"They sound like quite the barrel of laughs," Palamedes says dryly. "Thank God, none of the Houses have found a way to permanently disrupt someone's neural pathways like that." A beat. "I hope."

It doesn't surprise him, exactly, to hear that the morals of Darlington's magic-wielders are as tenuous as those of the heirs he had encountered at Canaan House, but it certainly is disappointing. "And you're part of Lethe, right? Does that mean you supervise them all?"