Adam’s funeral was yesterday.

Rafael learned about it after the fact, from a teacher in contact with Adam’s family, and had to find a way to gently tell Stavros and Nicholas. It was a small family affair, not many others were invited.

Nicholas laughed it off and then went very quiet. Didn’t say a word through dinner. He still had to take a potion just to get to sleep tonight.

The dorms have four beds in a room so they’re the only ones inside, but Rafael’s hearing gets so sensitive during a full that his bed has been transmuted into a massive four-poster with heavy curtains and a silencing ward over the top. The ward is kind of pointless since he’s keeping the other two in here with him but Rafael doesn’t want to be separated right now. He’s not going to sleep anyway.

"Would one of your cousins have come up here?" Rafael asks, sitting up with his head tipped back against the top of the headboard. With the curtains drawn, his bed is pitch black with vague shadows.

Stavros is curled around Nicholas' back with an arm slung over his waist, hand resting on Rafael’s knee. No point lowering their voices, the potion keeps Nicholas under.

"A spell blurred his face but he smelled like you," Rafael continues.

"I know," says Stavros. “They cordoned off the forest but I got in with wildshape.”

The scent left a wandering path up and down, just inside the tree line. Someone had been watching them when they were lying under the stars that night.

"I sent a letter home," Stavros admits. "Nothing."

"Would they tell you?" Rafael asks, not trying to soften the question.

"I pretended I was my cousin."

They go quiet as Nicholas shifts a bit in his sleep.

"Did you tell the magpol?" Stavros continues.

"Tell them what? I could smell him? Excuse me, officer, I’m diseased but before you put me down..." Rafael rolls his head along the backboard. "And they've been useless, haven't they?"

The mage police questioned them separately but asked the same thing. Mostly why they were out that night, and especially why they were in the forest.

Winter break was long enough ago that they had just wanted to get out for a bit. Shake out their energy. Sleep outside in nature. They didn’t even want to get into trouble that night, and they weren’t planning to go into the trees.

Technically students aren’t allowed inside the forest without a teacher’s permission. There are not only various hidden and impossible to detect portals to other forests all over the world, but it's also filled with creatures from nymphs to the occasional wendigo back from when this island used to be a magical creature conservation - or from when it was a stronghold, or a prison, or a high mage’s private island, so on and so forth.

The creatures are now barely held back from eating all the students by strong defensive wards but they only extend so far out from the citadel. Not that it’s ever scared the boys off when they run through it nearly every full moon. They’ve seen the worst the forest has to offer and Rafael himself is up on that leaderboard. They thought they were safe.

Rafael was supposed to keep them safe.

Stavros huffs. "Magpol spent so fucking long stuttering out questions like my father was going to swoop out of the shadows to eat them if they said something wrong." He grits his teeth. "There are spells to track porting, but now it's been too long for any to work and they're still bumbling around the forest."

Rafael hums. "Talking a lot too. A student asked me about it when I was in the library."

Stavros sighs. "Raffy, tell me maiming people is illegal."

"Oh, Ross. Only if you get caught."

The uniform is the same for everyone. Shades of grey shirt and slacks, shiny leather shoes, black tie. An apprentice wand tucked up a sleeve of course, and then whatever else the students layer on. This is the same across all years and tracks of the high school.

Students all have outer robes as well but that’s only worn for special occasions. Or by stuck-up hereditary mages, who want to prove they’re superior to the idiopathic mages picked out of the mundane population. Stavros himself only managed to kick the habit in year eight.

Because of the uniform rules, every time class is let out the corridors are a sea of colours from random jackets and jumpers.

One such bright white coat is Stavros’, next to Nicholas’ shiny black puffer and Rafael’s mute navy jumper. The crowd surges around them as they head to their next class, people darting glances their way. Most of their friends have stepped up during classes and asked the usual questions; are you doing okay, is there anything I can do?

And then there are the others, who ask far more pointed questions like they don’t already damn well know what happened from the rumours flying around.

Rafael had a kid small enough to be in year seven ask if Adam died in pain from a scary monster in the forest. Stavros hauled the little girl over the side of the staircase and dropped her two storeys before the protective wards caught her and held her in suspension for a teacher to get her down.

It's halfway through the school year so even the new little year-sevens should know not to mess with them, but with Nicholas closed in on himself and Rafael so anxious whenever he can’t see both of his friends, Stavros is much more focused inwards on their group rather than projecting outwards.

And it would be fine for anyone else, if only Stavros and Nicholas hadn’t spent the last five years bulldozing their way through people whenever they needed to, like collateral damage isn’t a word in their collective dictionary.

People take it as a sign of weakness.

The high school is split into five tracks depending on the source of magic. Ritual Casting, Familiar Nurture, Nature Communication, Pulling The Veil and Inner Core. Stavros, Rafael and Nicholas are all Inner Core students.

Everyone can do folk magic with a focus like the apprentice wands; levitating, lighting things, producing a small bubble of water, that kind of thing. To do high magic with power in it, you need rituals like RitCast, a familiar to channel magic like Famure, to be able to communicate with nature like NatCom, to pull power from other dimensions like Pull, or just to have an inner core like InCore.

RitCast and InCore hate each other because their casting is similar enough that it’s always compared and it’s always a competition. Stavros and Nicholas have given RitCast shit since they first stepped foot onto the floating island, and the two can get really bad about it.

So it’s not actually a surprise when they’re on the way to Advanced Runes class and a group of year-elevens, a year older, block them off in an empty hallway. These are from the RitCast dorms judging by the standard-issue ingredient pouches that hang from their hips.

"Walk away," Stavros warns them, stepping out in front of Nicholas and Rafael. His wand snaps out of the holster spell keeping it up his sleeve.

"I've been hearing rumours lately." A RitCast boy is smirking like Stavros doesn’t make him cry three times a year.

"I'm going to skin your face off," Stavros says, spinning his wand until it's a blur. "Make you fucking eat it."

The boy stutters.

Another RitCast steps up though, from the back of the group and confident because she's got meat shields in front of her. She smirks. "I heard poor Adam died not twenty metres from you."

Stavros raises his wand and the four year-elevens mirror him while Rafael pulls back for more range, staying in front of Nicholas protectively. Stavros glances back before he can stop himself and Nicholas just stands there but instead of his usual blank state, his eyes are wide, focused.

"I heard," the RitCast muses. Her eyes slide past Stavros and land on Nicholas. "That Nicholas was the one to suggest leaving the citadel that night."

Nicholas' breath hitches.

Rafael is actually the first one to move.

They get detention and track points taken away, but Nicholas practised healing spells on the year-elevens and they’re already as good as new by the time the teachers found them.

But not even an overpowered scrubbing spell can get all that blood off the carpet.