Draconia's arrival," Matteo continued where March left off. "The heir to Briar Valley, and one of the most powerful mages in existence."

Cater and Trey nodded, Cater was the first to speak. "I'm kinda glad I haven't had to interact with him so far..."

March grinned, like he knew something Cater didn't. "The previous housewarden of Diasomnia stepped down the moment orientation had ended, simply because Malleus had arrived. We assume that Malleus has taken over the role, with Lilia Vanrouge as his vice."

"What?" Cater exclaimed, fighting the urge to stand up from the table in surprise. "Like the same guy I just started a club with?"

Matteo nodded. "The very same. Now, we do not know much of the history between the two, but them seem quite close. I would expect you to get to know Malleus quite well if you are leading a club with Lilia."

What was Cater getting himself into? He couldn’t interact with fae royalty. He couldn’t be close with one of the most powerful mages in the world!

"Don't think that's such a bad thing," March continued at seeing Cater's nervous expression. He looked between Cater and Trey as he advised them. "Night Raven tends to be full of people with their own agendas. It can be cutthroat that way. My best advice for you is to use that. You can find friendships here, and cherish them if you do, but if you cannot make friends, make allies. If you have an opportunity to ally with powerful people, take it."

"Do not be the person at others mercy," Matteo added. "The best way to avoid such a thing is to avoid being the weakest, by any means necessary."

A moment of unsteady silence passed as March looked towards a clock on one wall of the cafeteria. "I'm going to go check on other students," he said, grabbing his unfinished lunch tray as he stood, looking back at Cater and Trey. "I'm always available if either of you ever have an issue. Night Raven has its difficulties; I want to make sure you both can succeed here." With a glance at Matteo, he walked towards other tables filled with Heartslabyul students. Matteo was quick to stand and follow, leaving Trey and Cater to finish their meal alone in thought.

Cater turned his head slightly to look at Trey. “That was kinda a lot.”

Trey nodded. “I don’t really know what I expected from this school, but I don’t think this was it.”

“Feel ya there.”

They were quiet for a long while, each finishing their meals without speaking any further to one another. They let March and Matteo’s advice settle into their minds, unsure of what it would mean for them.

Did Cater really belong here? Was he even powerful enough to attend any arcane academy, much less the famous Night Raven College? And after hearing everything that March and Matteo had said to them, maybe even if Cater was powerful enough to attend, he still wasn't sure if he was cut out for this.

How could Cater avoid being the "weakest," as Matteo had described, if he already felt so behind in both his own magical ability and familiarity with the magical world as a whole? None of his closest family members had a drop of magic within them. He was sure he had some magical ancestors or distant cousins or something, but certainly not anyone of note. As far as he was concerned, Cater was the very first of his bloodline to contain enough magical ability to be accepted into an arcane academy.

There was no way Cater could be stronger, more powerful, than those who grew up in this world, those who had been learning and training their magic from the day it first manifested, perhaps even earlier.

But... maybe he just had to be more creative with it? Maybe he would have to make alliances (hopefully friendships, too) to make himself powerful, because he would be connected to powerful people.

If Cater fell behind in raw magical ability, or of knowledge of magic, maybe he could succeed in other ways.

Before he could figure out just how he was going to succeed, lunch was over and it was time to go to class.

The final class of the day was History of Magic with Professor Trein. From even the first day, Cater knew this was going to be a difficult class to stay awake in. From the monotone drone of Trein's voice, to its placement directly following lunch, to the fact that it was a history class, Cater was pretty much guaranteed to fall asleep. 

Trein's cat, Lucius, seemed to be determined to catch anyone who dared to nap—though hopefully there weren't many on the first day of classes. Lucius spent a good deal of time lounging on the desk in front of Cater, which wasn't helping him stay focused on the lecture.

Still, he got through the class without much issue, parting with Trey and heading to the main doors of NRC to meet March. He stood just outside the doors, watching other students come to and fro as he waited. It didn't take long for March to arrive, and they started to walk down main street.

As they stopped in front of each of the seven statues, March went in depth about the legends based around each individual, and the qualities in them each dorm represented. Cater learned about the Queen of Heart's spirit of strictness, the King of Beast's persistent spirit, the Sea Witch's benevolence, the Sorcerer of the Sands mindfulness, the tenacity of the Fairest Queen, the diligence of the King of the Underworld, and the noble spirit of the Thorn Fairy. There seemed to be a lot a lot to learn; Cater once again felt like a complete stranger to this world.

At least... not everyone seemed opposed to talking to strangers. There were some that were willing to help someone like him catch up on things that he didn't grow up learning. Like March and Matteo, or Trey.

Cater wondered how much he could ask March before the housewarden got bored of answering. How much could he learn from one person, and what sorts of things could he ask about?

"Matteo said something yesterday," Cater began slowly. "Something about a Heartslabyul tradition, some kind of party? Was it a birthday party?"

March chuckled as they continued to walk down main street, slowly making their way back inside the school. "It's actually an Unbirthday party."

Turning his head to the side, Cater blinked in confusion. "What's an Unbirthday supposed to be?"

"A tradition passed down from the Queen of Heart's time. She quite enjoyed parties, and enjoyed coming up with any reason she could to have them. One of the most famous being Unbirthday parties, taking place on days in which no one in attendance has a birthday." March continued to explain as they climbed the steps to enter the building once again. "Heartslabyul students enjoy the events almost as much as the Queen did, so we continue holding them. It differs from year to year on how many parties we hold; I tend to do about one Unbirthday party a month. Not overwhelming everyone’s schedules, but enough for there to always be something to look forward to."

"Huh," was all Cater said. Heartslabyul really did have a lot of parties and events, didn't they? The way March framed it certainly sounded like a plus, but Cater wasn't sold.

His sisters always liked to throw parties, especially when their parents were away. Cater tried avoiding those nights as much as he could; he didn't like Taylor and Tiffany's friends, and he didn't like how much of a mess they made—a mess that Cater would usually end up cleaning. In the last few months before Cater left for school, it had just gotten worse. They were older, they had more friends, and they loved showing off their magic-using brother to anyone who happened to cross their path, no matter what Cater wanted to do.

It didn't seem like Heartslabyul's parties would be much like Taylor and Tiffany's, though. Just the other Heartslabyul students, no alcohol, and no one forcing him to do something he didn't want to do.

A tea party sounded much nicer.

Soon after, the two of them arrived in the mirror chamber and finished the walk back to Heartslabyul.

They parted ways when they arrived inside Heartslabyul's main building, Cater going up to his room to change into his dorm uniform and put away his school bag, while March went about his housewarden duties. When Cater arrived at his room, no one else happened to be in the room, so he was quick to change and then head down to the dorm lounge.

The evening passed rather quickly. Most of the upperclassmen had more rigorous homework than the freshmen did, so the lounge was much quieter than it had been the day before, with most students trying to get things done, and the freshmen (who had less work) trying to avoid the upperclassmen's wrath. Cater himself had a few things to get done, but it wasn't a ton, and it wouldn't be due the following day, so while he worked on it, he wasn't particularly concerned about it. Eventually, it was time for dinner, and not too long after that, time for bed.

The second day of classes was much like the first. They began with homeroom, followed by potions, physical training, arithmancy, a short break for lunch, and finally, animal linguistics. The way Cater understood how the class schedule worked for freshmen was that there were certain classes all freshmen took (such as alchemy, history of magic, and physical training), and others that not everyone took in that first semester, but would take in some future semester, like astrology or animal linguistics. Cater hadn't selected these classes, nor had any other freshman, but so far, they seemed enjoyable enough.

During the lunch break, March and Matteo didn't stop by their table for nearly as long as the previous day, instead just greeting them as they passed by. Trey and Cater once again sat together, this time with Nova, Quinn, and a few other Heartslabyul students. They talked about their classes so far, but more importantly, they all swapped various rumors that had already begun to get passed around the school. They talked about other dorms and the things they'd heard, and a large portion of the conversation seemed to focus on Diasomnia, particularly on the one and only Malleus Draconia.

A lot of Cater's fellow students seemed to know a lot about him, a few even considered themselves experts. Cater doubted that, but while he had known who Malleus Draciona was before coming to NRC, he clearly hadn't known nearly as much as everyone else seemed to.

"I heard he challenged his housewarden just ten minutes after orientation ended," one of them whispered. 

"He's got some kind of vampire here with him for some reason."

"I heard that he banished his tutors, which is why he has to go to school at all."

"I heard he killed his tutors."

Cater looked around at all his classmates, confused at the words they were saying. Where had they even heard these things?

"Have any of you ever actually talked to him?" Cater found himself asking, all those within earshot turned to him, mouths agape.

"Are you kidding?"

"That's insane!"

"Why would we talk to him?"

"He'd vaporize us if we got too close!"

Rolling his eyes, Cater continued. "Do you actually know that? Yeah, he's powerful, he seems off-putting, but he's a student like the rest of us. There's nothing wrong with talking to a fellow student." He glanced over to where many Diasomnia students usually sat during lunch, happening to catch Lilia's eyes when he looked up. Lilia smiled and waved, Cater waving back. When Cater looked back to his own table, nearly everyone was staring at him in shock.

"You know the vampire?!"

Cater looked back, confused. "Vampire? That's Lilia, he's my club mate, he'd not a—" He stopped. Lilia was pretty vampire-like. "Okay, he might be a vampire, but he's also still our classmate."

Being scared of Malleus, that Cater could understand. He was scared too, but didn't appreciate the idea of spreading unfounded rumors—but Lilia was just like any other student, wasn't he? A bit weird, a bit mysterious, but so was everyone else. Cater couldn't see any reason to be afraid of Lilia, besides the fact that he was close to Malleus.

But Cater seemed to be the only one that thought that. He'd been thinking about what March had said the day before, and he didn't like how fast everyone seemed to judge one another without truly knowing anything about them. Cater himself was nervous to run into Malleus, and a part of him hoped that he never would, but it didn't mean Cater was going to spread insane and untrue rumors about him. If anything, that would be a sure way to get someone like that on his bad side, which he really didn't want.

Despite Cater's protests, it didn't seem like any of the other Heartslabyul students he'd been talking to changed their opinion on Malleus, but maybe they wouldn't be so quick to spread rumors. Or maybe they wouldn't change a thing. Cater had no idea, but at least he'd tried.

Only a few minutes after getting out of animal linguistics (Cater's last class of the day), his phone buzzed, and he pulled it out to see an announcement made in an official Heartslabyul group chat. The fact that Heartslabyul had an official group chat could lead to all sorts of somewhat concerning situations, but Cater banished the thought as he opened the announcement to see that a mandatory dorm meeting would be held that night, detailing information for the following days Unbirthday party.

A small group of Heartslabyul freshmen speculated on the message as they made their way to the mirror chamber after classes were over. It seemed that March had told more than just Cater a bit about Heartslabyul traditions, but no one seemed to know very much. Trey seemed to know more than anyone else, a few others from the Queendom of Roses were almost as informed. Trey explained that they were probably just going to talk about the assignments that each student would have in order to prepare for it. Still, many of them had no idea what that could entail, as they'd never heard of such thing as an "Unbirthday party" before.

But they showed up to the dorm meeting all the same.

Apparently Heartslabyul had a courtroom. 

Like, a literal courtroom, where the dorm meetings were held. And everyone was supposed to line up in a specific order according to their year and suit. Matteo stood at the front of the room, in front of the "judge" stand, directing those who were unsure of where they should be standing, disappearing through a doorway when everyone was in their correct place.

The meeting began when March stepped onto the stand, Matteo trailing behind.

March's dorm uniform was different from everyone else's. He had the white dress pants and waistcoat like everyone else (although half of his was red, the other half black), but the similarities seemed to end there. Instead of the jacket that everyone else had, he wore a white coat with long tails in the back, the inner lining of the coat the same checkered pattern as one of the mismatched sleeves of the other students uniforms. March also had a long cape draped over his shoulder, black on the outside and red on the inside, long enough to reach the floor. The cape was attached by a strap around his neck, with the logos of all four suits embroidered onto the strap. And finally, a large golden crown on his head, although it seemed more like a tiara or even a headband for it to fit in front of his ears. He stood up on the stand, smiling at the Heartslabyul students that were gathered, and began.

"Hello, Heartslabyul students. I hope the beginning of the semester has treated you well." His eyes scanned the rows of students all standing at attention—apparently another part of Heartslabyul tradition. "These meetings are filled with all sorts of formalities, so beyond this one, I do not plan to be calling for a dorm-wide meeting such as this unless it proves itself absolutely necessary. This meeting should be rather quick, so rest easy," he continued, a few students breathing sighs of relief or even chuckling, "I won't take too much of your time."

True to his word, the meeting was rather quick, March just going over the tradition as well as the preparation assignments each student had. The upperclassmen were mostly split between cooking and decorating (also including overall set-up), a few designated to be in charge of individual tasks. All the freshmen were assigned to paint the roses, which seemed to be a rather pointless task, but one determined by tradition, and still upheld so many decades later. March then told them a rough schedule for when things should be accomplished, before dismissing all students, claiming he would be available afterwards if anyone had any questions.

And well, Cater had a lot of questions, but he didn't typically like to ask whatever questions he had, knowing that everyone around him already knew the answers. He'd just figure things out as it happened.

More than anything else, Cater just didn't understand why Heartslabyul had so many rules and traditions. Like, yeah, it was because of the Queen of Hearts and whatever, but why did it matter?

Parties were fun, Cater had to admit. And theming all the students after a deck of cards was entertaining, too. So many things that Heartslabyul seemed pointless, but weren't bad per se. Cater didn't mind, he just didn't understand it.

Cater especially didn't understand painting the roses red.

Like, probably the most common type of rose was red. Why couldn't they just plant red roses?

The freshmen got a rather early start on painting the roses the morning of the Unbirthday party. A couple upperclassmen were there to lead and assist, just to make sure the freshmen were able to do it right on their first try.

Despite having a bit of help, it took a good portion of the day to get all the roses painted. They were doing entirely too much work outside in the heat of the day. By the end of it, Cater could feel his sweat causing his makeup to smear and strands of hair to stick to his face. It did not feel pleasant.

He’d most certainly have to take a shower and clean himself up before the party actually started—at least he’d elected to not wear his dorm uniform while painting roses, since he’d have to wear that for the party.

When all the roses were finally painted, the freshmen were released to clean up, and they pretty much had free time until the party started. The rest of the sophomores and juniors seemed to be just getting started on their duties for the party (aside from a few that had been cooking nearly all day). Cater was relieved to get back inside to enjoy some nice air conditioning, but as badly as he wanted to just crash onto his bed and nap until the party started, he felt way too gross to lay in bed.

The small bathroom connected to their bedroom only had one tiny shower, which Quinn had gotten to first. The other three could either wait, or go down to the dorm’s communal showers. Cater and Nova both elected to use the communal showers, while Trey decided to wait to use their private one.

He showered, changed into fresh clothes (the base layer of his dorm uniform), then dried and styled his hair, and finally reapplied his makeup, the red diamond mark as the finishing touch. From that point on, the day would mostly be spent waiting for the Unbirthday party to begin. Cater tried to be productive, or to at least do something other than wait, but he was unsuccessful. The remaining few hours were spent almost entirely on his phone, scrolling mindlessly until it was time for the party to begin.

The Unbirthday party opened with March reciting something like a speech, checking off things that were meant to be done in order for the party to begin. It still all felt a little silly to Cater, but he went along with it.

The party was nice. The garden was decorated well, and there was good food and beautiful desserts—even though Cater didn’t have a taste for sweets. It was certainly a much better party than any that Cater had been to, especially any hosted by his sisters.

At least an hour or so must have passed, and Cater was sitting at a table near to the center of the clearing on one of many mis-matched chairs, watching the party around him. He began to notice smiles, laughter, and all the signs of people genuinely enjoying themselves. He hadn’t considered whether he’d witness such a sight.

The traditions didn’t seem to get in the way of enjoyment at all—at least, not in the way it was handled now. Maybe they even added to it in certain ways. Sure, painting the roses was exhausting work, but it was something that all the freshmen did together. That had to mean something, right?

Maybe Heartslabyul traditions weren’t just about following the old Queen’s rules, maybe there was a certain pride that came with their dorm and its history. Cater hadn’t thought about it that way before, but he found himself becoming fond of some of the traditions. He found himself being fond of Heartslabyul itself.

Chapter Text

"Remember, astrology is far more than just the study of the stars. What are you able to glean from the information presented here?"

Professor Grandiere paced the room, watching as many students avoided her gaze, intent at not answering the question. She taught the astrology courses at Night Raven, one of few female teachers at the school, but easily one of the most noteworthy professors. She was an expert in the field of astrology, and that became very clear to every student in her class. Her dark robe trailed behind her on the floor as she paced, waiting for a student to be daring enough to answer her question.

It had been a few weeks since the first days of classes, and the first Heartslabyul Unbirthday party, and Cater was finally starting to fall into a sort-of routine. His schedule was rather consistent from day-to-day, filled with classes, club activities, homework, and dorm duties. He did find that—even beyond the novelty of being someplace new—Cater actually did like it here. He was learning so much, and doing things that he'd never thought possible. Cater felt happier, freer than he ever had before.

Some subjects seemed to come easily for him, and others were far more difficult. History, for one, was not Cater's strong suit. With the combination of boring lectures, and a comprehensive history of things he'd never heard of before, none of it was going to be easy to learn, but there were other things that Cater found he had a knack for.

While most of the class was silent, Cater glanced around. Professor Grandiere's question shouldn't be that difficult to answer, right? She'd practically given them the answer mere minutes ago, but no one wanted to answer. She cast a stern look around the room, which only seemed to make the students less willing to answer.

Perhaps a bit nervously, Cater raised his hand. This wasn't something he was used to doing. He didn't think he was stupid; he would answer if he ever happened to get called on (and if he'd been paying attention, he'd probably get it right), but he'd never been the type of student to just volunteer an answer. Night Raven really seemed to be changing him—hopefully for the better.

"The constellations visible in that picture show that it's in a fire season, so fire magic is amplified."

Professor Grandiere looked down at Cater briefly, before nodding. "That is correct. Does anyone have any examples of how a circumstance such as this could have an impact on our lives?"

Someone else answered this question, and him and a couple other students basically took turns answering every question throughout the remainder of the class. That was how it had been more often than not in this class so far, but Cater didn't mind. He didn't participate much in many of his other classes, but this one was different.

Cater enjoyed astrology, probably more than anyone else in his class. He'd always enjoyed looking at the sky, mapping out certain stars in his head, finding new ways to learn about them whenever he could. He'd often thought that there was something more to the stars, but never knew before just how right he was. To non-mages, astrology was about predicting events and people based on the alignment of the constellations, and that was sort of true, but while the stars didn't directly have an effect on people's choices or personalities, they did affect the magic that existed in the world.

That meant that certain mages might be more powerful at certain points in the year, or that certain spells would be easier to cast, maybe even that the barrier between mage and magical energy would be much thinner than usual. The alignment of stars could not only cause such things, but it could predict major events that would shake the magical world to its core.

The bell rang and dismissed them from class. Cater packed up his books, shoving them into his school bag before standing up and joining the crowd of his fellow classmates on their way to the cafeteria.

The past month had been pretty good, Cater supposed, and not just from an academic or magic-using standpoint. Cater felt like he had friends. Maybe they weren't friendships that would last forever, but they were people he liked and people who liked him back. He had a group that he always sat with during lunch, and they never seemed to run out of things to talk about. And inside the dorm, too. Evenings spent in the dorm lounge, conversing with other Heartslabyul students, were some of the best—even when he should have been working on homework.

As Cater walked towards the cafeteria, he chatted with Trey about their classes so far that day. Things today weren't particularly different from other days, but there were always things to talk about.

"You're really good at astrology," Trey said nonchalantly, and Cater almost stumbled over his own feet.

"I am?" he replied, perhaps a bit dumbly. "You really think I am?"

Trey shrugged. "Well, yeah. You know more than anyone else in that class, and it's not even close."

Cater scrunched up his nose, considering what Trey had told him. Was he starting to become a nerd? He knew a lot about the stars already, sure, but he hadn't realized how much more he seemed to know than his classmates. 

It wasn't Cater's intention to be a nerd—decent at his classes, sure, but the best at even just one subject? The idea felt so foreign to him. He often struggled to pay attention at all during classes, so this was definitely an unexpected jump.

But was it a bad thing?

Looking at Trey, Cater could probably get away with describing him as the definition of a nerd, but it wasn't a bad thing when it came to Trey. Like, he was attractive. And he wasn't just smart, he was funny, he was a really good cook, and so many other things—more than Cater could even think of.

"Huh," Cater said quietly. Maybe he didn't hate the idea of being the best at something. "I couldn't tell."

They arrived at the cafeteria, selecting their meal before joining their other friends at a table near one of the large windows against the back wall.

They didn't talk about anything of note—they hardly ever did, really, but they were able to just talk and laugh and have a good time. It was a much-needed break from the hours of classes they had every day. Much of this particular lunch conversation was focused on this month's upcoming Unbirthday party, the second one of the semester.

"Yeah, no, I'm officially off rose-painting duty," Trey said, perhaps a bit too smug. "Just had to demonstrate my skills, and now I'm on the cooking team."

"Luckyyyy," complained Nova. "Painting roses takes so much work, it's exhausting."

"Maybe we'll be better at it this time," Quinn supplied. "I mean, we're better at magic now. It should go at least a little faster than before."

"But we had upperclassmen helping us last time," Cater added, poking his fork through some pieces of lettuce in the salad he'd chosen for lunch today. "They're totally not gonna help us again, and Trey isn't, either." He turned his head to look at Trey, jokingly pouting at him. "How dare you leave us to such an awful task?"

Trey chuckled. "I'm sure you'll manage. If nothing else, it shouldn't be as hot this time."

Cater perked up slightly at the reminder. "True," he chirped; that would certainly make a world of difference when it came to the arduous task.

The topic of conversation shifted a few more times before the lunch period was over, and they all had to attend their final class of the day. Trey and Cater walked together towards Trein's lecture hall for History of Magic. The class went by quickly enough, Cater definitely nodding off a few times during the lecture, but it wasn’t awful, he supposed.

Once that class was over, it was time for Cater’s club meeting—which should easily become the best part of his day.

Humming to himself, Cater walked from Professor Trein's lecture hall towards the music room where his club meetings were held. He thoroughly enjoyed his club meetings with Lilia. Sometimes they'd jam, each picking instruments that the classroom had available for them to use, and sometimes they wouldn't play any music at all, preferring to just sit and chat. It was only the two of them in their club, so how they chose to spend their time was entirely up to them. He was wondering just what they would do today. Cater was in a music-making mood, so he liked the idea of just jamming out today, but Lilia might have different plans.

Whatever would happen, Pop Music Club was always a good place to be. Lilia already felt like such a good friend—and it had only been a month. Cater certainly couldn't go wrong no matter what their activity was for the day.

He reached the door to the music classroom, still humming to himself as he pushed open the door, but soon stopped dead in his tracks, staring wide-eyed at what—or rather, who—was in front of him.

Why was Malleus Draconia in the Pop Music Club meeting room?

What the hell was happening?

Mere moments away from completely freaking out, Cater did his best to plaster on a smile and calm expression as Lilia started to explain.

“I told him he could come and try out some of the instruments, is that alright?”

What was Cater supposed to do? Tell Malleus Draconia no? Of course he could come in and try the instruments; it wasn’t like Cater really had a choice in the matter. This was the heir of Briar Valley, already one of the most powerful mages in existence—and he was just Cater Diamond.

“Of course,” Cater replied, a bit warily. “You’re welcome to anything you’d like.”

“I thank you, Diamond, for your generosity, and for your friendship towards Lilia.”

Should Cater be bowing? He should probably be bowing. Oh shit, had he already screwed up that badly? What was one supposed to do when interacting with royalty? Lilia seemed so… casual about it. Should he be casual about it, too?

Oh, Sevens, what was he doing?

"It's nothing," Cater said quickly, almost certain that this was the wrong way to be speaking to literal royalty, but try as he might, he couldn't come up with something better. "Any friend of Lilia is a friend of mine."

Friend? Was he insane?!

He couldn't just call the goddamn heir of Briar Valley a friend. Cater was like, literally a peasant. He should be saying "your highness" or some bullshit like that.

Malleus... smiled at him. It was a bit unnerving, to be honest, what with the horns, the fangs, the reptile-like eyes, and the way he towered over Cater, but it didn't feel threatening. It was a smile, a genuine smile.

Maybe this really was okay. Cater had told off his dormmates for judging someone like Malleus without actually knowing anything about him, and now Cater was starting to do the very same thing. March had warned him that he'd likely end up interacting with Malleus one way or another, so he had to take advantage of the situation. This was fine, it was okay for Malleus to hang out at their club meeting, everything was fine—it could give Cater a chance to "ally himself with powerful people."

