It’s a weird day when you find out you’re actually a wizard.

Most kids get their powers at five or six and have these adorable stories of how they accidentally turn their family pet rainbow-colored because they want a unicorn, or turn their mashed vegetables into a cream puff pastry.

Not me.

I got my wizard powers at the ripe old age of sixteen.

Every kid in Starstorm Kingdom wants to find out they are a wizard and get shipped off to one of the many wizard prep schools in the capital city.

Not me.

I don’t even live in Starstorm Kingdom. I was born in Lifewood Kingdom, and there aren't any wizards here.

I am perfectly happy being normal Allen Silverlake, the nerdy kid who spends their lunch break painting fruit.

There is a certain charm to just being normal and living a normal life of normalcy.

But unfortunately, that is…

…not me.

You can imagine the feeling of learning I actually have magic powers hidden somewhere in the layers of my short, scrawny, string-bean body.

They aren’t good feelings.

It all starts in the art studio while I am minding my own business, trying to finish up my end-term art project before the holiday break starts the next day. 

Art is the only thing that brings me joy, and I am good at it.

That is its own form of magic if you ask me.

And the only kind I need, thank you very much.

Just as I am putting the finishing touches on my self-portrait, Marcus Mudfoot marches in with his two goons, one on each shoulder.

Marcus hates me. If you were to ask him why, he’d say something like, “Just look at his face. Do I need a better reason?”

I’d have liked a better one, but after four years of his bullying, I know asking for one only lands me taped to the flagpole on the carriage ramp.

“Hey look boys, our little pansy in here painting pansies,” Marcus says with a snorting laugh before I even see him. I peer around my easel to see him standing in the doorway and I let out a long sigh.

This isn’t going to be good.

And I really am not in the mood.

“It’s a self-portrait. Can you leave me alone for once?” I try to ignore him and keep painting. Five more minutes of peace and I’ll be done.

Marcus laughs some more along with his goons. “Either way, you’re still painting a pansy, right?”

I roll my eyes and keep painting. He isn’t going to distract me today. “Sure, Marcus. Whatever you say.”

Just a few more touches.

A few more.

Twenty-seven hours of work will finally pay off when I use it to get into the best art academy in the four neighboring kingdoms next year.

Marcus keeps rambling on about how pathetic I am… and probably fifty other terrible things. I stopped listening a minute ago. All I want is to finish up this painting and go home.

“Hey! Pansy! I’m talking to you!” Marcus growls as he rips the canvas right off my easel while my brush is still on it, causing a giant white streak down the center.

My blood boils.

My heart races.

My face glows bright red.

I am so sick of Marcus Mudfoot messing with me, and this time, he has gone too far.

TWENTY-SEVEN HOURS.

As he and his goons point and laugh at my portrait, my fists clench, and something inside me blossoms.

I feel it happening. I feel my life change in an instant.

It is like a strange golden light that's been there my whole life only now begins to glow bright enough to see. It flicks on and fills every pore, every vein, every underdeveloped muscle of my body.

I don’t know how I know that I can do what I do, but I know it before I do it.

“Hey! Marcus. Heads up!” I say and swoosh my hand through the air towards him.

The greyish-brown water from my brush-cleaning cup flies up into the air and splashes Marcus right in the face.

As he chokes and gags on dirty paint water, his goons look up at me with wide eyes of shock.

I take that opportunity to make some tubes of paint fly at them and squirt bright oil paint right into their widened eyes.

As they panic, they slip on the now wet floor and they all fall into a pile on the ground. I catch my painting with my new mind powers and float it gently back to my easel while the three boys twist around each other like pretzels trying to stand.

“Curse of the Realms, Silverlake!” Marcus gasps when he stands. “You’re an even bigger freak than I thought!”

With that, he and his buddies run out of the room, slipping and sliding the whole way.

After they are gone, what happened starts to settle in my head.

But what had happened?

I stare at my own hands, befuddled and concerned.

I’m not a wizard. In fact, no one in my tiny little village in the middle of the Eastern Forest of Lifewood kingdom has ever become a wizard. Those kinds of stories are hardly even talked about here.

We are great cooks. Wonderful tailors. Phenomenal carpenters.

We aren’t wizards.

I try to pretend like it didn’t happen and finish up my painting, but my hands are shaking too heavily, and I only make the white line worse as I smudge it across the canvas.

When my principal, Mr. Longmeadow walks in with a concerned look on his face, I know this incident isn’t going to go unnoticed.

School has been over for nearly an hour when I’m relieved from my spot sitting outside Mr. Longmeadow’s office and invited into the office instead.

