Love's Labor's Won Read Online Free Page A

pulled from the house of a magician who was killed in a duel,” he explained. “Most of them are junk, without the owner, but a handful shouldn’t have been in anyone’s possession. Finding that” — he pointed to a gold heart-shaped artefact that looked scorched and pitted — “was worrying enough.”
    Emily knew better than to touch it, but she peered closely at the scarred metal. “What is it?”
    “A corruptor,” the Grandmaster said. “Certain kinds of magic, as you know, bring emotional resonances in their wake. These...devices...amplify the effects of casting such spells. A magician under their influence will rapidly become addicted to using dark magic, ensuring an eventual collapse into madness. Even the most stable of magicians, a very rare beast indeed, would be threatened by their magic.”
    “If one’s mind was changing,” Emily said slowly, “and all the tools one used to measure it were changing too, how would one know one’s mind was changing?”
    “Precisely,” the Grandmaster said. He waved a hand at the space in front of his desk and a chair shimmered into existence. “Take a seat, Lady Emily. We have much to discuss.”
    Emily sat, resting her hands on her lap.
    “Your exams were marked ahead of everyone else, including the Fourth Years,” the Grandmaster said. “We needed to know if you were ready to move into Fourth Year yourself or if you needed to retake Third Year. Our general conclusion was that you were ready to move forward, as you did manage to close the gap quite nicely with the other students.”
    “Thank you, sir,” Emily said. Mountaintop used the same basic exams as Whitehall, she’d discovered, but the educational pathway was different. She’d mastered some tricks that were only taught to Fourth Years, yet she’d lacked others that had left her ill-prepared for Third Year at Whitehall. “I worked hard.”
    “Indeed you did,” the Grandmaster agreed. “No one would have blamed you for choosing to wait out the year, then redoing the Third Year from scratch. You can justly be proud of your achievements. However, they do tend to cause us problems too.”
    He took a breath. “The one thing you don’t have is a proposal for a joint project,” he continued. “Your classmates had already teamed up, so we had no one for you to work with on your joint project, particularly as there was no guarantee you would go directly into Fourth Year.”
    Emily had a feeling that there was no guarantee that anyone would make it into Fourth Year, but she held her tongue. Alassa and Imaiqah had been working together from the start, while she’d been at Mountaintop, yet they’d had great problems putting their project proposal together. She...hadn’t had the time to do one for herself.
    “This problem caused us some concern,” the Grandmaster added. “The purpose of this project is to teach you how to work with another magician. Allowing you to submit a project of your own, without a partner, would defeat the object of the exercise. Several of my staff felt it would be better for you to repeat Third Year, which would allow you to work with another student. However, as you passed the exams, you could not be held back academically.”
    “I could submit a proposal in Fourth Year,” Emily offered.
    The Grandmaster smiled. “And would you then actually do the project itself in Fifth Year?”
    Emily cursed under her breath. She saw his point; if she had to do both the proposal and the project itself, she would need a full two years. Hell, she couldn’t pass Fourth Year without a completed project — or, at least, a determined attempt at one. The books Lady Barb had given her to read had made it clear that working together was the desired outcome, not a magical breakthrough. None of the tutors seemed to expect any of their students to come up with something totally new.
    Aloha did , Emily thought. But she had a concept from Earth .
    “Luckily, we have an alternative,” the