Trying to just return to normal after being attacked by an assassin was… difficult. If I hadn't been in classes and working at the Charm and Fable, I wasn't sure that I'd have been able to get back so quickly. But with their help, I was able to get back to normal without too much trouble, and found myself enjoying life… mostly.

"Thank you everyone for your auditions and showing off some of your introductory acting chops," the theatre teacher, a large woman with bright green feathers for hair, and the bloodline of some sort of air-aligned creature, said, beaming at all of us. "Why don't we start with some of the big roles? For the role of Princess Aurélie, we have none other than our very own Sandara!"

I glanced at the older student. She was a year ahead of me, and supposedly, was quite a powerful mage, with some talent in wielding the divine blessings of some knowledge deity or another. Salem had mentioned there were rumors she was going for an archmage title, and I figured she was likely in the theatre class for the same reason I was – to relax.

I couldn't say the role didn't fit her. With her immaculate long braids, each clinking with a dozen beads containing minor bits of artifice from her affinity, her smooth, dark skin, and her large brown eyes, she might have been able to pass for the daughter of any mage in the High King's court.

On announcement of her position, the mage smiled, her eyebrows raising slightly, though not all that much, and she nodded her head graciously in the direction of our green-feathered teacher.

"For the role of Andar, the farmer boy, we have Jackson!"

Next to me, Salem gently jabbed me in the ribs, letting out a snort of amusement. I puffed out a small laugh as Jackson's eyes went wide, and he shook his head.

"Are you sure? I don't think I fit the role."

The theatre teacher let out a laugh, then realized he was quite serious and cut it off, smiling as she shook her head.

"Quite serious, dear. Now, for the role of Anatriathraxul the dragon, we have Emrys!"

I sighed and closed my eyes. I had known it was coming, but it was still annoying. I didn't think that I would be able to play a particularly convincing villain, even if I was half-decent at mimicking my family.

As the teacher continued to work her way down the list of people's roles, I noticed Sandara slip away from one of her friends and over towards Salem and myself. She nodded to him, then looked to me.

"So, have you signed up for any of the summer games? Someone who managed to beat Gerhard Dreki might actually serve to be an interesting challenge."

"I've signed up for all of them," I admitted. "What makes you think that either of us stand a chance in any of the events? Salem's probably gonna be good at the treasure hunt, but I can't imagine winning the faerie fire fight, let alone the exhibition."

"Please," she said, rolling her eyes. "I already have the top ten most likely competitors marked out for each competition. Only five first, going into second, years even made that list of thirty. You and your team are four of them, for the firefight and the treasure hunt."

"Who's t'e other firs' year?" Salem asked curiously.

"Wesley is going to dominate the spell control exhibition," Sandara admitted. "I'm not even sure I can beat him, and I'm an excellent ether shaper. He's unnaturally good. I suspect he has an ether affinity."

"He doesn't, but what he's got is pretty absurd," I said. "His is related to, but distinct from, divination affinities."

I didn't like the guy, but nor was I going to freely share his exact affinity. What I'd already told her was what he'd already shared in class once.

"Interesting," Sandara said, evaluating me carefully. "Well, for that, I'll let you know who your team should be most concerned about in the treasure hunt: Cyprus Luone. Third year, about to graduate after the summer courses. He has a twilight hare bloodline, and a divination affinity."

I flicked around in my mind, trying to remember what I'd heard about twilight hares. I knew they had some sort of strange, speed related power. I knew it operated differently from most other speed powers, not just enhancing the body like my own bloodline, nor altering the flow of time like the famous haste spell did, but it did still somehow make them faster.

When no other details came to mind, I resolved to look it up sometime – probably at one of the city's libraries that was a bit less interested in trying to eat me.

"Good ta' know," Salem said cheerfully, and Sandara nodded, then slipped away, returning to her friends, as I was called to the front in order to receive my copy of the script.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Despite Sandara's intensity, and the ominous attack on Yushin, it didn't take long for the full routine of my two classes and double shifts at work to kick in. Despite the dour mood of our nameless domestic magic teacher, he was an effective mentor, and within a week, I'd mastered the spells for the class.

Clean quickly became one of my all time favorite spells, and I found myself committing its spell formula, incantation, and gestures solidly to memory. A part of me was almost tempted to put them into my wand, but ultimately, that would be a bit of a waste, even for me.

The spell was incredibly effective, scrubbing dirt, mud, blood, and pretty much any other kind of mess or stain out of cloth, stone, wood, and metal. It wasn't even especially power intensive, as I could easily have shot a single arcane missile for the casting cost of three or so casts of clean.

