I hurried to finish connecting the spell work. The straight lines wriggled, but they’d have to do. I didn’t have time to properly rule them out.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait — what in Cain’s dream of hell was that symbol? Oh, yes, right, no, I needed that one. It was essential.

“Breathe, Daniel,” Blaise whispered as he walked by, carrying his project up to Roux’s worktable cum desk.

Good advice. I sucked in several deep breaths, but my project blurred in front of my eyes, symbols distorted and running into each other. I shook my head and glanced up. Roux had changed the time once again.

I threw myself into the work. The torch slipped over my gloved thumb, the metal-woven cloth burning against my skin like a metal sheet left out in the sun, but otherwise absorbing the damage. Even if I had to sacrifice a finger. Or three. However many fingers it took.

I laid the last connecting line. All right, it should work. I signed the torch off, the effort taking several tries, but Roux would have my head if I tested the worktable’s fire retardant enchantments.

Once able to drop the torch, I threw off my gloves. Only a few moments left. Roux paced at the front of the room, as intimidating as a blue… Focus.

I placed my palm flat in the centre of my circle, the warm metal prickling my skin. I focused Le Savant’s power, his gift to his disciples, his sorcerers, into the circuits, filling up the lines like it was water.

A fat hand landed on my shoulder. I jerked away, my hand knocking the astrolabe and torch off the table, but Roux held me up by the shoulder. Some muscle under the blueberry physique.

“It’s past time,” Roux said.

“Oh, er, I’m done?” That wasn’t supposed to be a question.

Roux peered down at my slab of embroidered iron, looking less like a blueberry now that his face had lost its ire. “And what, pray tell, is this?”

“It, er, it boils water,” I said. “You put a pot of water on it.”

His bushy eyebrows went up, and he turned his head, reading the symbols. “Did you see what your peers made?”

I shook my head.

“They made a ring to store heat, they fireproofed paper, and yes, they even made a still, the brats. All perfect examples of capturing thermodynamics for your own purposes.”

“I’ll do it again,” I said. “However many times until I get it right—”

“Travere, it’s… Daniel, it’s against the rules,” Roux said.

I scrunched up my eyes, and took several steadying breaths, as if that would make this whole scene disappear. My knees threatened to buckle beneath me. I wanted nothing more than to crawl in bed — except to try the exam again. If I could only do that…

Roux exhaled and picked up the iron, turning it in his hands, his head shaking back and forth. “I don’t even need to test your work to know your grade.”

“Please, sir,” I begged. I even clasped my hands together. Utterly pathetic, I knew, but I was about as skilled in debate as I was in Practicum. “I can do better—”

“What’s this? Crib notes?” Frowning, he picked up my makeshift report card.

My eyes widened. “Of course not. It’s motivation. To remind me, I have to…”

“Motivation? But you’re placing too much–” Roux made an exasperated sigh, the kind my teachers reserved for me. He set the paper back down and, after producing a fountain pen from the folds of his cobalt Sorcerer Guild robes, scrawled in the middle of the red circle. He slid the paper back to me.

My jaw slackened. A ‘70.’ He had put a ‘70’ down.

“You’ll pass with this,” Roux said. “Sloppy work, but the idea is there. It possesses a simple genius to it.”

I burst out laughing, which tittered out quickly enough. That last bit had to be a joke.

Roux made an annoyed sound in his throat. “All said, good enough to make it to your last semester.”

I breathed out, sagging in my chair like losing all the wind in my sail. One last chance. One last chance.

“However, you’ll have to do better than this for your thesis project.”

I stiffened. “Thesis project?”

“You’re very lucky, Daniel.” Roux set down the iron with a soft thump. “Once you make it to the final semester, grades mean very little in regard to getting into the Sorcerer’s Guild. Entry into the guild depends on your final project, a thesis project done in pairs. A theoretical discovery, a personal enchantment or, in your case, some sort of device.”

In pairs… I almost whispered the words like I recited scripture late at night. In pairs. If I could get the right partner, it wouldn’t matter how stupid I was. I wouldn’t even have to worry about tackling theoretical work, the Holy Grail in sorcery, the pursuit Le Savant held above all others after his human companion Oswin had turned his head from war machines to the majesty of the cosmos. Personal enhancements, a misnomer my father continually ranted about, came next in the hierarchy, and then practical devices, like my pitiful attempt at a heating pad.

“But if your thesis project remains at this level…” Roux nudged the iron. “Well, it better not. You’ll have all semester to work on it before you present it to a select committee of guild judges. This will be your last chance, Daniel. Make your father proud.”

I tightened my hands into fists. “I’ll pass,” I said. “I’ll pass and get into the guild, no matter what it takes.”

Roux granted me a thin smile. “Go on and get some rest. I don’t need a student collapsing on the last day of exams.”

I nodded, and picked my equipment off the floor as Roux went to erase the chalkboard and examine the other students’ more hopeful projects.

One last chance. Or a second last chance. Roux had said I’d just passed Practicum, and my other grades were enough. I swallowed. They weren’t good enough. Vespasian would have words for me, as soon as I arrived back at our ancestral home, Auvergne House, none of them as nice as the cane he’d have reserved.

I set the torch on the table, the tube rolling until it got stuck in a crack. Just like me.

No, that was how Vespasian would have acted, before the last summer break. Before I had cut him off mid-stride in his tirade, screaming at Vespasian that I would never be the son he wanted. First with my choking stupidity, and then, right before the break, I had to go and kiss a man. Because just being stupid wasn’t a horrible enough shame for my parents.

And for once, I had won an argument. Vespasian had seen me for the irreversible loser I was. He’d given up on me. Now when I returned home, I faced silence. My desk was clear of the books he demanded I read.

I put my equipment away and walked through the corridor like it was all a dream. Or I was. One day I’d wake up and be who I was really meant to be. A success. Someone not…

My feet came to stop in front of a portrait. Le Savant stared out, his eyes all black from edge to edge, his face covered in indigo tattoos he alone in Fallion could wear. From one clawed hand, Le Savant dropped the pyromane, his last war machine before he’d turned to theoretical work. Unlike my pitiful heating pad, his was a work of genius. It drew the right mixture of minerals from within the human body to create an internal incendiary device. Undetectable, unstoppable, unconscionable.

The violet-haired Larians, even more stupid and wicked than I in taking up arms against Le Chasseur’s army to protect the blasphemous vampires, had been spared the pyromane’s devastating effects by the human man staring adoringly up at Le Savant, his hair painted for once its actual lavender. As if it wasn’t common knowledge for every Fallion for the eight hundred years after the Vampire Wars that Oswin had once been a prince of the Larians.

But that was before Oswin had been taken as Le Savant’s tent slave. Before Oswin had convinced Le Savant the horror of the pyromane and introduced him to the beauty of studying and understanding the world around us and the heavens above us. Before Oswin had devoted himself to his god.

Oswin looked up at Le Savant with a warm expression, and not only because Le Savant discarded the pyromane. A look I would even dare call happy. My fingers reached up to the touch the oils, as if happiness spread through touch. And why wouldn’t he be happy? Oswin never had to worry about getting into the guild. He’d founded the guild. He had never had to worry about inappropriate kissing dreams either.

All Oswin had ever worried about was serving Le Savant. He excelled at it, and he made it seem effortless, until the day he’d died.

I steadied my shaking hands. I could do this. I could make my father proud, I could fix our relationship — I could fix everything. I would ace the thesis project. I would get into the guild. I’d make it all better, no matter the cost.