Mal pressed the mortar and pestle into the top shelf at the back of the greenhouse.

  Cassandra marched over to him, her short hair fluttering behind her. She propped a hand on her hip and looked down at him.

  "There was no way you could have known that the plant had been switched," she said.

  "I was just lucky."

  "I've been doing this since before you were in diapers, and even I had no idea that the plants had been switched," she said. "Whoever decided to prank you had good taste—those two are known for being virtually identical. It's why I keep both types carefully labeled."

  Mal opened his mouth, then shut it. "I was extremely lucky."

  "The more you dabble in my type of magic, the more you understand that luck really isn't a thing. Perhaps it was simply by instinct, perhaps there's something you're not telling me. Either way, what happened just now was no fluke."

  Mal took a few steps back. If she found out, there is no telling what her plans could be. Perhaps she would be benevolent and let Mal walk away from the situation. Perhaps she could be malicious and decide that he would make for good material for a study on the effects of the Shattercore infusion.

  He didn't know enough about her to say either way.

  Frankly, Mal would've made a run for it ages ago—the problem was that he was just so incredibly exhausted and weak right now, there was no chance he'd be able to run more than four or five steps before he collapsed into the ground.

  His best shot was to play dumb and act like nothing had changed.

  "I really have no idea what you're talking about," Mal said. "You say luck doesn't exist, but even you can't really believe that. Stupid accidents happen all the time."

  "Yes, like you," she said.

  "I really have no idea how I was conceived, and I really don't want to know."

  Cassandra snorted. "You know, I don't think there's a single other student who would be willing to make these kinds of jokes with the teacher. I've noticed that—you're respectful, but you treat us more like peers than superiors." Her eyes flickered. "Almost like you know more than you're letting on."

  Chills ran down Mal's spine.

  At absolute best, Cassandra was just engaging in idle speculation. At worst, she was leveling an accusation.

  Mal had heard all the stories—stories of dark wizards stealing the bodies of their children or relatives. If suspected, the penalty was death.

  Yes, mere suspicion was all it took. After all, wizards only became more powerful the older they became. The more knowledge and spells they accumulated, the more dangerous they became. So an immortal, body-hopping dark wizard was possibly the most terrifying thing that one could imagine.

  "It's a bad habit from my childhood," Mal said. "Father always did say that I was a rude child."

  An unreadable expression passed over Cassandra's eyes.

  She wasn't buying it. Crap, crap, crap—

  "I would like to perform a diagnosis spell," Cassandra said. "I suspect that you're not well."

  Diagnosis spell my ass, Mal thought. She's planning to restrain me. Maybe even knock me out and take me in front of the rest of the teachers. Or maybe…

  His heart stopped.

  She might be planning to put me down.

  Right now, Mal was at his absolute weakest, physically and magically. If she'd decided that he was going to die today, he didn't have a single chance.

  A quiet part of him whispered that perhaps he was overthinking things. He ignored that part of himself. He hadn't survived this long by taking stupid risks.

  Even if he was right, what was he supposed to do? The only thing he had available to him was knowledge. What, was he supposed to start blabbering about the future? As if.

  Mal was well and truly cornered.

  She held out her hand and a staff appeared in front of her.

  The tip of the staff lit up a soft, ocean blue. He saw the mana flow into the staff from a pocket on the inside of her coat.

  Before he had time to think, he felt his whole body shiver—at the same moment, the tip of her staff shivered.

  Mal's eyes widened. Resonance. That was resonance, wasn't it?

  She was using his theory! Plagiarism—!

  Wait, but if that were the case, what did she do?

  She reached for her coat, where the mana had flowed from and into the staff. She pulled out a small vial of water. She looked at it, almost seeming to read it like text on a page. With every fraction of an inch that her eyes moved across the vial, her expression got darker and darker.

  Her movements stilled, she placed the vial back inside of her pocket.

  She stared at him for an entire minute in total silence.

  "You… How are you alive?"

  She knew.

  That was the only thing that made any sense. She had to know.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  The words were as dry as ash, mouth was with the texture and taste of the eastern wastelands.

  She paced back and forth, her eyes wide as saucer plates and the knuckle of her finger being dug into by her teeth.

  "It's gone," she muttered. "Not broken, but completely gone. That's impossible."

  "I assume you're talking about your sanity," Mal said.

  She stopped moving and her eyes shot toward him.

  "No, I'm talking about your Eternus-damned core, you idiot."

  Well, damn.

  "I mean, just because my core's shattered doesn't mean that I should be dead," Mal said. "That seems a little bit extreme."

  She stared at him and then cackled. "You don't even know what happened to you, do you?"

  Mal frowned. He didn't know? That was ridiculous. He knew exactly what he did to himself.

  "Elaborate. What happened to me?"

  "Your core isn't just damaged," she said. "It's gone. Dust. Not a hollow core, not shattered. It has been completely ground into nonexistence."

  Mal furrowed his eyebrows together. "I fail to understand the difference."

  "The core is closely and mysteriously linked to the functioning of the body," she crossed her arms. "Even a shattered core is still a core. That's why people who have them are still capable of living—albeit with extreme physical impairments. But in your case…"

  "I just don't have one. It's gone."

  Her expression darkened, and she looked like she was in another place. "Every generation, there's some idiot who thinks that they'll be the exception, that they can survive the procedure. And every time they're wrong, and a coven has to bury a friend, a student, a mentor."

  Her gaze turned back onto him and Mal took another step back.

  "But you… You're still alive. Walking around as if nothing happened." She paused. "Well, that's not true. You're pale. Your breathing isn't steady—it hasn't been steady. It did a number on you… but not enough to finish the job." She snorted. "You know, other witches would be bowing at your feet right now. But for me, all I can think of is how much of a freak you are. It's like seeing somebody walk around with a hole in their head, talking and eating and sleeping as if there's nothing wrong. You're an abomination to life."