He’s standing behind his desk with one of my parents on either side of them. My mom, a small, round woman with long silver hair is practically about to explode as she bounces up and down with joy.

My father looks stern as ever, tall and menacing, as he watches me enter.

“Have a seat, Mr. Silverlake.” Mr. Longmeadow gestures to a large leather chair across from his desk.

I obey.

Mr. Longmeadow slides a piece of parchment across his desk for me to look at. Although the handwriting is beautiful, and the signature is drawn in a shimmering gold, it doesn’t say much:

I will arrive at your office. Sixteen-hundred.

Be sure Mr. Silverlake is there.

The signature is so curvy and convoluted, I can’t make out who’d written it.

“What is this?” I ask as I push the parchment back to my principal.

“I thought you could tell me,” he says while adjusting his oversized glasses. “I found it on my desk thirty seconds before Mr. Mudfoot came running in talking about flying paint.”

“Marcus has a wild imagination,” I say. Maybe I can still get myself out of this. After all, I’m not a wizard. I don’t know what I’d done, but it wasn’t magic.

I am Allen Silverlake, nothing more.

“Do you know whose signature that is?” Mr. Longmeadow asks, tapping his pale finger on the parchment over and over.

I look once more at the mesh of curves and lines pretending to make letters. “How could anyone know whose signature that is?”

Mr. Longmeadow coughs to clear his throat. “That is the signature of Prince Rhettlin.”

A jolt of electricity shoots through my body. I stiffen like a board, and my eyes grow so large my eyeballs could have rolled out if I tilted my head in the wrong direction.

Prince Rhettlin?

The Prince Rhettlin?

“Like… the real one?” I squeak and Mr. Longmeadow nods.

What in the name of Merlin? Why? Why is the King of Stormstar Kingdom's youngest son writing to my teacher about me?

And… he is coming here? At sixteen-hundred? What time is it?

As that thought floats through my head the cuckoo clock on my principal’s wall springs to life with an obnoxious squeak.

Sixteen hundred. On the dot.

Mr. Longmeadow’s door bursts open and a tall, broad, seventeen-year-old rushes in wearing elegant clothes of white and gold. My breath is stolen from me by the sheer shock and awe of a Prince of Starstorm Kingdom walking into the same room as me.

The fact that he is even more handsome in person than the paintings of him in textbooks might have something to do with it as well.

Mr. Longmeadow, Mother, my father, and I all instinctively stand and bow our heads as royalty walks by. After which I sink back down and try to become invisible.

If I have magic in me, can it at least let me do that?

“Pleasure, Principal Longmeadow, is it?” Prince Rhettlin says in his posh accent, hand extended for Mr. Longmeadow to accept.

“Er…yeah. Yes. Yes, Your Highness,” Mr. Longmeadow says and shakes the Prince’s hand. As he does, he leans over so I can see his face and mouths, “He knows my name,” with excitement.

Prince Rhettlin claps his hands once and asks, “All right. So? Where is he?”

“Who? What? Oh!” Mr. Longmeadow says as if he had completely forgotten the reason we are all here the second the Prince walked in. “Behind you.”

Prince Rhettlin turns around and looks down at me as I slowly sink lower in my chair. “You’re Allen Silverlake?”

The furrow on his brow tells me he is as disappointed to learn this news as most people who met me are. I can’t help being small, timid, and ultimately a ball of anxiety and low motivation.

That’s who Allen Silverlake is. Everyone really should just get used to it.

“Er. Yes, sir. Your Mage—Your Highness.” I’ve never met royalty before. I have no idea what I’m doing.

Prince Rhettlin claps again. “Great. I heard whispers that you’ve exhibited signs of being a wizard?”

A strange squeaking sound peeps out of Mom in the corner as her bouncing gets… bouncier.

I sink as low in my chair as I can. “Oh. Er…no. I don’t think so.”

Not only am I not showing signs of being a wizard, but even if I am, that happened two hours ago. How did he know this already?

Prince Rhettlin tilts his head and scrunches his perfect, handsome face in a way that makes sure he is still… really… attractive. “So, you didn’t make tubes of paint fly and squirt in the eye of another student?”

“Oh…yeah. I guess I did do that.” Why can’t I sink lower? Can magic turn this chair into a blob of goo that can swallow me whole?

“Wonderful!” Prince Rhettlin claps once more.

Not exactly the response I am expecting.

The prince stands as tall as he can and reaches his hand out to me. “With that out in the open now, I, as a representative of my father, King Liam Stormstar, would like to formally invite you to attend Wizard Prep.”

I stare at his hand, frozen solid.

I’m sorry.

What?