No, the difficulty came from the sheer, mind-bogglingly high number of permutations that the spell had, and how each permutation interacted with everything else. While it was possible to just create a single version and use it for everything, it wouldn't be very effective, a bit like trying to create an energy barrier spell that protected against all energy.

No, the potent transmutation spell needed to be adjusted to the material, the stain type, and how embedded the stain was, with each iteration having slightly different variations in the shape of the spell.

Still, it was entirely worth it.

The sticking charm, on the other hand, was an almost exact opposite – it was dead simple, but took a surprising amount of power for a first circle spell, more than twice that of an arcane missile. It did create a semi-permanent effect, so perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised, but I honestly was.

The spell did exactly what it sounded like – it stuck one thing to something else. It wasn't an exceptionally powerful amount of sticking force, using the minimum needed to get it to stick, with the maximum amount of force being low enough I could easily break the spell even without tapping my bloodline, making it more effective as a bit of glue than as a nail. On larger objects, multiple sticking charms could be laid, but they were never going to be anything exceptional.

Even if I didn't fully memorize it, I could see myself occasionally pulling out my grimoire to study and cast it. And at the end of the day, wasn't that the point of domestic magic? To learn spells that would be helpful in ordinary life?

Sure, I might not be able to bind a monster's teeth together with this spell, but if I needed to hang a painting, or stick some notes on the wall, or making a quick fix on something that a mending spell wasn't well-suited to working on, then I could and would use it.

The fertility rite spell… Well, it was fine. I used it on myself to act as birth control, proved that I could cast it in class, and that was about it. The components were cheap, and if I ever went back to White Sands, then I could see myself teaching it to some of the hedge witches and wise men who'd taught me magic in my time wandering, but I wasn't exactly going to build a life out of it.

The thought of returning to White Sands was an odd one. The area was low in ether, and while it did a lot of fruit and vegetable growing, it wasn't especially likely to produce much of note to wizards. But I also couldn't help but wonder if there was something that could be done to assist the people living there. Most of them didn't have bad lives, not unless crops failed, but they were certainly less luxurious than the lives of the people in Panath Hold.

I spent a few days contemplating if I'd return to White Sands, and if so, what I could do to improve the region as a whole. There were no simple 'enrich local ether' spells I'd heard of, though Salem had apparently heard that there were certain druidic techniques to deepen a place's connection to Etherius. In the end, there was nothing I could do about it in the short run, and I shelved it.

While the theatre class wasn't focused on teaching spellcasting, for my role I was made to learn a handful of simple spells. The first was a cantrip, amplify voice, to ensure that the entire audience would be able to hear me.

"The entire place's actually built specifically wit' the cantrip in mind," Salem told me. With his role as a stage hand, he had to learn a few more spells than I did, as well as the enchantments for sound that were scattered throughout the massive, spatially expanded atrium.

After that, there were two more spells I had to learn: illusory inferno and draw the eye.

The first was exactly what it sounded like, creating a massive blast of flame that was entirely harmless, which I'd need to do when I revealed that I was really a dragon, and in the fights. I'd suggested it would be more authentic if I just released a wave of dragonfire and just shot it to the side to avoid actually hurting people, but had immediately been shot down by the set designers, which was honestly fair.

Draw the eye, on the other hand, was an enchantment spell that could, for just a second, force people who didn't have the will to resist to look at me. It wasn't incredibly powerful, nor was it especially unethical. Sure, there were ways to abuse the magic, but there were ways to abuse pretty much any spell under the sun if someone was determined enough. For the play, I'd be using it each time I appeared on stage.

Yushin had helped me master illusory inferno, muttering that sometimes a bluff could be useful in a fight. Truthfully, I just thought she wanted to spend time with us – ever since the assassin, her Uncle had been with her nearly constantly, and we'd barely gotten a chance to talk. Salem helped me master the spell to draw the eye, his psychic affinity aiding me in a method somewhat similar to what professor Caeruleum's abjuration affinity did, nudging my shaping, words, and gestures to more accurately mesh with the perfect version of the spell.

"M' workin' on a way to build a sort'a mental construc' an' instan'ly learn the shapin' aspect'a spells," Salem admitted. "But it's slow goin."

"Trying to combine your psychic powers and wizardry without losing any aspects of either?" I asked. It seemed like a reasonable step to take, especially considering that he'd asked for a copy of the grimoire I'd found.

"That's the idea a' least. Got a long way ta' go."

When not working, Salem and I continued to go out together on our maybe-dates, but I found myself growing increasingly frustrated with the lack of clarity. I enjoyed Salem's company, and he clearly enjoyed mine, but it still somewhat felt like we were just close friends, rather than actually dating one another.

In the middle of one of the practices for the play that Salem and I finally got into some trouble… and some clarity.

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