It felt mean.

The smile that Cater had received from Malleus was genuine. Cater could tell that much. He could tell that the heir of Briar Valley was not some pretentious asshole who didn't give two shits about anyone around him. He could tell that Malleus Draconia was a fellow student, and not just in name.

There were certainly still things about Malleus that were somewhat off-putting, and Cater didn't think that would ever change, but maybe it wouldn't matter all that much.

As Lilia guided Malleus around the classroom, inviting him to try out any instrument he wanted, Cater dropped his school bag on a chair, grabbed a guitar that belonged to the school, and sat himself on top of a table. He absentmindedly strummed a few chords, before trying to pluck out the melody he’d been humming earlier as he walked. He didn’t want to give the impression that he was nervous with Malleus being so nearby, but he wasn’t sure the best way to go about it. Full on ignoring his presence seemed wrong, but so did keeping an eye on him.

He was probably overthinking this; if Malleus felt offended, Cater would probably be burnt to a crisp by now (or something similar), but he was perfectly fine.

Still, Cater’s heart kept racing.

Malleus and Lilia seemed to be looking at the few string instruments that the classroom held—violins, cellos, and the like. Cater hadn’t looked at those much himself, since he didn’t play them, but he knew that the school had at least a few of those instruments stored in the classroom. Malleus seemed quite interested in those from what Cater could tell (which, admittedly, was not much, because he was trying to pay little attention to the fae).

Focusing instead on the guitar, on the melody he was trying to play, Cater forced himself to relax. He was fine. Everything was fine.

Music was something Cater was comfortable with, something he was good at. He enjoyed singing, always had, and jumped at the opportunity he had to learn guitar in public school. He didn’t own a guitar, or any instruments, but that wasn’t a surprise to him. Cater’s parents had plenty of money, but no intentions to contribute to Cater’s interests, so he usually ended up with a lot of stuff that he didn’t really care about, but his sisters thought he should like.

He didn’t mind, really. All the schools he’d gone to had guitars available for him to use at the school, so he didn’t really need one. He was somewhat surprised to learn that Night Raven did have music classes, and provided a few instruments for students to use. Sure, nothing that belonged to a school was going to be particularly high-quality, but Cater was just glad to have an opportunity to play.

As Cater strummed, he continued humming. What was the tune he had stuck in his head? He didn’t recognize it as anything he knew—did he come up with it?

Cater had never written a song before, but he’d occasionally write or improvise guitar solos. He did a bit more of it with Lilia, just the two of them jamming out, but it was all about creating something that fit within the framework of a song that already existed. This felt much newer, much more original.

Finding that the acoustic guitar that Cater had selected did not seem to fit the vibe of the tune he’d started playing, Cater stood and walked the few feet across the classroom to put that guitar back on its stand and instead select an electric guitar, but right as Cater had put down the acoustic, he started to feel lightheaded.

The last thing Cater could comprehend was an ear-splitting shriek, and his vision fading to black as his body collapsed to the ground.

It was bright, far too bright, when Cater opened his eyes. His whole body seemed to ache just slightly, and his brain was a little slow to realize what had happened. He was on the ground, lying on his back. It seemed to still be his club meeting, but he had no idea what time it was.

“Oh, he’s awake!”

Cater heard Lilia’s voice, and then Lilia was kneeling above him.

“You alright?”

Slowly, Cater tried to sit up and nod, but he definitely felt a little lightheaded. “What happened?”

“Malleus tried to use the electric violin,” Lilia began. “It didn’t go so well.”

Malleus seemed to be deep in thought. “I don’t understand how a mechanized version could be so different to play.”

Lilia glanced back at Malleus, deep in thought, then looked again at Cater. “Sorry about that. I should have told him to be more careful.”

Shaking his head, Cater replied, “No, it’s alright. I’m… I’m just gonna head back to my dorm now.”

“Do you want us to walk you there?” Lilia offered, but Cater refused.

“No, no, I’m good, thanks.”

He didn’t tell anyone what happened when he got back to his dorm. He found out rather quickly that he was a little bit late to getting back than he usually was, so he just said that his club meeting ran long, and then he threw himself into his homework.

If he had elected to share that Malleus Draconia had joined in his club meeting, and did something that ended up with Cater passed out on the ground, that certainly wouldn’t go over well in the dorm. Most everyone would probably become firmer in their stance that the heir of Briar Valley was a powerful and pretentious mage that they should stay away from—but Cater didn’t want that at all!

In settling down for bed that night, Cater laid awake thinking about that afternoon. He’d never been so close to royalty before. Malleus was powerful, both in magic and in influence, but he didn’t seem to be like, mean about it. He just seemed to be a little bit… confused when it came to human lives, since his was so different.

Cater thought maybe everyone else was too quick to judge Malleus based on appearances or rumors, because he didn’t seem to be pretentious or anything. He didn’t really look like he wanted to do anyone any harm. Malleus seemed genuinely excited to go to the Pop Music Club meeting, to get to try out a lot of different instruments. To Cater, that meant something.

To be honest, Cater didn’t really want to be close to Malleus any more than his dormmates did, but he didn’t want that to be because of stupid rumors that the fae intended to harm those around him. Cater mostly wanted to fly under the radar at Night Raven, and that certainly wouldn’t happen if crowds of people fell silent and cleared a way for his friend to pass through.

It didn’t seem to matter what Cater wanted, though. For one reason or another, he was being pushed into interacting with Malleus, and he figured he’d have to live with that. He’d have to embrace that.

Chapter Text

Malleus Draconia would not leave him alone.

Ever since club meeting, the heir of Briar Valley would actively seek Cater out and try to make up for what had happened. It was… a nice thought, Cater had to admit, but it was most definitely too much. It became increasingly difficult for Cater to simply exist at school with the 6’5” or whatever plus horns goth prince following him around.

And look, Cater didn’t think Malleus meant anyone harm, but that fact was: everyone else did, and since they did, they started to steer clear of Cater. That was not great for the social life Cater had hoped to have at NRC.

They were not in the same class, but they did have occasional joint classes together. Whenever that happened, Malleus would almost hover behind Cater, watching him closely, but never saying a word. Cater didn’t know how to ask him to stop.

How does one tell royalty to not do something? Cater certainly didn’t know. He was like, a regular person. He wasn’t used to being around people like Malleus.

Whenever Cater was in the botanical gardens, collecting plants needed for his alchemy classes, Malleus would be there, and he would gather everything that Cater needed within minutes, and shove it all into Cater’s arms.

“Um, thanks,” Cater would reply, before continuing on with whatever he needed to do next.

This went on for days, and Cater had no idea how to get it to stop.

After a week of this, Cater was just walking through a hallway, classrooms lining either side, on his way to the mirror chamber to get back to Heartslabyul. Malleus stepped out in front of him, and Cater stopped, looking up at Malleus’s face.

“Diamond,” Malleus said quietly, “Would you be so kind as to step in here quickly?” He motioned to a classroom with an open door, right beside where Cater was standing.

Well, what was Cater supposed to do? Say ‘no?’

“Uh, okay,” Cater replied, walking into the classroom, Malleus following.

The classroom was empty, small, and not one that Cater had been in before. He wasn’t sure what else to do, until Malleus beckoned him to sit. Then, Malleus directed him to open a box that Malleus placed on Cater’s lap—a box that looked suspiciously shaped like a guitar case.

“Briar Valley is not well known for making more modern instruments,” Malleus explained, “but I did manage to locate one shop that created them. I have also enchanted it to be unbreakable, to not tarnish, and for the case to open for none but you.”

Cater stared in awe at the beautiful electric guitar that sat in front of him after he’d opened the case. He was quite surprised to hear that such instruments were made anywhere in Briar Valley, since they seemed so… opposed to modern technology, but there was a certain level of beauty that the instrument contained that Cater knew could be found in no other instrument. From the dark, almost black, wood of the fingerboard, to the thorn-like pattern on the body, it was the most gorgeous thing that Cater had ever seen—and it was a much higher quality instrument than he deserved.

And besides, just why was Malleus giving this to him? To make up for Cater accidentally getting knocked out?

What was even going on?

“Oh, I can’t accept this.”

He wanted to. He really wanted to, but he didn’t deserve this. Not at all.

Malleus’s head tilted to the side, confused. “You… do not appreciate the gift?”

“No, no, that’s not what I—” He stopped. Why was this so hard? “I mean, I do appreciate it, it just—it wasn’t really necessary.”

“I do not understand. I have wronged you, and now you do not accept my gift to make it right?”

“You didn’t wrong me; this is a magic school. Things happen.”

Cater’s explanation did not seem to help Malleus at all.

“What do you mean by ‘things?’”

Sevens, this was gonna be hard. Cater felt he was already grasping at straws, finding any reason he could to get this prince off his back, but it was not working.

“Well, uh, I mean, accidents happen.” Malleus still seemed confused. “You didn’t mean to make me pass out or anything. You just didn’t know that’s what would happen. I don’t think that puts you in my debt or anything. It was just an accident.”

“I believe I understand now,” said Malleus as he rose from his seat. Cater breathed a sigh of relief. “If I were to purposefully wrong you, then you would accept my gift and all would be well between us.”

“Exactly! But you haven’t purposefully done anything wrong to me so I can’t accept this—”

He hadn’t finished his refusal of the gift before Malleus had begun to speak again.

“Would inconveniencing you so that you miss curfew count as purposefully wronging you?”

“I guess—wait, what?”

The door slammed shut. Green-tinted magic surrounded the doorknob, and Cater knew it would likely burn him or something if he attempted to open the door.

“I will return after curfew to let you out, and you will accept my gift.” It wasn’t a request; this was most definitely an order.

“Wait, Malleus, this is—you don’t—wait!” Malleus disappeared in a burst of green flame. “Shit,” was all Cater could say. Was he really was locked in until after curfew? Had Malleus had really just done that to him?

What the hell?

This was really happening.

Great.

The Malleus Draconia had just trapped Cater in a random classroom. What the hell was he supposed to do in a situation like this? His magic was definitely not powerful enough to negate Malleus’s spell, he wasn’t strong enough to brute force his way out, either, and most all classes and club meetings were over by now so the chances that someone might walk by and help him escape were slim to none.

Well… there was something he certainly could try.

He wouldn’t manage to avoid the pain he knew would befall anyone that tried to touch the doorknob, but he could prevent there from being any lasting damage while still managing to escape.

Cater pulled out his magical pen from the pocket of his jacket, muttered the incantation to his signature spell, and summoned a clone.

His double moved quickly, oddly cheerful despite only existing as a sacrifice so that Cater could escape the classroom. Cater watched as the clone’s hand reached for the aflame doorknob without a moment’s hesitation and—

And nothing happened.

He hadn’t expected the clone to physically react to the sensation of the doorknob; they didn’t really feel things, instead delaying the feeling for Cater to experience when he eventually took the clones down.

But Cater was disheartened to see that the door did not budge.

Sighing, Cater released the spell that had created his clone, hissing through his teeth and flexing his hand as he felt like his skin was melting off—though, of course, it wasn’t. He wouldn’t even have a physical mark, and while the pain was awful, it was over within seconds. Once the pain had subsided, Cater looked back at the door and groaned.

Now what was he supposed to do?

Even his clone hadn’t managed to open the door. Malleus’s spell wasn’t just to ward Cater off from attempting to escape, it was also keeping the door shut—no matter the effort put into opening it.

Cater was fully and completely trapped.

The only thing Cater could think of was to pull out his phone and send off a quick text, alerting at least someone to his unusual situation.

trey pls dont be mad but i wont be back before curfew tonight

He had to wait a few minutes before he received an answer, which was phrased in pretty much the exact way that he expected.

What do you mean? What’s wrong?
Cater so help me if you’re in trouble…

its not my fault i promise
its just that malleus has decided to trap me in a classroom
until after curfew
so that ill accept a gift he got for me

…
Cater what the hell did you get yourself into.

i promise ill explain everything just cover for me
pls

For good measure, he added a string of pleading face emojis, until Trey responded with a ‘Fine.’

thank you thank you thank you thank you!!!!

Cater checked the time on his phone. Great, now he only needed to figure out how to spend the next three hours.

Perhaps he ought to do some homework.

And that’s what he tried to do, honest. He spent a good hour or so doing his best to focus on his homework, but he’d never been very good at focusing. His mind always drifted to something more interesting, and it just became harder and harder to stay on task.

So, before long, Cater had found himself laying on the stone tiled floor of the classroom, holding his phone up in the air above his face, scrolling mindlessly through magicam.

It was a lot easier to pass the time when Cater didn't have to think of ways to pass the time. He didn't exactly like how he was always drawn to mindless activities to keep him busy, but he couldn't really help his natural reactions. It was just something he did, not something he chose to do.

Arguably, that was worse, but Cater wasn't in the mood to be all moral with himself. He was trapped in a small, cold, stone classroom for sevens' sake! He couldn't do anything about his situation, he had basically no chance of making it back to his dorm without getting in some kind of trouble. Now was not the time to guilt himself into doing something more productive with his time.

Eventually, the green flame surrounding the doorknob fizzled out, dropping an unsealed letter to the ground. Cater quickly jumped up, running towards the door just to see if it would open. Miraculously, it did, and without so much as a surge of heat as Cater had grabbed the doorknob. Relieved, Cater went back into the classroom to grab his school bag, hesitating before he grabbed the guitar case as well. He still wasn't sure if he really should accept the guitar, but he felt that a certain somebody might manage to do something even worse to him if he didn't. 

On his way out of the classroom, Cater picked up the letter, opening it to see just what was inside. He found a single piece of paper, with only a few words written.

My deepest apologies for preventing you from keeping curfew, I do hope you will accept my gift as suitable compensation.

Cater huffed and rolled his eyes. He wasn't entirely sure if Malleus was like, actually trying to be snarky, or if his words were completely genuine, but either way, Cater didn't feel like he had much of a choice in the matter. He tucked the letter into his bag, and started out towards Heartslabyul.

This part of the evening was the most stressful—perhaps even worse than spending three hours literally locked in a classroom by himself. At any moment, Cater knew that he could run into a teacher, or a housewarden, or literally anyone, and who knows what kind of trouble he could face if that happened? He'd only been at this school for a few weeks, he couldn't be in trouble so soon! Being out past curfew probably wasn't bad enough for expulsion, but what if something like this happened again? Cater couldn't afford to get kicked out of Night Raven, this was the only place he had to himself! The only place that he could be himself!

Throughout the journey, there were many close calls, where Cater swore he heard footsteps, or talking, or anything else that was indicative of someone being just around the corner from him, but thankfully, he managed to make it all the way to the mirror chamber without running into anyone. He managed to enter through the gate into Heartslabyul, finding no one in the gardens—night sky glistening above him, dark and beautiful, blurring all the way to the horizon.

But Cater couldn't get distracted by the stars. He still needed to make it into the dorm's main building, through the lounge, and up into his bedroom without anyone noticing. Once that was done, he would be much less likely to get in trouble (he couldn't exactly get in trouble for being awake late at night, it was just about whether he'd be in his room or not).

As it so happened, right as Cater entered the common room, his luck ran out. Not only were both the housewarden and vice sitting there, but so was Trey—all three waiting for him, it seemed.

March and Matteo were sitting with their backs turned to the main entrance, but Trey must have seen Cater enter out of the corner of his vision, as he sat up straighter and looked relieved, turning his head to meet Cater’s eyes.

Cater froze, panic showing clearly in his expression. Trey had tattled on him? And not only that, but he’d also just completely given him away! Now he had literally no chance of making it back to his room without anyone noticing!

Well, even if Trey hadn't noticed him so quickly, Cater was sure that both March and Matteo had heard him come in. With March being a rabbit beastman, and Matteo being part fae, they both had much better hearing than Cater did. They both turned, almost in sync, to look at Cater, but they didn't seem angry. Why was that? Cater had quite literally broken the rules—and not even one of the sillier ones. Sure, it wasn't really his fault, but no one else at Night Raven would care who was at fault. Why would they?

Not quite sure what to say, Cater simply stood, frozen in the entryway. He was sure he looked extremely stupid; his guess confirmed by March's quiet laughter.

“Calm down, Cater, you’re not in trouble,” said March. “Trey told us about what happened, we just wanted to make sure you made it back to the dorm okay.”

He let out a breath. That was a relief.

“But we are quite curious to hear this story of yours,” Matteo added as he leaned closer towards March. “I suppose it would be rather riveting.”

“You said Malleus Draconia trapped you somewhere? So that you’ll accept a gift? What even did you do, Cater?” Trey was definitely in some form of shock, and, well, Cater couldn’t blame him.

Cater took the guitar case off his back, resting it on the floor beside his feet as he sat down in the chair opposite March and Matteo—Trey in the chair beside them.

“Lilia, Diasomnia’s vice housewarden, is my clubmate, and a couple weeks ago he invited Malleus along to the club meeting. I don’t even know what happened, but I guess Malleus accidentally cast a spell that ended up knocking me out? Ever since then he’s been really weird, following me around and trying to ‘make up for it.’” He motioned to the guitar case. “This is the latest attempt; I think the last one hopefully.”

“And… how did that end with you trapped somewhere in the school?” March seemed to be holding back a laugh. Deep down, Cater might have been a little bit offended, but he was honestly too relieved to not be in trouble that he didn’t actually care.

“I didn’t want to accept any gifts from him, I told him there was no debt to repay or score to settle or whatever, so he made one, and decided that locking me in an empty classroom for five hours was a good one.”

Now both March and Matteo had a hard time containing laughter, and out of the corner of his eye Cater could see Trey crack a smile.

“I will say, I’m not really surprised that happened,” March confessed through a slight chuckle. “I have not spoken to Malleus much personally, but that does seem accurate to what I’ve gathered about him so far.”

“Indeed, he is a quite fascinating case,” Matteo added, nodding along. “I would love to learn more… and I would love to see the gift he thought fit to bestow upon you, although I believe I can predict just what it is.” He eyed the guitar case that leaned against the chair, Cater still keeping a hand on it to secure it.

He took Matteo’s remark to be an invitation to open the case and show off the gift… which he still felt weird about owning, but he supposed there was nothing really to be done about it. He didn’t feel like he’d ever be good enough to actually deserve this instrument, but he owned it now, and that was that.

Without saying a word, Cater laid the guitar case on the coffee table in front of him, kneeling down beside it as he clicked open the latches and breathlessly opened the case. He didn’t glance up to see anyone else’s reactions; he was only consumed once again by the beauty of the instrument.

“Um, Malleus said that Briar Valley doesn’t have much modern technology, so it’s hard to find instruments like these there. But he did manage to track down one place that made them.” He led the lid of the case open and rest on the table, displaying the guitar for everyone to see. “So it’s obviously like, really good.”

No one spoke; all eyes were on Cater and the instrument.

“He also enchanted it,” Cater added. “So it can’t be broken, and the case can’t even be opened by anyone but me. It’s definitely too much,” he insisted. “I don’t deserve something like this, but I’m sure if I refused again, he’ll just trap me somewhere smaller for twice as long.”

A few soft chuckles rang out at that remark. Cater glanced up when March stood. “I believe you have found yourself a powerful ally, Cater. Possibly even a friend.”

Cater stared, dumbfounded. “Really? How did I—”

“Most students here would have done anything to keep Malleus Draconia in their debt,” March continued, crossing his arms over his chest. “You didn’t. I believe he would be able to tell that you are quite different from your average student here. Since he did work so hard to repay the debt, and you were kind enough to explain things to him, I do think you will be someone he might seek out in the future if he needs assistance, and I think he’ll also watch out for you.”

“What if I don’t want that?”

“Trust me, Cater, you do want that.”

Not quite sure if Cater liked what March was saying, he elected to remain silent. Cater didn't want to use people, especially if those people could be considered his friends. He didn't want powerful allies, he just wanted someone who wouldn't forget him when he eventually had to leave them behind.

Why did March care?

Was it some kind of act? Did March want to set Cater up for something that he knew he didn't want to do? Was this whole thing just a ploy to get Cater to try to get closer to mages that he had no chance of ever matching, and who surely had no use for him? Cater wanted to believe that March was genuine, but even after only being here for a few weeks, it was so hard to find someone who truly cared at Night Raven College.

And what did Matteo want out of all of this? He was still a complete mystery to Cater. He seemed to back up March in most anything he did, but Cater couldn't see why. He looked around at other dorms, and even at many of the upperclassmen in Heartslabyul, and he saw backstabbers, people that only rallied behind someone just so they'd have a better angle to take them out.

They both seemed so nice, but Cater knew that nice people, good people, didn't end up at Night Raven College—and if they did, they wouldn’t stay that way for long. He knew that kindness was often a façade, either to trick people into underestimating them or force people to trust them, all for their own benefit. 

As much as Cater wanted to trust March and Matteo, it was hard. One of the first things March had said to him was to be wary of the other students, for each had their agenda and would not let anyone hold them back—and now Cater was supposed to trust everything that March said? Now Cater was supposed to trust that March cared about him, and that this wasn't just to further March's agenda?

Cater looked at them, wary and unsure, until March suddenly stood and began to head towards the staircases that led up to the bedrooms.

“Ah, well. I’m off to bed. You two ought to do that same. It is past curfew, after all. Lights out in twenty.”

Matteo was quick to follow, leaving Cater and Trey alone in the silent Heartslabyul lounge. 

"Are you okay?" Trey asked quietly; Cater wasn't sure how to respond, eventually settling on insisting he was alright, even though he knew Trey didn't exactly believe him.

March and Matteo were hard to read, difficult for Cater to grasp intentions, but it was entirely different with Trey. Someone who Cater had trusted to cover for him, and then ended up telling on him directly to the housewarden? Except, it wasn't with malice, or, at least, it didn't seem like it was. Trey seemed to be concerned about Cater, and he seemed to trust March and Matteo, enough to trust that they wouldn't punish Cater for missing curfew.

Why?

None of it made sense.

Being admitted into an exclusive school for mages was the first curveball Cater’s life had thrown him, and actually being allowed to attend was the second. And then he was supposed to make friends—but not friends, allies—and yet, still friends? And he had to watch out for his upperclassmen, but it was his upperclassmen telling him to watch out?

He was powerful enough to attend this school, but not powerful enough to be respected. He had to paint the roses by hand because he couldn’t figure out the spell to just turn them red. He was terrible at studying, but had to study so much more simply because he didn’t grow up learning the history of magic. That wasn't even mentioning the wild interaction he'd had just hours ago, with a literal crown prince being all petty just so he would accept a gift with far more value than Cater had ever held in his life—and not just monetary value. 

And most of all, Cater had to be good enough at all of this to even be given a chance to keep coming back and learning more. He felt pressure from his family to already be an expert mage—but he was still just a student.

A student who had no idea what he was really doing here.

"Do you ever think," Cater began, whispering to Trey without really deciding if he wanted to talk right now, "that maybe you're in over your head?" He glanced up, examining Trey's eyes, hidden behind the black frames of his glasses. Trey's eyes were bright, some kind of golden-orange. Cater felt that perhaps this was a bit too intimate, asking deep questions, staring into someone's eyes, as they were completely alone in the middle of the night. And although they were inside, a roof above them, Cater couldn’t help but think of the stars that were certainly shining down on them right now.

He wondered which stars would be shining even brighter tonight. Would they bring him hope, increase his power—or attempt to strip him of everything he held dearly?

Trey was silent for a long time, not quite meeting Cater's gaze, but still looking in his direction. "Yeah," he eventually admitted. "This place is a lot more than I was bargaining for." His hand moved to absentmindedly scratch the back of his head. "But it’s still good, and at least we have people here to support us," he added, a slight grin gracing his face as he lifted his gaze to meet Cater’s eyes.

Cater nodded slightly, but he wasn't quite sure. Trey was obviously referring to March and Matteo when he mentioned such a support system, but it was more complicated than that.

The people Trey had decided to trust were the very people who had warned them to not trust easily, because Night Raven was full of backstabbers, people who would do anything just to further their own agendas. Cater wanted to trust; he wanted so badly to trust the people around him, but what if he trusted the wrong person? What if the person he trusted, the person he relied on most, just turned around and betrayed him?

Could he ever recover from something like that?

After a few moments of silence passed, Cater stood up, stretching his arms and grabbing the things he'd set down when he arrived. "I'm gonna go to bed," he said decisively, despite not feeling confident at all. "It's been a long day."

Without another glance behind him or at Trey, Cater started up the stairs towards his bedroom.

Chapter Text

Cater was frustrated. He'd been at this school for, what, three months now? —and he still didn't feel like he'd accomplished anything. Sure, he knew a bit more about the theory of magic, and the history of the magical world, but it wasn't like he'd actually gotten any better at using magic. He’d made some allies, maybe even a couple friends, but how much good could that do him, really? Even his unique magic was still at the same level it had been when he'd first arrived. He’d barely used it, only trying to improve the skill in private, to no avail. Upperclassmen would probably say "it takes time," but Cater didn't know if he had the time to wait. He just knew that when Taylor and Tiffany saw that he hadn't gotten any better at magic (meaning: more entertaining to mess with) that they would no longer be in support of him going to NRC. And once his sisters weren't in support of his magical education, neither would his parents.

