“I guess I won this round,” I say. “Sucks to suck.”

“Yeah,” she says. “I definitely sucked this time around.” She looks down, not meeting my eyes. Is she sad? My gut clenches. Great, now I feel like a complete jerk. She leans over her cauldron, and her expression disappears in the steam.

Gloating doesn’t feel as good as I wanted it to. I scramble for something I can say to fix this conversation. “It’s just embarrassing at this point that my GPA is lower than yours,” I say, offering her an opening into the exchange we’ve had many times before.

She looks at me, and her face softens. “Yeah, too bad ranking is done by GPA,” she says, her mouth quirked in this tiny almost smile. “How does it feel to know that I’m smarter than you?”

“I wouldn’t know,” I say. And then the balance is restored—I no longer feel like a total asshole, and we both go about our business with our potions. Except things are also obviously different because, for once, I feel like I’m pulling ahead in our competition.

I get a few other congratulations, mostly from the seniors in our class. The juniors are all salty that I have them beat so badly. Which is nothing new.

Eli, one of the junior wizards in the class, leans across my lab table, eyeing me skeptically. I try to pretend that I’m too into brewing my potion to see him, because I don’t see this interaction going anywhere good. He’s giving off majorly sketchy vibes. “Hey, Shay,” he says. “I was just wondering . . . does your family have a magic-sharing pool?”

I suppress my need to scream with frustration. This again. People are so deeply convinced that there’s no way I could be this powerful naturally. This clown literally has class with me every day and hasn’t noticed that I’m—gasp—better at magic than him. And how rich does he think I am to suggest that I have a magic-sharing pool?

Sharing magic is invasive by nature—it creates a connection between people that lets you use their magical energy and gives you a window into how they’re feeling. If you’re significantly more powerful than the person you’re sharing with, you can actually use that connection to influence their feelings. Most people only do it with their families, since you want to be sure that someone won’t use that connection to manipulate you.

Because of all the associated risks, it’s incredibly expensive to hire someone to share magic with you. Families that have whole groups of people they’ve hired to make a magic-sharing pool for themselves? They’re rich beyond belief.

I unclench my jaw to speak. “No, I don’t have a magic-sharing pool.”