Aadhya said, “Did she have a casting rebound or something?”

“I don’t know!” Orion said, sounding frayed at the edges. “I don’t think so.”

“I heard you killed a manifestation in the library,” Liu said. “Sometimes they can split themselves. Maybe she got partly drained.”

Orion hooked a finger into the chain round my neck and fished my crystal out from under my shirt: it was dark and cracked and empty. That was because I hadn’t protected it properly when I had finally yanked down the shielding spell, but it would’ve looked the same if I’d been shielding against a manifestation and it had broken through. But I didn’t tell him Liu’s guess was wrong, or say anything one way or another. The whole conversation felt like something happening on a TV screen in a program I didn’t even watch, with actors I didn’t recognize. “Right,” Orion said, grimly. “Stay with her, would you?” and then he took off the power-sharer on his wrist and got up.

He went and grabbed one of the mops standing at the edge of the cafeteria waiting for the next maintenance shift, and went round the whole room whacking the ceiling tiles hard. People squawked complaints as mals started literally raining down all over the place, but they were mostly the larval ones who hang around waiting for leftovers; Orion ignored them until he finally hit a nest of flingers in the corner. After he’d killed all nine of them, he came back to the table, put his hand on my chest, and shoved what felt like a year’s worth of mana right into my not-at-all-drained body.

I’ve got a substantial capacity for holding mana, but it was too much for even me. I didn’t have a functional storing crystal on me, so I couldn’t bleed off any of it. If I’d been properly functional at the moment, I’d have used it for the dramatic display I’d been planning. If I’d been a little less functional, I’d have instinctively cast my most natural spell, which at this particular moment was the killing spell I’d lately been casting over and over. I was just functional enough to recognize that I really didn’t want to do that, and yet I was about to be mana-poisoned if I didn’t do something with the power. So instead I poured it into the one completely unthinking spell I know that doesn’t involve killing people, which is the little meditation Mum had me do every morning and night, directly after toothbrushing. She taught it to me when I was little by having me sing the Simple Gifts hymn, which is as close to the idea as any incantation gets, but it’s not really an incantation, you don’t actually need words for it at all. It’s just making the choice to put yourself right, whatever that means for you. On the handful of occasions when I asked her whether I really was a monster, what was wrong with me, she told me there was nothing wrong with me that wasn’t wrong with me, and made me do the meditation until I felt right again. If that doesn’t make sense to you, you’re completely welcome to go and visit the commune and discuss it with her.

Normally the spell requires no mana; sitting down with the intention to cast it is enough. I was so far from right that I couldn’t actually form that intention, but throwing so much power into the spell was enough to force me through, rather like picking myself up by the scruff of my neck and shaking myself really hard, with a few slaps across the face from each side. I jerked up onto my feet, standing with a yowl, batting my hands at the air wildly for a moment. That only used up about one month’s worth of mana; I had eleven more ready to pop my seams, and—still operating on instinct—I shoved the spell out from me, which made everyone else at the table except Orion jump and gasp just the same as I had. That took care of nine months’ worth; two other random kids passing by tripped and dropped their trays as it hit them, and then it finally petered out.

I sank back down on the bench with a hard thump. I certainly did feel like myself again, namely violently irritated. Everyone else around the table was looking uneasily happy, their faces brighter, except Liu on the other side of the table, who was shaking violently, staring at her own hands: her fingernails had gone back to normal. She stared at Orion. “What did you do?” she cracked out, wobbly.

“I don’t know!” Orion said. “It’s never done that before!”

“Next time,” I rasped out, “ask first.” He looked at me anxiously, and I added, “And I’m fine,” which I was, involuntarily, although I didn’t actually want to be fine just yet. I’ve never been on board with Mum’s whole schtick about letting the process run its course, but for the first time I got the idea. However, the Scholomance isn’t exactly a forgiving place to do any processing, and after a moment I was more or less grateful. Well, less. “Stop hovering,” I muttered, and looked away from Orion to do a quick poison check on all the food on my tray, which I hadn’t actually inspected before taking. I had to chuck more than half of it, and I was starving, since I’d missed lunch.

Aadhya gave me half of her chocolate pudding and said, “Pay me back when you have a chance,” and Cora a little grudgingly gave me the apple she’d meant to save for later when Nkoyo gave her a nudge. Orion had sat down next to me slowly and was looking a little less freaked out. Liu was still staring at her own hands, tears running in two parallel lines down her face. I’d obviously been right about her carefully rationed malia use; if she’d been using more than the bare minimum, the spell wouldn’t have been able to bring her true. She might have been even less happy about it than I was, though. Now she knew exactly where she was going to end up if she went back to using malia, and she’d have to do it again anyway, or completely change her entire strategy.

Orion didn’t stop hovering. He walked me back to my room after dinner and obviously wanted to come inside. He’d probably have stayed with me through the night again, the wanker. “And again, I’m fine,” I said. “Aren’t you worried there’s someone in need of a hero somewhere? You could always prowl the senior res hall if you’re that bored.”

That won me a glare, at least. “You’re welcome,” Orion said. “Really, no big deal, I’m up to seven times now—”

“Six,” I said through my teeth.

“This morning?” he said pointedly.

You didn’t save me from anything today, I almost said, but I wasn’t completely sure that was true, and anyway I still didn’t want to talk about it, so I just turned coolly on my heel and went into my room and shut the door on him.

Then, since I was in fact fine and now no longer in a nice comfortable dissociating haze, it was time to inventory the damage, which was pretty appalling. The crystal I’d used to channel to the rest of my store was also cracked. A full nineteen crystals had been completely drained. I had only eight filled ones left. And I was alive, after taking on a maw-mouth, which did put things into a different perspective. I sat down on the bed with the cracked crystals in my hands, staring at them. It’s one thing to have the strong sense that I could cast any number of insanely powerful murder spells. It’s another to have proven it quite that dramatically, even if the only person I’d proved it to was me.