He figured he had the rest of the semester, and if he didn't have something to show for himself by winter break, the odds of him returning in the spring were low to none.

But no one knew that. No one knew that every tiny piece of Cater's life was controlled by his sisters—enforced by his parents. No one knew that Cater wasn't truly free, because they would never let him be. He was used to that, but in a time like this it really wasn't easy. When the one thing he really wanted could be taken away from him in an instant.

It didn’t seem fair. Everyone around Cater was better than him at pretty much all facets of magic—and probably everything else—but they didn’t seem to have anything on the line. No matter what they did, they would get to come back next semester, and keep returning all the way until graduating. Even being held back for multiple years wouldn’t stop them from ever coming back to learn more. Cater was already behind, but he had to do so much more just to get another semester out of his magical education. He hated that this was his life.

The past few weeks, Cater had been pretty much running himself ragged just to accomplish something, and he still had nothing to show for it.

What else could he do?

There were only a couple weeks left until the semester was over, and Cater knew he'd end up back at his parent's house, back with his family, back where everything mattered but him. He needed to accomplish something, he needed to do something big enough that he'd either convince his family to let him come back—or something remarkable enough that no one at Night Raven would ever forget him.

And as the final Unbirthday party of the semester was fast approaching, Cater knew just the way to accomplish at least one of those goals.

As usual, painting the roses red proved to be the most time-consuming, repetitive task. Thankfully, it wasn't as hot anymore—trading the warm and sunny weather for cold air and wind. While that was better, at least, in Cater's opinion, the task still dragged on, further and further into the afternoon.

"Ugh, this is taking forever," one of Cater's fellow freshmen complained. No matter the task, and no matter how long it actually took, someone would complain.

If Cater hadn't already made up his mind, he would have just ignored the comment, but this was his chance.

"I can help with that," Cater cheerfully volunteered, nervous but determined. He pulled his magical pen out of his pocket, gripping it in his hand as his dormmates looked at him.

"What do you mean?" one of them asked.

Cater grinned, not letting anyone see how worried he was that it just wouldn't work.

"Let me show you."

A few of the dorm members around him stopped their work, watching curiously as Cater closed his eyes and took a deep breath to calm his nerves.

"I am he," Cater whispered, his grasp on his magical pen tightening, "and we are they." This would be his first time using this spell in front of other mages. Would he be able to pull it off? He'd never been able to make very many clones before, and never been able to keep them up for very long, but this was a chance to prove himself. Right now, he could show off something that only he could do, and so long as he didn't fail miserably, that had to account for something. Maybe his classmates would respect him, maybe even like him, and maybe he could be starting on a path that could lead him places he'd never dreamt would be possible. 

And if nothing else, hopefully he could leave a mark that secured him a spot in his classmates’ memory.

He took a deep breath.

"Split Card."

Two clones materialized out of thin air, grinning at the original Cater before turning to the other students that had gathered, watching, scrutinizing, and judging. They were silent for a while, in shock, then all clamored to ask him what he'd just done.

"It's my unique magic." Cater shrugged, motioning to his clones to begin on the task of painting roses as Cater explained it to his dormmates. "I can create clones of myself, though they won't last forever, so we should probably finish our job quick."

A couple people around him seemed to agree, returning to the task at hand, but not without the occasional amazed glance at either of the clones or Cater himself. Others seemed less willing to get back to the job, more interested in observing the clones and interrogating Cater about the spell.

"So how many can you make?"

"Do they act just like you?"

"How long do they last?"

"Can they use magic too?"

"Can the clones make more clones and can those clones make more clones and—"

Cater answered every question to the best of his ability, but there were some that he simply did not know the answer to—and wasn't particularly interested in finding out. With a little bit of coaxing, he managed to get everyone pretty much back on track to finish painting the roses, but no one seemed quite as diligent in finishing the task as they had before.

Once there were others there to do the work (Cater’s clones), they didn’t seem too eager to get the job done, despite having been complaining about how long it took mere minutes ago.

He wasn’t worried about it; he didn’t have a reason to be, right? Everyone was tired, it made sense that they’d relax a bit when they had the chance. And if that wasn’t the reason, it was probably because they were simply distracted by Cater’s spell.

What Cater had done was simple—to him, at least. It was exhausting, but he'd been doing it for so long that it felt like second nature. 

To the rest of Heartslabyul, it was groundbreaking.

Word of Cater's unique magic must have traveled fast, as it didn't take long for many of his upperclassmen to ask him about it. They had many of the same questions, some of which Cater still didn't have an answer for, but he tried his best.

He was unprepared when Trey approached him and asked about it. Trey's questions weren't like everyone else's. It was as if he didn't care about the spell itself—and maybe he didn't.

"When did you first discover the spell?" Trey asked, the two of them sitting in the gardens, beneath a tree, staying separate from the Unbirthday Party celebrations that went on around them. Both had cups of tea in their hands, the saucers in their laps. It would probably be breaking some kind of rule if they didn't have tea within arms reach of them at all times during an Unbirthday Party.

"When I was a kid," Cater answered after a second or two. "I think I started working on it when I was ten or eleven, but it was a year or so before I could make them last longer than a couple minutes."

"Hm," was Trey's response. He didn't seem amazed by the power like so many other students had been. Cater wondered why that was. "Do you want to know mine?"

The question surprised Cater at first. Only about half of the freshmen at Night Raven even had their unique magic by the time they began school—and a disproportionate amount of them were in Diasomnia. Cater felt like he was one of the odd ones out in Heartslabyul, considering he already had and knew how to use the spell.

But Trey knew his, too, and he was offering to show it to Cater.

"Of course!" Cater exclaimed, nodding excitedly as he stirred his sugar-less cup of tea. Even without any added sugar cubes, it was too sweet for his tastes.

"Alright..." Trey said slowly. He looked deep in thought, perhaps unsure of how best to demonstrate his ability. He grinned, seemingly having figured it out. "What's your favorite food?"

Cater was, admittedly, confused. "What? Like, anything?"

Trey nodded. "Literally anything you'd like."

"Um," Cater hesitated. His mind went blank. "How about... spicy ramen?"

With a grin, Trey nodded and closed his eyes. He pulled his magical pen from his pocket, muttering under his breath. When he was done, he looked up at Cater. 

Nothing had happened.

Unsure of what he was meant to do, Cater just looked back at Trey, clearly confused.

"Uhh..." he mumbled, eyes glancing around as he tried to figure out what Trey had done.

"Drink the tea," Trey told him after a few moments of near-uncomfortable silence.

"What?"

"Drink the tea," Trey repeated. "Trust me."

Cater looked down at his cup of tea, then back up at Trey, who was smiling at him. He supposed that he did trust Trey, and lifted the cup to his mouth. He took a sip, and discovered that the tea was an entirely different type of 'hot,' now tasting the soup broth of a spicy ramen. It was not only spicy, but warm and flavorful. His eyes widened, looking at Trey as he continued to sip at his now spicy-tasting tea.

"How did you do that?"

Trey chuckled. "My unique magic allows me to like, overwrite existing characteristics. So I can change the flavor of a food or a drink to taste like someone's favorite food, or temporarily change the color of something, stuff like that."

"That's super cool!" Cater exclaimed, putting down his tea as he met Trey's gaze.

"You think so?" Trey sounded a bit embarrassed, his face flushing ever so slightly. "When you compare my spell to a lot of other's, it really doesn't seem too special."

"Of course it's special! Have you tried it on anything else? More than just food and colors?"

"Not really," Trey replied. He looked like he didn't quite believe Cater's enthusiasm about his spell—although he appreciated it. "I probably need to get a bit better at it before I see just how far it can go."

Cater was quick to agree. "Yeah, I get that. I can only make a couple clones at a time, and they don't last super long."

He wanted to get better at his spell. He thought there could be so much potential in it, if he just got better at it. He hoped that he could make some progress with this spell. He had to get good at something.

And if he couldn't do it soon, he knew that he wouldn't get another chance.

"I think Night Raven is a good place for that," Cater said quietly. "A place where we can learn and grow, for as long as we're here." His voice trailed off towards the end, shoulders tensing up, and breaking eye contact with Trey.

Part of him wanted to confide in someone. Maybe they could help him figure out what to do, how to handle dealing with his family just so that he could ensure he would be able to come back for another semester. Maybe they would care enough to do anything to get him to stay. 

Or maybe they wouldn't care at all. Maybe they would want him to leave, and would completely crush him on the way out.

"It's a good thing we're here for a few years, then," Trey said with a slight chuckle. Cater glanced up to look at Trey for a brief moment before turning his gaze back to his lap. He wasn't sure what response he was hoping for from Trey, but it didn't change anything.

Cater wanted to trust people, but it wasn't even about trust anymore. Cater wanted to stay at Night Raven more than anything he’d ever wanted before. He would do anything to stay at school, and if there was even a chance that someone he confided in would make his situation worse, he couldn't risk it.

Somehow, Cater was going to figure out a way to stay at Night Raven College—and he was going to do it by himself.

The next portion of the Unbirthday Party—the croquet tournament—was about to begin, so Cater and Trey had to return to the party. Cater quickly finished the last of his tea—which still tasted like spicy ramen broth, thank the Sevens—before standing up and moving towards the center of the courtyard.

Thanks to the last few Unbirthday Parties, Cater had discovered that he was most certainly not a natural croquet player, but that was okay with him. Despite being one of the first few out of the tournament, he still had a good time playing, and a good time watching the remainder of the games once he was out.

He leaned on his flamingo croquet mallet as he watched the game in front of him. Cater still didn't understand why they had to use flamingos and hedgehogs to play croquet, but at least they only used the animals at Unbirthday Parties; all other games of croquet were played with normal, non-living mallets and balls. Trey was doing rather well in the tournament, despite his insistence every time that he wasn't all that good at croquet. Nova and Quinn were put into different games, but the last time Cater had checked, they were both still in. Cater was not the least bit surprised that he got out far faster than any of his roommates.

Probably about half of Heartslabyul's students had been eliminated by now. Some of them had returned to the clearing for another round of tea and desserts, others—like Cater—watched the games and cheered on the remaining players. Was it weird to be cheering in a game of croquet? Cater wasn't sure, but he also didn't think he cared.

Trey stayed in the tournament for a very long time; he might even have been the last freshman standing. He certainly lasted longer than even the housewarden, who had gotten out a little while past the halfway mark. Since he'd gotten out of the tournament, March had been walking around, observing the games and speaking with other dorm members, until he eventually settled down to watch one particular game—in which Matteo was currently winning.

Cater was a little bit surprised to learn at the first Unbirthday Party that March was no expert at croquet. It almost seemed like it should be a requirement to be the Heartslabyul housewarden, based on how often it was played in the dorm, as well as how many of the Queen's rules were tied directly to the game. But March wasn't amazing at croquet—although Matteo was—and he didn't seem to be bothered by that fact.

"I'm not the biggest fan of sports that require a lot of standing still," March had said with a laugh. "I just get impatient waiting for my turn to come around again. It's a relief to be out of the game, to be honest. My legs were getting stiff."

The remark had reminded Cater that March was, in fact, in the Track & Field club, so it made sense. March enjoyed running—and Cater had since learned that he was incredibly fast, particularly at the shorter races—so a game like croquet was not well suited to his skill set.

The tournament was over soon enough—Matteo barely losing at the last second to another junior—and the Unbirthday Party concluded not long after. Being as late in the year as it was, the sun was starting to set rather early into the evening. The tournament had concluded before five o'clock (as per the rules), but they did not have much time to finish the party cleanup before it would be too dark to do so safely. Someone asked Cater if he could make another couple clones to help with the process. He didn’t try to refuse, knowing full well that he wouldn’t be able to keep the spell running for very long. He didn’t want to disappoint anyone, or making anything harder on his dormmates.

Despite not doing much physically taxing work, Cater was terribly out of breath when he got back to his room that evening. He collapsed onto his bed, chest heaving. He’d made four clones in one day, and the total physical exertion that had been made between him and all the clones had just worn down his body.

He spent an embarrassingly long about of time simply laying on his bed, trying to catch his breath and force his body to relax and recover. As he was lying down, he reflected back on the day he’d just had.

The fourth and final Unbirthday Party of the semester had been very eventful; Cater had certainly left a mark—something he had wanted so desperately to do—so why did he feel sick to his stomach as he thought about it?

Leaving a mark—creating a version of himself that would remain in people’s minds—was so important to Cater. He knew that he’d be left alone one day, whether he was the one leaving or the one left behind, it didn’t make a difference. Cater would be alone once again, and what would he have to show for it?

He had left a mark. No one could deny that, but the thought of being nothing but a memory in the minds of his acquaintances simply saddened him.

Cater was terrified that he was going to lose this wonderful thing he’d found. He was used to losing things, to leaving people behind, to having people forget him, but it felt different this time. It felt so much worse. He didn't know for sure yet if his parents were planning to pull him out of school, but it was a very real possibility that Cater simply couldn't ignore.

Whatever happened at the end of this semester, Cater wasn’t going to just sit back and let it happen. He wasn’t going to just let his family take him away from the only place he ever truly wanted to be—and if they tried, Cater was going to fight back. He wasn’t going to lose this. Not yet.

Chapter Text

Cater laid awake in his bed. He should be going to sleep, not just because he had classes tomorrow, but he was also physically exhausted after the day he’d just had.

From what he could tell, his three roommates had all been asleep for a long time. That was probably good, it meant that none of them paid him any mind when he had finally come back to the room, way later than he should have. Long after curfew.

It wasn’t his fault, honestly. The upperclassmen had asked him to help with some things, and how could he refuse?

He was never good at saying “no,” anyway. That had been drilled into him from a young age. His sisters wanted something? It was theirs, give it to them. His sisters wanted him to play with them? Yes, he’d be delighted. His mom picked out his outfit for the first day of school—yes, she knew the best ways to style him, anyway. It was never worth fighting, because he’d never win. It was pointless to try.

At school, he had a couple months when pretty much no one asked anything of him. He had some responsibilities, but no more than anyone else—at least, no more than the other freshmen. It was nice, he could kinda do what he wanted, as long as it wasn’t breaking any rules (at least, not any of the rules that made sense). Cater appreciated this time that he had, where he was finally with people his age, people like him—where he could finally be himself.

But that time didn’t last long.

Cater liked being helpful. He liked having a use (other than being a plaything for his sisters…) but it felt kinda… weird. Everyone was nice about it, but Cater had a suspicion that they were just using him to get out of things that they didn’t want to do. It wasn’t great, but it was better than the alternative. It was better than being at home.

Anything was better than being at home.

Most of the requests from his upperclassmen settled down after the first week, to which Cater was thankful. He knew he wouldn’t be able to refuse if someone did ask him to do something, so he was relieved he wasn’t being asked. Unfortunately, Cater didn’t have enough time to fully restore his energy before the end of the semester was fast approaching.

It didn’t take long for Cater to come to the conclusion that finals week was literal hell. It was nothing like the end of the semester exams in the various public schools that Cater had been to before coming to Night Raven, and Cater wasn't sure how he had even survived in the first place. With at least one huge exam per day (sometimes multiple in one day), the week dragged on and on, and the worst part was: Cater wouldn't find out how he scored until the following week. Some of his exams, he had a rough idea of how he had performed—he knew he'd done well in his astrology and flight finals—but he was clueless when it came to most other exams he'd taken.

Studying for tests was never something Cater really needed to do in public school, but Night Raven was so different from everything he was used to. This led to a bit of a rude awakening, as Cater discovered that he did not know how to study, nor did he have the willpower to force himself to do so anyway.

The worst part of finals week was Cater knowing that he could have done better, if he had just dragged himself to his desk and buried his face in notes and textbooks until he knew everything he needed to know.

But—for better or for worse—exams were over. Cater had completed his first semester at Night Raven College, and no matter what his parents had in mind for him, it would not be his last.

An agonizing weekend was spent waiting for exam scores to be posted; some of the upperclassmen didn't seem worried (they were familiar enough with their professors and how exams were graded), but all the freshmen were losing their minds. They had no idea what to expect, and they knew that this first round of exams could set them up for their entire educational future. If they scored well on these exams, they were setting themselves up for success, but if they didn't...

Well, Cater knew that logically, one or two bad test scores probably wouldn't ruin his life forever, but it sure felt that way. And especially when his mere presence at Night Raven was on such unstable footing as it was, he really didn't want to risk failing any classes.

Still, whatever happened once those exam scores were released, no matter how good or bad Cater had done, he was going to fight for his ability to remain at Night Raven College. He wasn't going to simply roll over and let anyone else decide his fate.

But it was all too easy to say things like that. It was a lot harder to ensure that it actually happened.

Over the weekend in which Cater spent agonizing with all his dormmates, they were pleasantly surprised to have a day of rather nice weather, so Cater, along with a few other Heartslabyul freshmen, decided to lose his mind in the garden instead of in the dorm lounge.

The group of them shared their own "horror stories" regarding their finals experience while enjoying the brisk, clean air of the Heartslabyul gardens. While not all of their group had taken the exact same courses, they did all have some in common, and it seemed the consensus was that Vargas's physical training final was the worst out of the bunch—even worse than the alchemy final.

"He had no reason to make it that difficult," Nova whined. "I'm certain I botched the whole thing."

Cater didn't think he'd failed that final, but he agreed that it was way harder than necessary. From a mile run, multiple sport pass-offs, push-ups, and all sorts of other exercises, it had been an absolutely brutal exam. Contrary to the flight exam Cater had also taken with Vargas, which was much more achievable.

Other students had many things to say about their experience with exams, so the conversation carried easily. Cater found he was glad to have a group of fellow classmates—dormmates, even—that didn't see each other as a threat. He'd been warned that many students at Night Raven did view anyone besides themselves as competition.

Though, Cater could never be too careful. Maybe this semester they were a team—a group of friends, maybe—but that could change so quickly. One event could ruin so many relationships; Cater just hoped it wouldn't happen to him.

A little while into the conversation, Cater noticed his phone buzzing in his pocket. He pulled it out and felt his heart stop when he saw the contact that appeared on his screen.

Forcing himself to breathe, Cater excused himself from the group, pressed to answer the call, and held his phone up to his face.

"Hi, dad," he said, a bit warily, as he removed himself from the area as fast as possible, searching for someplace more private. "Um, what's the occasion?"

"I don't need a reason to call my son, now do I?" His voice was low and flat, not the slightest bit amused. This voice all too often sent shudders down Cater's spine, and now was no different. Cater had to try very hard to stay composed, but he felt as if he were walking on eggshells—and it was just a phone call.

"No, of course not," Cater said quickly. "I just... I meant to ask what you need from me?" He glanced around, making sure that no one was near enough to hear his part of the conversation, or see just how tense and nervous he must have looked. Just to be safe, he traveled further into the garden's maze.

Without wasting a moment for pleasantries, Cater's father jumped right into business.

"Your semester ends on the thirteenth, and you will return on the fifteenth. The house will be empty when you arrive, as I am taking your mother and sisters on a trip for the holidays. You will take care of the house while we are gone. No parties, no people over, and I expect it to be in spotless condition when we return. Is that clear?"

Cater gulped. He wasn't sure what else he could really do in this situation but agree. "Yes, sir. I'll take care of everything, but—"

"What?" he barked. "Is something not to your satisfaction?"

Flinching, Cater quickly backtracked. "No, no, not at all! I just, since you called, I wanted to ask what all I should be bringing back with me, for break?" He wasn't sure if his father would understand what he was really asking, but Cater was too scared to bring it up directly.

Whether for better or worse, he seemed to understand perfectly. "If the house is spotless, and you don't break any of my rules, then you'll go back to school. If not..." 

He didn't even need to finish the thought.

"I understand," Cater said solemnly. "I won't disappoint you."

"We'll see."

The call ended; Cater still held his phone to his face, arm shaking as his mind ran circles trying to process this new information. He slowly lowered his phone, slipping it into his pocket, as he stood motionless, staring blankly at the rosebushes ahead of him.

Was Cater upset that his whole family was going on some trip and leaving him behind to take care of the house? Not really. Maybe he should be, but he was honestly relieved that he wouldn't have to deal with spending time with his family during his time off from school. And most of all, Cater was delighted that he had such a chance to ensure his return to Night Raven College in the new year. So long as he didn't bring any friends over to his parent's house, and he made sure it stayed perfectly clean, he'd get to come back to school.

It was perhaps entirely too easy. Cater didn't have any friends that lived nearby enough for him to invite over—he wasn't even sure if he had any friends he'd want to invite over even if they did live nearby. Cleaning wasn't necessarily his favorite thing, but he wasn't bad at it when he needed to. And if he could use a bit of magic to make the whole process easier, well, that would be just a bonus.

This was his chance, and he certainly wasn't going to screw it up. He was going to come back next semester, and he was going to be both a good student and a good mage. His parents weren't going to get in his way, his sisters weren't going to get in his way, and neither was anyone else. For the first time, possibly ever, Cater was looking forward to going home for break.

After an agonizing weekend, filled with stress from the exams, as well as from the phone call Cater had received, the exam scores were posted.

Cater was almost too scared to look, but he was thrilled to see the results.

Did he ace every test? Absolutely not. He was, however, in the top ten for his scores in both astrology and flight, and he had somehow managed to avoid failing a single one. Some of the scores weren't particularly high—his history of magic exam was his lowest score, just barely scraping a C, but that was still a 'pass,' and for that, Cater was relieved.

He wasn’t used to feeling proud about his academic performance. This was entirely new to him, and he wasn’t sure how to react. Should he be celebrating? If so, how? Or was this something he was ‘expected’ to do, and thus didn’t deserve celebration?

A few fellow students seemed to be celebrating—whether it was for good final grades, or simply that the semester was over—so Cater figured he’d join in.

That evening, Cater stood in his bedroom, staring at his unmade bed, and the somewhat messy corner of the room. He'd laid his empty trunk down at the foot of his bed, and he was trying to figure out what all he should pack.

Strictly speaking, there was a possibility that Cater would do something wrong over the break, and his father would not allow him to return to Night Raven. Knowing what his father was most likely to do in that situation, Cater knew that he wouldn't get to simply come back to pick up his things—so he should bring anything with him that he couldn't just replace. Anything he had that was truly one-of-a-kind.

And, well, he only owned one thing that was that rare.

Cater turned his head to look at the guitar case that was leaning against his desk. Of anything he owned, this was the only thing that was truly special. The only thing that was irreplaceable. 

If, for whatever reason, Cater didn't return to Night Raven after the break—which wasn't going to happen, but Cater had to prepare for the possibility—this unique gift would be his only possession worth keeping. With that reasoning, Cater absolutely needed to bring it with him. It would be safe in his dorm room, yes (no one else could even open the case), but he wasn't sure if he could take the risk.

But the idea of any of his family finding out about the guitar made his stomach turn. The enchantments that had been placed upon it would make it impossible for his sisters to just take it from him, or even break it, but they didn't often need to use force. It was their words that did far more. And if they wanted something from him, they always got it. Always.

He didn't want to take that risk.

After trying and failing to determine which option seemed better, Cater decided to work on packing things that took less effort. He packed the basics, mostly just clothes, as most of the things he'd need to bring were still things he would be using over the next day or two. As he was packing, Cater put on some headphones, turning on a favorite playlist, and decided to put more effort into actually cleaning his portion of the room. He wouldn't say it was dirty, but it certainly wasn't clean and organized. 

Actually, the shared dorm room as a whole was not often kept in good, spotless condition. Trey's corner was often kept cleaner than the other three, with his bed made before classes each morning, and clutter kept off of the floor, but his desk was far messier than everyone else's. Textbooks, loose papers, notes, and a ton more random objects were littered across the surface of the desk. Cater didn't think he'd ever seen it clean since the day they'd first moved in.

Quinn's corner was often extremely crowded, with more decorations than any of the either three, but with a glance, Cater supposed it wasn't actually very messy, there were just a great many things—books, scripts, and various hair products among the most common—which made the portion of the room look messy by comparison.

Nova's corner wasn't bad, either, but had gotten worse throughout the year. He'd begun the semester keeping his room extremely clean, bed made every morning, but as the semester went on, many of those efforts didn't last. Although, of the four of them, Nova was the one to spend the least time in their bedroom, so he didn't have as much of a chance to mess it up.

Compared to the other three corners, Cater's didn't seem all that out of place, but he figured now was as good a time as any to spruce it up a little bit. It certainly made the process of packing take longer, but Cater didn't mind.

He figured, no matter how things turned out, he wouldn't regret cleaning his room now.

