Chapter Seven

CHAPTER SEVEN

Y ou are both idiots" was Agnes's pronouncement upon hearing of the control spell. "It would serve you right if Cassius and I refused to get involved and the two of you had to sort this mess out yourselves."

But neither of them did refuse. Cassius promised he would begin researching counterspells immediately, and Agnes agreed to look through the vaults she had access to for any information about control spells. "In the meantime," Agnes said, "be careful. If Grimm slips up and gives you an order in public, people are bound to notice. You two should stay far away from each other whenever possible."

"Gladly," Grimm said, and I heartily concurred. So I was surprised when Agnes made a point of repeating this instruction to me once Grimm had left.

"I don't know why you're so concerned," I complained. "Grimm and I already avoid each other. This will hardly alter my daily schedule."

"No, you don't," Agnes said.

"What?"

She pushed her spectacles farther up her nose and sighed. "You're usually kept apart because anything else is more trouble than it's worth for the rest of us, but that's not the same thing as avoiding each other. Those restrictions were put in place because you both seem incapable of doing just that. So be careful, Leo."

I wanted to protest the need for such a warning, but under Agnes's shrewd gaze, I could not. The fact that we were in this situation at all spoke to my tendency to abandon common sense the second Grimm walked into the room.

"I will be," I said, and meant it.

It did not seem like such a difficult promise to keep, at first. The only place Grimm and I were required to interact was Duality, where I had not ceased my campaign of charms designed to annoy (though I had made certain concessions as to their length and word choice). Grimm seemed determined to speak to me as little as possible during class, but his continued frustration with our partnership was made clear by the marked clench of his jaw as he was forced to cast spells of increasing frivolity: a cantrip that captured your favorite smell to be used as a perfume, another that could move freckles around on a person's body, and a charm I was particularly proud of that made hair grow nearly a whole inch in one minute.

Days turned into a week. Then two. By the third, I was feeling impatient enough to corner Cassius in the library and ask how the counterspell was coming along.

"It's going very well," he assured me. But when I asked to see what he'd come up with so far, Cassius just smiled his blandest, most impersonal smile and told me firmly that he did not like sharing his spells with anyone until they were finished.

"I bet he hasn't even started yet," I complained to Agnes later that day, during what was meant to be our sparring session on the practice grounds. Agnes was taking it very seriously, but I was too distracted to be bothered. "At this rate he won't have anything for us to cast before the harvest break."

"Cassius is meticulous," Agnes pointed out. "He's probably still researching." She darted forward, and I only just managed to block her blow.

"Maybe," I said darkly. "Or maybe Grimm likes having me under his thumb and told Cassius to stall."

"Oh, please." Agnes snorted. "If Grimm wanted to take advantage of the spell, he would have done it last week when you taught the first tiers that rude song about him."

"It was good for his image!" I protested. "Besides, I don't think he realized I wrote it."

"Everyone realized you wrote it." Agnes flicked her braid over her shoulder in irritation. "Can we please focus on fighting instead of Grimm? The trials are coming up, and I need the practice. It's important."

"So is getting rid of the curse!" I said, annoyed now too. "Anyway, you're Agnesia Quest, do you really think you'll have any trouble during the trials?"

Agnes dropped her stance and lowered her practice sword. "If you're too impatient to let Cassius finish the counterspell," she snapped, "then why don't you spend your time writing one yourself, instead of wasting mine?"

I gaped at her, stung. Agnes was one of the few people I could usually count on not to push that particular button. But then, I usually steered well clear of her boundaries too. I knew Agnes hated the way her family name seemed to dictate how others saw her.

"Sorry," I muttered. Grimm was the only person I actually enjoyed having mad at me. Fighting with Agnes always made my heart shrivel up.

"Me too," she said. "Let's just forget about it."

It was easy enough to forget about our tiff, less so the reason for it. But she was right, short of writing the counterspell myself (which would only lead to further disaster), there was little I could do to hasten its completion. Besides, now that it seemed unlikely Grimm would decide to go back on his word and frame me for writing illegal magic, I was worried about being expelled for more mundane reasons.

