“Good morning, tactician.”

  Slowly raising her head from the kitchen counter, she opened her eyes. Everything hurt. The nausea was beginning to creep in.

  What time is it?

  “Hello,” she managed to croak, squinting at the timepiece on her wrist. Far too early. It was far too early to be awake after having done work all night.

  “Your hand.”

  “It’s good,” she mumbled, resting her head back on the cold counter and shutting her eyes.

  “What?”

  “I know how to take out sutures.”

  He was silent long enough for her to suspect that he had left, so she opened her eyes again.

  Theo was still there. Paler than usual, dark rings under his eyes, hair messy. Sitting casually with a stack of his own papers in front of him.

  Ty sat up and took a good look at him. “What do you want?”

  “Nothing, I’m reading,” he replied coolly, sifting through cream-colored pages.

  Already drained, she looked at her own mostly complete worksheets on the counter. As her own personal punishment, she had worked all through the night, greeting a few who had stayed out past the Academy’s default curfew—which did not bother her greatly, seeing as they were all strictly adults.

  There was a part of her that hoped that Theo would eventually turn up, too; he didn’t, but she couldn’t bring herself to leave after having forgotten their appointment. At the same time, she also couldn’t bring herself to look for him in his room and ask for help, even though on many occasions he had pointed out her self-absorbedness.

  So, late into night, she had decided to take the stitches out herself, after she made sure everyone other than Theo was back in their rooms. It hurt more than it should have because she hadn’t done much physician work since her exams a year ago, but knowing it was done and over with gave her a sense of relief.

  “Are those for class tomorrow?”

  Still staring at the sheets in front of her, she nodded. “Yes, they’re tactical maps and recommended formations. I still have rotations to do.”

  “Where am I?”

  “You’re backup.”

  “But surely the backup needs to be somewhere?”

  Ty paused and set down the papers, feeling the first wave of nausea. “Alex’s group, since Cyril is there.”

  He tutted. “It’s because he can warp, isn’t it.” His sentence had been phrased like a question, but there was only dismay and concession in his voice.

  “Yes. It’s become increasingly evident that you are not suited for physical work,” she admitted matter-of-factly, putting her work in her bag while remembering how he had been called into the infirmary for a second time that week for blacking out during practice. “What’s the matter with you, anyway?” she muttered without thinking, feeling the nausea amplify as she instinctively held a hand up to apply pressure on her temple.

  Unfazed, Theo did not look up. “It’s not something I can help, much like you can’t help being born the way you are.”

  “And they still let you in?”

  He glared at his papers, but she got the feeling that it wasn’t what he was reading that upset him. “I didn’t enroll in a physical discipline, so it doesn’t matter. You’re also one to talk.”

  Ty gathered up the remaining pieces of paper with calculations that she needed Darius to double check. “I don’t faint in the middle of class. You need to eat breakfast. I know you skip.”

  “Only sick people eat breakfast,” he complained in a hushed whisper.

  “Selene and Darius eat breakfast.”

  “Exactly. Selene is small and sickly, and Darius is sick with tradition.”

  “What they do is of no concern to your own condition.”

  The physician let out a loud sigh. “You’re right.”

  Stunned at being told she was right, she stopped what she was doing to face Theo, who still had his head bent over the counter with his head propped up on an arm.

  “Here’s another life lesson, tactician: even when people admit they’re wrong, it doesn’t mean that they’ll always change.”

  There it is. She sighed and set down her papers, taking her mug to the washbasin to clean out before filling back up using the pitcher of already-purified water near the end of the counter. Her head felt light.

  “If you knew what was good for you, you’d listen,” she seethed quietly, bowing her head a bit to wait for the current bout of nausea to subside. “If I create problems for you when I act recklessly, you’re just doing the same to me.”

  All she got back was a passive mutter. “Again, you’re not wrong.”

  Ty lifted her head up, heading over to the counter to slam her healed hand onto it. “So, what’s the problem? You can’t take supplementary classes, you can’t get better, so eat breakfast! Graces, Theo, it’s just food.”

  That finally got him to look up. “And what are you going to do if I don’t?” He didn’t even wait for her to reply. “That’s right, nothing.”

  Staring at the indifferent, challenging look he was giving her, she wished that she didn’t want to throw up.

  How are you this soft?

  It’s because I’m scared of hurting people.

  “I’ll get breakfast with you.”

  “No, you won’t,” was his immediate reply.

  Frustrated, suppressing the urge to vomit coffee, Ty patted her inner jacket pocket, grabbing the packets inside to scatter on the counter so that she could see them better. The black-powdered one was easy to spot with the translucent paper wrappings.

  “You gave up your chance to negotiate a minute ago.” She dumped the contents of the package into her mouth, promptly taking a swig of water, and then pocketed the rest as she set the cup down loudly onto the counter.