If he didn't return to Night Raven for the next semester, whoever would inevitably have to clean out his room, it wouldn't be much worse of a job. And if Cater did return—which he was confident he would—it was always nice to come back to a clean room, and a made bed.

After he'd spruced up his room a bit, Cater determined he'd earned a break from the effort of packing, so he left his bedroom and let himself wander the hallways a bit.

Despite attending Night Raven for a semester, living in Heartslabyul for multiple months, Cater found he hadn't explored much beyond his own bedroom and the dorm common areas. He didn't really have much of a reason to, but now that he thought about it, he didn't have a reason not to, either.

The stairs seemed to be calling to him, in a way, so Cater started his ascent. His bedroom wasn't all the way at the top of the stairs, but he assumed it was close-ish to the top. He'd never checked before, so he didn't really know how much higher the stairs climbed, and what exactly lay at the top.

Eventually, the stairs came to an end, leading directly into a large room that felt a lot like an attic. It didn't feel gross or dusty like Cater expected an attic to feel, but it was dark. Curious about what Heartslabyul could use an attic for, Cater pulled his phone out of his pocket, turning on the phone's flashlight. He shined it around the room, searching for anything of interest.

It didn't even occur to Cater that he might not be allowed to be in here. That maybe this was a place where students weren't supposed to be. He was caught up in the thrill of discovering someplace new.

The phone flashlight didn't give him a super good view of anything in the room, but he was able to get his bearings a bit thanks to it. He saw that the room was rather empty, and—contrary to what he'd smelled—there was a thin layer of dust on nearly everything. He saw some boxes and perhaps some old furniture against the walls, but his attention was quickly caught by a ladder in one corner.

Without a glance back at the stairway behind him, Cater walked across the room towards the ladder, and began to climb. It didn't take long for him to reach the top of the ladder, finding what felt like a solid ceiling above him. Only, when he slightly pushed against it, it didn't seem to be so solid anymore.

It was some kind of trapdoor, Cater determined. He figured there was no way it would be unlocked, but why not give it a shot? He pushed against it, and was absolutely shocked to find it opening without too much effort.

A rush of cold air clung to his skin, and Cater realized exactly where this trapdoor led. He pushed the trapdoor open all the way, it clanging against the surface of whatever it opened to. He continued climbing up the ladder, ignoring the shiver down his spine as his got colder and colder. Only once he was fully off the ladder, did Cater look around, and determine that he was—in fact—on the roof of Heartslabyul.

And it was cold.

For what was possibly the first time, Cater was glad that his dorm uniform included multiple layers, though he also wished that he could roll down the sleeves on his jacket.

This section of the roof was so much flatter than Cater had expected. There was a slight tilt towards the edge of the roof, but it wasn't excessive; Cater figured he could sit comfortably on the roof without worrying that he'd slide right off. He found himself walking closer towards the edge, away from the small hole left open from the trapdoor, and sat down just a few feet away from the edge.

It always got dark so quickly in the winter, Cater realized. He didn’t think it had been that long since he’d started packing, and the sun had still been up then. It was possible he had lost track of time a little, but even then, there was no darkness like that of winter evenings. A lot of people complained about it—and yeah, Cater understood that sentiment—but he liked when it was dark outside. It meant he could see the stars.

Cater’s eyes traced the constellations above him. He couldn’t see them as clearly as he could in the observatory that the astrology classes occasionally used, but he could still pick out a few.

They were so much brighter up here than from his bedroom’s window.

He pulled his knees up against his chest. He was rather glad he decided to go exploring today.

Chapter Text

There were a great many things about Night Raven College (and the magical world as a whole) that were new and strange to Cater. Some of them he'd gotten used to over the past semester, others still felt insane.

Since arriving at NRC, Cater had technically traveled by mirror every single day, to get from Heartslabyul to the main campus and back. For some reason, that didn't seem all that strange. When he thought about it, yes it was a little mind-breaking that every single dorm existed in almost their own dimensions—at least, that's what Cater understood it to be. Although, he supposed, the dorms had to exist somewhere in the same world as the main campus, just somewhere isolated? He honestly had no idea, so he didn't think much of it. Each mirror had one location they were set to, and it never changed: the Heartslabyul mirror always led to Heartslabyul.

But there was a different type of mirror travel that Cater was very much not used to, though he immediately liked it.

The Dark Mirror could transport individuals to pretty much anywhere in the entire world in an instant. No need to buy an overpriced ticket, no need for a plane, train, bus, or anything of the sort. He figured that there would have to be a suitably magical mirror at the other location, but there were a lot of mages in the world, so a lot of places that could house a magical mirror.

He knew there was one situated in the city where his family currently lived. He didn't know the exact location it would drop him off, but he figured it would be a reasonable distance. Not too bad at all. 

How cool was that? Stepping through a mirror, ending up pretty much anywhere you wanted?

The whole world, practically at your fingertips...

Cater's insides twisted as he thought about the concept of mirror travel. If he'd had access to something like this when he was a kid... well, moving cities, or even countries every couple of years wouldn't have disrupted his life as much as it had, he figured. He could have gone to any school he wanted to, kept in touch with so many friends he'd left behind, and maybe he could have had a far happier life.

But it wasn't just that his family members weren't born with magic. There was far more to Cater's situation than that. 

A magical mirror was something Cater's family would probably like to have, but not for any reason that Cater would have wanted it for. If he wanted to go to school in one place, with friends he'd made prior to moving, it wouldn't matter. He'd get sent to whatever place was easiest for his mom to push him out the door each morning. But if Taylor or Tiffany wanted to go somewhere special, why of course they'd get to!

No, a magical mirror wouldn't have given Cater a happier childhood, nor would a family of mages. No matter the countless scenarios he dreamed up, there was always an underlying reason why his family was as fucked up as it was. It wasn't something he could change or fix, or something he could wish away. It was the way things were, and it was the way things would always be.

"Can you believe this semester is already over?" Trey remarked as the two of them entered the mirror chamber together. Trey would be leaving before Cater would, but the assigned time slots were close enough that Cater didn't think it'd be worth it to hang out in the dorm for any longer.

"Yeah," Cater agreed, setting his guitar case down at his feet when he'd found a place to sit, having decided he’d rather risk his sisters seeing it than leave it behind. "It totally flew by."

Trey took a seat beside him, setting his suitcase on the ground next to the bench. "Now we've just got three weeks until we're back," Trey continued. He glanced at Cater before asking, "Do you think that'll be too long, or not long enough?"

Cater let out a breath through his teeth. "Hmm, well, in public schools I'd get two weeks of winter break," he said softly, "and even that felt like too much sometimes."

But maybe it was just him. Even if he hated school, being there was better than the alternative. He could only endure so much, and not having a moment away from his family was incredibly draining.

"Where are you going for the break?" Trey eventually asked, breaking the silence that might not have been all that awkward, but felt uncomfortable to Cater.

"Just... home," he whispered. "Nowhere special."

"Mmm-hmm, and where was that again?"

"Shaftlands," Cater replied, not bothering to give a more specific or interesting answer. The location could change at any moment, but they'd spent a good few years in the Shaftlands by now, so Cater would be surprised if that changed drastically. "But I've been all over."

"That's pretty cool. I've pretty much never left the Queendom before coming here," Trey chuckled. "I'd like to visit the Shaftlands at some point."

A part of Cater wondered if Trey was waiting for an offer, but he brushed the thought aside.

And even if Trey was wanting an invite, Cater didn't have the heart to give him one. There were a lot of great cities within the Shaftlands that Cater would be excited to show off, but not at the cost. Cater couldn't invite Trey to the Shaftlands—not while his family was there.

"Yeah, it's nice," Cater finally responded, almost afraid to meet Trey's gaze. "But I'm sure it's nothing special. The Queendom has a lot of cool places too, I'm sure." Cater's family had lived there too, for a year or two, but it was when Cater was really young; he didn't see very much of it, and he remembered even less.

"Eh, not my part." Cater dared a glance at Trey, relieved but somewhat conflicted when he saw Trey looking straight ahead, not at Cater. "A couple interesting people, but nothing else of note."

"Well, to be fair, I don't think my part of the Shaftlands is all that interesting, either."

That wasn't true.

There were plenty of interesting things about Cater's city; there were interesting things about every city Cater had lived it.

He didn't know why he was lying.

Maybe he didn't care. Maybe all the important things about his city weren't actually important to him. Maybe he just didn't want to encourage Trey to visit while Cater's family lived there.

Crowley called out for the next group of students to leave. "Queendom" was all Cater caught, but he knew where it led when Trey stood up.

"I'll see you in a few weeks," Trey said cheerfully, picking up the suitcase he'd set by his feet. Cater waved and smiled half-heartedly when Trey turned his back and moved to get in line to travel to his destination.

Cater didn't let himself stare after Trey for very long, turning away before Trey disappeared into the mirror. He figured he probably had another half hour or so before it would be his turn, which was alright. He wasn't all that eager to get back, anyway.

It was strange how often Cater's feelings of the break changed. At first, he was completely dreading it, but after receiving the phone call from his dad, he didn't hate the idea of returning to the Shaftlands anymore. But today, when the time had arrived for him to leave NRC, everything felt awful again. He wondered if he could get away with just staying at school for the break, not dealing with his family, especially his dad's strict rules about how he should behave, and guarantee that he'd get to stay another semester.

But that wasn't so simple, either. Cater had disobeyed his father before, but never so dramatically. He'd refused to let his sisters do his hair, or let his mom take him shopping, or even talked back to something his dad had said to him, and it never turned out well. The punishments he received were never all that bad—it wasn't like he'd get hit for rolling his eyes—but it was always easier to just go along with whatever his family wanted.

Besides, where would he go in the summer? Sure, maybe he could get away with staying at Night Raven over winter break, maybe even spring break, but he knew that couldn't happen for the months of summer break. And then there would be no chance to ever return to NRC, or have pretty much anything else he wanted. Disobeying this drastically was far worse than what Cater was prepared to do.

Crowley called out another location. It wasn't Cater's yet, but they'd moved onto the Shaftlands by now. It wouldn't be too much longer, he figured. Cater resigned himself to going; he didn't really have a choice in the matter.

It wouldn't be too bad, right?

Since the original phone call, Cater had learned that the trip his family was going on lasted for about two weeks, meaning they would return home right before New Year's. His responsibility over the house ended then, but he supposed his "trial" probably wouldn't. 

There would be one additional week after their return before the new semester at Night Raven began. Surely he could last two weeks by himself, and then just one week with his family, obeying their rules, letting his sisters drag him around however they pleased, if it meant he'd go back to school.

He did hate that they would be back before New Year's, already dreading just what Taylor and Tiffany would drag him into. The two of them certainly loved to party, and while Cater did too, he did not love going to parties with his sisters and their friends. If there was any way Cater avoid going out for the celebration of a new year, he would, but he feared he wouldn't have that option.

It was only a few more minutes until Crowley called out another location, meaning it was finally Cater's turn to travel. He stood up, grabbed his guitar case and made sure that he wasn't leaving anything behind, before he joined the slowly growing line to the Dark Mirror.

Only a few minutes had passed from the moment Cater had stood up, until he had traveled through the mirror and arrived back in the Shaftlands. The exact location that the mirror had transported him was on nearly the other side of the city from his parents’ house, but Cater didn't mind. He knew how the city's bus systems worked, and it wasn't like he was in a rush. No one was waiting for him, after all.

It was just a short walk to the bus stop, where Cater stood in a small crowd for a few minutes before the bus arrived. The bus wasn't very crowded when Cater got on, so he took a seat near the back. Digging through the bag Cater had slung around his shoulder, he found his headphones, putting them on and selecting a playlist. He knew the route well enough that he wasn't worried about possibly missing his stop if he didn't hear it called out.

Cater didn't care about whether or not it was "unfair" that he relied so heavily on the city's public transportation to get around, while both Taylor and Tiffany had their own cars. He didn't even have a driver’s license—even learning to drive seemed like a terrible idea, since Cater knew it would require a lot of time alone with his dad in a confined space. It simply didn't feel worth it, especially when the buses were reliable enough to get by.

Besides, maybe he liked the aesthetic of taking the bus. Or the simplicity of it. He didn't have to park anywhere—certainly a plus—and he could just listen to music and stare out the window until his stop. That wasn't something he could do if he were driving.

Sometimes, Cater thought it was ironic. One of his family's ways to "put him in his place" had backfired, and they didn't even realize. Sure, he might have been treated unfairly compared to his sisters, but that simply didn't matter to him.

After being on the bus for maybe fifteen minutes, Cater knew that the next stop was the one closest to his parents’ house, so he prepared himself to get off. When he stepped off the bus, Cater stood on the sidewalk for a few seconds, as if working up the courage to finish the journey.

He didn't know why there was a sort of pit in his stomach at the mere thought of being at his parents’ house. It wasn't like he was even going to be interacting with his family for two weeks; for all he cared, it was just a house that he happened to be taking care of until the owners came home. But no matter how much he tried to rationalize it, Cater knew that wasn't true. He wasn't just house-sitting; he was being tested. Constantly monitored, with everything that truly mattered on the line.

It was too late to turn back now. It had been too late a long time ago.

He started walking.

The street Cater's family lived on was filled with many houses of comparable size to the Diamond house, each with large yards and well-kept grass and decorative plants, a strong contrast to the many apartment buildings and rather few parks throughout the rest of the city. When, at last, the house came into view, Cater pushed away any feelings of dread, and approached the front door.

Cater inserted his key into the lock, and let himself in. He locked the door again behind him, and moved immediately towards his bedroom. It wasn't far from the front door, just up some stairs off to the side of the entryway and down the hall. He knew that the house would be empty, so at least he wouldn't be obligated to talk to anyone before setting his stuff down.

Compared to his sisters' bedrooms, his was pretty small and ill-fitting to his tastes, but at least it was his own space—something he didn't get much of at home. His bed took up a fair bit of the room, and was far nicer than the beds they had at Night Raven (which were, admittedly, better than he'd expected). He had a desk positioned in front of a window that overlooked the front yard and the street beyond, and a decently large closet that housed all sorts of clothes his sisters and mom had picked out for him over the years. He could barely take one glance at it all without gagging.

Quickly laying his guitar case down on the bed, and removing the bag he'd had slung around his shoulders, Cater left the room before he could have a much worse reaction to it.

He instead entered the small bathroom beside his bedroom, closing the door and leaning up against it. The visceral reaction he'd had to simply being in that room, being in this house, was deeply shocking to him. Yes, he'd dreaded coming back here, yes, he hated how his room was decorated, but it had never been this bad before leaving for school. He didn't know how he would survive three weeks of being back here...

One day at a time, he supposed. It couldn't be that bad.

When Cater ventured out of his bathroom and into the rest of the house, he was disappointed to find the condition it had been left in. He wouldn’t say it was a complete mess, but he wasn’t surprised to find that his family hadn’t bothered to keep it clean before they left on their vacation, knowing that Cater would be there to clean up after them. All the decorative pillows and blankets from the couches in the living room were strewn about, meaningless magazines cluttering up the surface of every table. The trash cans in the kitchen were just about overflowing, as was the stack of dirty dishes in the sink. Cater was sure he’d find even more mess the more he looked.

Well, his dad was expecting to come back to a clean house, and that could be the determining factor in whether or not Cater would return to NRC after the break.

Cater started cleaning.

It really wasn’t all that bad once he got into it. Pick up some pillows, fold blankets, summon a clone to do the dishes while he took out the trash. He got most of the work done within just a few minutes.

A relief, really. Now all he had to do was avoid breaking any rules for two weeks: just long enough for his family to return from their trip. That should be pretty easy, even if some of his dad’s rules were a bit insane. Heartslabyul had plenty of crazy rules, and while not all of them were necessary or enforced, it was easy enough to go awhile without breaking any.

Just two weeks by himself. The third and final week of break would be packed with his family running him ragged that it would certainly fly by in no time. Cater only needed to endure two weeks by himself, and then he’d basically made it.

He could do this.

A mere four days into the break, Cater felt like he was going completely insane. He’d avoided spending much time in the house at all, knowing that being in that environment (however empty it was) would only make things worse, but he could hardly come up with anything to do. Sure, he could wander around a few stores, go to a movie, or go to a café and people watch, but all that stuff would get boring quickly.

And besides, things like that were far more fun with friends—something Cater didn’t currently have access to.

Besides those activities that one could only do for so long, Cater thought he could get away with spending a large portion of the break asleep, but even that got boring before too long. As it turned out, Cater’s brain wasn’t a huge fan of shutting off, so once he’d slept a few hours past the recommended amount, staying asleep seemed pretty much impossible.

Well, what else could he do? There were still multiple days left until his family’s vacation was over, but he’d completely run out of things to do.

Cater rubbed his eyes, staring up at the ceiling above his bed. He groaned; why couldn’t he have done something fun for the break, like visiting friends or something? Why did he have to stay in this stupid house, all by himself, with no one to even talk to?

All his NRC friends were busy with their own work and activities over the break, busy enough that they didn’t have time to call, or even text. Sure, Cater could get a couple conversations going throughout the day, but it was never much, and whoever he was talking with would need to hang up sooner or later. He didn’t blame them, but it certainly didn’t help to ease Cater’s intense boredom.

He practiced guitar, even tried singing and writing songs, took pictures, went skateboarding (something he hadn’t done since the summer), and it still wasn’t enough.

If he just had one person that he could talk to, one person who was actually a friend, that was—not a family member—then he’d be fine. Just one person.

But the house was empty, the halls silent, surfaces collecting dust that Cater would have to clean off. Cater was by himself, and he was going insane.

Every night as Cater laid down in bed, he stared at the ceiling, reminding himself just what he was doing this for.

For Night Raven. For the friends Cater had made. For his education.

For his freedom.

Chapter Text

Cater cleaned the house for probably the fourth or fifth time over the past two weeks, knowing that his family would be getting home the following day, and it all needed to be perfect—or else. By all accounts, he'd done everything right, and there should be nothing holding him back from another semester at Night Raven College, but when it came to his parents, Cater could never be sure.

When he had done literally everything he could think of to prepare for his parent's arrival, Cater set himself up at a table near the main entryway, determined to busy himself with something worthwhile, instead of stressing about the next few hours.

He didn't have homework assigned over the break, and he had been avoiding doing anything even slightly related to the more boring subjects, but he didn't stop working on improving his magic, either. Unfortunately, it didn't seem like a good idea to practice some type of practical magic in the house when his family could walk through the door at any moment, so he found something far safer to do with his time—magic history.

One of his worse subjects from the past semester, magic history was something that Cater knew he had a distinct disadvantage in. He hadn't grown up with magic users, in fact, he didn't even really know any before going to Night Raven. The magical world had such a rich history that Cater had barely ever even heard of, and he was supposed to know just as much as those who had grown up a part of it.

History in general was never a strong suit for Cater. It was too many lectures and too few things to catch his attention. It was all so dark and dull, and most of it seemed pretty pointless to learn, in Cater's opinion. He much preferred to live in the moment instead of dwelling in whatever stupid stuff happened in the past.

To Cater's disdain, if he wanted to not flunk out of NRC, he had to get at least somewhat familiar with magic history.

Without knowing how long it would take his family to return, Cater didn't have a plan for this studying (if it could be called "studying"). He simply flipped through the textbook, reading and trying his best to comprehend the information, taking notes when he actually understood a passage—his notebook embarrassingly empty even after what had to have been at least a couple hours. He really wasn't made for history, or academics in general.

The words blurred together. Cater was sure he wasn't absorbing a lick of information from the far-too-hefty book, but stopping now wouldn't do him any good.

Cater was almost relieved when he heard the lock click and the front door open.

Almost.

It was his sisters that first entered, laughing loudly at something that only the two of them could find funny, followed by his mother, immediately overbearing, and finally his father, his mere presence seeming to suck the life out of the entire house.

All three Diamond siblings looked very similar, with the same orange hair and striking green eyes. Tiffany was the oldest, just two years older than Taylor, who was four years older than Cater—the “baby” of the family. They certainly liked to treat him like a baby, constantly deciding everything for him, clothes, friends, interests—anything and everything. Both were pretty much spoiled rotten; sweet in front of parents and peers, but would flip a switch to push Cater around whenever they felt it necessary.

For the most part, they got their looks from their mother: Josephine Diamond. She was tall and thin, with the longest, well-kept hair of any of the family. Her eyes were also green, but far duller than her children’s. She put a lot of value into her image, always fussing over Cater’s appearance whenever she had the chance.

Richard Diamond did not appear to pass any physical traits onto his children, and for the most part, he didn’t seem to mind. However, when it came to Cater, he was never pleased. If Cater decided to dress femininely, he was a disgrace to his father. If he tried to dress more masculine, then he wasn’t playing “fair” with his sisters.

But he wasn’t too bad, Cater tried to convince himself. It wasn’t like he was abusive or anything. He just had favorites and was bad at hiding that. And the fact that Cater seemed to tense up whenever his father walked in wasn’t a big deal—Cater wanted to meet his father’s high expectations, that was all.

It was only a moment or two after Cater’s family entered that he found himself wishing they would go away again.

“Oh, Cater, dear, let me see your face,” his mother took his face into her hands, pulling and prodding at various points, already obsessing over his appearance. He had put on makeup that morning, but perhaps not well enough. “How have you been sleeping? Are those bags under your eyes? Have you been watching your weight? You need to pluck your eyebrows, we have family pictures to take!”

She kept going on, finding maybe dozens of things that Cater wasn’t doing well enough, but he wasn’t paying attention. Instead, his gaze followed his father, walking around and inspecting the house. He looked dismissive, but didn’t seem to find much to complain about.

When his mother finally let go, Cater still didn’t get much of a break.

“What are you doing?” Taylor draped herself across the table, resting her chin on her hands.

"History?" Tiffany practically barked, in disbelief over the subject of the textbook she had snatched from Cater. "Did that school turn you into a nerd after all?"

"You mean we have to break him in again?" Taylor whined

It was just a joke, Cater repeated to himself. They were just teasing. He couldn't let it bother him.

"We only have a week this time," Taylor continued, and Cater felt like he'd blacked out. They acknowledged the time restraint? They said aloud that he'd only have a week with them.

Was that his answer? Was he really going back to Night Raven?

Was Cater actually getting what he wanted this time?

Cater raised his head, his gaze finding his father, who was looking dismissively at him. His sisters were still going on and on, but Cater was tuning them out as his father stalked across the room towards him. Cater met his gaze, daring to hope.

“The house is sufficiently clean,” he said, clearly not pleased with how the situation had turned out, “you may return for another semester.”

Knowing that cheering and rejoicing would not be received all that well, Cater just smiled. “Thank you, Dad.”

At that moment, he tuned back into his sisters conversation.

"We have got to take him out for New Years tomorrow."

"Yes a party is just what he needs!"

“Can we, Daddy?” Taylor and Tiffany were now holding on to either one of Cater’s arms, Taylor looking up at their dad with pleading eyes. It was unfair just how much the man softened, compared to how he’d been when looking at Cater.

“Whatever you want, girls.”

A shudder went down Cater's spine. He knew what was going to happen, but it couldn't be all that bad, right? It was just a party. Cater had been to parties before. He liked parties.

He didn't like parties with the people Taylor and Tiffany liked to party with, however.

But it would just be one night. Just one night, and if Cater survived that, then he would return to Night Raven. Certainly, that was worth going to one awful party.

Of course, a party was never just a party. For the Diamond children, a party required hours of getting ready.

"How about this one?" Taylor held up yet another dress with all sorts of fringe and sparkles—this time in green. "I do have those emerald earrings that would go perfect with it."

Cater didn't know how long this had been going on, but he'd stopped paying attention a long time ago. He didn't think he'd be able to get away with straight up leaving the room, but no one cared if he was listening; they didn't want his input, anyway. Instead, he just scrolled through posts on magicam, occasionally glancing up to see what outfit was debated next.

Tiffany was slow to respond to this one, staring the dress up and down from the way it dangled on the hangar. "Does green really scream 'new years' to you?"

"I saw someone say it brings prosperity into the new year," Taylor replied, draping the dress over the back of a chair she walked past, heading towards the full-length mirror leaning against a wall. "But how should I do my hair?" she continued, her hands holding her hair in place to test a few styles.

"Pretty sure I've seen people say that about literally every color," was Tiffany's response. "The green's good, but the gold is better."

"Really? I don't like how the gold washes me out; I'd much prefer to do silver."

"Yeah, well I'm already doing silver. Do you have anything else in there?" She glanced up at the closet, which Taylor had returned to look through.

"Hmm," Taylor hummed as she dug through the unreasonable amount of clothes in her closet. "Literally nothing."

"What about Mom's closet?"

"It's so old money in there. This is a party, not a gala."

"Just make Dad buy you something new, then," said Tiffany, already scrolling through some catalogue of new dresses. Taylor hurried to join her at looking, and it didn't take long for them to select an entirely new outfit, just for Taylor to wear out to a New Year's Eve party.

