But because I was demonstratively curled up in my nice comfy chair with my feet tucked up underneath me, it had to come up the chair leg and go over the arm. Orion happened to be looking at me in time to grab me and yank me out sprawling over the floor in front of the whole Dubai crowd, just before he disintegrated the crawler, incidentally along with three-quarters of my lovely repaired chair.

I figured out what had happened almost instantly, especially since Magnus was just sitting back down in the New York corner. Everyone was looking over at me and Orion, the way you do when something explodes into flames unexpectedly, but he and several other New York kids were just a bit slow looking over. And they looked fairly grim about my visible survival. Not that I had any proof, of course, and there was Orion smugging down at me with deliberately obnoxious cheer, “So that makes eight, right?”—just asking to be told that it didn’t count because it was his own arseholish friends trying to murder me.

“Thanks loads,” I said through my teeth. “On that note, I’m going to bed.” I held my sutras against my chest—thankfully I’d been holding them in my lap—and snagged my bookbag by the one strap it had left, and stalked directly out of the reading room.

It wasn’t my way of saying thanks or of being rude, either one. I just had to get out of the library. I was angry at myself for being stupid and needing my life saved, and I was angry at the Dubai kids and everyone else, too, for thinking Orion was a perverted loon for liking unsettling me, but most of all I was angry at Magnus, and Todd, and every last one of the New York enclave kids, because they had given me an excuse, a gold-plated excuse, to do something to them. They’d deliberately tried to kill me. By Scholomance rules, that gave me a right to do something to them. And if I didn’t, then they’d assume it was because I was afraid of them. They’d think I was agreeing with them, telling them they were right to look at me and see just a piece of rubbish to be kicked out of their way. Someone who wasn’t worth as much as they were.

The tears of rage were already leaking out of my eyes by the time I got to the stairs. I was just lucky there were some other kids going down to the dorms, and I managed to keep at least one person in blurry sight along the way until I finally got to my room and clanged the door shut behind me. I started pacing the room with the sutras still clutched against my chest. It was only five steps across and turn and go back, over and over. I couldn’t meditate, and I couldn’t even try to work. If I put my hands to pen and paper right now, I knew what would happen: a spell would come out, a spell like a supervolcano.

The rotten thing about having Mum as a mum is, I know how to stop being angry. I’ve been taught any number of ways to manage anger, and they really work. What she’s never been able to teach me is how to want to manage it. So I go on seething and raging and knowing the whole time that it’s my own fault, because I do know how to stop.

And this time was worse, because I couldn’t make excuses for them. All these years, whenever someone took advantage of me, shoved me out of the way, left me exposed, for their own benefit, at least I’ve been able to do that. To tell myself that they were only doing what anyone would do. We all wanted to live, and we were all doing our best to make it out of here, to end up safe, no matter how mean and awful we had to be along the way. I was doing the same thing. I’d kicked a freshman out of a chair and spent mana to fix it so I could shove myself in with a bunch of kids who didn’t want me, and because I’d been sitting there being rude and mean to them, I’d scared the New York kids. They needed Orion: that little buzzer on his wrist that brought him to their rescue if they ever did get into trouble, the power he dumped into their shared power sink. What right did I have to take that for myself, eight times and counting? Why did I deserve to live more than them?

But I had an answer now: I hadn’t pulled malia even with a knife in my gut, and I’d gone after a maw-mouth to save half the freshmen instead of running away, and meanwhile Magnus had tried to murder me because Orion liked me, and Todd had destroyed Mika because he was scared, and because I had that answer, I couldn’t help thinking actually I did deserve to live more than them. And I know nobody gets to live or not live because they deserve it, deserving doesn’t count for a thing, but the point was, I now felt deep in my heart that I was in fact a better human being than Magnus or Todd, and hooray, all the prizes for me, but that wasn’t helpful when what I actually needed was reasons why I shouldn’t just wipe them out of existence.

I went on pacing for what felt like an hour. My gut hurt, and I was wasting time and effort that could have gone into something useful like the schoolwork I should’ve been doing, or the mana I should’ve been raising. Instead I built an elaborate fantasy of how Magnus would beg my forgiveness in front of everyone and sob and plead for me not to flay him alive, especially after I tore a strip or two off just to start, and Orion would just stand by with his face angry and disappointed and his arms folded, doing nothing to help him, rejecting all his friends and his home for me. Every few minutes I veered rapidly over to feeling sick at myself and saying out loud, “Okay, I’m going to walk back and forth three more times and then I’m going to meditate,” trying to commit myself, and then I walked back and forth two more times and then I started over with the fantasy from the beginning, reworking it in my head. I even talked some of the lines out under my breath.

I’m not a moron, I knew it was dangerous: I was on the edge of casting. That’s all that magic is, after all. You start with a clear intention, your destination; you gather up the power; and then you send the power traveling down the road, giving the clearest directions you can, whether it’s with words or goop or metal. The better the directions are, the more well-traveled the road, the easier it is for the power to get to where you want it to go; that’s why most wizards can’t just invent their own spells and recipes. But I can blaze a trail to Mordor anytime I want, and I still had nine full crystals in my chest, and so what if those ran out? There was loads of power to be had. After all, if Magnus deserved to die, why shouldn’t I put his life to good use?

And that thought is exactly why I knew I had to stop, I knew I had to let it all go, or else I’d become a much worse person than Magnus and Todd and Jack all put together, and no more prizes for me. But I knew it the way you know the sixth biscuit in a row isn’t good for you and you’ll be sorry, and they’re not even really very nice, and yet you keep eating them anyway.

That’s why I opened the door when Aadhya knocked. I did check it was her and kept well back this time, I wasn’t getting caught the same way twice, but I let her in, even though I didn’t want company at all. At least having her there would make it harder for me to keep cramming the biscuits of revenge fantasy into my mouth. “Yeah?” I said shortly but not outright rude, my idea of self-restraint at the moment.

Aadhya came in and let me shut the door, but she didn’t answer me for a moment, which was odd for her; she doesn’t dither. She looked around the room: it was the first time she’d ever come over. It was the first time—apart from Jack and Orion—that I’d ever had anyone over, in fact. At most a few people have come round to swap things with me, and on those occasions they didn’t come in far enough for the door to close behind them. My room’s pretty spartan. I spent my freshman year turning my cupboard into wall-mounted shelves, which are massively safer than any piece of furniture that has enclosed areas and a dark underside; I got credit in shop for it. I stripped my desk drawers for the same reason, traded for metal, and reinforced the legs and top of the desk instead, which is why it survived the incarnated flame’s visit. I’ve got a wobbly and rusted metal rack on top for papers that I also made myself out of the easiest metal I could get. Nothing else, besides the bed and the tool chest at the foot that I use to hold anything important enough that it would probably disappear if I left it lying around. Most kids have at least a few decorative bits here and there, a photo or cards on display; people give pottery and drawings at New Year. I’ve never been given any, and I don’t waste my own time making them.