“Because I thought he’d finally done it. I know it was supposed to be a tragedy, but to me it was like he broke the bank, beat the system. He got to stay in Fillory forever.”
“I know. I get it.” She put a restraining hand on his chest. “That’s what makes you different from the rest of us, Quentin. You actually still believe in magic. You do realize, right, that nobody else does? I mean, we all know magic is real. But you really believe in it. Don’t you.”
He felt flustered. “Is that wrong?”
She nodded and smiled even more brightly. “Yes, Quentin. It’s wrong.”
He kissed her, softly at first. Then he got up and locked the door.
And that’s how it started, though of course it had been starting for a long time. At first it was like they were getting away with something, as if they half expected someone or something to stop them. When nothing happened, and there were no consequences, they lost control—they ravenously, roughly pulled each other’s clothes off, not just out of desire for each other but out of a pure desire to lose control. It was like a fantasy. The sound of breathing and rustling cloth was thunderous in the little chaste bedroom. God only knew what they could hear downstairs. He wanted to push her, to see if she had it as bad as he did, to see how far she’d go and how far she’d let him go. She didn’t stop him. She pushed him ever further. It wasn’t his first time, or even his first time with Alice, technically, but this was different. This was real, human sex, and it was so much better just because they weren’t animals—because they were civilized and prudish and self-conscious humans who transformed into sweaty, lustful, naked beasts, not through magic but because that’s who on some level they really were all along.
They tried to be discreet about it—they barely even discussed it between themselves—but the others knew, and they came up with excuses to leave the two of them alone, and Quentin and Alice took them. Probably they were relieved that the tension between them was finally over. In its way the fact that Alice wanted Quentin as much as he wanted her was as much of a miracle as anything else he’d seen since he came to Brakebills, and no easier to believe, though he had no choice but to believe it. His love for Julia had been a liability, a dangerous force that lashed him to cold, empty Brooklyn. Alice’s love was so much more real, and it bound him finally and for good to his new life, his real life, at Brakebills. It fixed him here and nowhere else. It wasn’t a fantasy. It was flesh and blood.
And she understood that. She seemed to know everything about Quentin, everything he was thinking and feeling, sometimes before he did, and she wanted him in spite of it—because of it. Together they rudely colonized the upstairs at the Cottage, running back to the dorms only for indispensable personal items, and letting it be known that trespassers would be exposed to displays of mutual affection, verbal and otherwise, and the sight of their scattered underthings.
That wasn’t the only miraculous event that summer. Astoundingly, the three older Physical Kids had graduated from Brakebills. Even Josh, with his lousy grades. The official ceremony would happen in another week; it was a private affair to which the rest of the school was not invited. By tradition they would be allowed to stay at Brakebills for the rest of the summer, but after that they would be ushered out into the world.
Quentin was stunned by this turn of events. They all were. It was hard to imagine life at Brakebills without them; it was hard for Quentin to imagine life after Brakebills at all. There hadn’t been much discussion of what they were going to do next, or at least not around Quentin.
It wasn’t necessarily a cause for alarm. The passage from Brakebills to the outside world was a well-traveled one. There was an extensive network of magicians operating in the wider world, and, being magicians, they were in no danger of starving. They could do more or less whatever they wanted as long as they didn’t interfere with one another. The real problem was figuring out to their own satisfaction what that was. Some of the student body went into public service—quietly promoting the success of humanitarian causes, or subtly propping up the balance of various failing ecosystems, or participating in the governance of magical society, such as it was. A lot of people just traveled, or created magical artworks, or staged elaborate sorcerous war games. Others went into research: many magical schools (although not Brakebills) offered programs of post-graduate study, with various advanced degrees conferred at the end. Some students even chose to matriculate at a regular, nonmagical university. The application of conventional science, chemistry especially, to magical techniques was a hot field. Who knew what exotic spells you could create using the new trans uranic elements?