The new dress arrived within a day, and Taylor was happy with her party look, a dress with a black bodice and short, fringe-covered skirt in gold, a striking enough contrast to Tiffany's silver bodysuit with various cutouts covered by black mesh. Once they were satisfied with their looks, they were determined to make Cater look as cute as them.

Though Cater wasn't sure if "cute" was the right way to describe the outfit they'd picked out for him, but he didn't entirely hate it. Or, rather, he wouldn't have hated it if he didn't know about the attention it would inevitably give him... He didn't hate the high-waisted, flared jeans, nor did he hate the black, sleeveless top that was tucked into it. He didn't hate the silver eyeliner, or the way his hair had been curled and styled. Cater didn't hate the look, but he hated the sinking feeling in his stomach when he thought about what everyone else would see.

Cater didn't mind attention. He often enjoyed it, but it was different when his sisters were so intimately involved. Their party, their friends, their outfit selection—anything and everything was determined by them, and Cater didn't like the things they chose. He especially didn't like their friends.

It's just one party, Cater repeated over and over in his mind until the words didn't feel real. Just one party, one lousy, horrible party, and Cater would be free for another few months.

The three of them were picked up by a group of Tiffany’s friends, Cater immediately shoved into the very back seat, left to sit there silently as everyone else talked and laughed as loud as possible. Taylor and Tiffany relentlessly made fun of him to some of their friends. It was fine. He could block it out.

"Oh, he's cute."

Despite Cater's best attempts, he couldn't block out every comment that someone made about him. Every one of his sisters’ friends loved to make invasive comments about him. He always tried to ignore it, but it was hard when they were so constant, and so uncomfortable.

This one in particular came from the party’s host, who greeted their group at the door.

"That's all us," Taylor chirped, squeezing Cater’s arm. "If it were up to him, he'd be wearing so much red."

"Which just clashes horribly with his hair," Tiffany added, shaking her head. "No clue where he gets his awful sense of style."

The friend chuckled, stepping to the side to let the group enter. Cater was dragged around for a while, forced to meet and interact with anyone Taylor or Tiffany wanted him to. He tried to remain as composed as possible, but in a situation like this, it was pretty much impossible to stay sober.

Cater was sixteen years old. In some places he'd lived, there were very strict laws about drinking underneath the age of eighteen. Of course, those laws didn't prevent underage drinking from happening, only made it more of a game to avoid getting caught. In the Shaftlands, where Cater's family currently resided, the drinking age was the lowest Cater had ever heard of. At sixteen, Cater could drink and avoid any kind of legal trouble—with restrictions (restrictions that he would certainly be ignoring).

Drinking wasn't something that Cater ever really wanted to do very much of, but it helped nights like these to pass much faster, and for Cater to remember far less.

He’d wandered away from the crowds under the pretense of grabbing another drink, with no intent to return in a timely matter. Instead, he found himself leaning against a kitchen counter with a bottle of beer in his hand that he was slowly working through. He wasn’t sure exactly how much he’d had to drink so far—not too much, but definitely enough to cause a bit of a buzz and a harder time thinking clearly.

Taking another sip, Cater heard a voice address him. "The girls leave you alone?" Cater looked up, shoulders tensing when his eyes met the gaze of one of his sisters’ friends—the host, if he remembered correctly. He felt his heart racing, and it certainly wasn't in a good way.

"Looks like it," Cater replied, sipping at the drink in his hand. He didn't want to look nervous, and he knew he'd already messed it up. He didn’t say that he’d actually left them—he didn’t want them to get the idea that he didn’t want to be around them.

The man smiled, reaching his hand out towards Cater. “I’m Miles, by the way.”

Not really seeing a way out of the situation, while also not being totally put off by Miles so far, Cater shook his hand.

“It’s a nice place you have here,” Cater found himself saying quietly. He’d meant to complement the party, but his thoughts were getting jumbled, and he didn’t want to be there anyway.

“Thanks. Most people don’t see much beyond the front room,” he laughed, grabbing himself a drink off the counter. “And if they do, they’re too buzzed to notice.”

That caused Cater to crack a genuine smile. “So, you have a lot of parties here?”

Miles shrugged. “A fair few. Your sisters come to most of ‘em, I wonder why I haven’t seen you before?”

“Oh, well, I don’t live nearby,” Cater was quick to explain. “I’m usually away at school, just hanging around here for the break.”

“Cool,” said Miles, taking a drink from the bottle he held. “Where do you go?”

And that was just what Cater hoped no one would ask. If he said the name “Night Raven College,” most people he talked to would have probably heard it in passing. If they knew the place at all, they’d know it was a school for mages.

And Cater really didn’t want to show off the fact that he could do magic.

“Eh, nowhere special. Just a, uh, small school a few countries over.” Cater hoped he was doing enough to end that conversation entirely. He seemed to get lucky, as the subject moved away from school.

They were talking for what felt like forever. Cater had determined that Miles was not as bad as most of Taylor and Tiffany’s friends were, but he was still not someone Cater wanted in his life like, at all.

But he was also getting more drunk by the minute, and the longer the conversation went on, the more appealing Miles seemed to be.

"I think red would look good on you." Miles words felt almost out of nowhere. Sure, they’d been talking a bit about clothes, but such an outright complement seemed… odd. Odd, but not all that off-putting.

Cater was being flirted with. He knew that, and maybe if he were sober he'd find a way out. But he wasn't sober, and he was deciding that he couldn't care less how he spent the next few hours.

"Do you?" Cater blinked slowly. He set his drink down on the countertop beside him, arms propping himself up until he was sitting on the counter, looking down on the man who'd struck up a conversation, on the man who was probably a good few years older, but Cater was too drunk to care. "You don't think it would clash?" He smirked, twirling a strand of hair between his fingers. 

"Hmm, well, it'll be bold," he replied, leaning in, "but I think a bold look is fitting on someone like you."

Humming, Cater found himself leaning in, too. “I do love to stand out in a crowd.”

“Trust me, you do.”

And then Cater lost track of any thoughts he might have had. He felt like he was blacking out while Miles was kissing him, vaguely feeling fingernails dig into his back, and tasting the remnants of Miles’s drink as they kissed—but Cater himself was blank. He wasn’t happy, nor was he upset about what was happening now. He didn’t care about Miles, but he didn’t care very much about himself at the moment.

Part of him just wondered what he was doing. Why was he here? Why was he drinking, why was he making out with a complete and utter stranger, and why was he entertaining the thought of doing it over and over again?

Maybe if things were different. If Cater wasn't going back to NRC, if his life wasn't finally starting to turn around, he would be embracing the idea of blacking out and waking up with no memory of the night before. But things were finally starting to go his way, and the things he used to do to cope were simply stains and scars.

This wasn't who he was anymore.

"Sorry, man," Cater said quietly, gently pushing Miles away. "I'm not looking for anything right now."

Not with any of these people, anyway.

He honestly took it better than Cater had expected.

"All good. If you change your mind, you know where to find me," he winked, and Cater smiled a bit uncomfortably. "Can I get you another drink?"

Cater shook his head. "No, thanks."

Miles walked away, his image joining the blur of the rest of the partygoers. Cater stared at the wall ahead of him, letting all the sounds and sights of the ongoing party wash over him. He tried to separate himself from the event around him, trying to block out anything that might make this night more of an ordeal than it already had been.

When his surroundings came into focus again, Cater noticed the clock on the oven that was across the room from him. It read 12:36.

Huh, Cater thought. Miles had likely been his New Year’s kiss. There was something that felt rather… uncomfortable about that.

It had been awhile since Cater had kissed anyone. The most recent time was definitely before Night Raven, and it could have been by a few months. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t care; Cater did miss it, but not enough to resort to Taylor and Tiffany’s friends. Yeah, he wanted to go on dates, cuddle, make out, whatever the hell else he felt like doing, but he didn’t want it to be something he used to cope anymore. He wanted it to be with someone he liked, someone he wanted to be around, someone he wanted to do all those things with.

He knew he wasn’t going to find that person here.

And although he wasn’t quite ready to admit it to himself, he already had an idea of who that person was.

A few more minutes passed before Taylor came stumbling into the kitchen, leaning on one of the countertops as she looked around the room. When she caught sight of Cater, she waved and laughed.

“Come on!” she urged. “You’re missing the party!”

Her balance was off, and her words were slurring together, but no matter how drunk she was—and no matter how drunk he was either—he knew better than to disobey his sisters.

Cater jumped off the counter, walking over towards Taylor, who grabbed his wrist the moment he was in range, and dragged him back into the fray.

The party lasted for a good few hours past midnight. By the time they finally left, all three were thoroughly wasted, causing for a rather uncomfortable (but thankfully uneventful) journey home. Cater was the least drunk of the three, but also the least experienced when it came to drinking, and the way his stomach turned was evidence of that.

He didn’t remember the details of how he got back into the house and into his room, but he woke up, hours later, in his own bed—with the worst headache he’d had in his life. Even opening his eyes seemed an ordeal that was not worth the trouble. Cater wasn’t sure how long he laid in bed, forcing his eyes shut, trying to block out the world around him, but the pounding at his door forced him to eventually drag himself out of bed.

“Cater!” his dad barked through the door. “Get your lazy ass up, there’s work to do!”

Groaning, Cater pushed himself up on weak arms, legs shaking as he made his way to his bedroom door. He opened the door, coming face to face with his father’s disapproving expression.

“What?” Cater said, his voice snappy, clearly not doing well at hiding his hangover or his frustration.

“Tone,” he scolded. Cater sighed, rubbing his forehead.

“Right, sorry. What do you need?”

Cater forced himself to look up and meet his dad’s gaze, although his head was pounding, and he felt dizzy.

“You look like shit.”

The words were blunt, and maybe a bit harsh, but certainly warranted. Cater didn’t have a chance to respond before his father had continued.

“You have twenty minutes to make yourself presentable. Your mother wants new family pictures, and the front room needs to be redone. The photographer is coming first thing tomorrow, have everything ready by then.”

With that, he closed the door in Cater’s face. Cater blinked a bit, trying to adjust his eyes to the light, and leaned forward against the door.

This was fine. He was going back to Night Raven in just a few days. Of course his family would do everything they could to make those few days a living hell, but he was going back. That was all that mattered.

Yesterday: a terrible party, today: a massive hangover and moving way too much furniture over and over again, tomorrow: pictures, and whatever other bullshit they had planned—then he was gone.

Cater dragged himself to his bathroom to shower and put on some makeup.

An hour or two later, Cater was in the front room, already covered in sweat, while his mom and sisters kept directing him to “move this chair to that side” or “switch that couch with that one” or “change the painting on the wall,” or anything else that they determined.

Now, really, it wasn’t all too bad. He was glad for the indoor work this time around—the last time his mom wanted family pictures, they were taken outside in the garden, and the yardwork Cater ended up doing was absolutely horrendous.

At least this wasn’t outside in the burning sunlight. At least his hands weren’t covered in dirt. At least they only had so much furniture and so many decorations that could be switched around.

“Hmm.” Cater’s mom lounged on one of the couches across the room from where Cater was sitting on the ground, nearly panting from the exertion. “I don’t love those curtains. Cater, dear, switch them out with the blue?”

“Of course, mom,” he said with a slight sigh, standing up and walking over to where the spare curtain sets were folded. He grabbed the blue ones and moved to grab the stepladder, but Tiffany’s words made him hesitate.

“Can’t you use magic for this?”

Cater turned his head, finder her staring straight at him. He nervously twirled a strand of hair between his fingers. “I dunno if that’s the best idea…”

“C’mon,” she prodded. “Aren’t you learning anything at that school?”

“Yeah, but we didn’t get into much application—”

“It can’t possibly be that difficult,” his mom insisted. “It’s just curtains.”

Chest falling, Cater nodded. “Yeah, I’ll give it a shot.” He put the curtains back on the ground, separate from anything else, and pulled his magical pen out of his pocket. He’d hardly used magic at all during break, and he’d certainly avoided using it since his family got home.

What spell would be right for this? Levitation, maybe? Or was there something more specialized? Practical magic was really not Cater’s specialty.

Well, here goes nothing.

Cater tightened his grip on his magical pen, envisioning the result he wanted to happen. It was going well. The current curtains were getting unhooked from the curtain rod, while the blue ones were unfolding in the air and moving to replace them. While it seemed to take forever, eventually, everything was in its right place, and there had been no disasters along the way—though Cater was feeling lightheaded.

Things only got worse from there, though. He’d demonstrated a bit of his magical ability, and now it’d be abused relentlessly until Cater couldn’t physically handle any more.

They had him use Split Card to move the couches, use levitation to position some decorations as they determined what look they liked best, and had him change the curtains again, just one thing after another, until Cater lost control.

He’d been levitating a painting, but he couldn’t keep the spell up any longer, and the painting fell—the last thing Cater remembered was a sharp pain as the frame hit his head on the way down.

Chapter Text

The headache from the hangover was nothing compared to the splitting pain Cater felt when he woke up minutes later. There was some kind of cloth being pressed to his head, which he was rather confused by. He opened his eyes, propping himself up on his hands, his head throbbing. Taylor was sitting on the ground behind him, holding a plain cloth to his head and looking supremely displeased. Tiffany was sitting a few feet in front of him, not bothering to pay him any mind at all. He blinked, trying to piece together what had happened, but couldn’t remember anything after losing control of the levitation spell.

“Is he awake?” his mom asked, her voice sounding from across the room. “Girls, please help him to the powder room, can’t have blood on the carpet.”

Tiffany rolled her eyes. “Fine, Mom.” She turned to Cater. “Get up.”

Cater bit his tongue. He wanted to talk back, point out the fact that he’d just passed out, that there was a blood-soaked cloth pressed to his head, that he’d spent his whole life doing whatever they told him, and it always ended badly—but he stayed silent, struggling to stand up. Taylor and Tiffany walked with him to the nearest powder room, barely supporting him, if at all. They made it inside, Cater immediately leaning against the wall for support. He still stayed quiet, even as both his sisters worked to more securely bandage the wound. He knew they weren’t happy about helping him, and he really didn’t want to push it.

As could be expected, while his sisters were helping him, they weren’t exactly gentle while doing so. Pulling his hair, forcing his head from one side to another, and more. Cater felt like crying, but they’d just make fun of him for it. Instead, he just shut his eyes and clenched his jaw, doing his best to remain solemn and still.

“You must be pretty bad at magic if you can’t even levitate a painting for five minutes,” Tiffany scoffed as she pressed fresh gauze into his scalp.

“Like, how much does it even weigh?” Taylor laughed. “Isn’t magic supposed to do things that people can’t?”

“It… it’s not that simple,” Cater tried, his voice fading into a whimper when they ‘accidentally’ poked at the injured area.

“That’s just an excuse.”

They continued going back and forth, mocking him repeatedly until the wound had been sufficiently covered.

“Magic really was wasted on you, huh,” Tiffany finished, her and Taylor leaving him alone to let the words sink in.

Maybe they were right. Maybe magic really was wasted on him, maybe Cater really wasn’t meant to have that ability, maybe he didn’t deserve to be at NRC.

Maybe he was just useless.

His head throbbed. Cater patted at the gauze attached to his head, it seemed pretty secure, and wasn’t soaked through—that was probably a good sign.

How was he going to hide this from everyone at Night Raven? He couldn’t very well show up to school with gauze on his head and blood dried in his hair. Sure, maybe it would be healed enough by the time he went back in just a few days, but what if it opened again? What if he needed stitches, or else it wouldn’t heal correctly? He didn’t know the nature of this injury, so honestly, he had no idea what to expect.

If he were better at magic, he might be able to heal it himself without issue.

But magic got him into this mess, and it would probably only make things worse.

Cater sighed, letting his back slide down the wall until he was sitting on the ground. He pulled his knees into his chest and buried his face between his legs. The light still hurt more than he cared to admit.

He wasn’t sure how long he remained in that room, curled up and unable to move, but he thankfully went the rest of the day without being terribly bothered by any of his family.

It was the following morning when there were more issues.

Washing his hair was a whole ordeal, attempting to get the blood out without reopening the wound. Even the slightest touch still hurt, so completing the hairstyle his mom had decided for him was hell, but he somehow managed to do it without agitating or reopening the wound. After that, it was time for makeup. Cater did his makeup nearly every day, but his mom didn’t seem to be pleased with what she’d seen over the last few days, so she decided he wasn’t to be trusted with that today.

While his own routine wasn’t particularly short, the process his mother went through for him was far more extensive. He felt like he was sat uncomfortably in front of that mirror for hours.

Cater was brought back to attention by his mother snapping her fingers mere inches from his face. His eyes focused, glancing up at her stern expression.

“Focus,” she snipped. “You will need to repeat this process to appear presentable in public.”

“Yeah, of course, sorry,” he muttered. She appeared to be color-correcting the shadows underneath his eyes—which really weren’t that bad at all, but certainly didn’t live up to her standards. After that was a lecture on eyeliner and what was and wasn’t appropriate.

Once his mom was satisfied with Cater’s makeup (and face in general) he needed to put on the outfit she’d also selected for him. He found the outfit hanging in his closet, and didn’t even give it a moment of consideration before starting to put it on. Cater had been forced into far worse outfits before.

The colors were pale, dull, and honestly boring—but it didn’t matter. It didn’t fit him well, either. He felt like he could hardly breathe in the waistcoat, and he certainly couldn’t move his arms very much in the suit jacket. The pants were too short, revealing more than an inch of skin between the hem and his shoes, which were actually the most well-fitting piece of the outfit.

But it didn’t matter. Cater plastered on a fake smile and made his way down to the front room—where hopefully the whole family and the photographer weren’t already waiting for him.

For some reason that Cater never managed to entirely understand, his mother was obsessed with taking family photos. And it wasn’t like a “once every couple of years” thing. Sometimes, there wouldn’t even be enough time between sets of photos for their hair to be any noticeably longer. Yeah, he knew his mom was unreasonably obsessed with her image—and by extension, the whole family’s image—but the photos seemed… excessive.

As a kid, Cater had gotten used to it. The uncomfortable clothes, the hour or more spent in front of his mom’s mirror until she was satisfied with how he looked, the additional hours sitting, standing, or anything else the photographer deemed necessary, and especially the endless flashing of the camera right in his eyes. The first few sessions were particularly difficult, as he was a little kid that hated sitting still, and he hadn’t figured out how to avoid blinking reflexively during each and every photo.

But that was a long time ago, and Cater was quick to learn that he’d either compose himself during the photo sessions, or he’d face the consequences of disappointing his mother. So he’d gotten better. The smile became more real-looking, he never blinked, and his mom was happy—until she decided the pictures were outdated and she needed a new set immediately.

It had been long enough now that Cater worried he’d be out of practice. Everything felt far more uncomfortable than he remembered, and by the time he got dressed he had resolved himself to face whatever consequences his dad would have in store.

For that reason, he was surprised at how quickly the photo session seemed to fly by. Before he knew it, the photographer had left, and his mom was happy.

That was good, he supposed. He… wasn’t really sure if he cared any more, but he knew that he was supposed to be happy that his mom was happy. Sure, she’d remarked about the dark circles under his eyes, how the clothes didn’t fit him right and he’d have to be careful about what he ate at school, and that he certainly didn’t look as “cute” as he had in previous family pictures, but she was his mom. She was just… watching out for him in the way that she knew best.

Maybe he didn’t really care, but when his mom was happy, there seemed to be a lot less potential for conflict at home.

Cater tried to isolate himself in his room for the rest of the day, packing the few belongings he’d brought back with him from Night Raven, so that he’d be ready to leave first thing tomorrow morning. His attempts were semi-successful. While he wasn’t able to spend all day locked away in his room, keeping entirely to himself, at least nothing else bad happened. Plus, he also managed to pack all his things, and he was fully prepared to leave as soon as the option became available to him.

That time, unfortunately, did not come without a few setbacks along the way.

He tried to leave first thing in the morning, right through the front door—unsure on whether or not he’d even run into anyone as he did so. When he was inevitably caught, Cater tried to insist that no, he wasn’t trying to leave without saying “goodbye.” He was actually just… gathering his things by the door to make it easier for when he did leave. That seemed to work well enough, aside from one crucial detail.

Now his guitar case was out in the open for his family to plainly see. He practically held his breath through breakfast, worried that someone would notice, that they’d react poorly.

And it wasn’t just that it was a guitar, per se. Cater didn’t think he’d get in trouble for playing guitar—even if his parents didn’t like it, he thought it would be absurd for them to punish him just for playing an instrument. No, Cater knew the problem wouldn’t lie in the object itself, but rather in the fact that Cater owned something truly unique, and his sisters couldn’t stand it.

They were already pissed that he was the one with the magical ability, but they seemed to be okay with that since they could force him to do whatever they wanted.

This felt different.

But maybe Cater was overreacting. Maybe no one would notice. Maybe no one would care. Maybe he had been worried for no reason at all.

Or maybe he’d been right to worry all along.

“Since when do you have a guitar?”

The first words Taylor spoke to anyone that morning, and Cater wanted to shrink into his seat.

Taylor’s words caught their mother’s attention, her eyes turning towards Cater. “Do you really?”

Cater didn’t know what to say. He didn’t want them to know that it really was his, because then they would have power over it. But could he get away with lying? Or would he simply dig himself a deeper grave?

“It’s not mine.” The words burst out before Cater could determine if that’s what he really wanted to say. “I’m just borrowing it. From school.”

“And since when do you even play?” Taylor crossed her arms over her chest.

He spoke again without thinking. “Not long,” another lie. “And I’m not very good.”

The only true thing that Cater knew in this moment was that he needed to get out. He needed to be on his way back to NRC as soon as physically possible.

Despite Cater’s many insistences that he needed to leave now, it still took him far too long to pull himself away. He didn’t know how he’d managed to escape without even being forced to open his guitar case, but he was thankful.

As Cater walked, leaving the house behind him, he resolved himself to the fact that returning for the summer would be even worse than this winter break had been.

All things considered, Cater thought he got through the break relatively unscathed. Which was probably not a good thought process, considering how his head still hurt a little from the incident just a couple days ago. But that didn’t matter very much to him—he had survived after all, and it wasn’t like it was still bleeding.

It didn’t take very Cater long to make his way to the bus stop—he definitely did the walk faster this time than when he was going from the bus to his house. It was a lot easier to leave it behind than to go towards it.

When the bus arrived a few minutes later, Cater climbed onto it, eyes scanning for an open seat. It wasn’t terribly crowded, so he managed to find an open row, falling into the seat and letting his head go limp into the cushion behind him. It was only after the bus started moving that he put on headphones and tried to tune out the rest of the world.

He was finally going back. After weeks that oscillated between boredom and torture, Cater was finally going back to Night Raven. He closed his eyes, sighing and letting go of the tension that he must have been holding in his body for a long while now.

Despite everything, Cater had survived. He’d made it through, and now he had months of good ahead of him. Cater didn’t think he’d ever felt so hopeful.

At some point through the bus ride to the other side of town, Cater searched his phone for the schedule he knew he’d saved that would tell him when the Dark Mirror would be available for him to travel directly back to campus. That particular mirror would be extremely busy with almost every student making their way back after the break, and it could only allow travel from one location at a time. And if Cater happened to miss that time, well, getting back to school would prove to be far more difficult than he was ready to deal with.

Unfortunately, Cater had never been very organized, and he had no idea when or where he’d saved the schedule to refer to later. It could be in his saved photos, or written down in his note’s app—it could honestly be anywhere on that device, and Cater would just have to search until he found it.

The bus had almost gotten to his stop before Cater finally found the schedule. And—as he should have expected—his time was far later in the day. The Shaftlands weren’t the last group assigned to mirror travel back to campus, nor was his city the last one in the Shaftlands, but he still had hours before he’d be able to get anywhere.

Well, he had a phone charger, and he had headphones. With that, the hours could fly by.

After getting off at a bus stop fairly close to where he’d be able to mirror travel to NRC, Cater decided to simply walk around until he found somewhere decent enough to sit for a few hours without being disturbed. Just like when he’d arrived in the Shaftlands just a few weeks ago for the break, Cater didn’t have that many belongings he was carrying with him. It was simply the guitar and a small bag with his essentials, not terribly difficult to carry around.

It didn’t take long for Cater to wander into a public library, which would certainly fulfill the purpose of being a place where he could sit down and be undisturbed for a few hours. Plus, there was an extra added bonus that neither of his sisters would do so much as step into a library—they were always out and about in the city, so just about any “popular” location would run the risk of Cater running into them.

But the library was safe from them, so long as they kept believing it was a place for “losers.”

Cater found a secluded corner, setting his guitar case on the ground and practically falling into the armchair. He had a couple hours to kill before he’d need to do so much as stand up, which was a nice thought in theory, but not so good in practice.