  Well, that was hurtful.

  "What now?" Mal said.

  "Now, you explain exactly how this happened."

  "And after that?"

  "And after that, I'll decide what to do, depending on your answer."

  Mal breathed slowly.

  He was missing vital information. Mentions of covens, witches, a shattered core versus a nonexistent core.

  There was no point in trying to lie. He might just end up digging himself a deeper hole.

  "After our last conversation where you interrogated me about resonance, I ended up going to the library and studying that term you used. Shattercore."

  Cassandra slapped her palm into her face.

  "I am such an idiot," she muttered. "I can't believe I used that term in front of a student."

  Mal wasn't much concerned with the mental breakdown Cassandra seemed to be having.

  "I investigated further and found a recipe for a Shattercore brew. I read further into the herbalism textbook and decided that it would be a worthwhile project to invest my time in."

  "Why?" Cassandra said. "You mentioned the studies on shattered cores. You had to have known the risk."

  Mal's expression turned blank. "That's personal."

  She stared at him for a little bit longer before she shrugged. "Fine. Continue."

  "I managed to assemble all of the ingredients—which was shockingly easy, incidentally."

  "I had the same reaction when I found the recipe. It's considered something of a joke among witches." She rolled her pipe between her thumb and her index finger. "But there was one plant that you should've had a tricky time getting access to…"

  "Yes, it was the one that you allowed me to harvest from as a gift."

  An expression of almost physical pain seemed to cross her face. "I see. Go on."

  Mal shrugged. "I followed the recipe as closely as I could. Unfortunately, where the book recommended making an oil, I had to substitute with an infusion, as I wasn't confident enough to try that technique."

  "But if that were the case, it should've only damaged your core. Maybe not even shattered it with how weak an infusion is." A flash of realization. "You added extra, didn't you?"

  "I did."

  "… By how much?"

  "I think I used three or five times the listed ingredients?"

  Cassandra didn't say anything. She shut her eyes and rubbed the temples of her head.

  "So what, you started chugging down jar after jar of Shattercore essence tea?"

  "No, I was worried that the potion wouldn't be as effective if I did that. Instead, I boiled away as much water as I could."

  "How long did that take?"

  "A few days."

  "…you thought that the magical essence of the ingredients would leak into the air, that's why you went so overkill with the ingredients."

  "Yes."

  "And then you drank it."

  She took several breaths and stared at him. A wide smile stretched from ear to ear across her face.

  "Do you have any idea how incredibly stupid every single thing you did was?" she said.

  "No, but I suspect you're about to tell me."

  She pressed both of her palms into her face, her pipe still smoking and caught between her index and middle finger. She pulled it away, her eerie smile still caught on her face.

  "First of all," she said. "Deciding to brew an infusion after being told in multiple medical textbooks that the end result will have you in a wheelchair for the rest of your life is absolutely idiotic. I don't care what your reason was at all. As soon as you heard that, you should've immediately stored whatever suicidal impulse that compelled you to do this deep inside of yourself where you would never find it again."

  Wow, Mal thought. I think that's the most words she's ever said in one go.

  "Second of all, coming up with some harebrained new technique where you boil away the water to create a more intense infusion." She ground her teeth together. "There's not nearly as much bleed from the heat as you think. At least, not for these ingredients. And even if that wasn't true—"

  She leaned in and put a hand on Mal's shoulder. Her lips were right next to his ear.

  "Heat. Affects. Brews."

  Mal stopped and truly considered what she just said.

  Heat affects brews.

  Right, that made sense. As was just demonstrated in the previous class, the heat intensified the effects of the restfulness infusion.

  Oh.

  "About half of the ingredients that are listed in that recipe list are affected by heat." She pulled away. The smell of the herb she'd been smoking remained in the air. "The current Shattercore essence recipe, the one that you were using, was arrived at after extensive analysis for thousands of years of what would provide the absolute best possible chance of survival. And despite that, everyone still dies!" She put her hands on her hips. "But you, Mr. Patoal, wiser than all of the witches who contributed to that recipe, decided to triple the ingredients, then throw some heat onto it for several days just for the hell of it! Truly, your genius knows no bounds!"

  Mal wanted to argue with her, or walk out—or really just something. But honestly, he was incredibly embarrassed at the current moment.

  Because she was absolutely right. He knew nothing about herbalism. He picked it up three weeks ago. What had he been thinking—

  Oh, he knew what he'd been thinking. He was thinking that he used to be a somewhat competent potions master in his first life, and that herbalism was pretty much the same so it didn't really matter.

  "I am so stupid," Mal said. "What is wrong with me?"

  Cassandra patted him on the cheek. "You are. Really, by all rights, you should be dead right now."

  Her wide grin dropped and her eyes narrowed. "But as stupid as you acted, you clearly did something right. No, you'd already demonstrated a pretty freakish level of talent prior to ever taking that infusion. You were able to figure out core principles of witchcraft based off of nothing but intuition."

  Her voice trailed off.

  "Really, I should be sending you off to the church, they'd love to research you," she said. "But they'd have no idea what to do with you, they think witchcraft is a joke. So maybe a coven? They might be able to help you better reach your full potential. No, they'd be too busy kissing the ground you're walking on to teach you anything useful."

  She made an unpleasant expression like she'd just swallowed something disgusting.

  "Professor Cassandra?" Mal said. "What is it?"

  Behind her eyes, he could see some kind of internal battle raging. Finally, she shut them, let out a long breath, then opened them. This time, they were crystal clear and locked on him.

  "Malfrasius Patoal, how would you feel about becoming my apprentice?"