On the last morning Quentin got up early with the idea of foraging for contraband spell components in the kitchen. He had made up his mind to compete. He had to know if he could do it or not. It was that simple.

Most of the cupboards were locked—he probably wasn’t the first student to have thought of it—but he did manage to load up his pockets with flour and a stray silver fork and some old sprouting garlic cloves that might come in handy for something, he didn’t know what. He headed downstairs.

Alice was waiting for him on the landing between floors.

“I have to ask you something,” she said, her voice full of crisp determination. “Are you in love with me? It’s okay if you aren’t, I just want to know.”

She made it almost all the way through, but she couldn’t quite say the last phrase full voice and whispered it instead.

He hadn’t even met her eyes since the afternoon they’d been foxes together. Three weeks at least. Now they stood together on the smooth, freezing stone floor, abjectly human. How could a person who hadn’t washed or cut her hair in five months be so beautiful?

“I don’t know,” he said. His voice was scratchy from lack of use. The words felt more frightening than any spell he had ever cast. “I mean, you’d think I would, but I don’t. I really don’t know.”

He tried to make his tone light and conversational, but his body felt heavy. The floor was accelerating rapidly upward with both of them on it. At that moment, when he should have been most lucidly present, he had no idea whether he was lying or telling the truth. With all the time he’d spent studying here, everything he’d learned, why hadn’t he learned this one thing? He was failing both of them, himself and Alice.

“It’s okay,” she said, with a quick little smile that strained the ligaments that held Quentin’s heart in his chest. “I didn’t think so. I was more wondering whether you would lie about it.”

He was lost. “Was I supposed to lie?”

“It’s okay, Quentin. It was nice. The sex, I mean. You do realize it’s all right to have nice things sometimes, right?”

She saved him from having to answer by standing up on tiptoe and kissing him softly on the lips. Her lips were dry and chapped, but the tip of her tongue was soft and warm. It felt like the last warm thing in the world.

“Try not to die,” she said.

She patted his rough cheek and disappeared down the stairs ahead of him in the predawn twilight.