As had been proven time and time again, Cater was not the best at fighting back boredom. He didn’t like to be left in silence, allowing all his thoughts to flood his mind with no barrier to hold them back.

The less time he had to think, the better.

So, the hours dragged on. At first, Cater tried to find something decent to spend his time on. He was in a library after all, there were probably some interesting things to do, but nothing caught his attention. It didn’t take long for him to give up and default back to his phone.

He drafted a couple posts for magicam, showing only the outwardly “good” parts of his winter break—his sisters followed him, so he was extra cautious. There honestly wasn’t much for him to say, or many pictures to add, since he didn’t exactly want to document very much of the holiday. Still, he had some cute selfies, as well as some pictures with his sisters that they’d certainly expect to see, so he managed to pull something together.

Currently, Cater wouldn’t describe his magicam account as big or popular. He had a few hundred followers (a good few of them were people he knew IRL), but he enjoyed posting pictures, so he kept doing so, even if not many people saw them.

After making sure the photos looked perfect, and struggling to determine the perfect caption, Cater allowed it to post, and he put his phone on his chest, staring up at the ceiling. He’d certainly go back to check the status of the post within seconds, but right now he was simply bored.

Sevens he needed to get back to NRC. The closer he got, the worse the ache became. He missed his friends, his dorm, and the environment that mages-in-training created. He even missed the sometimes-good-usually-sketchy food in the cafeteria and getting stalked by Trein’s cat in yet another boring lecture.

Cater pushed himself up off the chair and to his feet. He’d waited long enough, right? If he started walking now, he’d only be like an hour early. Ish. Surely that wasn’t too early. People were usually multiple hours early to the airport for flights—was this that different?

After a moment of consideration, Cater decided that it wasn’t that different, and he started walking.

It was strange, before Cater had received his invitation to Night Raven he’d never noticed the small “hole in the wall” building right in the busiest part of the city. Now that he was training to become a mage, and now relied so heavily on mirror travel, he understood its purpose.

Magical mirrors were expensive, after all, and it was sensible for there to be magical mirrors made available in major cities—especially for students traveling to school.

Opening the door to the old and cramped building, Cater’s eyes scanned the area. He’d been in the building once before, in traveling from NRC for the break, but he didn’t stick around inside for very long that time. Now, he had about an hour to see everything.

Quickly after entering, Cater noticed a desk towards the front with no one standing behind it. He approached, glancing around for a bell or anything for him to notify someone that he was here, but didn’t see anything at first glance.

Still, within moments, a woman appeared from behind a curtain covered doorway, quickly stationing herself behind the desk. “Do you have an appointment?” the woman asked, pen clicking against a clipboard. Cater noticed that she was wearing a nametag, one that read ‘Ms. Chambers.’

Cater nodded. “Uh, yeah, to Night Raven?” He hadn’t been through the process from this side before, having only traveled from school so far.

“Ah,” she replied, flipping to a different paper. “You’re a bit early.” She pushed the clipboard towards him and continued. “Check off the box next to your name, the mirror is currently running on schedule and should be available in about fifty minutes.”

Taking the clipboard and the attached pen, Cater’s eyes scanned down the short list until he came across his name. He put a check in the box beside it and handed the clipboard back across the desk.

Ms. Chambers glanced at the paper and gave Cater a curt nod. She stood up and motioned for him to follow her back through the curtain that she’d entered from.

She led him back into the larger room, which doubled as both a waiting room and the room in which the magical mirror was actually kept. There were a few people sitting around, most of them looking too old to also be Night Raven students. Cater assumed he was the first one here.

He took a seat that wasn’t too close to anyone else as to avoid bothering them, and put his bag and guitar case down at his feet.

It didn’t take long for him to strike up a conversation with Ms. Chambers, who seemed interested to hear about his experience at Night Raven.

“I went to Royal Sword, myself,” she told him. “It’s one of the few co-ed arcane academies, I wish more would start doing the same.”

“Absolutely!” Cater enthusiastically agreed. “I have genuinely no idea why Night Raven is a boy’s school. I’ve gone to a ton of different schools all over the world, and Night Raven is the only one that isn’t co-ed.”

They talked like that for much of the next hour. He asked her about RSA, about how she got into this business, and she asked him about NRC and his time as a student so far. She told him that usually this “mirror travel hub” was busier than this, but Night Raven was the last arcane academy to start their new semester, and a lot of people didn’t tend to travel so much in this part of the year.

She had a lot of interesting things to share. Cater was still fascinated by so many things in the magical world, especially mirror travel, so being able to see how normal it seemed was riveting. There was so much more of this world that Cater had yet to learn.

The conversations were paused every now and again as someone else arrived and needed to check in, gradually more and more NRC students showing up.

And finally, finally, it was time to go.

All those who had been there when Cater had arrived had left by now, and it was only the Night Raven students that still had somewhere to go.

Ms. Chambers adjusted something in front of the mirror, holding the clipboard full of students names and had them enter one by one. When she got to Cater, she smiled and said it was nice to chat. Cater returned with a grin and thanked her for all she had to say.

And then he stepped up, through the mirror, returning at last to NRC.

Cater stepped to the side as to not block whoever followed him and breathed a sigh of relief. Night Raven wasn’t perfect, not by any means, but it was good enough for him.

Chapter Text

The mirror chamber was packed when Cater stepped through the mirror, filled with students greeting each other, catching up and exchanging stories from their eventful breaks. He looked around, searching for any of his friends, but they didn’t seem to be in the mirror chamber. He said a quick “hi” to some of the people he knew from classes on his way to the Heartslabyul mirror.

Heartslabyul’s gardens were decently crowded, some students just arriving, some attempting to relax before the new semester began, others on their way to dinner. Cater wasn’t surprised to find that most of the dorm had already arrived—his city had been close to the end of the schedule after all.

From there, Cater wanted nothing more than get to his room and crash in his bed—to rest in an environment where he finally felt secure enough to relax.

Only Quinn was in the bedroom when Cater entered, working on unpacking from the looks of it. They chatted and caught up on their breaks (Cater being careful about what all he actually said) as Cater crossed the room to his bed. After setting down his back and guitar case, he practically leapt into bed and finally let his shoulders relax after weeks of tension.

Within just a few minutes, Cater felt relaxed enough that he could fall asleep right then and there—jeans, makeup, and still-shining sun be damned.

Although not entirely sure if he’d actually dozed off or just zoned out, the next thing Cater knew was the bedroom door opening, with Trey and Nova stepping inside. By the looks of it, both had returned from break hours ago, and had simply been elsewhere when Cater arrived.

“Cater!” Nova practically squealed when he walked through the door. Cater couldn’t help but grin. It really was nice to be around people who actually wanted him around; he’d missed this. “I wanna hear all about your break.” He pushed himself onto his bed, crossing his legs beneath him and staring across the room at Cater.

As Nova was doing so, Trey was crossing the room to get to his own corner, briefly meeting Cater’s eyes and grinning. Cater wanted to say something to Trey, maybe even just a “hi” or a “good to see you,” but he couldn’t force out the words. It felt a lot harder to say something like that to Trey than it should have been.

“Oh, it’s not that interesting,” Cater insisted, tearing his gaze away from Trey and towards Nova. “There’s not much to share.”

“Nonsense!” said Nova. “Your magicam post was filled with so many awesome looking things!”

Cater laughed, knowing that his anxiety wouldn’t show through on his face, and hoping that Nova would get bored soon enough.

He talked a little bit, mostly the same things he’d said to Quinn not too long ago. He didn’t give details, he didn’t talk about how he spent more than half his break completely alone, just watching over a big empty house, and he didn’t talk about how he got drunk and found himself making out with a guy that was probably five or six years older than him (at least). He didn’t talk about his injury, or anything else that he wasn’t proud of. There were just parts of his life that others didn’t need to know.

It was hard, sometimes, to have secrets like that weighing so heavily on his heart, but it was better than the alternative. It was better than being mocked—or worse, pitied—for these things that he already felt so ashamed of.

Eventually, Cater managed to steer the conversation away from his own break, and got his roommates to talk about theirs, instead. As they talked, Cater leaned his back against the headboard of his bed, listening intently to his dear friends recount tales of their past few weeks, while he did his best to let his body relax.

As Quinn and Nova talked, Cater occasionally found his gaze drifting over to Trey’s corner, where he was sitting at his desk with his chair turned around the face the middle of the room. At one point, Cater had looked far enough over to notice something strange.

Trey was staring at him, eyes wide—an expression that Cater wasn’t used to seeing on Trey, especially not at him. He suddenly felt very self-conscious.

Nova was still talking, but Cater didn’t catch a word, now entirely focused on Trey—trying to determine just why he was staring, and especially why the stare seemed so fearful.

The conversation lulled, and Cater had his answer.

“Hey, um, Cater,” Trey’s voice was a bit weak, somewhat unsure. “You—you’re bleeding.”

Cater’s eyes widened. His hand went to his head, his hair feeling all sticky and gross to the touch. Yeah, no, Trey was right, he was definitely bleeding.

Shit.

He pressed his palm firmly against the side of his head as he scrambled to stand and hurry out of the room. His roommates concerned voiced called out after him, but Cater responded, insisting he was fine, that this was no big deal, that they didn’t have to worry. He really didn’t want this to become a whole thing—but word traveled fast in Heartslabyul, and speculation spread faster.

Somehow, Cater made it to the infirmary without issue, breathing a sigh of relief when he saw that there were no other students present. However, he tensed up again at seeing that the professor that was currently watching over the infirmary was none other than Professor Crewel.

“Mr. Diamond.” He didn’t seem particularly pleased, but Cater was here, and he needed help, so there wasn’t anything he could do about it. “What brings you to the infirmary, seeing as most students had only returned a mere five hours ago?”

Cater had to refrain from rolling his eyes as the annoyed tone in Crewel’s voice. Seriously, this man was the one watching over the infirmary tonight? Just his luck. Then, he thought about the other professors, the other options that likely would have been available to cover for the actual nurse, and suddenly Crewel didn’t seem so bad.

But how to go about explaining his situation? How truthful could he be without making anything seem like a big deal? Or revealing what actually caused the injury?

He shrugged. “I just need treatment for something that happened a few days ago and isn’t healing fast enough.”

“Tsk tsk,” Crewel sighed, standing up and motioning for Cater to sit down. Cater obediently moved to do so, trying not to make eye contact with Crewel. He was sure one wrong move would raise the professor’s suspicions far more than Cater was prepared to handle. “Remove your hand.”

Once again, Cater complied, moving his hand away from his head so that Crewel could get a look at the injury. He was surprised to see just how much blood was on his hand. It wasn’t as bad as when he’d first been cut by that heavy frame, but this was definitely more than the slight bleeding he would have hoped for.

Crewel was rather silent as he looked over the reopened cut and the bloodstained area, occasionally letting out a quiet “hmm” in reaction to something.

“I can use a spell to stich this up,” Crewel determined, finally stepping back. “It’ll hurt like normal stitches, but once the skin has healed properly the spell will fade and you won’t need to return unless there are other issues. I can also perform a scan to determine if you have a concussion, but unfortunately there is not a spell to automatically heal that, but I can brew a potion to speed up the process. Finally, I can clean the blood in your hair, but you will have to be wary when washing that area for at least a couple weeks. Does all that sound acceptable?”

Cater nodded. “That would be great.”

Unfortunately for Cater, Crewel was not exaggerating when he said the spell would hurt.

As a kid, Cater didn’t get super hurt very often. Sick, yes (being constantly coddled didn’t exactly give him an opportunity to build his immune system, so he spent a lot of his childhood sick), but not hurt. It was only in the last few years—when his sisters started to demand more of him—that he’d been getting injured more often. If he couldn’t be cute, he could at least be useful, they’d tell him—and he'd believe it. While he’d had a fair few experiences of getting hurt in the last couple years, Cater couldn’t say he was used to it.

The pain from this spell was actually a lot worse than Cater had experienced during the couple times he’d needed stitches and gone to a non-magical doctor to get them. Those times, the area had been numbed beforehand and he could barely feel a thing. In this case, he felt all the pain from stitches that weren’t actually there.

Thankfully, it didn’t last for very long, and Crewel was soon moving onto the next spell—determining whether or not Cater had a concussion.

Still eerily silent, Crewel performed a spell, magical energy circling around Cater’s head. It remained there for an uncomfortably long time, twisting and turning slowly around his skull. Eventually, the magic dissipated, and Crewel stepped back.

“You do have a moderately severe concussion. Try not to worsen it tonight, I will have a potion brewed tomorrow to speed up the recovery process. Stop by here again tomorrow and it will be ready.”

Cater started to nod, but Crewel wasn’t finished.

“Don’t be thinking too hard over the next few days,” he continued, turning his back to Cater—maybe beginning to gather potion ingredients? Cater wasn’t sure—but he glanced back just long enough to make brief eye contact. “Shouldn’t be too difficult.”

A part of Cater really wanted to talk back, to call out Crewel for the awful insult he’d just given, but it honestly didn’t surprise him. Crewel had called students… worse things in the past.

From that point, Crewel performed another quick spell to get rid of the dried blood on Cater’s hair, hands, and scalp, and sent him on his way—with a few strict warnings and a reminder to return the following day, of course.

Thankfully, it wasn’t quite past curfew yet (although Cater wasn’t sure if he would get in trouble having just come from the infirmary, but he didn’t want to risk it), although it was close enough that there were very few students out and about. He wanted to make his way back to the dorm without needing to so much as glance at another person—he didn’t want to face anyone right now.

Not when he’d only just gotten back to someplace good, not when he was already hiding so much from everyone around him, especially those that deep down, he really did want to trust.

He just needed some time. A few minutes, maybe, just to collect himself, to repair the wall that had started to crack, to adjust the mask so it properly covered his face. Then he’d be ready. Then, he could face the world with a bright smile and a good attitude.

But it seemed even a few minutes might be too much to ask for.

Cater jumped, clamping his hand over his mouth to avoid letting out an embarrassing shriek, and stumbled back, catching himself just as he realized who he’d accidentally run into.

“What are you doing here?” Cater hissed, trying to stand up straight and regain any small amount of composure he could.

Trey looked just as surprised as Cater felt, and somewhat dumbfounded. He took entirely too long to compose his thoughts and respond to Cater’s hushed question.

“Making sure you’re okay,” he eventually managed to blurt. “You were really insistent on us staying put but I couldn’t just let you run off on your own while bleeding.” He seemed to be stumbling over his words, trying to make excuses for why he’d ignored what Cater said, but never feeling like his reasons were good enough. Cater felt a twinge of sadness; Trey really did care enough to go after him… He’d never had someone do that before.

If only Cater could confide in him.

“Aww, well, that’s sweet,” Cater plastered on a smile, tilting his head to the side. “Checking up on me. Well, as you can see, I’m all good! Nothing to worry about, haha.”

He stood there, uncomfortable with the way Trey continued to stare at him. It wasn’t quite a glare, but his brow was knit, his mouth set firmly in a frown.

“You’re acting strange.”

Cater was taken aback. Even if he really was acting weird (which, admittedly, was quite possible), he didn’t expect Trey to be so forward about it. Trey was very non-confrontational, so this was very out of the ordinary.

“Oh, really? Probably just the head trauma, then,” Cater said lightly, hoping to get a laugh out of Trey for that.

He was unsuccessful.

“Are you really okay, Cater?” He didn’t wait for Cater’s answer before asking more questions, overwhelming him with comments and questions that Cater knew he couldn’t answer. “Did something happen over the break? How did you get hurt? Will you please just tell me what happened?”

As Trey continued to speak, Cater felt his body tense up. This whole situation was feeling worse and worse by the moment, and he wasn’t sure how much longer he could last before he burst.

“Trey!” Cater finally exclaimed, which seemed to shock him into silence. “Please, if I’m not worried about it, why are you?”

Trey didn’t seem to have an immediate answer to that. He appeared to be fumbling for words, trying to explain himself, but still came up blank. Cater took his somewhat defeated expression as an invitation to go on.

“I really am fine, I promise,” he said softly. “You can even check if you want, but Professor Crewel fixed me up and there’s nothing to worry about.”

As usual, Trey looked like he wanted to protest, sighing and nodding instead. “If you’re sure you’re okay,” he tried one last time. Cater couldn’t help himself from grinning and rolling his eyes.

“Yes, I’m fine,” he insisted, starting once again to walk back towards the mirror chamber, slinging his arm around Trey as he walked past. “Now c’mon. It’s getting close to curfew.”

After just a few steps, Cater stopped in his tracks, looking down at the ground. There was something else he wanted to say, that he didn’t get to earlier. Now he was worried that it might come out wrong, or seem weird, but he knew he still wanted to say it.

“Trey?” he whispered; his heart was pounding.

“Yeah?”

“I wanted to say…” The words seemed to get weaker as the sentence went on. Eventually, he had to stop and clear his throat before he had the courage to keep going. “Um, thanks for checking up on me, and I’m, uh, I’m glad to see you.”

When he finally forced himself to glance up, he found himself meeting Trey’s gaze. Trey was smiling. He linked his arm with Cater’s, and set the pace for their walk towards the mirror chamber.

“I’m glad, too.”

Chapter Text

It didn’t take too long for Cater to settle back into the routine of classes, homework, dorm responsibilities, and club activities. It really just felt like this was the way things were supposed to be. He was busy, but it all seemed far more purposeful than what he did at home.

Since visiting the infirmary again before classes the following morning, Cater hadn’t noticed any remaining issues stemming from the injury. His head didn’t hurt, he certainly didn’t start bleeding again, and there didn’t seem to be any lingering issues from the concussion—plus, any scar was completely concealed by his hair. For all intents and purposes, he’d never gotten injured at all.

As for his classes this semester, far too many of them felt pretty identical to the ones he’d taken last semester. He still had the same alchemy, history, flight, and physical training classes, and he still had no control over the rest of his classes. Next year. Next year, he’d have at least options to choose from. In addition to the classes that continued from the previous semester, this time Cater was taking classes on magic analysis, protection spells, and practical magic.

Certainly not as fun as his previous semester, which had included astrology and animal linguistics—one of which was his favorite subject so far, the other was just plain entertaining.

Although Cater managed to settle into the motions of school easily enough, there were… certain things, that were much more of a struggle than he’d expected.

Particularly, Heartslabyul dorm’s student responsibilities (although they really should just be called “chores”) were taking up a lot more of his time and energy than they probably should have been. And no, it wasn’t his chores that were all that difficult—it was everyone else’s.

But he didn’t mind. Cater was glad that his unique magic had the opportunity to be helpful to so many of his fellow students. All he had to do was cast a little spell and a clone took care of any of his chores, and anything else that anyone needed done, all while he could sit down and relax (or try not to fall behind on his homework). It was very useful that way.

Cater was just… really tired.

Even after just a few weeks of the new semester, he was already feeling exhausted. He was helping a lot of students, which was good, and he was staying decently caught up in his classes, and although some of his grades were not so stellar, he felt he was doing a pretty good job overall.

He was just tired.

It was taking more and more effort each morning to get his makeup right, to cover the dark circles underneath his eyes and make himself look presentable, and that added effort only further perpetuated that endless cycle. He’d been back at Night Raven for less than a month, and he felt like he was fading fast.

But honestly, Cater wouldn’t change a thing. Well, maybe he’d make it so his unique magic wasn’t so draining to use all the time, but beyond that, he was okay. He was helping people. He was surrounded by people who wanted him around for one reason or another, and he was learning things that could lead him towards a good, successful life—far away from his family’s control. So no, he wouldn’t change a thing.

One particular evening, Cater had recently come back to the dorm after his club meeting, and was trying to work his way through a particularly confusing magical analysis assignment. Much of the classwork relied on memorizing specific formulas and applying them to certain spells, which might be the reason Cater was struggling. It was far too much like math in that way, and he’d never been all that good at math.

Cater had set himself up at a table in the dorm lounge, hoping he’d be able to make at least some progress on the tricky assignment, but so far, it wasn’t going so well. The lounge was decently empty, thankfully, but only because it had been such a nice day and everyone else had decided to spend their time outside in the gardens. Cater would have much preferred to be outside, as well, but he knew he’d just end up distracted and getting further behind on the homework.

After what felt like hours (though it was more likely just forty-five minutes or so), Cater’s attention was caught by March walking around the lounge, tidying up and chatting with the few dorm members that were around. It didn’t take him very long to walk by Cater’s table, putting away some spare supplies and card games onto the shelves on the back wall.

“I just saw one of your clones outside,” he remarked after a short greeting, stacking a couple game boxes on a high shelf. “It wasn’t your turn to feed the flamingos, was it?” he asked, and while his back was facing Cater, his ears were pointed towards him, clearly listening for his response. “I thought I saw your name on the schedule for tomorrow.”

“Oh, yeah,” Cater said awkwardly, twirling a strand of hair between his fingers. “I was just trying to help out another student who said he was busy today.”

“Hmm,” said March, organizing the items on the other shelves. “Who was it? Did they agree to just trade days with you?” He turned just enough to be looking at Cater, studying his movements.

Cater hesitated slightly. March didn’t seem mad or anything, but Cater had done this sort of thing before, and no one had ever cared. It felt… weird, for March to be noticing it all of a sudden. It had been going on ever since he’d revealed his unique magic, after all. Still, March was awaiting a response.

“It was Alistair,” Cater eventually answered, Alistair being a Heartslabyul sophomore, “and no, not really. I was just trying to help.” He tried not to meet March’s intense gaze. He liked his housewarden—a lot, really—but he could become so intimidating oh so easily, and Cater didn’t know what to make of it.

When Cater didn’t continue, and didn’t look March in the eye, that seemed to be some kind of cue for March, steering the conversation away from the topic of feeding the flamingos, down into potentially far worse territory.

“This reminds me, actually.” March sat down in the seat across from Cater, sitting partially cross-legged, one leg underneath him the other bouncing slightly on the ground. “Didn’t I see you setting up for dinner last night? And didn’t you clean the hedgehog’s cage last week? And weren’t you trimming the rosebushes just earlier today?”

Cater gulped. He didn’t know where this was about to go, so he just tried his best to defend himself. Some kind of weight settled in his chest; none of this felt right.

“A bunch of people complained about being too busy to get everything done, I just wanted to help.”

March’s hands reached across the table towards Cater, leaning forward in his seat to get even closer. “Cater, please. I know you say this kind of thing doesn’t matter, or that your unique magic just makes it easy to do more things, but can’t you see you’re just being used?”

“Used?” Cater exclaimed, briefly lurching away from March’s outstretched hands. “What do you mean?”

“All the students asking you to do their work because they’re ‘busy,’” he mimed quotes, “everyone complaining around you and getting you to offer yourself up! Please tell me you’re noticing this.”

Cater just shrugged slightly, resting his arms back on the table. “I like being helpful. I don’t want anyone to get in trouble if something isn’t done.”

Because I’m the one that always gets in trouble.

March sighed quietly. “I appreciate your willingness to help, but I think you’re too quick to assume the best of people. Alistair is off playing spelldrive with a bunch of other random students; I saw him doing so. He wasn’t busy, he just didn’t want to do his job. You are being used, Cater, and I don’t want it to keep happening.”

Uncertainly, Cater let March take hold of his hands. “It’s not like it’s actually making anything harder for me. I can just use split card, and then I can get twice as much done. Why shouldn’t I be using that to help the dorm?”

“Because it is not your duty to do so,” March was quick to reply, squeezing Cater’s hands. “Helping is one thing, helping is perfectly fine, but don’t you dare try to convince me that it has no adverse effects on you.”

Cater flinched slightly. He didn’t even admit that to himself, and to think March had been able to read him so easily…

“Your unique magic is incredibly draining. I know that it is, don’t lie to me,” he cut off Cater’s response the moment his mouth opened. “You cannot keep letting others abuse your magic at the cost of your own wellbeing. I won’t allow it.”

After a beat of silence, the words settling, March stood up, letting go of Cater’s hands. “There will be a dorm meeting in the courthouse tonight at precisely eight thirty. Since you feel that you cannot stop this behavior yourself, I shall have to prevent it some other way.”

He didn’t listen to Cater’s attempts at protest, he just stalked away and left Cater sitting alone.

This was bad.

This was really, really bad.

March meant well, Cater knew he really did, but this was quite possibly the opposite of helping Cater out.

Still-unfinished assignment now completely forgotten, Cater hurriedly shoved all his belongings into his bag and pretty much ran all the way to his bedroom. His heart was racing as he slammed the door behind him—extremely thankful that the room happened to be empty.

Tossing the bag onto his bed, Cater started pacing, pulling at his hair and trying to keep himself from crying.

How could he stop this? It would be pretty much impossible to get March to stop, and no matter what he did, everyone would know it was about him.

