only if you get caught

It's the night after Adam's funeral and Nicholas is still only sleeping with the help of potions.

The dorms have four beds to a room so they're the only ones inside, but they still shut the heavy curtains around the four-poster bed and use a silencing charm. The walls are rather thin - not that the other boys in neighbouring rooms would talk about anything they overhear, not after what Stavros did to them last time.

"Would one of your cousins have come up here?" Rafael asks, sitting up with his head tipped back against the top of the headboard. With the curtains drawn, the bed is pitch black with vague shadows.

Stavros is curled around Nicholas' back with an arm slung over his waist, hand resting on Rafael's knee. No point lowering their voices, the potion keeps Nicholas under.

"He smelled like you," Rafael continues.

"I know," says Stavros.

It took a while, especially with the whole forest bordered off now, but Stavros shifted into his fox form and snuck in as Hearth, traced a winding path up and down the tree line following the scent. Someone had been watching them for a while when they were lying under the stars that night.

"I sent a letter home," Stavros admits. "Nothing."

"Would they tell you?" Rafael asks, not trying to soften the question. They all know how Stavros' parents treat him.

"I pretended I was my brother."

They go quiet as Nicholas shifts a bit in his sleep.

"Did you tell the magpol?" Stavros continues.

"No, I didn't know what the scent was when they took our statements." Rafael rolls his head along the backboard. "And they've been useless, haven't they?"

Stavros huffs. "Spent so fucking long stuttering out questions like my father was going to swoop out of the shadows to eat them if they said something wrong." He grits his teeth. "There are spells to track apparition, but now it's been too long for any to work and they're still bumbling around the forest."

Rafael hums. "Talking a lot too. A student asked me about it when I was in the library."

Stavros sighs. "Raffy, tell me maiming people is illegal."

"Oh, Ross," Rafael muses. "Only if you get caught."

...

The uniform is the same for everyone – white button shirt, black slacks, shiny leather shoes, black tie with white embroidery of a mage symbol of crossed staffs wrapped in rays of light, apprentice wand, and whatever else you layer on. This is the same across all years and tracts.

Students all have outer robes as well but that's only worn for special occasions or by stuck up hereditary mages who want to prove they're superior to the idiopathic mages picked out of the mundane population whenever they spontaneously pop up. Stavros only managed to kick the habit in year eight.

Because of the uniform rules the corridors, every time class is let out, is a sea of colours from random jackets and jumpers, mainly black still because people are boring but the occasional fluro bobbing about in the crowd.

One such neon pink rain jacket is Stavros, next to Nicholas' shiny black puffer and Rafael's mute navy jumper. The crowd surges around them as they head to their next class, people darting them glances. Most of their friends have stepped up during classes and asked the usual questions; are you doing okay, is there anything I can do.

And then there are the others, who ask far more pointed questions like they don't already know damn well know what happened from the rumours flying around.

Rafael had a kid small enough to be in year seven ask if Adam died in pain and Stavros hauled the little girl over the side of the staircase and dropped her two storeys before the protective wards caught her and held her in suspension for a teacher to get her down.

It's halfway through the school year so even the new little year-sevens should know not to mess with them, but with Nicholas closed in on himself and Rafael so anxious whenever he can't see both of his friends, Stavros is much more focused inwards on their group rather than projecting outwards.

And it would be fine for anyone else, if only Stavros and Nicholas hadn't spent the last five years bulldozing their way through people whenever they needed to like collateral damage isn't a word in their collective dictionary.

So people take it as a sign of weakness.

The school is from years seven to twelve and split into five tracts depending on the source of magic. Ritual Casting, Familiar Nurture, Nature Communication and Pulling The Veil. Nicholas, Stavros and Rafael are all Inner Core students.

RitCast and InCore hate each other because their casting is similar enough that it's always compared and it's always a competition. Nicholas and Stavros have given RitCast shit since they first stepped foot onto the floating island, and the two can get really bad about it.

So it's not actually a surprise when they're on the way to Advanced Runes class and a group of year-elevens, a year older, block them off. These are from the RitCast dorms judging by the standard-issue ingredients pouches that hang from their hips.

"Walk away," Stavros warns them, stepping out in front of Nicholas and Rafael.

"I've been hearing rumours lately." A RitCast boy is smirking like Stavros doesn't make him cry three times a year the bastard never learns.

"I'm going to skin your face off," Stavros says, spinning his wand until it's a blur. "Make you fucking eat it."

The boy stutters.

Another steps up though, from the back of the group and confident because she's got meat shields in front of her. Sarah smirks. "I heard poor Adam died not twenty meters from you."

Stavros raises his wand and the four year-elevens mirror him. Rafael pulls back for more range. Stavros glances back before he can stop himself and Nicholas just stands there but instead of his usual blank state, his eyes are wide, focused.

"I heard," Sarah muses. Her eyes slide past Stavros, land on Nicholas. "That Nicholas was the one to suggest leaving the castle that night."

Nicholas' breath hitches.

Rafael is actually the first one to move.

...

Not even an overpowered bleaching spell can get all that blood off the walls.