No matter how bad my mood was, speaking to Cecilia in Form every morning never failed to brighten my mood.

On one particular morning, she interrupted my conversation with Josh. For the record, he didn’t complain and neither did I.

‘So Japan are gonna join the pact as well?’ he had been asking.

‘They’ve expressed interest, but we can’t say for certain. The French attack scared the whole world.’

‘Scared the hell out of everyo-’

‘Morning,’ came my sacred interruption.

I was so thankful that she had spoken to me. I had been gearing up for a horrible day, but her voice seemed to wash all of my problems away.

My friends would know why I would be a bit down on that day, as they all were as well. Cecilia would have no clue.

It was the twenty-first of March. The day that marked exactly two years since the deaths of Maltor Confussée and Henry Myers.

Of course, Maltor’s death had apparently not been a death, but Henry’s sure was. Jay, Asbel, and I had all agreed to visit the grave after school.

When I had woke up, the first thing that had appeared in my mind had been his death. The vivid memory of Robert’s voice yelling ‘Immitis Occisio!’ seconds before that dull thud would haunt me until my final breath.

He hadn’t even known that Maltor betrayed us. It was only after Maltor had gotten him killed that he revealed his betrayal.

‘Morning,’ I said hastily, swivelling in my seat. ‘You alright?’

She smiled at me, which, of course, meant that my heart rate doubled.

‘Not bad, honestly,’ she replied, taking her seat. ‘I just can’t be bothered for school.’

‘Understandable,’ I murmured, a bit hurt by the fact that seeing me didn’t make her bothered. I knew damn well that she made me want to come to school. She made me bothered.

‘I’ll just talk to Ethan then,’ Josh murmured sarcastically.

I tossed a grin over my shoulder at him.

‘How’s Jeremy been since we saw him at the hospital?’ I asked coolly, hoping that I hadn’t struck a chord. ‘I didn’t make him angrier, did I?’

‘Oh, no, don’t worry!’ she replied frantically. ‘He’s as angry as ever. He’s gonna stay that mad until Maltor’s dead.’

‘Well he chose the right side,’ I joked. ‘I swear to you, Maltor is not gonna survive our next fight.’

She smiled faintly, and the nod that accompanied it was even fainter.

‘Are you sure you’re fine with fighting Maltor?’ I asked. I knew that it wasn’t my first time asking, but something told me I had to make sure. ‘Like one hundred per cent sure?’

Cecilia’s smile grew as she sighed quietly.

‘Yes, Albert, I’m fine with fighting him. It doesn’t matter that he’s my brother; he wants genocide.’

‘When are you gonna take the test?’ I asked nonchalantly.

In truth, I was insanely worried about Cecilia stepping foot on the battlefield. It had been scary to even see her on Rex Aquarum on that day two months ago, and she had barely done any actual fighting.

The memory of Righello pushing against her with his sword made my body feel as though it had been plunged into an ice bath.

My fight with him still haunted me. It had been the toughest battle of mine in a long time. His speed, power, reflexes, and battle IQ put him leagues above most other people alive, let alone on Maltor’s side. Speaking of which, he was far superior to Maltor. If Righello ever decided to turn against him, he would need help from the entire council of Olympus to survive.

‘I’m practising and studying loads at the moment,’ she explained, dragging me away from my train of thought. ‘I’ll do it as soon as I can once I think I’m ready.’

‘You’ll be a menace on the field,’ I joked, grinning sarcastically. ‘Better than me.’

‘Oh, stop it,’ she scoffed, but I was certain that her face was slightly pinker. ‘Maybe if I go with a group or something then I could do some damage, but no way am I doing anything significant on my own.’

‘I’d take you under my wing,’ I replied quickly, my grin growing. ‘We’d kick ass together.’

‘Under your what?’ she asked, raising an eyebrow ironically.

‘Oh, ha ha,’ I droned jokingly, my voice monotonous.

I was kinda glad that Cecilia didn’t seem to mind the wings. I was always thankful when somebody didn’t mind them. When Ethan and I had been training with William Johnson, it warmed my heart whenever I realised that William had seen my wings but didn’t treat me any differently.

I knew I was different. Right from the moment I escaped The School. I wasn’t the same as everybody else. Everybody feared the different. Feared the unknown. The problem when I was growing up was that I was the unknown.

But Cecilia didn’t care about them. She didn’t treat me any differently because of them. She was even comfortable enough with them to make light-hearted jokes. Funny jokes at that, as well.

Her green eyes glistened as she looked at me. They were like emeralds, not that I’d ever seen any. Just looking into them made my heart soar.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

‘What’s first?’ she asked coolly, changing the subject. ‘IT, right?’

‘Yeah,’ I said slowly, hoping that I was remembering correctly. ‘The worst bit about that lesson is that I don’t sit next to you.’

Cecilia stared at me silently for a moment. The only move she made was a single blink of her eyes. Then, she smirked.

‘You say that as though you’d rather sit with me than Ethan.’

‘Why wouldn’t I?’

Her smirk morphed into a smile.

Whenever Cecilia and I were engaged in conversation, it seemed as though Josh and Ethan purposely left us alone. If Cecilia and I did end up going further, I’d have to thank them for being the best wingmen on the planet.

Form, like many situations in which I was with Cecilia, flew by alarmingly quickly. Before I even knew it, I found myself sitting next to Ethan in our IT lesson, with Cecilia and Natasha sitting behind us.

‘How’s it going with Cecilia?’ Ethan whispered to me as everyone else settled down. He had a fat grin on his face. ‘Good?’

‘I mean, yeah,’ I replied after pausing for a moment. ‘We’re still good friends.’

I knew immediately that I had somehow done something wrong, because Ethan’s face went slack and he stared at me, unblinking.

