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She thought of his low score in the past assignment, and worry prickled through her, sharp and unpleasant.

“Did you have a look at the notes I left in your tray yesterday?” she asked.

“Mm…” He hesitated, casting her a sidelong glance before rifling through his leather folder. “Yes.”

A blatant lie. Fern looked at him in disbelief. “You didn’t even look at the notes? The bibliography? Did you find any of the books I recommended?”

Lautric sighed. “I am content to defer to your opinions in this case.”

Oh, he was, was he?

Their companionship of the previous night, their tenuous, delicate alliance, was snapped like a silk thread under too much tension. Fern was reminded of who he really was, all the arrogance and entitlement of his house crashing down upon her.

“You’re a scholar of Transgressive Invocation,” she said. “You’re not going to push for us to focus on it?”

Lautric tilted his head. “Is it the most powerful form of Invocation?”

Fern narrowed her eyes. “I don’t know, Mr Lautric, is it? Why don’t you tell me.”

“I’m not sure.” He rubbed his hand across his face, long, slim fingers digging into the skin around his eyes. He rifled through his papers, the disarrayed chaos of them. “Was it in the notes you gave me? I can’t remember.”

Fern stared at him. It was clear he was exhausted, but more than that, he seemed foggy headed, as thoughhe was genuinely trying to remember things that had happened only the previous day. Fern knew it had been a long night for both of them, but even in her exhausted state she could remember yesterday’s events.

“Why don’t we go through the notes now?” she said, suppressing a sigh of frustration. There was no use being angry, they had too much to do to waste time on confrontation.

Lautric nodded. “Yes.”

She pulled out her notebook, reading through the notes she had made and her observations based on what reading she had managed to fit in. Lautric sat at her side, slumped against the surface of his desk, cheek resting in one palm. He listened, watching her as she read. His gaze was direct, and quite unabashed, eyes moving slowly from her eyes to her hair, to her cheeks, lingering on her mouth.

Fern read on, refusing to be set off-course and let his distraction infect her concentration. When she was done, she lay the notes firmly down, clicking the cap off her pen.

“In short, we have to consider Transgressive Invocation, Summoning, and both Conjuration and Banishment. We could probably set aside Occlusion and Warding as the most commonplace of the Invocations.” She paused, waited, then prompted, “Well? What do you think?”

Lautric’s eyes moved reluctantly back up from where they’d been lingering on her mouth as she spoke. He tapped his pen to chin, thinking for a moment.

“Summoning or Conjuration, surely,” he said. “Oldest and grander in scale. No?”

“Oldest, yes. Grander in scale—yes, the Divine and Elemental summons are some of the most impressive spells known to us. But are they the mostpowerful? Necromancy, too, is old, and death magic can be far more powerful than elemental magic.”

Lautric shook his head. “Transgressive Invocation is a risk, and necromantic incantations are complex and cunning. They’re true Sumbral spells, designed to lead their casters into error. Not to mention illegal. Besides, we’re going to have to perform our chosen spell during our assignment. I’ve no desire to defile the dead for the sake of a job interview—do you?”

Fern had not expected such scruples from him. She wanted to challenge him, to ask, why study Transgressive Invocation if you never intended to get your hands dirty with dark magic?

But it would not get them closer to a decision, and besides, Fern also had no desire to defile the dead, even for a role she’d coveted for so long.

“Very well,” she said. “Summoning or Conjuration, then. We’ll need to choose between the two and justify our choices, so I think we should start with some of the seminal works. Allencourt and Gibson’sBook of Summoning, maybe Paulina Lire’sEncyclopaedia of High Summons, Amwan and Choris’sHistory of Conjuration?”

Lautric, having whipped out the small notepad from his pocket, dutifully scribbled down the names she had just mentioned. Fern paused, awaiting his response. He looked at her with polite curiosity.

“Well?” she prompted.

“Well… yes, let’s look at those.”

“Any suggestions of texts to add to the list?”

“Not particularly.”

Fern narrowed her eyes. “Have you actually read any of those texts?”