All Simon Snow characters belong to the author Rainbow Rowell. I do not own any of these characters, I'm just borrowing them.

Chapter Two

Baz

Snow is an idiot. That's really all there is to it. He may be the most powerful magician and the Mage's Heir, but he's an idiot.

But he's also my roommate. And over the years I have kind of started to . . . well, it kills me to say this, but I have kind of started to think of him as a friend.

He looks worse than he usually does at the beginning of the year. He always looks too skinny. It's worse this year. His skin is pale and you can see his bones. His elbows and cheekbones are too pointy and there are dark bluish gray circles around his red-ringed eyes.

But what does that matter to me? It doesn't. Not really.

Dev and Niall were waiting for me when I got here. They always know which day I'm coming. I always arrive two days before classes start, so Snow doesn't have enough time to follow me around and figure out my plans to torture him, but he has just enough time to know I'm planning something.

Anyway, this year the first time I saw snow was in the library with Bunce. They were planning some kind of ridiculous scheme that involved killing me a year early, just to get it out of the way.

The first stop I made after I saw them in the library was the Wavering Wood. I already missed the woods at home, filled with deer and squirrels and practically every other animal you would normally find in the woods. The Wavering Wood was filled with magical creatures and I wasn't that cruel. Unless it was the Merwolves, then I would drain every last one of them if I had the chance. And if they didn't taste so horrible.

It was already starting to get dark by the time I left the Wavering Wood, so I lit a fire in my palm and navigated my way out. I don't usually go into the Wavering Wood unless I had some evil plan in the makings, usually one that involved Snow.

I walked around the Football Pitch and that was when I remembered. The drawbridge went up after the sun set. I didn't think I was in the forest that long, but it must have just gone up because Snow was standing on the other side, looking up at it hopelessly.

"Snow?" I called out.

He turned around. He had his hands shoved into his pockets and his jaw was clenched. I knew he was mad at me, but it wasn't my fault this time, it wasn't like I asked him to come looking for me. And either way I took little pleasure in his anger, because now I was trapped on the other side of the drawbridge with none other than Simon Snow. The Chosen One, and all that.