I stare down the hallway of the elemental wing of Wizard Prep, taking in the sight before I move through. My friends are waiting for me all the way at the other side.

The movement around the elemental hall always fascinates me: a collection of talented wizards who are always one bad fireball away from burning the entire building to the ground. Students ride around on waves to get from the kitchen to the lounge and etch essays into tattered notebooks, but naturally, they all are using small lightning strikes to burn the words.

It is like no one in the hall can exist for two entire seconds without using magic, but that is the type of students who chose elemental as their seventh-year focus: obsessed.

And this new kid… this Allen Silverlake… he is supposed to be on the level of these wizards by next year? Impossible.

Though, the thought of the impossible helps me draw in a sobering breath.

It was when I realized the task is going to be impossible that I saw Allen as more than a nuisance my father thrust upon me. The moment he revealed that he didn’t even know what a focus was… that was the moment I smiled.

This kid—a term I use more metaphorically, as he cannot be all that much younger than myself, but in experience, he might as well be a child—will be the bane of my existence for three entire months, and yet—at the moment—that idea made me smile.

Perhaps it is the challenge.

Perhaps it is the change of pace.

Perhaps it is something I cannot yet perceive.

Only time will tell, and the irony of that is that time is the one thing working against us.

“Hey! Rhett! We already got-a table!” yells out Oliver Deepside—Oli, as we call him—from a table at Polly’s Potions.

Polly’s Potions is, without a doubt, the greatest part of the elemental wing, and that is saying something as it is the greatest wing in all of Wizard Prep. The small tavern is nestled right in the back of the hall, always dimly lit, even in the middle of the day.

Oli waves his hands high in the air from the booth right in front, by the huge wooden bay window that looks out into the rest of the shopping section of the wing. Students run in and out of little boutique shops built right into the stone of the hall, bearing all kinds of magical items and trinkets.

If your eyes aren’t trained to spot spells when you see them, you’d think this entire section of the hall is outside, in some huge town square.

Such is the magic of Wizard Prep.

“How was newbie duty this morning?” asks Francesca Meadowbrooke, or Fran as we call her, as she sips from a sparkling orange potion that matches her hair. The potion is bubbling and fizzing all over the place.

“Exactly as you would think,” I say as I sit down at the head of the table, a table which is always reserved for my friends and me. We do, practically, own this school. Me more realistically than my friends, as my father does, literally, own the school.

“So. What do we have to fear? Is he some magic prodigy? Come from some insanely powerful family? What’s his deal?” asks Alexander Lightland, or Alex. Alex is the smallest among us, both short and skinny, but he talks loud enough to make up for it.

“That’s the thing…” I say as I look at all the empty potion bottles on the table around my friends. They’d obviously been here all afternoon, clearly. This is the kind of activity I will be missing all semester. “He has no deal. He is just some kid in way over his head. He didn’t even know what focuses were.”

My four friends all start murmuring amongst themselves. I can hardly make out what any one person is saying until Alex speaks up, as his voice sticks out the most.

“Are you serious?” he says with his brows scrunched up tight on his pale forehead.

“Your father really wants you to hang out with some nobody the whole semester? Priceless!” Oli says with a bellowing laugh. Oli Deepside is, without a doubt, the second most popular guy in school. Me, naturally, being the first. 

But that is because everyone loves a Prince, and I do not love that people only like me because of that, so it hardly counts.

Oli earned his status all on his own by just being the biggest, most badass wizard to go through Wizard Prep in decades.

Which is why it hits extra hard as I steal the potion he is drinking right out of his hand, swig it back before replying, “I’ve hung out with you lot for the past five years. Nothing new to me.”

“Oh ho ho,” Oli hoots as he watches the last drop of his potion drain for the bottle. “Very funny. I don’t see anyone else lettin' you into the elemental wing, sixth year.”

He says the last words with the grit any seventh-year would.

It’s simple. Seventh years are the shit. Sixth years are children who have no idea what they are doing. Always has been that way. Always will be that way.

A seventh year will never allow a sixth year into a focus wing.

Unless you are me.

I smack the empty potion bottle into the center of the table and clink it against the dozen and a half other empty bottles lying there. “I don’t see anyone else pay for the potion problem of each and every one of you.”

“He ain’t wrong!” Alex bellows with a smile and holds up a red potion that makes a loud crackling noise.

“CHEERS!” cheer the three others and they all clink glasses.

As they all chug their potions, the effects of the little bit I drank of Oli’s kicks in, and suddenly I feel weightless... like I can fly. Gravity cannot touch me.

It is a strength potion.

Oli is addicted to them. Their effects are temporary, and dangerous if you strain yourself under the influence.

But in the meantime, you feel like a god.

I try to stay away from such addicting potions unless it is to show Oli who is boss around here: or who will be once he is a seventh year, anyway.

