“She knows I didn’t do this on purpose, right?” Maziar asked Marlen as he led them through the seventh floor of the South Cradle. “Why do I feel like I’m getting punished when I didn’t do anything?”

“I wouldn’t dream of assuming what goes through the head of the Archon,” Marlen said. “Although saying that you didn’t do anything is a bit of a stretch. It might do you well to lay low for a while after this.”

“I was laying low!” Maziar told him. “I wanted to lay low! Please, let me lay low!”

“What I want to know is why you, who effectively gained free labor, are the one complaining when I’m the one who’s going to sweep your floors and scrub your toilets,” Ennette said, tossing her red hair over her shoulder. Then she paused. “You do have toilets here, right?”

Maziar gave her a pained smile as Marlen reassured her.

Maziar couldn’t quite place what it was about the girl, but the longer he stayed around her, the more she unnerved him. Why was that? Red hair and freckles weren’t very common in the kingdom, but she wasn’t so different from anyone else he’d met.

He supposed it had to do with the fact that she clearly didn’t know anything about him, yet still pretended that she did. She certainly seemed to have made up her mind about him from the moment they met. “Villain,” she said, as if this were some kind of fairytale.

Maziar scoffed and scratched his chin.

Even though it wouldn’t do him any good, he still had half a mind to feed her to War and forget it had all happened in the first place. It was almost a pity that his mother was already involved; it would be tough to get away unscathed with that plan now.

One thing was for sure—the girl gave Maziar a headache, and he didn’t need any more of those.

“How about this,” Maziar started, “If you leave me alone, I’ll leave you alone.”

“She will need to attend classes with you at the very least,” Marlen reminded him as they came to Maziar’s door, and he started running his hands on the walls next to it. “When she’s ready, at least. The Archon made that perfectly clear.”

Narrowing his eyes, Maziar said, “She’s using her to police me, isn’t she? That damn woman is taking advantage of the situation to make sure I attend classes.”

“I should’ve known you’d be the type to skip classes,” Ennette noted.

“Your opinion wasn’t asked for, thanks,” Maziar snapped. She looked like she had more to say but kept her mouth shut.

Marlen found a spot on the wall he liked and began to draw the shape of a door with a glittering trail of green mana. After adding a magic circle in the center, he snapped his fingers. With a poof, the drawing became a redwood door with little strawberry plants carved into the panels.

“Wow!” Ennette exclaimed, her mouth hanging open.

“This is all it takes to impress you?” Maziar scoffed.

“Well, you certainly don’t,” she grumbled, walking toward the door. “Can I open it?”

“Of course,” the secretary said with a slight bow. “This door and the room beyond it are yours now. Once you open the door for the first time, your fingerprints will be used as the keys. You can request the door to imprint for other people merely by asking while holding the knob. Should you like the access to be temporary, all you need to do is specify the time frame.”

“That’s so cool!” Ennette said in awe. “That’s super convenient. No keys to lose or passwords to forget?”

“I mean, you can still lose your hands,” Maziar pointed out, which earned him another glare. In the light coming from the nearby torches, her eyes were quite a pretty green, like the color of summer leaves. He shoved his hands in his pockets and leaned against his own door. “I’m just saying.”

“Say less,” Ennette said to him.

Maziar couldn’t help but laugh.

Ennette turned the knob of the door and walked in with Marlen, while Maziar just poked his head through the door.

“It’s like a whole apartment!” Ennette exclaimed.

It was smaller and less ornate than his room, but it was cozy. Like his, there was a single main room connected to a small kitchenette and a bathroom. All spaces were fully outfitted with all the modern amenities the Tower could provide. Given that Marlen was a very thorough designer, Maziar was certain that there would be—to Ennette’s great relief, he was sure—a toilet, among other modern conveniences.

“Wow,” Ennette breathed as she went around the room, touching everything. “Are these like… appliances? In a magic world?”

“They’re called magic devices,” Maziar told her. “And I’ll bet you break at least one by tomorrow.”

“This is my room, and you don’t have to be here if you don’t want to be.”

“I don’t, but how could I miss such a show?” he said, smirking. “I bet the toilet will be the first thing you break.”

The girl turned as red as a lobster as she looked around, probably for something to throw at him.

Watching her struggle would have been delightful, but Marlen interrupted. “That’s enough of that,” he said. “Worry not, Miss Ennette, I won’t leave you to figure things out on your own. Maziar, must you antagonize her further?”

“I’m only trying to make her feel more comfortable,” Maziar lied, and he did little to hide it. Marlen rolled his eyes and cast a brief incantation. A window to his office desk appeared mid-air, and he picked up a yellow packet before closing it.

“Well, then,” said Marlen, clearing his throat as he handed the packet to Ennette. “This document contains all the information you need to start attending as an apprentice...”

