Chapter 21 was originally a ‘mum’ chapter because it had the queen, Hakyeon’s, Ravi’s and Jaehwan’s mother’s in it. Ravi’s, Hakyeon’s and Jaehwan’s were cut to make room for more of Minho’s mum and as a result I failed to see where some confusion would arise. My apologises.

However, my mistake has allowed me to write more about some things I thought would be cut from the story forever.

Please read the facts at the bottom. It’s a good time for me to clear some things up.

Chapter 22 – Where Hakyeon’s From

“I apologise for making you come all this way,” the queen says as the couple enters her sitting room.

The couple bows. “It’s no trouble,” the man replies.

It was trouble but they couldn’t exactly say that to the queen. It had taken them several days to travel from their town on the outskirts of the country to the palace. But they really wanted a baby and they had had no calls for possible adoptions before now.

All adoptions went through the palace but the couple hadn’t expected to be dealing directly with the queen. For what reason would the queen be dealing with this? Unconsciously their eyes settle on her obvious pregnancy, questions running through their minds.

The queen chuckles and rests her hand on her stomach. “This one is mine, I’m afraid.”

Feeling abashed the couple bows their head for being rude.

“Actually, I asked you to come here because I have some questions I wanted to ask you that couldn’t be done by letter.”

That was a little suspicious, what couldn’t be asked in a letter? The couple exchanges nervous glances.

“What kind of questions, Your Majesty?” the woman asks.

The queen decides to get straight to the point. “Do you practice magic?”

The couple frowns in confusion. “No, Your Majesty. We’d be registered if we did.”

They probably didn’t need to know about the number of sorcerers who practiced magic illegally, it would just make them feel unsafe, so the queen just laughs a little.

“Good.”

“May we ask why it’s important that we don’t do magic?” the man enquires.

“I just want this child to grow up magic free,” the queen smiles. “I can’t really say more than that, unfortunately.”

“That’s fine,” the woman mutters. “We hate it.”

We’re scared of it, is what the queen hears. As a sorcerer herself she’d seen it firsthand when she’d been an apprentice. The avoidance and the wary looks she’d received had certainly said a lot about the opinion citizens in the outskirts had towards sorcerers.

For now it didn’t matter that magic scared this couple, what mattered was that they wouldn’t encourage the baby to do magic itself.

The queen smiles and motions towards the door. “Would you like to meet the mother?”

They agree and the queen calls in a young maid who is in the late stages of pregnancy.

“Did you do the test?” Dohyun asks.

The queen sighs. “It was inconclusive.”

“Ah,” the sorcerer mutters. “So he’s either got heaps of intuitive magic or none.”

“We won’t know until he’s older,” the queen replies. “It’s out of our hands anyway.”

“Minho has none,” Dohyun says, trying to sound encouraging. “His was inconclusive too.”

The queen doesn’t respond, thinking about how that little drop of potion had evaporated the second it touched the newborn’s skin. It was a stupid test, confusing and often wrong entirely. Surely someone should have invented something better by now.

Dohyun sighs at the lack of reply. “Did they name him?”

“Mmm,” the queen hums, still lost in thought. “Cha Hakyeon.”

“Cha Hakyeon!” his mother squawks. “Stop that right now!”

The vase, which had been floating steadily across the room, drops to the floor in front of the five year old. Startled and confused Hakyeon reaches out towards the shards that now littered the floor.

Before she can snatch his arm away to prevent cuts, the vase pieces jitter on the hardwood noisily and then spring back together, reconstructing the vase perfectly.

Hakyeon’s startled cry is nothing compared to his mother’s and she picks him up in a panic. “Don’t do that!” she scolds. “I told you not to do that!”

He’d started being able to move things a year ago and at first it had been exciting. However, the fear his parents had shown when they’d found out had frightened him enough that he thought magic was scary now.

Hakyeon is crying out of confusion and the fear in his own mother’s voice. He clings to her and buries his face in her hair. “I won’t do it anymore.”

This time he means it.

“You ever considered becoming a father?” Kim Chunja asks, watching the sorcerer rock Ravi gently.

