The following days were the strangest I'd had at the academy. Whether it was the pin, the knowledge I'd fought in an actual Siroth revolt, or my public rebuttal of Aeloria Besas's bullshit in class, I was now in the academy. Fellow students spoke to me, nodded to me, acknowledged me.

True, others glared at me or pointedly avoided me, but that was the politics of any large group.

Arun was one of those that avoided me, but the sway he'd had in turning others against me had clearly waned.

As for Aeloria, she missed a few days of classes but returned later in the cycle. She, most of all, stayed as far away from me as possible. All things being equal, it had been worth throwing her under the bus.

By the end of the cycle, six full days since I'd left for Velkyn, the horror of seeing Earl again had mostly faded back down to the level of simmering dread I always carried with me.

My only aim now was to get through to the tournament and my escape without any further trouble.

Someone did not feel the same.

As we shuffled into Enchanting, Linus Mornar was in high spirits. Extra disheveled and extra exuberant. He welcomed us in with a wide armed gesture.

"Greetings class! The Cycles are ticking away, are they not? And we still have so much to squeeze in to ensure you're ready for the Intra Academy Tournament."

Ellaazi groaned, but it didn't travel down to Mornar, thankfully. Little things like that had a tendency of upsetting the eccentric Archon.

"So, going forward I plan to get through two enchantments a day! To mentally prepare you for the increased work load, today we will be creating a Proximity Alert Enchantment. This is a simple enough enchantment, but, it involves enchanting two rods. Rather than waste time talking about it, can you all please turn to page 70 in your books."

I rifled through the pages until I found the enchantment, and Mornar, unable to help himself, started talking again. "First, we create the protective wards. But this time you put only one on each rod.

"On the other side we will be applying a connection ward which will link the two. You will need to refer you to page 30 for that. If you don't mind, please insert a bookmark so we don't have any confusion or unnecessary questions later."

Then we were off, racing to complete the work.

When it came to the connection glyph, I looked at the page and then over to Torma. He'd already done his, but it was still worth eyeing what it looked like in real life, rather than from the page of a book.

As I hadn't practiced this one before, I traced it out in my notebook and copied it a couple of times before checking on Ellaazi. She was trying to inconspicuously trace from the book, but the spine was at an awkward angle, and she was about as inconspicuous as a rat in a sandwich.

I nudged her. Slid over one of my drawings, which she took with grudging acceptance, and I began carving the connecting rune on the rod.

It was a figure of eight with two tails on each loop and as soon as I'd finished the engraving, I activated the rune to check it like I'd seen Torma do.

The effect took hold and the two separate rods attached like magnets. Satisfied, I sat silently studying the glyphs needed for the actual enchantment while we waited for everybody else to finish.

After another ten minutes, Master Mornar addressed the room "Okay, everyone. There are a couple of stragglers, but I think the majority of us are ready to push on. Study the runes, practice their form and engrave!"

On the first part of the rod, there were two runes, one in the shape of an eye and the other of an ear. On the second part of the rod, there was a swirling rune along with two parallel jagged lines.

I wanted to trace the runes from the book again, but Mornar was pacing the room, eyes roving everywhere, rather than his usual sedentary position at the front of the class. It wasn't worth the risk of getting caught tracing them and risking his ire, so I worked carefully and methodically, with a lot of rubbing out to get it as perfect as I possibly could.

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Once I'd recreated the eye, I glanced over to check on Ellaazi, who was once again having trouble. I traced the eye from my own drawing, checked the master wasn't looking, and slipped it over to her.

Torvald, having already repeated each drawing onto paper was about to start carving the earlike rune onto his first rod. He noticed what was going on with me and Ellaazi and carefully slid his ear diagram over to me.

I accepted it gratefully and passed it back as soon as I was done before tracing another copy for Ellaazi.

We repeated the process with each rune and without issue, though when the Mornar sauntered past, looking at our drawings he raised an eyebrow at Ellaazi's. I felt my blood run a little cooler, but I needn't have worried.

"Very good, Ellaazi. It is incredible to see such hard work and improvement from you."

She smiled, but kept her focus on her work as we readied to etch the runes on the actual rods. As always, it was a stressful process that left very little room for error and once completed I checked on Ellaazi.

