“Good morning, Mx. Heart!”

Mx. Heart smiled warmly. Lukas was hovering in midair a few inches above the ground, waving.

“Ah, Lukas,” Mx. Heart said, tossing back their long dark hair. “Always greeting your elders! What a kind young man you are.”

“I do my best,” Lukas said, shrugging.

“Hah! You should see him when I have to wake him every dawn,” his twin brother, Sakul, said. Small fires flickered along the tips of Sakul’s fingers. When he held up his hand, he allowed the flames to weave between one another, as if in a dance. “He’s not such a kind young man when he whaps you in the face with a pillow.”

Mx. Heart laughed. “You boys.”

“And how are you doing, Mx. Heart?” Sakul continued. “How are your students?”

“Quite well! Most of them have already manifested their magic. But a few the younger ones haven’t yet.”

“Any interesting powers?”

“Hm… not anything extraordinarily unusual. Well, there is one little boy can make flowers bloom, and a girl who can summon any sword within walking distance.”

“Cool,” Lukas said shortly. He cleared his throat. “Actually, Mx. Heart, I’ve been meaning to ask you a cooking question—“

“And, oh! We have a student who can manipulate constellations!”

“Seriously?!” Sakul cried. “That’s fascinating!”

“Surely not as fascinating as twins, masters of wind and fire,” Mx. Heart said, giving both of them a wink.

Lukas managed to force a laugh. “Yes! Right. Wind and fire. Now, about that cooking question. If you combine a pinch of—“

“You should come by the campus sometime!” Mx. Heart cried suddenly. “I so miss having you boys around. If you’ll pardon my honesty, in all truthfulness I was actually quite sad when you left for the upper school. It meant I wouldn’t get to see your beautiful faces each and every day!”

Sakul blushed. “Please, don’t flatter me—“

Lukas elbowed him.

“—us,” Sakul corrected quickly. “Please don’t flatter us. We only manifested two years ago, and we’re not even close to being done with our training.”

Mx. Heart waved a hand. “Oh, please. Everyone knows you’re both going to be the most talented Mages in all of the kingdom. I mean, look at you!”

They gestured to Lukas, who abruptly realized he was now much farther up off the ground than he had been when the conversation started— at least five feet farther.

Lukas shot Sakul a panicky look, and with a quick nod of Sakul’s head, Lukas drifted back down to the grass.

So quick, in fact, that Mx. Heart barely noticed.

Sakul cleared his throat. “We should really be going, Mx. Heart. We’re going to be late for our first class of the day.”

“Nice talking to you,” Lukas said stiffly.

“Nice talking to you too, boys!” Mx. Heart said cheerily.

They snapped their fingers, there was a loud POP!, and then they were gone.

Lukas rubbed his ears, turning to face his brother. “Okay, ouch. They really don’t have to teleport EVERYWHERE they go, do they?”

“They like to show off their magic, I guess,” Sakul said.

Lukas sighed. He kicked at the grass with his boot, hard enough that the toe of the leather took on a sickly green.

“That was a close one,” Sakul muttered after a minute.

“Yeah. It was.”

“Sorry.”

Sakul waved his hand, and a cool breeze blew over from the hills.

Lukas cringed.

“We can’t keep this up forever, you know,” Sakul said quietly. “You know we can’t.”

Lukas whirled on him. “Why not? We made it through a whole year of primary school and a whole year of upper school with none of the magic professors noticing. Who says they ever will?”

“Because… it’s lying! And you know how people in this kingdom talk. Eventually someone’s going to find out.”

“Come on. At least wait a few more years!”

Sakul sighed.

They stood together for a long moment in silence, Lukas still digging his boot into the earth, the fact that they were both supposed to go to class forgotten.

“We can keep it up until we come of age,” Sakul said finally. “Then at least we can legally run… and keep you hidden.”

“But we’re not telling anyone why,” Lukas said firmly. “Nuh-uh. No way. No way am I getting up and telling everyone, ‘hey, my twin has two powers and I have none! Surprise!!’“

Sakul exhaled. “No. But promise me we’ll run. To keep you safe. Promise?”

Lukas sighed. “Fine. I promise.”