Dohyun chuckles softly. “I’m too old now. Besides… I think having a child that could do magic would break my heart. I know too much now…”

Chunja smiles sadly. “It rains when Ravi cries… the first time it happened I cried too.”

Dohyun’s brows pull together as he eyes the baby, wondering what it meant when a newborn could control the weather. Most kids didn’t display any signs of intuitive magic until they were four…

“I’m moving to just outside of town,” the sorcerer announces suddenly.

The potion maker’s mouth falls open. “Why?”

She twitches a little as her magic begins to stir at the thought of Ravi being the reason. Surely Ravi wasn’t the reason. Was Ravi in danger from Dohyun? No. No. Dohyun wouldn’t hurt a baby, especially not her baby. She feels bad for even considering it.

Dohyun feels the change and tries to smile reassuringly. “It’s about Hakyeon, actually.”

Chunja frowns. “I haven’t heard anything about him from his parents. He’s five now he would have presented some sign. I’m sure he doesn’t have any magic.”

Dohyun shakes his head and returns Ravi to his mother’s arms. “I don’t know,” he mutters. “I just have this feeling…”

“Let me go!” Hakyeon screams. The thunder that accompanies the eight year old’s scream shakes the house. “I’m not going to the capital!”

The official from the palace is also shaking. Out of fear. He has one hand wrapped around the child’s arm but he’s leaning away. Hakyeon is clinging to the post of his parent’s bed and has been for two days now. It was like he never got tired and he couldn’t be consoled. He’d taken the news of his parents’ death badly, as expected, the news of being taken to an orphanage in the capital had gone over even worse.

Things are flying around the room – zipping past dangerously close – and the official flinches with every item that is broken, only for them to put themselves back together and return to their crashing.

“I want my mum!” Hakyeon yells, trying to shake the official off. “I want my mum!”

The thunder only continues to get worse as Hakyeon’s screaming gives way to loud sobbing. Outside is hectic with wind and rain and lightning, and the whole town is taking cover in their homes, hiding from this freak storm.

He’s scared more than anything else. The magic he was doing, the storm and the things moving by themselves, he knew he was doing it but he couldn’t get them to stop. His mum and dad hated when he did magic so he never did. But now they were gone and he was doing magic and he didn’t know what to do or how to stop it and this man was trying to take him away and he was so, so scared.

The official screams when the front door opens, raising the volume of the storm even higher. Hakyeon is also startled and for a second he tricks himself into thinking the man in the doorway was his dad because of the similar build.

“Who are you?” the official demands, standing up to his full height.

“Choi Dohyun, Hakyeon’s guardian from now on.”

“He’s going to the orphanage,” the official replies.

“No!” Hakyeon screeches, clinging to the bed. “I won’t go!”

Dohyun turns to eye the child, not even worrying about the objects that are shooting past his face at alarming speeds. “Are you scared?” he asks.

Hakyeon chokes on his next sob as he nods.

“Is magic scary?” Dohyun demands.

The boy stifles a sob as he tries to answer. “It won’t stop.”

Dohyun bobs down next to the boy and smiles gently. “I’ll teach you how to stop it, okay? Would you like that?”

Honestly he’s surprised that Hakyeon has such little control over his magic. If he’d presented at the normal age then by now he should have been able to control it. Ravi had complete control over his, despite only being three.

Hakyeon nods furiously.

“Okay,” Dohyun smiles. “First, let’s calm down. Alright? If you can calm down then it’ll stop.”

It takes a long time for Hakyeon to calm down, for the sobbing to finally stop and the storm to subside and the objects to stop violently flinging themselves around the room. The official hovers awkwardly on the other side of the room, waiting to discuss what was going on because he hadn’t heard anything about Hakyeon getting a new guardian so soon.

“Good,” Dohyun nods as Hakyeon takes deep breaths. He pulls an envelope out of his jacket and hands it to the official.

The official looks sceptical as he takes it. His eyes widen comically when he gets to the end of the letter and sees who it’s from.

“But this–this is from-!”

“Yep. So it’s official. I’m the boy’s guardian from now on.”

