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I t took all of my willpower to stop myself from stalking poor Phyllis night and day once I’d gotten it in my head to talk to her about Neverthorn’s secrets.

I’d asked her more than once if we could meet and have a chat, but she put me off each time, promising she’d let me know when her schedule opened up.

I was giving her three days before I cracked open her schedule all on my own.

By dinner on the second day, I was almost coming out of my skin with impatience.

Fable, Ellie and Caterina sat to my right, reading over advanced rune-casting charts. Since the night in the Dark Wood, everyone in House Phoenix had re-dedicated themselves, throwing every effort at getting better. Faster.

Even though the runes weren’t working like they did in the woods, they were working . Aside from Zeed, we were actually making magic, even if it was weak. And, as Typhon pointed out, it was building muscle memory.

“Learn it now, get fast at it, and when the moment comes, your magic and the runes won’t fail you.”

Gary, Zeed and Ross were on the other side of the table, working on battle strategy, taking a look at old skirmishes between Nocta and Heronius, doing what they could to find a better strategy.

“Here.” Zeed stuck his finger into the paper. “That’s where I would stay. If Heronius had shored up his defenses, Nocta would not have been able to get through.”

I leaned over the table. Zeed had a point.

But the images on the paper were continuing to move.

Battle strategy was actually a pretty interesting class – and I wasn’t half bad at it.

We were given blank sheets and a sheet of what looked like stickers of little Heronius, Nocta and army characters.

We placed them on the paper and tapped the upper right corner.

The battle played out then, based on where we thought the strategy was best. Each sheet was numbered so Doyenne Storm would know how many tries it took us to get it right.

Before Zeed had even hit go, I could see the hole in his plan. I almost felt guilty pointing it out, given his struggles with rune making, but pretending wasn’t going to help him improve.

“Actually, with the way Nocta attacks from unexpected directions, I think your little Heronius is going to get it up the asterisk.”

Sure enough, within a few skirmishes, the Heronius sticker had been slashed up, the Nocta sticker waved his little hands in victory, and the paper burned to a crisp with a flash.

Zeed groaned. “Doyenne Storm wants an unburnt battle strategy by tomorrow.”

Ross and Gary were in the same boat. They’d settled in, following Zeed’s lead. Not a terrible idea, he was a smart dude – if he could allow himself to not be so tied up by what he thought he should do, and rather just do what he had to do.

I shrugged. “Keep trying. Just ... don’t be so rigid, Zeed. I get that you have an engineer brain, and it’s brilliant. But you gotta think outside the box. Nocta doesn’t do things ... normal.”

He frowned at me. “Wait. You’re done?”

I shrugged. I didn’t want to rub it in that I had the assignment done on my first pass.

Zeed made a gimme motion with his hand. “Let me see.”

I sighed and pulled the battle sheet out. My sheet had Heronius standing in the middle of the battlefield, fists in the air with his victory. I thought it more than a little gruesome that they were still using the dead hero as a moving sticker.

Zeed took the sheet from me. “Holy sheet. You got it on the first try?”

Everyone at the table turned to me. “Well ... lucky strike I guess.”

His eyes narrowed. “Harlow. That isn’t a thing with battle strategy. How did you do it?”

I squirmed a little in my seat. “I just tried to think about what Nocta might do, you know, if I was him. How would I attack, how would I set up my army. Then I built in Heronius’ attack off that.”

Caterina leaned closer. “You tried to think like an evil wizard? And you figured it out?”

Gods. This was uncomfortable. “I want that perfect score in at least one class.” I tried to laugh it off.

Caterina took my paper and looked it over. “That’s brilliant, Harlow. Honest. Freaky, but brilliant.”

“Lo-lo!” Opie saved me as she ran over.

I wrapped an arm around her. She shot a look across at Zeed and a quick blush settled over her cheeks.

He grinned. “Hey Opie, you haven’t come to visit our table lately. Getting too cool for us?”

“Oh! No, of course not!” Her blush deepened.

He was way too old for more than a puppy-love crush, but she could have worse taste in boys. Zeed was one of the good ones. He motioned for Opie to put her hand out.

“Here. I remembered that you said you were collecting rocks of all colors, right?”

Opie’s eyes widened as he dropped a solid, smooth black stone into her hand. “Wow, where did you get that?”

“Picked it up when I was out for a walk in the courtyard.” He gave her a wink and she all but swooned. Damn, he could turn on the charm when he wanted. But also, damn, it was sweet. He earned some serious points with me for that move.

“Thank you,” Opie whispered, and then she was gone, whatever reason she’d come over melted away under the heat of her raging hormones.

Fable reached over and touched Zeed’s hand. “That was incredibly sweet.”

He shrugged, two spots of color blooming on his cheekbones. “I’d bring you a rock too, if you wanted.”