  “What’s that?”

  She shot him a glare. “I’ll tell you if you agree to eat breakfast.”

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  Theo scoffed. “You just said I had to, what’s the point in disagreeing? Really, you were actually starting to be cool for once.”

  Taken aback, her face barely a tint pinker, she picked up her belongings and started storming off to the dorms.

  “Hey, last night, where w—”

  Ignoring him, rushing through the connecting stone-walled hallway and into the dorm area, she fumbled for the pin on her sweater when she almost ran into someone else.

  “Oh! Oh, Ty!”

  Looking up to see who it was, she only began to walk faster. Her room was at the end of the hall; it wouldn’t be much further.

  “No, Ty! Ty—tactician, please!”

  Finally arriving at her room entrance, she swiveled around to finally answer her. “Yes?”

  Callie wrung her hands nervously, grimacing, clearly expecting to be reprimanded. “Are you alright?”

  Ty’s features softened. The annoyance faded away. “Why would I not be?”

  Just as she was about to answer, Callie noticed Theo stop in the corner of her eye and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Y-you left suddenly yesterday. I wasn’t sure if you were...if you were upset with me. F-for not telling you.”

  Again, those glassy eyes.

  Confused, Ty shook her head slightly. “Callie, do you think I’m going to punish you or something?”

  That appeared to make things worse.

  “N-no,” she blubbered, pressing her hands to her cheeks and looking down, eyes welling up with tears. “Oh, Graces, no, I’m sorry.”

  “Callie, you can do what you want, you’re an adult,” Ty reasoned slowly. “Just get me a signed slip, and I’ll have the paperwork done. You don’t have to cry.”

  The tears were falling freely now. “I know, I know,” she continued to insist, wiping her face.

  “Anything else?” Ty tried to ask gently now that most of the nausea had subsided, and her head was clear.

  “Well, I...I really did want to ask you if you were...if you were alright from last night,” Callie stuttered, raising her voice in exasperation. “He, he—I saw you leave, and I saw a bit of a curse still on you.” Wiping her eyes again, she looked back up at Ty. “It’s gone now, but some...it’s good to do a Spell Cleanse. If you’ll let me.”

  Ty looked to her right and shot Theo an icy glare. Then, she turned to her crying classmate. “Here, come in and I’ll let you. Just stop crying. Please.”

  * * *

  Callie gently closed the tome on her lap and stood up, brushing her dress. “Okay, it’s done,” she spoke calmly, head bowed.

  “Anything awry?”

  Ty sat at her desk stiffly, hands on her lap as she regarded Callie with a dispassionate look in her eyes. Spell Cleanses were rare for her back at home, but when they did happen, her mother performed them—they were often done after she came home from venturing outside in case she caught something.

  As far as she knew, not many individuals knew how to cast Spell Cleanses, but those who did were highly valued. It took a lot of learning to be able to do them, and it usually offered one a spot in any court or MATS position. Out of her entire class, a staggering three people knew how to perform them: Callie, Theo, and herself. If she didn’t know better, she would have thought that they had been placed in Class 1-A simply because they knew how to.

  “No, everything looks fine,” Callie nodded with a timid smile, head still bowed. “It must have worn off.” Then, looking up just the slightest, she added, “Sorry for getting worked up earlier. It won’t happen again. I’ll get a slip written up for you by tonight.”

  Worries only partially alleviated, Ty turned back to her desk, glancing at her papers and feeling like she owed her embarrassed classmate an explanation. “I think it happened when I was reading the menu. He just wanted to get me to talk, it wasn’t anything important. I said some things I didn’t want to and overreacted. Sorry for leaving without saying anything.”

  Callie shook her head by the door, hugging her book to her chest. “It’s okay. I think you’re a good person. You, um…” Her eyes shifted uncomfortably. “I’m not entirely sure what you’re going through, but…you’re not alone. You have us, your class. Or…or me.”

  In retrospect, she should have stayed quiet. But she couldn’t let the statement go. “You probably shouldn’t say that in front of the other students,” she responded dryly.

  The shy student mulled over her words as she looked up at the ceiling. It looked like she was going to cry again. “I...I don’t think the others dislike you. I think maybe...maybe it’s because you think they don’t like you...that it affects how they see you, and how you see them.”

  Ty was quiet.

  “I-I’m sorry, that was out of line,” Callie took back quickly, registering what she had just said and turning toward the door. “I’ll get working on my slip. Thank you.”

  And then she was out the door, leaving Ty speechless as always, hovering over her own work as she regretfully pondered Callie’s words. Wondering how true they were, knowing that she had absolutely no authority to question them.

  * * *

  “No.”