He must have tripped on a rug or something, because he soon stumbled, nearly falling completely to the floor, barely catching himself in time. When he stood back up, Cater noticed that he was starting to feel very woozy, and his head was throbbing. He sat down on his bed, resting his face in his hands as he tried to catch his breath. Why did he feel so sick all of a sudden? It felt worse… it felt more physical than if it was just because of the meeting.

Then it hit him, and Cater hurriedly pulled out his magic pen and stopped his spell, a short burst of not-exactly-memorizes flooded his mind, and he fell backwards onto his bed.

How long had he kept the spell running? It must have been forever, if it was having this adverse of a reaction on him. Maybe March was right…

About the spell being draining, not about having a whole-ass meeting to reprimand the dorm about “using” him.

Cater certainly didn’t feel used; he felt helpful. And surely his dormmates didn’t mean to do anything harmful, right? They probably just didn’t understand how Cater’s spell worked—hell, he didn’t completely understand it yet, either. If they knew that it drained him, knew that it made him tired and sometimes even sick, then they would stop, right?

Right?

Ugh, why was this so difficult?

All Cater wanted was to be liked, and even if his dormmates were using him without the purest of intentions, they liked him for doing things for them. It didn’t matter if Cater was tired, it didn’t matter, because for the first time in his life, people liked him. People wanted him to be there.

No matter their reasons, the result was the same: Cater was well-liked.

He really didn’t want anything to change that.

Cater only grew more anxious as the word traveled through the rest of the dorm that there would be a meeting. No one seemed to suspect the reason, but Cater knew they’d all hate him in just a few hours. As far as they were concerned, Cater had tattled. He’d gone to tell the housewarden about how a few students were slacking off just a little. It wasn’t important, it didn’t matter; no one was getting hurt, so why’d he go and tell?

They wouldn’t listen to him when he would argue that he didn’t tell on purpose. Cater knew that they’d blame him no matter what. It was always his fault. Every single time, no matter what it really was, it was always his fault.

He used to think it was unfair. Why was it always his fault? Why was it never his sisters’? Why was it never his parents’? Why was it never anyone else’s fault but his?

But talking back would always just get him in more trouble, so Cater just learned to accept it. He knew that if anything went wrong, it was his fault, and he was used to that. He’s managed to do so much to prevent bad things from happening, so when something did go wrong, it was probably because he’d failed to take care of it when he should.

March didn’t understand that. No one understood that. Cater was happy to help. If other students felt that they needed to give their responsibilities to someone else, it must be for a reason, right? Maybe they were just extra busy, maybe they’d return the favor eventually, maybe, maybe, maybe—

It didn’t matter, really.

The flamingos needed to be fed. The furniture in the lounge needed to be moved back to its original place. The roses needed to be painted. It didn’t matter what the task was; it needed to be done, and Cater could do it. He didn’t see why it was such a big deal. It shouldn’t be such a big deal.

By now, it was getting close to 8:30. Cater nervously made his way to the courtroom, housed in a completely separate building on Heartslabyul grounds. The courtroom wasn’t used all that often, as meetings for the entire dorm were rather uncommon anyway, and not all of them would even be housed in there. But this was a serious matter—at least in March’s point of view—and there was no room better suited for the incoming lecture.

It was dark and overcast outside, vastly different from the nice weather from earlier in the day—oddly fitting for Cater’s mood going into the meeting. It was probably going to rain soon; there was a storm brewing, but Cater wasn’t sure if it would be a physical one.

Chapter Text

When Cater stepped into the courtroom just a few minutes before the meeting was scheduled to start, about half the dorm was already there. Freshmen were supposed to sit at the front, so Cater quickly made his way through the hall and sat himself at his position. He looked up at the stand, seeing March sitting in the large throne—clearly unamused, with Matteo sitting beside him on the arm of the chair. They whispered to each other, until Matteo caught sight of Cater. He smiled and waved. March looked up, his brooding expression turning into a warmer greeting. Cater waved back warily, and March went back to talking with Matteo.

He only felt worse as the seconds ticked by, and more and more people arrived. From the vague murmuring he heard from the other students, they weren’t sure what this meeting was about, but they were apprehensive. March didn’t call for meetings very often, so whenever there was one, it was quite a big deal. Students were trying to guess what this meeting was about—all unsuccessfully.

Trey arrived just a minute or two before the meeting was scheduled to start, taking his place beside Cater. Without glancing up, Cater could feel Trey’s eyes on him, neither speaking.

Some part of Cater wanted to speak to Trey, to confide in him, but this wasn’t the time nor the place, and Cater was never one to share his issues with others, even when he had someone to share with.

As much as Cater loved March—and he really, truly did—he still felt like he couldn’t really share anything with him. March was housewarden; he had to keep the best interests of every dorm member in mind, not just Cater. So while March was there for Cater, and Cater knew he could rely on him, he still couldn’t rely on him for anything really… deep. Or personal.

And with Matteo… things were weird. Because Cater felt that Matteo saw through his strange little mask, but he couldn’t quite be sure. Matteo certainly knew more about Cater than Cater knew about them, but they were also much too close to March. If Cater tried to confide in Matteo, he would only run into the same issues. Cater was just one member of Heartslabyul; he couldn’t bother both the housewarden and the vice with his personal problems.

Cater wanted to trust Trey with those types of things, he just… he just didn’t. He didn’t really trust anyone with those things, but for some reason, he really didn’t trust Trey. He liked Trey. A lot. Cater really liked Trey, probably more than he should, and that made it all the harder to try to confide in him.

When Cater had first arrived at Night Raven, he’d been hopeful to find a friend that would last longer than Cater had ever experienced before—someone that wouldn’t just forget about him the moment he was out of sight.

Now, Cater wasn’t so sure that he did want that anymore.

Things were easier when you always had the option to just leave, and allow everyone to forget you. Cater would much rather be forgotten than be the reason for dozens of upperclassmen getting in trouble with the housewarden.

Which was exactly what was going to happen.

The clock’s minute hand must have finally reached the halfway point, since March stood, stepping towards the front of the stand and calling for silence. The whispers ceased, each student sat up straight and prepared to listen to what Housewarden Greyvale had to say. Matteo stood up, following in March’s footsteps, until he came to stand a few steps behind March, and off to one side.

Uncomfortable silence enveloped the courtroom for a few seconds, and then March cleared his throat and began speaking.

“I have been made aware of a certain behavior from a few of our students happening recently, something that I do not approve of in the least.” He waited a few passing seconds, eyes dragging around the room, meeting certain gazes in a scalding glare, before continuing. “I have learned that a few students have been avoiding doing their assigned work and passing it off onto underclassmen. I am disappointed that I even need to specify: This is not acceptable.”

Cater felt a few eyes glaring at him, as he started to bow his head, his face heating up in shame and embarrassment. This wasn’t what he wanted. Now people were in trouble, and it was his fault.

“Maybe I have been too lenient.” March continued, starting to stalk across the front of the stage, heels clicking on the wooden floor. “I do not think I have unreasonable expectations for the students in my dorm.” His eyes tracked every student in that room, glaring, as his ears were pinned back against his hair. “I expect you to do your best in your classes, I expect you to get back to the dorm before curfew, I expect you to do the work assigned to you to help around the dorm, and I expect you to respect your classmates, even if they aren’t your upperclassmen.”

There were already very few students in that room that didn’t bow their heads in shame, but March was somehow not finished.

“The rule at Night Raven is that the weak obey the strong, is it not?” A few brave students nodded. “You are each welcome to challenge me. If you prove yourself to be stronger than I, then Heartslabyul will be run as you see fit. But if no one declares a challenge, this dorm is still under my reign, and you are to listen to what I say.”

He waited; not a single student dared to challenge. A few within the crowd still looked far more annoyed then remorseful for what they’d done. March must have noticed them, too, for as he spoke the next few words, he was staring them down directly.

“Do you not realize how easy you have it?” This was a different side to March that Cater hadn’t seen before. He… wasn’t thrilled to be seeing it. “There are over eight-hundred rules dating back to the time the Queen of Hearts ruled. Previous housewardens have expected students to follow each and every one of them. I do not.” When a few of those students started to look more afraid than anything else, March’s gaze went back to scanning the entire crowd.

“Heartslabyul could easily be the top performing dorm at Night Raven if its students weren’t all slacking off and leaving their work to other students. We are supposed to be honoring the Queen of Heart’s spirit of strictness. You should all be well disciplined by now, and if you are not, then I truly must have done something wrong. Perhaps I should reinstate some rules that I had previously decided to do without.”

His voice softened, but his posture remained just as strict. “But I won’t punish those who are innocent in this crime.” March looked briefly at Cater—who was trying his best to still stand confident, even though he felt like he had done something very wrong—and then glanced at a few of the other students, most of them freshmen, all those who were consistent in doing their own work and doing it well. “I know those who have broken the rules—and worse, went against the spirit of our dear Queen—and I am prepared to give them a suitable punishment. If I learn about any more of this behavior happening, the consequences will not be taken lightly, I assure you of that.”

With one last glance around the courtroom, March seemed to decide enough was enough.

“Meeting adjourned. I will be reaching out to the offenders tomorrow morning. Off to bed.”

As the students filed back out of the courtroom, Cater felt so many eyes on him, both glaring and pitying—he wasn’t sure which was worse, but he figured he deserved it, so he just sat there until everyone had left. Only then was he brave enough to lift his head, and he found March staring down at him from the stand. Even Matteo had left—likely at March’s request, and it was just the two of them left in the otherwise empty courtroom.

With a slight nod of his head, March beckoned for Cater to follow him, and then he himself began to walk out of the courtroom. Cater followed, at first silently, but that didn’t last for very long. It was when they had entered into the gardens—heavy rain pouring around them, immediately soaking through Cater’s uniform—that Cater started to speak.

“Don’t you think you went a little hard on everyone?” Cater asked, trying to keep up with March, but March was well trained to be quick on his feet (being in the track & field club and all), and the wet grass did not make it any easier.

“No, I do not.”

“But couldn’t you have at least dealt with it discretely? You didn’t have to involve the entire dorm—”

March stopped in his tracks, but he did not turn to look at Cater. He muttered under his breath, “Time for tea,” and then the world around them seemed to slow. Raindrops moved in slow motion, almost frozen in midair. And yet, he and March seemed to be unaffected. What was going on?

Cater looked around in awe, until he finally found the ability to speak again. “What’s happening?”

“This is my unique magic,” March answered, still not turning to face Cater, his arms behind his back. “I can slow down or speed up time within a certain bubble. Things seem normal to us from in here, but we could spend an hour in here, while only a few minutes have passed out there.”

“Wow,” Cater breathed. That seemed like such a… useful spell. Cater liked his unique magic, that was true, but it seemed rather limited. His clones couldn’t do anything that he couldn’t do, and whatever energy they used (magical or physical) would wear on him eventually. But with even partial control over the flow of time, the possibilities were limitless.

“Before you start,” March cut Cater off right as he opened his mouth to speak, “it’s not all that you think. But, regardless, we are not here to discuss my unique magic.” Finally, he turned to look at Cater. “Do you remember what I told you about this school on the first day of classes?” Cater nodded. “Night Raven is cutthroat. You need to ally yourself with powerful people or else you will always be at others mercy.”

One of his arms went across his stomach, the other rubbed his forehead. “Your unique magic is powerful, Cater, and you really could use it to your advantage, but instead you are just letting your upperclassmen walk all over you. I firmly believe that you could beat most if not all these students in a duel, and even if not, you could definitely outwit them. Why won’t you let yourself be the powerful one?”

It took Cater a few seconds to figure out what to say. And even when he did speak, he was not entirely sure what was going to come out of his mouth. March was right, yes, in some ways, but he didn’t really understand all the things that went into Cater’s life and impacted every decision he made. March didn’t understand everything that Cater had dealt with, and how much his past determined his actions. He didn’t understand that Cater wasn’t at Night Raven for the same reasons as everyone else was.

“I’m not supposed to be powerful,” Cater said quietly. “I’m supposed to do what I’m told without complaining, ‘cause if I don’t…” Tears started to fall from Cater’s eyes, and his body started to shake with his sobs. “If I don’t…”

March’s brow furrowed in concern. He quickly wrapped his arms around Cater and pulled him in for a tight hug. Cater didn’t want to cry. He didn’t like crying, especially in front of others, but he really couldn’t help it. He wasn’t used to people actually caring about him, and caring about what he wanted to do. He wasn’t used to someone noticing him for who he was, not whoever his sisters dressed him up to be.

But Cater especially wasn’t used to letting that mask fall. He had a façade for a reason: things were easier when no one could see your true face. Even if March’s hug was warm and comforting, Cater couldn’t relax into it. He knew it would just end and Cater would be left just as cold and alone as he was before. No matter how much someone tried to look at him and see who he really was, they always missed something. And it wasn’t their fault; Cater tried to hide things, and he really didn’t know any other way.

Cater’s prediction had been right; March pulled back from the hug to look at Cater more completely. He wasn’t like, abandoning him or anything, but the end of the hug had meant the end of the moment. Cater needed to put the mask back on.

“I don’t want you to cover for other people like this,” March finally spoke. “It is their responsibility, not yours. If something doesn’t get done it is not your fault. Do you understand?” Cater didn’t respond. “Do you understand?”

Slowly, Cater nodded. “Yeah, I understand.”

March pulled back further. “Don’t let them try to use you. You don’t have to come to me to put a stop to it, but I will. You’re stronger than them, in many ways. Use that to your advantage.”

It took a while for March to continue speaking again, and his voice was quieter when he did.

"I've told you many times that this place is cutthroat." His eyes looked past Cater, wide and full of emotion. Then he closed his eyes, bowing his head. "I wish it weren't true, but it is. And I really wish that we didn't have to change just to survive here. I don't want you to be cutthroat, I don’t want you to be like everyone else, but you must. This place will force you to, and it will eat you alive if you don't. If everyone else is going to be cutthroat, then you must too.”

With that final advice, March determined it was time for them both to turn in for the night. He escorted Cater back inside, keeping his “time bubble” up until they had gotten proper cover from the rain. After getting back inside the main building, they parted ways, March beginning his typical inspection of all the common spaces, and Cater slowly climbing up the stairs into his room.

Back in the comfort of his own room, Cater was as quick as possible to get ready for bed (unfortunately needing to use the dorm’s communal showers) and close the curtains so that no one would disturb him.

But he didn't go to sleep. He didn't even lay down or get under the covers; he just sat on the mattress, legs crossed beneath him, eyes unfocused as the thin curtains around him moved slightly—the window must be open, letting in a draft. If he closed his eyes and listened, he could hear the snoring of his roommates, the rustling of sheets and blankets, and the scratching of a pencil against paper. One of them was still awake. He couldn't tell who, but he wasn't about to open his curtains just so he could find out.

A part of him wanted to cry, but he couldn't. Whichever one of his roommates was awake (and it was probably Trey), they would certainly hear, and Cater didn't need additional embarrassment today.

So he just sat. Entirely still, barely breathing, thoughts moving through his head at record speed. There was so much about today that Cater just couldn't understand. Why did it matter? Why did March care? Why couldn't Cater just shrink away and disappear? Why?

Night Raven wasn't what Cater thought it would be. He thought his biggest issues would be academics, learning and mastering magical abilities. And then he thought it would be making friends, but that dream was soon crushed as he learned what most Night Raven students were actually like. Now, Cater felt like he was running in circles. Because apparently he was supposed to be making friends? Even though he'd been repeatedly warned against doing so? Everything was so confusing.

Nothing was clear anymore. Nothing made sense. The only thing that remained constant was that Cater had no idea what he was doing here. He didn't know if he belonged, he didn't know if anyone else belonged, either. Maybe no one belonged at Night Raven College, maybe everyone else did. Maybe none of it mattered at all!

Cater groaned and rubbed his eyes. He was too tired for this. 

Why couldn't he just be like everyone else? Or, if nothing else, why couldn't he just be consistently one way, and not constantly changing up his personality and the way he saw the world at just the flip of a switch? He just wanted to be normal. 

He just wanted to be normal, but he feared that ship had long since sailed.

Chapter Text

Cater regretted letting his guts spill to March. He didn’t want to be a burden, he didn’t want others to think he needed help or couldn’t do things on his own, and he feared that’s the impression he had just given his housewarden. Sure, March’s words were meant to reassure him, and sure, March told him that he was strong and powerful, but how much of that was actually true? It couldn’t be very much.

The following morning, Cater felt sick to his stomach. Things were bad enough last night, but now his upperclassmen were actually going to be receiving punishments, all because of him. He couldn’t bear to imagine just how universally hated he must be now. He didn’t think he could face them at all, it would be too difficult.

Sevens, doing so much as sitting up was a feat in itself that morning. He’d barely slept at all, and his energy was already drained. Was there any possibility of him getting away with skipping class? With the way he felt now, he didn’t know if he’d even make it to the mirror chamber.

If he weren’t already so drained, Cater would just try to send a clone in his place. Maybe no one would know the difference.

It wasn’t worth entertaining the thought; Cater couldn’t even create a clone in his current state, much less keep it up all day. He didn’t really have a choice; he had to get up and face the day.

With a quiet groan and a headache that he knew was only going to get worse, Cater pushed himself out of bed.

Worse than anything else on Cater’s mind was the thought that Trey was going to pry. Cater knew it, and there was no one Cater knew that was more stubborn than Trey. If he was given even the slightest moment to get information out of Cater, he would get it.

Although it certainly didn’t help that whenever Cater looked at Trey, he just wanted to tell him everything. He wanted to share with Trey all his thoughts, all his feelings, all his secrets, but he knew better than that. He’d have to try even harder to keep Trey from learning all there was to know about him.

It turned out that Cater’s suspicions were correct, and it took mere minutes of Cater being awake and out of bed for Trey to confront him.

“March was trying to defend you, wasn’t he?”

Cater wasn’t sure if he should try to answer, or just pretend he didn’t hear. He did determine it was best to respond, no matter how much he wanted to wipe this whole disaster from existence. “I don’t know what you mean by that.” He moved towards the bathroom, hoping Trey might take the hint that he wanted to be alone, with no such luck, as Trey didn’t seem willing to drop the topic so easily.

“With the meeting,” he continued. “The whole thing was because you’re letting people sluff off their work onto you.”

Rolling his eyes, Cater didn’t respond, instead starting to brush his teeth. Maybe his inability to respond would force Trey to at least back off. Instead, Trey began to brush his teeth as well, keeping eye contact with Cater the whole time. When the two minutes were up, Cater spit into the sink, and immediately busied himself with the rest of his morning routine, washing his face, doing his makeup, doing his hair, and the like. Trey echoed with his own routine, almost passive aggressively. He didn’t speak for a long while, not until Cater was busy applying the base layers of his concealer and foundation.

“I think he’s right, by the way.”

Of course you would.

Cater sighed. “I’m sure he is, but he just doesn’t understand everything the same way I do. Neither do you.”

“Then explain it to me.”

Trey’s earnest energy made Cater flinch. That was the exact reason why Cater couldn’t explain it, because he hadn’t lived the same life Cater had, and one couldn’t just understand the situation Cater was in if they hadn’t lived it themselves.

“No, it… it doesn’t matter,” Cater said with a resigned sigh. “March is right; you are too. I need to do better.”

Blinking in surprise, Trey rushed to backtrack. “Wait, Cater, that’s not what I—”

“Don’t sweat it, Trey. I know what you meant.”

Cater always needed to do better. Everyone always told him that, and he was never good enough. He’d… given up, in some senses. Academically, he never stood a chance. Physically he didn’t feel like he was particularly strong, either. His magic pool wasn’t huge, he wasn’t exactly smart, he wasn’t confident, he wasn’t all sorts of things that people expected him to be. So he just needed to do better.

He didn’t speak again, just silently finished getting ready, purposefully avoiding Trey’s now concerned gaze.

Once in a while, he'd dare to glance at Trey's reflection in the mirror. Trey had yet to respond; instead, he continued his morning routine, not glancing at Cater, either. Until Cater put on his final touches and started to leave.

Trey didn't grab him, per se, but he did put his arm out, putting a barrier between Cater and the door. Cater could have pushed past, he could have just left. He knew that Trey left that as an option, so when Cater did decide to stay, it meant something.

"You didn't do anything wrong, Cater," Trey whispered, his fingertips brushing along Cater's forearm. "You need to understand that. Nothing you did was wrong; it was just wrong of the upperclassmen to take advantage of you like that."

A heavy sigh escaped from Cater's chest. He didn't need Trey to understand him—no one ever would, anyway—he just needed Trey to leave the topic alone.

"Yeah, yeah, okay," Cater eventually relented. "I won't do it anymore. But it actually is my turn to feed the flamingos today, so I need to go get started on that."

Instead of pushing past Trey, he waited for Trey to lower his arm before moving.

Cater didn't feel great about how that conversation had ended. He didn't feel great about his relationship with Trey, or with anyone else for that matter, but Cater was never all that good at having meaningful conversations. He was never all that good at keeping friendships. What he was good at was jumping around, topic to topic, place to place, school to school, friend to new friend.

If Cater wasn't able to bounce back from one depressing loss to something new to lose, what was he good for?

As kind as March’s intent was, Cater couldn’t change that much overnight; he couldn’t just flip a switch and suddenly become the powerful one, the one in charge. Cater had lived with his sisters his entire life, and with them, he never could be powerful. He never even had a say. That wasn’t something he could just let go of.

Luckily, he didn’t have to change much, because people stopped asking him. Cater stopped doing other people’s jobs for them purely because they’d been threatened into doing them themselves.

That didn’t mean that they weren’t all casting him nasty looks as they did their work. They all knew who must have ratted them out, and they resented him for it, not realizing that he had never wanted them to be punished at all.

If Cater had a say in the matter at all, he would continue doing the work of his stressed and overloaded upperclassmen, and they would just be appreciative of his willingness to help out. Everything got done, and Cater made some allies (maybe even friends) along the way.

But Cater didn’t have a say. And now he was the most hated person in Heartslabyul—maybe in all of NRC.

With every glance, he just wanted to shrink away further and further, until no one could see his face, and everyone forgot about the harm he’d done.

Cater didn’t know if he could ever recover.

Letting out a sigh, Cater crouched down beside the flamingo’s pen, watching as the multicolored birds practically tripped over one another to reach the trough that had been freshly refilled with their food. He had never been all that good with animals, but at least the flamingos weren’t like… aggressive. If he had to deal with a bunch of unruly, angry flamingos on top of everything else that was already going wrong—well, Cater didn’t know how much he could take.

A part of him wondered if he could stay out here forever. The flamingos didn’t smell great but at least they didn’t glare at him whenever they thought he wasn’t looking. Maybe no one would notice. Maybe no one would care—

But, well, curfew was drawing close, and the pen didn’t have great places to sit and do homework, so Cater found himself trudging back inside eventually, avoiding eye contact and trying to make himself as small as possible.

He knew he should just be done for the night. Just shut himself in his room, close his curtains, and block out the whole world, but he stopped with his hand on the door.

Shaking his head, Cater let out a breath and continued climbing the stairs past his own room. He hadn’t gone up to the Heartslabyul roof in a long while.

The roof was nice for a few different reasons. Cater could see the sky without anything in his way, no one else had seemed to discover the trapdoor, meaning it was always empty, and all his problems seemed to disappear whenever Cater was up there.

Cater didn’t get up to the Heartslabyul roof all that often. Overusing it would make it less special, and the more times he disappeared up there, the more likely others were to notice.

It was worth it tonight.

Getting to the weird attic-area went well enough. He heard plenty of voices coming from the different rooms he passed by, but no one was in the hallway to cross paths with him. And then, it was just climbing the small ladder and pushing open the trapdoor to reveal the night sky, and Cater had made it. He shut the trapdoor behind him to avoid letting any drafts get inside that might catch someone’s attention (he’d never gotten locked out before, and was confident he could figure out a spell to unlock the trapdoor if needed).

The sky was rather overcast tonight, which wasn’t particularly surprising. It had rained heavily last night, lasting until the early morning, and hadn’t completely cleared yet. Cater didn’t mind all that much—it matched his mood, at least—but he would have preferred to see the stars.

But he couldn’t get everything he wanted. Sometimes it seemed that he couldn’t get anything he wanted.

Closing his eyes, Cater lifted his head up towards the sky and forced himself to breathe.

Inhale…

Exhale…

Inhale…

Exhale…

It didn’t matter. It really didn’t matter. So what if pretty much all of his upperclassmen hated him? In just a couple years, he’d never have to see any of them ever again. What felt life-ending now would be insignificant in the long run.

Besides, Cater had dealt with far worse. Night Raven was meant to be his escape from home, so as long as it was marginally better it was worth it. Even if NRC wasn’t great, it was better. It gave him a few years away from his family, and maybe even a better future than what he’d get otherwise.

Cater let himself fall backwards, the roof tiles digging uncomfortably into his back. He didn’t care. Discomfort was far preferable to whatever hell the last couple days had been.

