Page 30 of Zero Happily Ever Afters

“Carter, if you don’t get off the damn sidelines and—”

“Yeah, yeah, Emo Queen.” Carter hadn’t hesitated to strategize like Caleb. No, he’d looped his healing magics around each of his coven mates before entering the fray of chaos.

Flying from above, Carter swept past Jennifer and redistributed his roots into a precise strike of telekinesis toknock away the distraught pair that Jennifer had already immobilized.

As they crashed into the lava, their hopes were dashed, but their injuries remained mild since Carter had weaved a bit of his branch to lessen the pain of their impact.

He didn’t care for Jennifer’s approach of emotionally devastating anyone in their way, but he also refused to lose because of his own self-doubts. Anxiety quickly consumed by Jennifer and released back into the air for others to breathe in.Christ.She’d seriously mastered the emotional wavelengths of her peers well enough to literally weaponize their fucking feelings.

Wisps bounced against a blue barrier, blocking them from floating away. Carter and Jennifer eyed those around them, confused about whose branch this might be and how it benefited them.

“If you two want to actually earn some points, you got about ten seconds before that spell fades.” Katherine held her open grimoire in one hand while extending her other arm toward her coven mates and casting a powerful banishment strike that took out a cluster of wisps, ensuring she maintained the highest score on her team.

Since Katherine held such a high ranking, she had a lot of catching up to do to keep up with the point system in place. That didn’t deter her or any of my students, each lashing out at competitors with masterful offensively combative techniques.

Tactically speaking, I’d screwed up with Katherine’s coven. Each member had a support-style branch magic. Normally, I flipped student groupings around each semester so that by their final year at the academy, they’d grown used to working with others and had a well-balanced team of strategy, defense, offense, and support. However, after the warlock incursion their first semester, the way they bonded, the way they fought for their lives, for my life—I struggled breaking up their teams, rotating their partnerships.

That failure on my part didn’t matter because my homeroom coven had done what they’d always done. They compensated for my faults and continued to impress me. Despite being a team best suited for support, Katherine, Jennifer, and Carter proved the versatility in their casting capabilities.

Caleb still hesitated. It wasn’t his overactive mind making plans. Well, it was in part. He’d glanced at the big screen projecting all the names, branch magics, and rankings still in play. Some had already been crossed out with red Xs since they’d fallen into the lava pit below. What caused Caleb to freeze was the overwhelming shift of information displayed above; hisranking had dropped, and seeing it projected for everyone left him rattled.

Despite all his training, studying, and mastery over his roots, hitting the rank of 100 really was the peak of his potential according to Gemini’s standards since he didn’t have a branch to calculate. And since other students below him had shown blossoming improvements in their branch magics, rankings had shifted, and he dropped by six.

Get it together, Caleb.

I bit the inside of my cheek, resisting the impulse to reach out telepathically and knock some sense into his beehive of a mind.

Despite sinking into the shock of failing before he’d started, Caleb finally pulled it together and soared through the air. His heart fluttered, anxiously beating until he’d steadied his emotions by remembering what he’d always known.

Caleb was used to being overlooked, underestimated, and dismissed. He set his mind to showcasing why these scouts needed him, why they’d want him at their guild. Following along with his coven mates, Caleb countered a few competitors who’d moved in close to strike Jennifer, then pivoted to assist Carter in tackling an opponent before finally launching himself above Katherine and catching sight of the huge cluster of wisps just out of her casting range.

Caleb clapped his hands together, using the sound to precisely extend the huge wave of banishment cast. It cleared the area of wisps almost instantly.

Not that it impressed Caleb much since this was how he practiced with his fledging permit every day outside of school, yet nothing seemed to help him access that singular use of perfected banishment he’d demonstrated during the first-year showcase. It wasn’t his fault. I should’ve focused more on studying perfected roots, searched for some information that’d help him access that skill set. Not that there was much to be found since very few witches ever perfected a root magic.

“You branchless bastard!” Kenzo shouted, flying directly toward Caleb. “Those were my damn points!”

Caleb eyed the area, noticing a bunch of students fighting against the disruption that’d knocked away their levitation roots. Most plummeted into the lava pits coated in gray static, while a few resisted, relying entirely on their telekinesis to stay afloat and desperately hoping the hex would fade before their channeling wavered.

Having cleared the area of opponents, Kenzo had planned on collecting a surplus of points that Caleb had unintentionally stolen with his widespread banishment.

Kenzo planted a foot on Caleb’s face, kicked the stunned Caleb, and used the force as propulsion. It moved both boys in a backward flip through the air as Caleb descended until hegathered his bearings and Kenzo soared high using his former friend as a literal step while propelling himself further up into the highest trenches of students competing for points. Kenzo coated his entire body in gray static before lunging into the fray and tackling several students.

He didn’t care what he hexed, so long as he disrupted magic around him and threw off his competition, which allowed him to claim another batch of points as he knocked more and more people into the lava pit.

Part of him longed to dart back down and face off against Caleb, but he’d already prepared a strategy with his coven mates to ensure they performed well today. As the other three members of his coven caught up to Kenzo, Layla and Melanie were convinced Kenzo only included them because he wanted to make sure his coven scored first place, whereas Gael believed Kenzo cared so much about each member of his team he was determined they’d all succeed.

I rolled my eyes and huffed. The reality of Kenzo’s motives lay somewhere between those opposing theories in a mixed bag of angry emotions and utter arrogance.

Kenzo’s erratic strikes of hex magic had cleared a path for his coven mates in every direction, tearing through the competition of unlucky foes. Soaring swiftly through the sky, Kenzo served as a vanguard and unleashed advanced combative techniques. He truly was the ultimate offensive tactician. So much so, the scouts studied his maneuvers, eyeing the trickling hex magic in the air meant to support his team that lagged behind. Many enchanters still had a chip on their shoulders for Kenzo’s winning speech last year, where he declared them all incompetent fools. That didn’t seem to matter, though. Some scouts weaved together ways to present Kenzo, put a spin on his cockiness, and convince their enchanters why he would make a valued intern.

Good. That’d make my job easier. Granted, every scout with an interest massively underestimated Kenzo’s attitude.

Layla maintained minimal transformation, only shifting her eyes and her claws and enhancing all her senses so that she could sniff out magic usage and take down nearby classmates who encroached on her team.

As the second most aggressive member in their team—hell, in my homeroom class—she didn’t hesitate to knock classmates out of the competition and into the lava pit if they got too close to Gael or Melanie, but it appeared sticking close to those two became her priority. Kenzo’s plan flitted on Layla’s surface thoughts along with a few choice words for how she felt about the annoying asshat she worked with.

“Layla,” Gael shouted, telekinetically redirecting some of his spiked projectiles and luring the wisps he’d missed toward Layla.

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