Sweat beaded on her light red forehead. Her hands clenched the engraving pen so tightly I thought it might break.

"Hey," I whispered over. "Relax. Even if we fail, it'll be okay. We're both miles ahead of where we were a couple of cycles ago."

"Is there a problem?" Master Mornar barked. I'd totally missed his eyes on us.

"Sorry sir. It was my fault." I said before Ellaazi could take any heat.

"Was it indeed? Please refrain from any further chit-chat, Adam of House Garazal."

Then he was off, watching other students. As he moved, I caught Aeloria's eyes on me. If looks could kill I'd have died on the spot. For some reason, I smiled, and then got back to work.

I went slowly and steadily, determined not to screw it up and I finally completed the enchantment, I felt an enormous sense of pride.

Again I looked over to Ellaazi and to my surprise, she'd almost kept pace and was just finishing off her own jagged lines. I scanned her runes and nodded to myself, satisfied. They weren't perfect, but they were definitely good enough to work the enchantment, in my inexpert opinion.

Torma was long since finished, and beyond him, Ressa was just finishing up too. She smiled at me and waved the connected rod at me in victory.

I waved mine back, and Torma frowned.

"What?" I mouthed.

His eyes flickered to Mornar before he snatched the rod out of my hand, rolling his over to me at the same time. It was so sudden and unexpected, I didn't even react, though I watched him like a hawk as he went to work with his etching pen.

It was the swirl. Somehow, despite it being etching into metal, he managed to smooth out one loop I thought was fine, until I saw him thickening it to remove an imperfection.

"Attention class! Time is up. If you have managed to empower your rod, excellent. The rest of you, if you haven't completed the task, we will take this up at the beginning of next lesson, though you will fall behind now as we have much to achieve before the tournament."

With nimble hands Torma swapped our rods back. I wasn't sure what to make of his improvements. But when I attempted to empower it, the enchantment sprung to life and held. Ellaazi's did too. Relief flooded me.

Mornar spoke again. "I see a lot of active enchantments! Well done Class. For those of you who have successfully activated the enchantment, would you please pull your rods apart. Place your alarm rod down on the desk and hold your sense rod very carefully."

I followed her instructions with a little excitement at seeing exactly what we'd created.

"Now, one at a time. Starting with you, Arun. Place your sense rod down. It will become responsive once it has left your hand. Once you have let go, tap it with a finger."

Arun did as asked and the alarm rod let out a shrill noise and an audible vibration. "Perfect! Next!"

Success after success until our table at the back showed their work. The class was generally uninterested once they'd had their turn, all except Aeloria, whose eyes were fixed on me as the alarm sang out. Her expression darkened, and she turned away quickly. So weird.

"Well done everyone. I look forward to our next class. Two enchantments. Come fresh, and come ready to learn!

Once outside, I patted Torma on the back. "Thanks for that, mate. You saved my bacon there. I don't know how I fucked that up and didn't notice."

"You didn't," he muttered, face set in an irritated frown. "It was an imperfection on the rod. You could only see it under a certain light and it wasn't until it rolled that I even noticed the problem. They shouldn't be giving out imperfect rods like that."

I laughed to ease the tension on him. "With the amount they hand out it must happen all the time."

"No," He said with total seriousness. "It never happens. You were set up to fail and unless somebody was able to sneak in to the class, guess which rod would be yours and swap it, then it must have been Mornar."

"Oh shit." I looked around to see if anyone was listening. "It might have been Aeloria. She was watching me like a hawk, when it worked she scowled and turned away."

His face puckered up. "Maybe. But I don't think she couldn't do it without help."

"Should we tell someone?" Ellaazi asked, though her expression said she thought that was a terrible idea.

Ressa shook her head. "It's Aeloria. Even if some of the faculty have warmed to Adam, they're never going to side with him… with any of us over her. We'll just have to keep our eyes open and our wits about us."

"On the plus side," I glanced around again and lowered my voice. "We only have to make it to the tournament. Then it won't be a problem at all."

Ressa hissed and nudged me in the ribs to be quiet. She was completely right. It wasn't just me at risk if we were overheard.

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