The Last Graduate (The Scholomance, #2)

by Naomi Novik

cosseted

molluscular

And all of that works because we voluntarily enter the course: consent is the only way for someone else’s magic to get at your mana and your brain on that level. Well, except for violence. There’s always violence.

As a general rule, regardless of the specific situation in which you find yourself, at every step you must take care to preserve or widen the number of your options.

Their heads turned, anxious to follow me as I passed, wondering what was I running from, only I was running from them, from any of them who might turn out to be a decent person, who might turn out to be just as special as the people I loved. Who might deserve to live just as much as they did.

The workings all fizzled out as I came through the doors, but they hung in the air just long enough to make a fashion statement of the behold your dark goddess variety,

internecine

Damaging to both sides

geothaumaturgipolitical

I had grimly realized that the only possible grounds on which I could squabble with her were that she was seizing authority that nobody wanted to give her. As grounds went, that had the solidity of a bog. At least she was doing it on the basis of terrifying competence and not just the random chance of affinity.

Thucydides’s

Look this up

Or maybe if you only gave someone a reasonable chance of doing some good, even an enclave kid might take it.