Feeling no need to hang around as Marlen explained Tower life, Maziar slipped away to his own room.

In the form of a cat, War was stretched across the bed as he walked in. Seeing Maziar come in, he jumped off immediately. Taking his humanoid form—a middle-aged man with curly, black hair—he retrieved an apple from his barrel.

“I’m not your only familiar now, I take it?” War said. “It can’t be that bad. I hardly feel any mana drain at all. In fact… it’s almost as if you’re gaining it.”

“I am, apparently,” Maziar said. He flopped onto the bed and rubbed his face. “How the hell did this happen? Seriously? This was not in the plan!”

War shrugged. “I don’t think I have ever seen a plan that… well. Went according to plan,” he said. “You have to learn to be flexible. Adapt.”

“Can’t you eat her?”

“Can I?”

“...No.”

“How sad.”

“My mother has assigned her to keep watch over me,” Maziar said, sitting back up. “She doesn’t say it, but that’s what it is.”

“Do you think the Archon suspects something?”

“I doubt it. I think she thinks I’m just a brat.”

“You are just a brat,” War said, sitting in the desk chair. “A stupid one.”

“I don’t need that from you,” grumbled Maziar, throwing a pillow at his real familiar.

War caught it and asked, “So what are you going to do?”

“The only thing I can do,” Maziar said. “Lay low and hope it all blows over.”

“It won’t.”

“I know, but at least it gives me time to make a better plan.”

“Should you really be making any more plans?”

“Shut it.”

“And the girl?”

“I don’t know,” Maziar said honestly. “There’s something weird about her that I can’t place my finger on. We certainly can’t let her find out anything about us. She said something strange right after I summoned her.”

“That being?” War asked.

“She said that I was supposed to be some kind of chaos-wielding super-magician,” he told him. “It’s almost as if… she knew.”

“You are not a super-magician—let’s make that clear.”

“Not the point.”

“Could she have felt something through the bond?”

Maziar shook his head. “It sounds like she actually knows a lot about this world—not just about me. She mentioned another name and was asking about how time worked between dimensions. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

“Hm,” War hummed, tossing his apple core out the window. “I can tell you that time flows differently in different planes, and that in flipping from dimension to dimension you can gain or lose time depending on the calculations of the energy exchange between them.

“It’s not an exact science,” he continued. “The fae realm, for example, has spirited away people for one year of fae-realm time to return and find a hundred years had passed in their own plane, and vice versa; a hundred years could pass in the fae-realm for someone to return on the exact day they left.

“If your question was about whether or not she might have some knowledge of the future, then… I would say your instinct isn’t wrong—but it’s complicated.” War gave him an odd look then, his eyes moving from the top of Maziar’s head to his feet. “I still think she might be a little mad if she thinks you’ll ever be anything other than a waste of space in a caster tower.”

“Gee, thanks,” Maziar said. “Sorry that you have to serve a waste of space.”

“I said ‘waste of space in a caster tower,’ not ‘waste of space,’” War said. “You have plenty of purpose to me.”

“You know you’ll need to act like a real horse in front of her, right?” Maziar pointed out. “It’s not always just gonna be you and me anymore.”

War tilted his head. “You say that as if it’s a bad thing.”

“It’s not?”

“Don’t misunderstand—I get dreadfully bored when I’m confined to one shape or another—but how delightfully entertaining will it be to see you dance around with this clueless human creature?” War asked. “Besides, it might be healthy for you to look out for someone other than yourself. It may make you smarter, and think better of some of your more stupid ideas.”

“Why does everyone call me stupid?” Maziar asked grumpily.

“You’d think you would have gotten the hint by now.”

“I’m so glad I can entertain you with my sorry excuse for a life.”

“You mistake me, boy,” War told him, affronted. “As usual. But alas, I won’t pester you with my opinions anymore.”

Maziar tsk-ed at him and rolled over in his bed.

* * *

While he wasn’t the biggest fan of sharing, War had to admit he was curious about this girl Maziar had summoned.

The summoning itself was a curiosity, but it had been a long time since he’d seen Maziar’s eyes flicker with such light and life. Whatever else the girl was, she was a potential catalyst for his boy—and a distraction against Maziar’s more dangerous inclinations.

If she could manage to inspire emotions outside of his hatred and his quest for revenge, then War was determined to help her.

War walked over to the bed and hung over Maziar. He’d only just lain down, but his breathing was already slow and steady, and War felt him dreaming through their bond. Shaking his head, he pulled off the boy’s boots and grabbed a spare blanket.

And wouldn’t it be nice if he had someone else to take care of him? War thought, tucking him in. Wouldn’t it be nice if he wasn’t always so alone?