They were staring at each other and damned if I couldn’t almost see the sparks between them, as if they were their own kind of magic.

“Um. Yeah.” I scooped up my stuff. “Time to go.”

Fable and Zeed remained, but the rest of us were gone and headed up to the dorm. As we walked, I saw two Runecoats coming from the Sage’s office.

Interesting. Were they checking in on him, or checking in on their man, Liam?

Marina echoed my thoughts. “Do you think Liam will be coming back any time soon? I want to try and find my Quirk.”

Murmurs of agreement filtered through our group as Ross opened the door to the dorm and let us all in.

As I was about to step into the room, something whipped by my head, hit the stone wall and shattered. I dropped to a crouch and flung a rune in the direction the airborne missile had come from. One of my own runes, cast on instinct. I felt a twinge of despair and hoped it didn’t damage the weave.

My rune slammed into the corner of the hall. Before I thought better, I was running after whoever had thrown the ... rock? What was it?

Didn’t matter. The others were right behind me.

“What the hell was that?” Ross snarled as we raced around the corner and down the stairs that led to the sixth level.

Draconell’s domain.

I caught a glimpse of a bulky body and shaved head on the stairwell below me. Julius’ sheety Draconell buddy.

“Mortan, I know it was you!”

His laugh reached back to us, and all that did was speed me up. I hit their floor and Mortan wasn’t quite inside his dorm.

I spun a rune faster than I think I’d ever done inside the school. Simple, but if it worked ... so effective.

Gary, Ross, Marina, and Caterina slid to a stop just behind me. No doubt Ellie had stayed behind, she’d made it clear she would only fight if she had to.

Mortan cast a rune, the same one that Tarquinius had been throwing at us, only it was laced with something more. A fair bit of flame set to slam into us.

The five of us moved almost as one, casting a rune of blocking at the exact same time.

Our collective magic filled the space, the runes slamming together and coalescing into one in sparks of red, gold, yellow, orange, and green.

The runes we’d spun, and our magic, seemed to catch hold of one another, and expanded to fill the hallways, blocking the shove Mortan had sent, sure.

But also ... pressing on the walls of the hallway until the brick and mortar began to fall.

“Sheet,” Gary muttered. “Time to go.”

We ran back the way we had come, as the walls and hallways seemed to explode at the seams.

Back up on the seventh floor, we kept running until we hit the dorm, and all but scrambled to get inside.

Neverthorn had all sorts of spells set into the stone, it would repair itself, so I wasn’t worried about Draconell losing their dorms. Then again, it would serve them right if they had to sleep down in the mess hall for a night or two.

Adrenaline was coursing, and it was Marina that started it. Giggling. “Did you see the look on his face? That was frucking brilliant, Harlow!”

“What happened?” Ellie asked. “What did I miss?”

We filled her in quickly until she was crying with laughter. “Oh, gods, I wish I’d seen that!”

Marina fist bumped me, and I started to laugh. “Did you see the rune though? How it grabbed hold of all our castings at once?”

Caterina nodded. “I’ve never heard of anything like that. But the magic ... it connected us. It was almost as good as the Dark Wood. I felt ... like I found my home.”

“I’m sorry I missed it,” Ellie pouted a little. “I’ll have to come running next time.”

The others went still, even though I could see we were all still vibrating. Grinning, we looked at each other. “We tell Zeed and Fable, but no one else,” I said.

“What about Phyllis?” Gary asked. “Should we tell her?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. Maybe. Let’s sit on it for now.”

Because as much as I wanted to believe that Phyllis was one of us, I wasn’t sure. She had all this knowledge – the trip to the Dark Wood showed me that – and she’d kept it to herself.

Did it mean she was against us? I didn’t think that was the case. But to be fair. I didn’t really know what to think.

Almost as if we’d called her, the door banged open and Phyllis stood there, hands on her hips. “Please tell me you fools weren’t on the sixth floor?”

Which set us all into fits of laughter.

Tears streaked my face, I was laughing so hard, hell, I could barely breathe. Phyllis rolled her eyes and slammed the door in our faces.

Every time I thought we’d gotten the laughter out of us; it started up again. The thing was, I don’t think any of us wanted it to end. For the first time since I didn’t know when, I truly felt like I was with family.

This was how being with your house in Neverthorn should have been. Laughter. Having each other’s backs. Friends that were so much more.

Suddenly my tears of laughter shifted, and I was sobbing. A split second later, Marina, Caterina, and Ellie had wrapped me up in their arms and I was hugging them back.

“What just happened?” Ross whispered. “I thought we were having a good time.”

But then he and Gary joined in on the group hug. And when Zeed and Fable opened the door a few minutes later, we dragged them in too.

And for just a little while, the world was good. It was right. And I was exactly where I needed to be.