I was falling short in my studies.

Restlessness plagued me. I tried every trick that had helped me in the past and even spent a few days adopting Agnes's rigid study schedule in hopes that a change of pace would help, but to no avail. My tiermates were settling into a state of determined focus, trying to achieve as much as possible before the harvest break came, followed by the trials. But my attention, never steady even at the best of times, now drifted to the point that sometimes I would abruptly realize I'd been walking in the opposite direction of where I'd meant to, with no clear idea of where I'd been going. I was late to several lectures because I'd gone into the wrong building before recognizing my mistake.

"Where have you been?" Agnes hissed at me when I arrived, nearly a quarter bell late to our shared combat training.

"Got lost," I whispered back.

She looked me over suspiciously. "Are you drunk?"

"No," I answered. "But I sure would like to be."

But even drinking didn't soothe my agitation. I took to playing my violin later and later into the night—frantic songs that caused many of the hairs on my bow to break and made my neighbor across the hall come bang on my door, until I had Agnes renew the silencing charms on my room. I woke in the morning restless, feeling like there was something I wanted, or was meant to do, but I couldn't pin down what it was.

It wasn't until our next Duality practice that I had my answer.

Grimm wasn't there yet when I arrived, so I took a seat at our table and tapped my fingers idly across its surface while I waited. I felt full to the brim with nervous energy, and it made it hard to sit still. I had to go somewhere but had no destination in mind.

And then Grimm walked through the door, and the feeling vanished.

There was no subtlety to it. One moment, I was being driven to distraction by a hollow sort of wanting, and the next, Grimm came into sight and the feeling was gone. I sat there, reeling with confusion and relief, while Grimm crossed the room and sat down beside me. He began laying out his casting supplies without a word, unaware that anything had changed, while I sat frozen in horror.

It was the curse.

Quickly, I counted back in my head to when the restlessness had first overtaken me. And of course, of course , it was not until after the curse had been cast. Perhaps if this symptom had not so addled my brain, I would have put it together sooner. This was magic, tugging me into Grimm's presence so that it could better do its work.

From a scriver's perspective, I couldn't help but admire the mechanics: If a spell worked only when its subject was close enough to hear what the caster said, didn't it follow that you would want to keep them close? My opinion of the person who scrived this spell went down another notch, even as my assessment of their skill went up.

I must have let out some small noise of distress, because Grimm finally glanced my way. "Is something wrong?"

I opened my mouth and then closed it again promptly. The only thing that could make this new development worse was having Grimm know that I was being compelled to follow him around like some sort of doting lackey, waiting to jump at his command.

"Not at all," I said. "I just had an idea for an absolutely inspired enhancement charm." Which was enough to make Grimm huff and turn his attention from me.

He didn't need to know. No one did. This part of the curse was not so overpowering I couldn't handle it on my own. I would simply resist for as long as it took Cassius to write a counterspell that worked.

This seemed a fine plan when I was face-to-face with Grimm, with the restless ache caused by the curse soothed, but my assurance had worn off somewhat by the time I woke the next morning and the itchy, ants-under-my-skin feeling had returned worse than before, accompanied by an angry ache that sat underneath my ribs. I had classes to attend. Charms to write. Instructors to impress with said charms, in hopes they would ignore my abysmal memorization of spells they'd been trying to teach me for the past five years. All of this was very hard to do when I was being driven to distraction by the need to seek out Sebastian Grimm.

So, I cheated.

I began to linger in places I knew Grimm would have to pass through. This was surprisingly easy to do. As Agnes had so acidly pointed out, Grimm and I had a history of being drawn into each other's orbit, so I already knew a frankly concerning amount about his habits.

The only thing I worried about was that Grimm would notice my presence. Scrivers and casters shared very few classes together, the nature of our training being quite different. And Grimm seemed to have a sixth sense for whenever I was nearby; if I walked into a room, he looked up. If I sat down three tables behind him in the refectory to eat breakfast, the meal would undoubtedly end with Grimm glaring at me. If he noticed me on those occasions, he would certainly notice my lurking outside one of his classrooms. Or someone else would.