  “What do you mean, no?” Elias asked wondrously, freezing with a little red pin in his hand.

  Sitting with a map in front of her at the class’s evening practice, Elias and Alex beside her on opposite sides, the tactician shielded her face with the notebook in her hands. She forgot that she wasn’t allowed to interfere.

  Frighteningly kind, Alex pointed at where he was just about to put his pin. “If you put that there, my caster’d hit you.”

  Ty lowered the book to peek at Elias, watching him sigh and place his pin where he had intended to out of good sportsmanship. He huffed aggravatingly and rapidly flipped through the study book she had assigned him the previous class. Of course he hadn’t touched it.

  “You have ten seconds to think about a backup plan before the caster finishes,” Ty declared quietly.

  Elias scratched his head, exasperated. Still flipping. “Isn’t it your job to figure this stuff out?” he complained.

  “Yes, but you guys still need accountability as group leaders,” she replied politely. “Time’s almost up.”

  “Bah,” he grumbled. “Shoulda made it Callie.”

  Alex grinned. “If you’d like, we can undo the move and then you can try out something else.”

  “No, no.” He stopped flipping and landed on a page, clapping his hands together in victory. “My support gives me Last Resort, giving me a safe enough shield to block anything, and I counterattack harder. You’re done for.”

  “That’s if she knows how to cast it,” frowned Ty disapprovingly. “That’s not a very common spell to have on a Support, and it would leave you quite crippled after wearing off.”

  “But I’d still be alive,” he pointed out, eyeing Alex.

  “But then how would you heal?”

  Ignoring the Tactician’s follow-up comment, Alex moved two of her blue pins forward so that it was up against Elias’s red pin. “You’d be hard pressed to stay alive when I’m right there.”

  “I can defend myself,” he protested as he looked to Ty for comment, who was already slinging her bag over her shoulder and waving away the two and looking at her journal’s messy and nigh-illegible notes.

  “You two figure it out, maybe rope in Darius for calculations. I’m going to check up on everyone else.”

  Elias: no magic, DISCIPLINE, she scribbled in.

  His lack of magical prowess was a surprise initially, but now it was just becoming a bothersome thing to account for. Though it was normal for a great deal of the population to not know magic, they were seldom admitted into the Academy. And Elias really, really, did not know any. She had even tried to get him to read a few phrases aloud, but the sounds that had erupted from his mouth were such cacophonous nonsense that she could feel her ancestors turn in their graves.

  Other than that, however, his one true flaw was simple: he had no discipline. Correcting it would be another monster entirely. She just wished that he would listen to her every once in a while. Perhaps, she thought absently, he’ll listen to Callie. She’s disciplined.

  On the line right under Elias, Alex: merciful. As she had recently learned from all her nights spent working in the class’s common room, her fighting philosophy was one of a protector rather than a warrior. It was uplifting, but worrisome because she seemed too kind. She could easily picture Alex hesitating in battle if she were asked to fell a friend.

  “Ty, why would you put an Incinerate right after a Molten? Isn’t that unnecessary?”

  Faris, on the other hand…

  Walking up to Faris and looking at the burning target dummy on the other side of the arena, she craned her head to look at the list he tried to shove into her face. “Yes?”

  “Incinerate already casts Burn. If Molten already does it, why wouldn’t you just stack another more potent, offensive spell on top of it?”

  Having prepared for Faris to question her decisions, she opened her mouth only to be interrupted by a faraway individual yelling from the audience benches.

  “I know, I know!” yipped an enthusiastic voice.

  “It’s because the Burn stacks,” she explained, ignoring Theo. “Molten is internal, while Incinerate is an external condition. Two different sources. The passages are also quite close to each other, so it’s easy to meld them together.”

  “It adds!” yelled Theo from the benches, cupping his hands around his mouth.

  “Alright, then,” Faris replied distractedly to Ty before yelling back at Theo, “Don’t you have better things to do than watch me?”

  “No, I’m bored!”

  Ty spun around. “Go back to work before I send you to the physician’s office!”

  “Good luck with that!”

  The tactician let out a sigh and cocked her head at her caster. “How does the rotation feel?”

  Faris shrugged, taking another look at the list. “I’ve got some problems with it, but I think I can do it.” And then, a bit more seriously, “You have a book for this, right? Don’t tell me I need to carry around five tomes all the time.”

  “Yes, I’ll get one made. These are just for practice,” Ty nodded, pulling out her personal combat tome while starting to walk toward the dummy in front of them. “You can start whenever, from the top. I’ll be your target.”

  Freezing in the middle of cracking his knuckles and wrists, he opened his mouth. It looked like he was about to protest, but the words that left his mouth were confident: “How many you want me to do? Two, three?”

  “Two is enough.”

  “Fine by me.”