Anyway, Balthazar's goal is right in the story summary on AO3, but I decided to state it more forcefully and with less comedic ambiguity about halfway through the story itself, right at the end of the fifth chapter.
The story has ten chapters, and I'm about half done with the first round of edits. I should be able to meet my projection of finishing by March 15, a month after I completed the first draft. The draft is only about 30k words, but the psychic damage I'm taking from finding typos and inconsistencies and unintended repetitions cannot be exaggerated, so progress is slow.
After that, I'm going to let the story sit unmolested for another month before writing a formal query. I'll then do another round of edits before participating in several pitch events starting in late May.
As for constructive feedback from my first readers, what I have is basically "I don't like how Balthazar is such a sadsack" and "I don't like how Ceres is so mean." To which I have to respond that this is not YA fiction, and they're both difficult people who are only protagonists by virtue of their narrative roles as point-of-view characters who drive the plot. I already pulled my punches for both of these characters in a major way, and I'm not sure how much softer I can make them without losing the texture and flavor of the story. Also, my real-life friends are just going to have to trust me (and my Twitter feed) that there's a sizable audience of readers who are primed and thirsty for stories about powerful wizards who make shitty life choices while being ambiguously romantically involved with each other, and I hope that this is something a potential agent will be able to recognize.
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