Embarrassing.

Eventually I resorted to humming a little cantrip under my breath to help me blend into my surroundings, just enough that I could escape attention so long as no one looked at me directly. It left me tired all the time, but that was better than the prickly discomfort of ignoring the curse, or having to explain myself to anyone.

My relief when Cassius finally called on us to meet was profound. He'd had weeks to study the wording of the curse by now, plenty of time for him to have come up with a working counterspell.

All four of us gathered in Agnes's room. It was a better place for such a meeting than my own room, since Agnes actually took some care with her surroundings and did not currently have a multitude of empty bottles rolling around on the floor, but the space was still not really designed to entertain guests. Agnes and I perched on the bed, allowing Grimm and Cassius the honor of sitting in the two creaky chairs we'd pulled away from the table and into the center of the room, allowing us all to face one another.

Cassius, true to form, began by apologizing.

"I'm sorry this took so long, but I wanted to be thorough in my approach." As he spoke, Cassius reached into his pocket and withdrew three separate pieces of paper, which he handed to Grimm.

Having made the mistake of allowing something I'd not read be cast on me so recently, I was not about to do so again. I waggled my fingers under Grimm's nose until he handed over two of the spells for me to read while he studied the first, then we swapped.

Cassius hadn't lied about being thorough. Each counterspell approached untangling the curse from a different angle. His word choice was a little plodding, and the structure a tad predictable, but I could hardly fault Cassius for not writing the spells the same way I would have. Not when my own efforts doubtless would have ended up making things worse instead of better.

Please, please, please , I begged in my head as the first counterspell was cast. I would never roll my eyes at Cassius again if this worked. I would never roll my eyes at Grimm again if this worked.

"Go on," I told Grimm once the casting was finished, and braced myself. The weight of expectation was heavier with Agnes and Cassius watching. I wasn't the only one holding my breath as Grimm said, "Stand up, Loveage."

I did so. Immediately.

"Oh," Cassius said in a voice that was as small as my sinking hopes.

"There are still two more," Agnes reminded. But the same thing happened with the second spell. And the third. We tried having Agnes cast them too, just in case, but the effect was the same.

"I was afraid this might happen," Cassius confessed. "It's just so tricky, trying to unravel another scriver's work. It's like having someone else describe a scene to you and then being asked to paint it; the details are never going to look right."

Agnes opened a second window to help clear the room of spell smoke. "Well," she said with a sigh, "at least knowing what doesn't work will help us narrow down our approach going forward. I've heard that the third time's the charm."

"About that," Cassius said with some hesitancy. "I likely won't have any more counterspells for you until after the trials are done."

"What?" I said, more sharply than I'd meant to. Everyone stared at me, and Cassius's face fell.

"It's just that—I mean—that is to say, I'm a little busy," he stuttered, looking half-ready to keel over from remorse. "But maybe I can find a few spare moments—"

"We all have plenty to do getting ready for the trials," Agnes broke in, shooting a pointed glare in my direction.

"But we'll lose momentum!" I said desperately. Unlike everyone else, I didn't care a whit about prepping for the trials, but I still had the everyday expectations of the Fount to worry about, and it was getting harder and harder to meet those expectations while keeping the curse satisfied. "I really think we're so close. If we just give it another—"

"Quest is right," Grimm said. He began to pack away his caster's kit. "We can't risk dividing our attention; the trials are too important. Waiting to solve this will make little difference."

Of course it wouldn't—for him . The only person this made a difference to was me . Just that morning I'd been late to my first lecture because I had to track Grimm to the far side of the grounds in order to ensure I wasn't too distracted to actually sit still for said lecture. But there was no way to explain why waiting was a problem without, well, explaining. And I was still firmly of the opinion that occasional tardiness was better than telling everyone I'd been spying on Grimm from the bushes like some kind of stalker.

"I suppose waiting a little longer won't make anything worse," I said. Like an idiot.