Hakyeon doesn’t like that. He wants his parents back. Just thinking about it has the sobs threatening to come back but he forces them down, not wanting to start doing magic again.

“Do you want to come live with me, Hakyeon?” Dohyun asks. “I’ll teach you all about magic so you can control it. It won’t be scary anymore.”

“Really?”

Dohyun nods and stands up, offering his hand to the boy. Hakyeon wipes his hands over his eyes and climbs to his feet, taking the offered hand.

“Okay.”

“So you’re teaching him magic?” Chunja demands. “After everything you’ve said about magic?! Everything you know?!”

“I don’t really have a choice. He doesn’t have any control. He’s dangerous. What if he gets angry and throws a tantrum?”

Chunja scowls. “I guess you’re right… It’s better that you teach him and be safe than he learn from some other sorcerer.”

“Right?”

“…Does he have a lot of intuitive magic?”

“Yeah, a lot.”

“As much as Ravi?”

“Not that much.”

Cha Hakyeon hates Kim Ravi.

He can’t keep the scowl off his face as he watches the five year old throw ingredients into a cauldron. Sure, for a ten year old he was pretty damn advanced, but Ravi was five. He shouldn’t be making potions.

“You’re so awesome, Hakyeon!” the prodigy grins.

Hakyeon saw Ravi a few times a week when his teacher met with Ravi’s mother and the younger boy usually followed him around like a duckling. It was annoying, he couldn’t stand it. Why couldn’t that brat just leave him alone?

“You already have deliberate magic!” Ravi explodes after only two seconds of silence while he’s adding more ingredients.

Hakyeon tries not to show how proud he was about that, about having deliberate magic. It made him feel like he could achieve something, anything. Potions were awesome, but spells were more awesome and he couldn’t wait to be good enough to create his own.

There was only one thing that confused him about magic, and that was Ravi. Just Ravi as a whole confused him and he didn’t like it. Everything in magic had an answer, an explanation, everything except Kim Ravi. Ravi and his lack of deliberate magic was just wrong.

“Doesn’t he have too much deliberate magic for a twelve year old?” Chunja asks, watching Hakyeon cast a number of difficult spells.

Dohyun doesn’t answer because he doesn’t know what to say. Hakyeon did have too much deliberate magic.

“Aren’t you worried that he’s going to be corrupted?”

He was worried.

“Why haven’t you told him about all of your research?”

Dohyun sighs. “He’s scared. Telling him that the more he does the thing he loves the more likely he is to go insane is just going to make him more unstable.”

Chunja didn’t really agree with that logic. If Hakyeon was scared wouldn’t he stop doing magic? Wouldn’t his reserves stabilise and just remain the same? Couldn’t he find something else to love?

“I think if he keeps going at the pace he is, he’ll be fine. It’s growing steadily and he only does spells when he’d learning them. He’s not using it, it should be fine.”

Chunja wonders who it is Dohyun is trying to convince.

“Bigger reserves lead to faster corruption, and using the reserves leads to instability which leads to corruption… so he should be fine... since he isn’t using his reserves…”

The potion maker isn’t sure exactly what that explanation is trying to prove, to her it just points out the reasons to not let Hakyeon keep practicing. What if one day Hakyeon starts experimenting with spells? No doubt he will, what with his progress so far.

“He’s so cool!” they hear Ravi crow from the other side of the garden and the two sorcerers look over.

Hakyeon grins at the seven year old after finally learning to cast a new spell correctly.

“Argh,” Ravi groans. “I wish I could do spells!”

Hakyeon is fiddling around with the idea of self-cleaning crockery when the little flag on his teacher’s mailbox flicks up. Without really thinking about it he sends the letter flying to his teacher in the other room.

Dohyun catches the letter, trying not to frown at Hakyeon’s casual use of magic. He doesn’t spend long on the thought though because the only person that ever sent him letters by that mailbox was the queen. He rips it open, trying to be calm.

Choi Dohyun,

I’ve been caught. I’ll be executed today. I’m only able to write this letter because I have quite a few guards on my side. I’ll have Minho send this letter and another to Chunja. I’m sure he’ll write to you himself if he reads this. Maybe we shouldn’t have tried what we did. For now, you and Chunja should watch the kids and raise them properly.