With the wind rustling gently through his hair and cooling his skin, Cater must have finally been relaxed enough to fall asleep, because he woke up with no knowledge of how long he’d been out there. His phone was dead, and he was certainly in a lot of trouble if anyone caught him out of his room.

It felt late, or, rather, early in the morning. No one should be out and about to get him in trouble, so Cater reasoned it was probably safer to sneak back in now rather than wait until morning.

Careful to keep the trapdoor from making any noise, Cater made his way inside, stopping within the attic and listening, making sure that he couldn’t hear any voices or footsteps. Holding his breath, Cater hurried his way down the stairs and the long hallways. He hated how far away his room was from the top of the stairs; it meant he had a ton of rooms to travel past.

But there wasn’t anything he could do about that now.

He was nearing his room; he’d almost made it, but stopped in his tracks before he fully stepped onto his floor.

Someone was sitting out in the hallway. Cater couldn’t quite tell who (all he could see was someone’s clean and polished shoes of their dorm uniform—sitting right outside his door. His heart raced, breaths quickening as he tried to come up with a way, any way to get into his room safely.

Who wore shoes like that in their dorm uniform? Or at all, for that matter? Cater hadn’t exactly paid attention to all his dorm member’s shoes, but now he was wishing that he had. That way, he could at least mentally prepare for whoever he was about to face.

Cater felt like his heart stopped when he heard a voice call out to him.

“Hiding around a corner is rather inefficient when the one you are hiding from already knows of your presence.”

Matteo’s voice was quiet, barely loud enough to reach Cater’s ears. A thought passed through his mind that maybe, maybe he could head back up the stairs and pretend that he’d never been down there at all—but then he’d still be breaking curfew. Matteo knew he was there; there wasn’t any use in trying to stay concealed.

He stepped around the corner, coming fully into view. Matteo was sitting right beside the door to Cater’s room, leaning back against the wall, legs taking up most of the hallway in front of him. Matteo wasn’t wearing their complete dorm uniform, fully missing their black waistcoat, the jacket and hat sitting on the ground beside them. Cater wondered just how long Matteo had been sitting there—he figured it must have been a while.

“What are you doing here?” Cater asked, standing a few feet from where Matteo sat.

“March suspected you wouldn’t be following curfew tonight,” Matteo said calmly, a hand running through their hair as they looked up at Cater.

So he was going to get in trouble again. This was just great.

“I was just—I wasn’t—I didn’t mean to break curfew,” Cater struggled to get the words out, and he honestly wasn’t sure if they were the truth or not. Matteo lifted his hand in a motion to stop. Cater cut his losses, shoulders slumping.

“Sit,” Matteo urged, patting the floor beside them. Cater complied, immediately pulling his knees into his chest. He didn’t look up to meet Matteo’s gaze, shoulders tensed as he waited for the inevitable consequences of being caught outside his room long after curfew.

“Relax, everyone breaks curfew once or twice,” Matteo assured at noticing Cater’s very obvious tension. “And March and I don’t enjoy using punishment when there are clearly other problems at hand.”

Other problems.

Cater wondered just what he meant by that.

“How… how much did March tell you?” Cater asked quietly, a bit afraid of the answer.

Matteo smiled, leaning their head back against the wall. “More than you’d wish, but less than I’d like, I imagine.”

Letting out a huff, Cater hung his head.

“And how much do you want to know?” He wasn’t sure what prompted him to ask. Cater didn’t want Matteo to know like, anything about the whole argument he’d had with March, but if they already knew something, they might as well know everything, he supposed.

“Whatever you are willing to tell me.”

So… what was he willing to tell? March already knew so much more than Cater wanted anyone to know. He’d never meant to say so much, to disclose so many of his fears and issues. He wondered how many more secrets he even had left to share.

“Yesterday, I told March that I’m not supposed to be powerful. He seems to think that there’s something… special about me, but I know there’s not. I don’t care if I’m getting ‘taken advantage of’ because of my unique magic or anything, I’m just trying to get through without everyone hating me. I know that March was trying to help me, but I just didn’t want it.”

He glanced up towards Matteo, meeting their eyes for perhaps the first time, before looking away again.

“But I appreciate it, I really do, but this just… my life… it doesn’t work like that.”

Matteo was silent for a long while. Eventually, he opened his mouth to speak, but it wasn’t at all what Cater could have expected.

“March Hayes Greyvale is the best housewarden that Heartslabyul has had in a long while, but he does have his flaws. It is difficult for me to… speak ill of him, but I shall do my best.”

Cater watched as Matteo took a breath, perhaps preparing himself for what he was about to say.

“He cares too much about his dorm members to truly belong here at Night Raven,” Matteo said, somewhat sadly as they stared down at the floor in front of them. “But it is for that reason that we require someone like him. Someone to remind us that there is more to our lives than who can best whom in a duel.

“You may only notice what March does for you, and that is by intent. What you do not see is what he does for everyone else. March cares deeply about his dorm members. Every single one. What you have experienced is not ‘special treatment’ just because the housewarden happened to take a liking to you, it is simply what he thought you would need. It is no different than what he would do for any one of his dorm members.”

Cater stared blankly at the wall he sat across from. Some of Matteo’s words were comforting, others seemed to fly in one ear and out the other. Most of all, he didn’t understand why Matteo was telling him all these things. It wasn’t like it made any difference, right? It wouldn’t stop the glares that the other students sent his way; it wouldn’t make Cater suddenly powerful enough to avoid playing in this insane back and forth that was NRC; it wouldn’t make anyone like him.

“Then why does it feel like special treatment?” Cater eventually managed to force out the question. Matteo seemed surprised; they apparently hadn’t been expecting Cater to have a response. “Why am I the only one he’s called a dorm-wide meeting for? Why have I not gotten punished when I’ve repeatedly broken curfew? Why are you sitting here, outside my room, just because March thought I might be having a hard time?”

At some point, his eyes must have started to water. He’d been crying entirely too much lately, especially in front of others. Cater lifted his head, trying to prevent the tears from falling. He felt a gentle tap on his shoulder, glancing down to see Matteo holding out a box of tissues for him. He accepted one without thinking, dabbing at his eyes, then stopped.

He turned his head to the side, watching as Matteo set down the tissue box on the ground between them. It wasn’t like, a small box; it looked to be the normal size, but Cater was certain that Matteo hadn’t had it before—and they hadn’t used some kind of summoning spell, either. “Where did you get that?”

Matteo grinned, grabbing his hat and spinning it around in his hands a few times before reaching into it. Cater’s eyes widened as Matteo’s whole arm disappeared within the hat, then appeared again, now holding an apple in his hand, which he tossed towards Cater, who somehow managed to catch it. Then, they pulled out a banana from the hat, before doing some kind of fancy flip to get the hat to land on their head.

It was also important to note that the hat was not a regular-sized top hat, but a rather small one. It was too small to fit just the apple, not to mention the tissue box and Matteo’s entire arm.

“My unique magic is entitled ‘Take More Than Nothing,’” Matteo explained, beginning to peel the banana he now held. “Once I cast it on an object, it allows me to hold a potentially infinite amount of things within that object. It works best for bags and boxes, but I find much more delight in using a hat such as this.”

Now that Cater thought about it, he’d literally never seen Matteo with any kind of book back or anything to hold their textbooks. Had they genuinely just been carrying textbooks, study supplies, snacks, and who knows what else in a hat?

Perhaps even more shocking, both March and Matteo had now revealed their unique magic to Cater.

There were some students at Night Raven who advertised their unique magic with every fiber of their being. Cater somewhat considered himself to be one of them. Everyone he’d spoken to (and many others that he hadn’t) knew about Split Card. March and Matteo were both well-known throughout the student body, but it seemed that most students didn’t know the tricks they had up their sleeves.

But Cater did.

Try as he might to convince Cater that he wasn’t receiving “special treatment,” Matteo certainly made it feel like Cater was special.

He hated it.

He didn’t want to be special. He just wanted to get by. He just wished everyone could understand that.

“To your point,” Matteo eventually spoke, drawing Cater out from his thoughts, “many of March and I’s actions towards you could be considered some form of special treatment. He does not call meetings to deal with every student’s issues, only the ones that require it. We much prefer to perform inconspicuously, but are prepared to bring issues to light in order to solve them.”

“I just…” Cater said quietly, trailing off as he realized he wasn’t sure just what he wanted. Did he want everyone to stop caring? Did he want things to go back to the way they were?

…Did he want to shrink away into obscurity so that nothing could get worse than it already had?

“I just want the special treatment to stop,” he eventually settled on. “It doesn’t help anyone else, and it certainly doesn’t help me. I don’t want to be treated any differently than anyone else at this school.”

A moment of silence passed, and then Matteo chuckled. “I often find myself with two possibilities. I either must convince a disbelieving student that they are, in fact, special, or I must inform a conceited student that they are not any more special than those around them. You are an odd one, Cater Diamond.”

Cater scoffed—Matteo Hartly was calling him ‘odd.’ Still, he was curious about where this was going. “How so?”

“Because you seem to know, deep down, that you are special, and you are doing all within your power to change that.”

Chapter Text

You are special, and you are doing all within your power to change that.

“No, I’m not,” Cater stammered, nearly choking on his own words. “I’m not special.”

Matteo smirked; they knew they were right, and they didn’t need to say anything for Cater to start believing them, too. Matteo simply stood up, tucking his uniform jacket underneath his arm and reaching a hand towards Cater, bringing him to his feet.

“And even if I was,” Cater continued, perhaps not helping his case, “I wouldn’t want to be treated differently. There’s nothing I can gain from special treatment; it just makes things worse.”

“That tells me that you require rest,” said Matteo, eyes glancing to the door to Cater’s room. “Your mind feeds you all sorts of lies when it is tired.” They walked past Cater, towards their own room, likely. “Good night, Cater. I hope a good night’s rest will illuminate some truths you are insistent on denying.”

Cater stood and listened until Matteo’s footsteps faded. He wasn’t sure what to make of, well, everything.

But Matteo was right about at least one thing. Cater really needed to get some sleep.

The next morning, when Cater woke up, he felt better. He wasn’t sure if it was just due to the heavy sleep he’d managed to get, or the warm breeze through his window, or any other reason, but he felt better. Marginally, at least.

Classes that day were boring, but thankfully uneventful. He sat with his roommates at lunch like normal, and none of them were being weird towards him. Cater couldn’t really ask for anything more.

On his way out of the cafeteria, towards his final class of the day, Cater walked past March and Matteo, who were sitting at a table with a bunch of other juniors (mostly Heartslabyul, but a few from other dorms as well). Not wanting to disturb them or draw attention, Cater continued on his way without stopping, hardly even glancing at them. Still, both seemed to notice him, smiling and lifting their hands in greeting. Cater gave a nod in return, and continued on his way.

It didn’t feel like a weird interaction. It felt normal—not special treatment, and not unexpected. He wanted more interactions like that. A friendly smile, someone noticing him walk past, but not drop everything just for him.

Today was working out the way Cater wanted it to. If things could just stay that way, he didn’t anticipate any more issues.

Cater's final class of the day was magical analysis, which he always had a particularly difficult time paying attention in. Since freshmen still didn't get to choose any of their classes, Cater had gotten very used to the twenty-something other students he shared his entire class schedule with. While there were some that he knew very well (Trey, namely), Cater had always been good at getting to know a lot about others without sharing much about himself. In this particular class, Cater had been sat next to a bunch of Pomefiore and Diasomnia students, while Trey was practically on the other side of the room.

It wasn't an issue for Cater, not really, although being separated meant that Trey couldn't nudge him back to attention when Cater got distracted. Which was often.

Today was certainly no different.

By all accounts, it looked like Cater was paying attention. He wasn't asleep with his head on his desk, he didn't even have his phone out, but he truly did not hear a bit of the information shared in that class period.

This class had less than thirty students, each of them freshman at Night Raven College, but the similarities seemed to end there. They were from all over the world, so many different experiences, so many different lives lived—but here they all were, sitting in a cramped lecture hall, stressing about next week's quiz. There were fae, there were beastmen, there were geniuses, celebrities, even literal royalty. 

Malleus Draconia was not in this class, but he might be in the classroom just across the hall. Mere hours ago, he could have sat in the very seat that Cater was sitting in. 

There were so many people at Night Raven College that were special, so many individuals that had no hope of being simply a person, instead destined to do something truly groundbreaking.

How could Cater even compare? He wasn't special, even though Matteo seemed to think he was. He was some nobody that had been everywhere but belonged nowhere. There wasn't anything bad about that, Cater thought. Just because he wasn't special didn't mean that he was doomed to live a boring, insignificant life. He could do things, he could learn magic and create good music, all while being just another person. He didn't even want to be special—

...Why did it feel like a lie?

Cater wasn't special. He wasn't. He'd been told that time after time, fully internalizing it until there was no other possibility in his mind. If he really were special, everything would be a lot easier than it was. 

Maybe 'special' just felt like the wrong word. Cater didn't feel special, he felt different. 'Special' had a certain connotation, like it was a good thing; Cater just didn't belong.

Everyone else was powerful; everyone else had a place to call home, wherever it may be. Everyone else was well-suited to the unique challenges of attending an arcane academy—especially NRC.

But Cater was naive. He wasn't smart or powerful, and he'd yet to find someplace he fit in, somewhere he belonged. He wasn't special, but he was so very different from all the people around him.

A bell rang, and class was dismissed. All those around Cater gathered their things and were on their way. Cater was a bit slower to move, shoving his completely blank notes into his bag before slinging it over his shoulder. He checked his phone as he joined the crowd at the door, eventually making his way out into the hallway, leaning against the wall and responding to a couple magicam messages he'd gotten during the class period. 

"Hey." Trey's voice pulled Cater's attention away from the screen, shoving his phone into his pocket and glancing up.

"Hey," Cater replied, kicking the back of his shoe against the wall as he looked at Trey.

"Sorry about yesterday," Trey said quietly, scratching his head as he rested his back on the wall beside Cater. "I don't think I was being particularly helpful. I didn't want to make your mood worse or anything."

Cater let out a quiet chuckle. "It's NBD, Trey. I'm feeling better today, anyway." 

"That's good." Trey stared straight ahead, almost like he didn't dare look at Cater. He cleared his throat, his face scrunching up as he worked through his thoughts, determining what to say next. "I saw you weren't taking notes last period," he adjusted his glasses—a nervous habit of his, "if you're interested, we could go over my notes together? If you're not busy, I mean."

Trey was unbearably cute when he was nervous. Cater bit back a smile, feeling heat rise in his face. His heart thumped in his chest, internally screaming at himself to calm down! This was Trey, there was no reason for Cater to be acting this weird around him.

"That sounds great," Cater replied, before Trey had a chance to take it back. "Your notes are a lifesaver."

A quiet chuckle escaped Trey's lips; Cater felt his heart skip a beat, wondering just how long these... reactions would continue.

"At some point you're gonna have to take notes for yourself," Trey joked, starting to walk down the quickly emptying hallway.

"Not if I've got you around," Cater replied, playfully nudging Trey's shoulder as they walked towards the library together.

The two of them found an empty table in a decently secluded part of the library. It wasn't in a separate study room, but since it was a Friday afternoon, the library wasn't particularly crowded, anyway. Trey walked Cater through the lesson they'd just had which Cater had paid no attention to. Cater copied down Trey's notes, but wasn't confident that he actually understood much of it. But hey, at least Trey was also helping him with the homework that Cater hadn't even realized they had been assigned. 

Cater wasn't entirely sure how it happened, but they both lost focus shortly after they'd gotten into the homework. Trey talked about his family and the bakery they owned, and while Cater didn't like sweets and pastries all that much, even he found his mouth watering as Trey showed him pictures of some of their specialties. 

Then Trey swiped to what appeared to be a family picture, though not a recent one. 

"OMG, Trey, is this little you?" He practically snatched Trey's phone out of his hands, zooming in to look at the way-too-cute image of a much younger Trey.

In the picture, Trey looked like he was maybe eleven or twelve years old, his black-framed glasses too big for his face, hair overgrown. His sister was a toddler, brother a baby held in his mother's arms; they both shared Trey's dark green hair, but neither had his golden eyes. Trey was the spitting image of his father, and Cater involuntarily found himself envisioning just how Trey would look like years down the road...

Sevens, could he not have some normal, appropriate thoughts about his best friend?

"I didn't know that was in there," Trey laughed nervously, face flushing as he turned away from Cater.

Perhaps Cater had been looking at it for longer than he should have been, long enough for Trey to recover from the embarrassment and grab his phone back from Cater, setting it down on the table without turning it off. The screen still displayed the family picture.

"You said you had sisters, right?" Trey asked, only stumbling through the words a little bit. Cater nodded, biting back his true feelings as he pulled out his phone and searched for pictures. He didn't have the most recent family photos they took (probably a good thing—he really didn’t like those ones), but he was able to track down a few that were recent enough. He put it on his phone, setting it down on the table beside Trey's phone.

It was... difficult to see the side-by-side comparison. Trey's family, young and full of life and love. Their smiles were imperfect but genuine, and a far better sight than the cold, stiff, fake smiles that his family wore. All the makeup, the clothes pressed perfectly flat, not a hair out of place, it just looked... sad.

Cater was saved from having to continue comparing the two images, since Trey picked up Cater's phone to get a better look. There was a brief moment where Cater thought he saw Trey's smile falter, but he determined he was probably just seeing things. 

Silence fellow over the two of them as Trey stared at the photo; Cater couldn't quite read Trey's expression as he glanced between Cater's phone and his fac, but he so desperately wanted to know what Trey was thinking.

"I'm always told the three of us look identical," Cater said lightly, the silence was too much for him. He needed Trey to say something, anything really. He just needed some kind of acknowledgement. 

“Not quite,” Trey whispered, and the way he seemed to study Cater’s appearance made his heart feel like it was gonna pound its way out of his chest.

"Oh?" Cater asked, intrigued. "What's different?"

"Well, your smile, for one. You've got sharper teeth, and that one that juts out from the rest—" He stopped, cutting himself off, then clearing his throat. "I'm sure there's more differences that I can't see in a picture. But, uh, you do look a lot alike."

Cater bit his lip. The way Trey spoke made it clear that Trey had noticed a lot about him. More than Cater wanted, likely. He wanted to let himself live in the delusion that it was a good thing, that it meant Trey cared enough to notice things, to remember things, but it just made Cater nervous, heat pooling in his chest and an unfortunate blush rising in his cheeks. He turned his head away, hoping that Trey didn't notice his change in expression. 

"It's a good look, isn't it?" Cater joked, trying hard to continue the conversation without feeling so… awkward. For some reason, turning up the charm and walking the line between friendly and flirting felt far more comfortable than any kind of vulnerability. 

Either Trey didn't hear quite right or didn't want to acknowledge Cater's playful remark, since his response was nothing more than a distracted "Mhm-hmm."

Smile faltering, Cater glanced away again, trying to compose himself, for realsies, this time. 

It took just a few slow, deep breaths for Cater to feel his heart rate go back to normal, and a few breaths after that for him to have the confidence to look back at Trey. He might've been about to say something—really, he wasn't sure what he was about to do, so it probably didn't matter—but he didn't get the chance to say or do anything before they were interrupted. 

"Cater, Trey!" A voice distracted Cater from his thoughts, both he and Trey turning around the face the direction that the voice came from. 

Nova approached their table, waving and smiling. He sat himself down atop the table when he reached them.

"Hi, Nova," Trey greeted, "What's up?"

"You guys are also taking practical magic this semester, right?" Nova asked, legs swinging off the edge of the table. Cater nodded. "Great. Have you figured out the color-changing spell yet? Quinn was trying to help me with it, but it was just sooooo not happening."

"Nope," Cater said quickly. Practical magic was absolutely not his strong suit. He'd hardly been able to even cast the spell, and it had turned his hair a nearly blinding highlighter yellow. Cater had to get someone else to turn it back to orange afterwards. He wasn’t keen on doing it again.

"I don't quite have it consistent yet," Trey began, finally setting Cater's phone down on the tabletop, "but I've been able to get it pretty good, I think."

"Great, how the hell does it work?"

Trey quickly moved onto explaining the spell, Nova and Cater both listening intently, fearing that it might show up on the next practical magic assessment. A lot of time had already elapsed since classes had let out for the day, and they were working intently late into the evening. Quinn showed up at some point as well, and all four practiced that spell until Cater and Quinn felt better about it. 

Practical magic was still one of Cater's worst areas, and he was certainly not confident about the color-changing spell yet, but he was doing much better now. After the hours they spent going over it, Cater could now change the color of the correct object, rather than a random one that he didn't want to change (like his hair), though he wasn't good enough to change it to the color he wanted just yet. 

Someday, he told himself. Someday, a spell as theoretically simple as changing his shoes from white to black wouldn't give him such a headache. Someday, he could perform all sorts of spells without issue, but that was not happening yet. 

They lost track of time pretty quickly, especially since the rest of the library was quiet, only a few students here and there, and none passing by their little table. 

"Uh oh," Quinn said, staring down at their phone. "Cafeteria's just closed. And Sam's shop is closing real soon."

Outside of Heartslabyul parties, the dorm didn't have specific meals for all students to attend and partake in, instead having students rely on the cafeteria for their meals. Some things were stocked in the dorm, but that was mostly snacks and ingredients reserved for parties. Some students had food of their own stored in the dorm, but Cater certainly didn't have much. 

"Don't worry," Trey said calmly. "I'll make something back at the dorm."

"Really?" Nova asked. "Do you have enough food there?"

Trey nodded, taking off his glasses and cleaning them on the linking of his jacket. "When you're a part of the food team for dorm parties, you get access to a lot of things that no one else knows about." His grin was awfully sly, as if he were talking about something far more mischievous than just making dinner. 

It didn't take long for the four of them to pack up their notes and textbooks that had gotten mixed up atop the table, and they were soon on their way to the mirror chamber, walking beside one another on the cobblestone streets beneath the quickly darkening sky. 

The library, very similar to the gymnasium and alchemy workshop, was a completely separate building on NRC campus. That kind of thing would be annoying in a lot of places, but Sage's Island was unlike anywhere Cater had been before. It got cold enough to snow in the dead of winter, but didn't last long enough to be dreadful. Cater could imagine it would be miserable in heavy rain, or Sevens forbid a hailstorm, but now, it was nice to get a breath of fresh air. 

The air was cold, reddening his face and ears; he shoved his hands into his coat pockets so they wouldn't freeze up, but the night was so nice and clear that Cater didn't mind the cold. 

In order to get to the mirror chamber from the library, there was a walk along Main Street, up the staircase into the main castle-like building, and a fair bit of weaving through practically deserted hallways. On other evenings, they would have run into many more students, still going about club activities, homework, and study groups, but Friday evenings were different. They were likely not the only students still on the main campus, but the odds were against running into many others.

On a whim, Nova made the decision to cut through the courtyard in order to get to the mirror chamber faster. Cater certainly didn't have an issue; it was cold, but the sky was a gorgeous deep blue, stars shining brighter than they had the last few days.

The rustle of leaves caught Cater's attention, and the way everyone else stopped in their tracks told him that it wasn't just in his head. The wind wasn't particularly strong, certainly not enough to cause such a noise. That meant something—or someone—was in the courtyard with them.

It wasn't necessarily a bad thing. For all Cater knew, this could be a good friend, or maybe some small, cute animal that had somehow made its way into the courtyard. 

But this was Night Raven. It could just as likely be someone, or something, that could mean them harm. Someone that couldn't care less that duels were prohibited on campus. 

Cater looked around the courtyard, but the darkness made it difficult to see very far. He glanced towards his friends that stood beside him, each with a different expression: fear, curiosity, confusion—who knows what kind of expression Cater was making.

Another rustling sound reached Cater's ears, and now he was better able to pinpoint where the noise was coming from, his eyes locking onto a tree across the courtyard. It was dark enough, and far enough away for it to appear to be nothing more than a silhouette: trunk to branches to leaves to—

To the person coming out from behind it.

As his eyes traced the now moving silhouette, Cater could recognize a few distinctive features. The cut of the school uniform, the practically towering height, but most of all: the two horns atop the head.

Letting out a relieved breath, Cater's face broke into a smile as he started walking again, directly towards the blurred figure of Malleus Draconia—much to his friends' dismay, who called out after him in hushed voices, tugging on his sleeves to hold him back.

"Malleus!" Cater waited until he was close enough to truly make out Malleus's features before greeting him, waving his hand as he approached. "What are you doing here by yourself? It's nearly ten!"

Malleus lifted his head to the sound of Cater's voice. He didn't smile or wave at seeing Cater, but that wasn't a response he would have expected, anyway.

"Diamond," Malleus addressed Cater as he addressed just about anyone. Cater didn't know if it was a fae thing, a royalty thing, or maybe just a Malleus thing? "I'm afraid I must have lost track of the time."