“Anything for you, Your Highness?” asks the sweetest voice of one Madame Polly, the owner and potions master of the tavern. She has to be in her late seventies, but still wears tall, thigh-high black boots, a leather vest, and a skirt, with a long sleeve white button-up under.

Her make-up: dark. Lips: blood red.

Always.

That is just Polly, and we all love her for it.

“How many times can I say it is just Rhett at school, Madame Polly,” I say as I lean back in my chair to relax.

“Every damn day, Your Highness.” She flicks her finger and a pen jumps out of her pocket to write on a notebook that floats by her head.

I nod, as I always do every time we have this conversation, which is practically daily at this point, then ask, “What have you that’s new?”

“Oh. Oh! Polly created a wonderful new potion that straight-up freezes your brain! She just told us about it. It seems fantastic,” Fran says with a snort and a chuckle.

“It’s a prank potion, Rhett. Don’t listen to her,” says the final friend-member of the group: Lissa Foxthorn. She is, without a doubt, the only respectable, genuinely kind person amongst us.

“Hushhh! I wanna see the steam come out his nose!” Oli laughs. “That oughta bring him back to cool, after being a good little son and doing daddy’s wishes all mornin'.”

“Aww. Someone loves their daddy!” Alex joins in the laughter, twice as loud.

“Oh come on, guys. Just because the rest of you are just the right amount of privileged to be able to spend all day with your fingers up your asses, doesn’t mean everyone can. Those potions can hurt people if they aren't prepared,” Lissa says, rolling her eyes at the rest of them.

I am far too used to their pokes and jabs after five years that I know better than to take a word Oli and Alex say seriously, but that doesn’t mean I can’t have my fun.

“Don’t worry, Lissa, I can handle it,” I say with my palm held up the whole group sitting around the table. Then, I turn to Madame Polly and toss her a wink. “Five, please, Madame.”

“FIVE?” Alex, Oli, and Fran yell.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you were all cool?” I stare at each of them individually until they are forced to look away.

My stare is a power of mine I had perfected since being a child forced to take lessons in intimidation.

After five years, it still works on them every single time.

No one fucks with a Prince when they have this look on their face.

One of the few and only perks I enjoy about my status.

“We…. uh…. Okay,” Alex says as Polly distributes the potions around the table. They are in smaller, round glasses, likely because too much too fast is extremely dangerous. The round shape of the bottle with the long thin neck made it go down slower.

I grab my potion in my hand and hold it up to clink against the others. Everyone meets me with fear in their eyes, and I enjoy the look just before I pull away and down the entire drink in one go.

Oli and Alex hardly get through half. Fran doesn’t get more than a sip.

As they cough, white steam shoots from their noses and mouth and they each leave one at a time to run to the bathroom to wash out their mouths.

I throw my head back and laugh as I put the empty bottle on the table where only Lissa remains, also with an empty glass.

“We sure got them good this time,” Polly chuckles from beside me. I throw up my hand which she slaps in a thunderous high-five.

“What just happened?” Lissa asks as she stares into her empty glass like she is missing something.

“I knew they were going to give me shit for hanging out with the new kid this morning, so Polly and I hatched a plan. What we just drank was a memory potion. So this moment will stick with us clearly forever,” I say with a smile and another, much earned, high five from Polly.

“Cold,” Lissa says with a grin. “Pun intended.”

“They’ll be all right. It wears off after a few minutes. Polly and I came up with it specially, didn’t we?”

“Sure did.” Another high five. Then Polly walks off to tend to other students—which are not many in the middle of the day when most elemental students are studying.

Once she is gone, I settle back into the booth and lay my arms on the table. “If I am going to be spending less time around here this semester, I figured I may as well go out with a bang.”

“You really have to babysit this kid all semester?” Lissa asks.

“If I want him to pass the final exam and not get expelled and sent into my father’s army… it seems so.” The fun of the moment wears off at this thought. The reality sets in: my fate will truly be decided by this nobody from a different kingdom. I look down at my own hands because it is easier than looking at another person while feeling vulnerable.  “This kid has no idea what he has gotten himself into.”

“Then why would your father request this of you? It seems impossible.”

“I think that is the point. It is impossible,” I say and look up. “He wants me to fail. He wants any excuse to finally be rid of me for good.”

“Rhett…”

I clench my fist and dig it into the table. “But I won’t fail. Not this time.”

And I mean that.

My father is taking everything from me this semester: my friends, my dignity, my freedom.

And that… that is why it made me smile.

My father is getting desperate.

It is the challenge.

It is the change of pace.

That all excites me more than anything has in a long time.

I will prove my father the fool.

I will finally show him.

The King of Stormstar Kingdom will finally have to admit his youngest son is not as much of a failure as he is always claiming him to be.

Whatever it takes. No matter how long, how many nights of studying, or endless practice sessions it will take, Allen Silverlake will pass his entrance exam.