Dohyun tuts sadly after reading it over a number of times. “Even her last words are scolding,” he whispers. “And ‘for now’ what? I’m not going to step down just because you tell me to. I’ll get into the palace and stop everything. I’ll make sure Minho is okay too. Alright?”

Facts I highly recommend that you read.

Some of these things didn’t make it into other chapters because of awkward explanations or simply not being relevant at the time, others are just random or rehashed but most explain things in this chapter.

• Normally I’d be like ‘a queen wouldn’t apologise’ but Minho’s mum is supposed to be a complete opposite of his dad. She’s also a sorcerer who was raised in the outskirts so obviously her views and manners are different to those from the capital.
• That test is dumb. Basically a drop of potion is dropped on a newborns arm. If it evaporates instantly it means the baby has a lot of intuitive magic or none at all, very few turn out to have a lot. If it sort of sizzles and takes longer to evaporate then the baby has normal intuitive magic levels. About 4% of the population has intuitive magic and even fewer choose to practice magic.
• I’ll blatantly state that Hakyeon is Minho’s half-brother, the king’s illegitimate son. It was always an idea I had to have Hakyeon somehow related to the king. However, it doesn’t really have much importance to the plot so there’s no need to worry about it.
• Normally I don’t get any comments until about 60 people have read the chapter. On chapter 21 I had two comments asking the same thing within the first 30 reads. Needless to say I realised my mistake… Thank you so much.
• Minho can’t do magic which means he can’t be used by the king. Minji, the princess, does, but she doesn’t have much intuitive magic and doesn’t progress much in spells, the king gave up on her but she’s loyal to him, I think.
• Minji is about two weeks younger than Hakyeon.
• Five years between Minho and Hakyeon, five years between Hakyeon and Ravi.
• I mentioned intuitive magic being able to control the weather ages ago. I think it was around chapter four, maybe. I know it was when Hakyeon was explaining magic (Ravi’s magic specifically). The point is that it’s unintentional. Obviously Hakyeon learns how to control his intuitive magic to a fine degree from Leo, because creatures have better control over it (since it’s the only magic they have).
• Choi Dohyun probably knows the most about magic and thinks it’s dangerous. However, he goes from being completely against Hakyeon learning it when he’s a baby, to being unable to take it away from him because it would make him unhappy.
• No ten year old wants to hang around a five year old and if that five year old happened to be better at something… well the petty hatred would be there. Hakyeon comes to love Ravi like a brother and Ravi has a sort of big brother worship thing going on for most of his childhood and teens.
• I know exactly how magic and corruption works in this universe, I just have trouble explaining it. Let me ramble for a bit and try explain it.
  There are no double standards in what leads to corruption and what doesn’t. Making potions grows the reserves of deliberate magic. Big reserves equals more chance of becoming corrupt. At the same time, sorcerers who use their reserves for spells (and unnecessary magic is included in this) are likely to have their reserves become unstable. This is more likely to happen if they’re close to being empty (they refill automatically (can you believe I wrote automagically by accident when I was typing this?)) and that’s what happens to Hakyeon.
• Ravi is special and that’s why he doesn’t have reserves.
• I don’t know why he’s special. He just is.
• Intuitive magic is unintentional. It’s done automatically without thought. If someone with deliberate magic fell out of a tree they’d have to cast a spell to save themself. If someone with only intuitive magic did it (like a creature) their magic will automatically kick in and save them. This can be manipulated but normally only creatures bother to learn to control it to that degree. A human would just learn a spell because it’s faster. Hakyeon learns it from Leo.
• Dohyun had a letter from the queen to give to the official about being Hakyeon’s guardian.
• I ship DohyunxQueen even if they were never together.
• I wish I’d given her a name, she won’t be in the story anymore except for being mentioned.

There we go. 800 words of nothing. My bad. I’ll write some actual plot soon, hopefully. Thanks for sticking with this story through these pointless chapters. Sorry about any confusion on the last chapter.