‘Don’t start this again,’ we both said at the same time, evidently meaning two very different things.

‘Start what?’ he said, before I could say it.

‘Your scheming. I’m not doing the Emma thing all over again.’

‘It’ll do you more harm than good if you let your feelings for her sit on your chest. You’ve gotta do something about it.’

For a very brief moment, I thought about it. The thought of taking things further with Cecilia warmed me more than it had done with Emma. The only problem was the extreme level of terror that arose whenever I thought about actually taking things further.

The last time I had been trying to further my relationship with a girl, things had not gone well. Things had gone so incredibly poorly that the two of us now had to be ready to try to kill each other if the situation ever arose.

‘Do I even have a chance?’ I asked, lowering my voice even more than I already had.

‘Shut up,’ Ethan said, sounding rather bored. ‘You cannot be serious. Obviously you have a chance. There is a higher chance of the two of you getting together than there is of this war ending within the next year.’

‘I don’t know how to take that.’

‘In a good way. And, hey, talk to Natasha about this. She probably has a better idea about how Cecilia feels than I do.’

‘Good idea, I can do that later,’ I grinned.

Ethan was, rarely, a genius. The idea to talk to Natasha was simply brilliant. I was almost ashamed that I had not thought about it before he had.

This idea did come with a rather significant downside, though. I did not focus for the entirety of IT, nor the English lesson that followed. I was looking forward to seeing and speaking to Natasha that I could not think of anything else.

I took my chance at Break, when everyone else was distracted with one another.

Awkwardly striding up to her, I tried to look calm by putting my hands in my pockets, but this façade was evidently useless, as Natasha caught on immediately.

‘What do you wanna ask and why is it about Cecilia?’

‘You know the most annoying thing about you?’

‘Hit me with it.’

‘The fact that you somehow know me so well.’

She smirked teasingly at me for a moment before pressing, ‘So it’s about Cecilia?’

‘Of course.’

A rather crushing silence followed.

She would think I was a complete fool. And what if she had to break the news that Cecilia had given no signs that she felt the same way towards me?

I couldn’t get ‘cold feet’ now. I was in too deep. The ‘cat was out of the bag’ or however that dumb saying went.

‘I don’t know how to say it,’ I began slowly. ‘But, uh, do you remember Emma? That whole thing I had with her?’

If Natasha were trying to hide her grin, she was failing.

‘Can I continue or are you just gonna stand there laughing?’ I joked.

‘No, no,’ she choked. ‘Go on.’

‘Well, uh, imagine that thing with Emma but over twice as bad.’

‘‘Bad’?’

The feeling itself wasn’t bad, but the consequences of it were. My love for Cecilia would disrupt her life in more ways than one. It could put her in danger.

Before I even had chance to try and put those thoughts into words, Natasha continued.

‘So that means you like her even more than you liked Emma?’

‘Yes. Definitely.’

Natasha raised a rather suspicious eyebrow. ‘Albert, it’s only been three months.’

‘That’s all my damn heart needs, Natasha,’ I replied quietly. ‘I can’t describe it without sounding weird. I don’t care that she’s his sister. She makes me happier than Emma ever could have.’

‘What was the question you wanted to ask?’ Natasha poked, smirking. ‘Or did you just want to gush about her?’

‘I wanted to ask if I have a chance.’

Natasha’s eyebrows shot up so high I was almost surprised that they did not fly off her forehead.

‘You want to ask her?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is Ethan making you do this?’

‘No.’

Her jaw dropped ever so slightly.

‘And you think you don’t have a chance?’

I attempted to give her the most deadpan look I could muster.

‘Better safe than sorry,’ I mumbled. ‘So, do I?’

‘You have a higher chance of becoming her boyfriend than you ever had with Emma. And you know how high your chance was with her.’

I remembered how everyone spoke about me and Emma. Their words would have almost made you believe that the two of us were already in a relationship. It would be safe to say that, at least according to everybody else, my chances with Emma had been extraordinarily high.

‘So I should go for it?’

‘If you’re sure that you like her, then I don’t see any harm with it,’ she replied cheekily.

I saw multiple possible problems, but I didn’t want Natasha to spend her Break listening to me complain about hypothetical problems.

‘Do you have any idea how you’re gonna do it?’ Natasha asked, lowering her voice. Cecilia had, without me noticing, moved a bit closer whilst she had been talking to Isaac.

‘Absolutely no clue,’ was my gloomy response. ‘With Emma I was gonna take her ice skating beforehand, remember? I can’t do that now.’

‘You can just take her on a date,’ Natasha suggested. ‘I know you probably won’t want to call it a date, but you could do that. Go to the café or something.’

‘I’m not asking her in public.’

‘Then go to Rex Aquarum. Nobody’s gonna use it in a while, so you’ll have the place to yourself.’

I could picture it in my head. The two of us sat on the deck, or maybe even up in the lookout spot, the sun beaming down on us as I popped the question. It was perfect, but there was one problem.

‘Isn’t it always in the hangar?’

A look of deep thought came across Natasha’s face for a moment. But then she came up with a solution, as she always did.

‘I’m sure you can just ask Asbel to put it out on the coast for a bit, whenever you decide to ask her.’

Happiness flooded my body as the image of Cecilia and I sitting on Rex Aquarum flashed through my mind once more. I had to do it.

‘Albert, let me ask you this, though,’ Natasha murmured cautiously. ‘Are you one hundred per cent sure you want to ask her?’

‘Yes,’ I said quickly. ‘I’m telling you, Natasha, these feelings are stronger than what I felt towards Emma.’

She giggled. ‘Well, if it helps, she does find you rather attractive.’

And, with that, she hurried off to speak to someone else. I did not have space in my mind to even notice who she had gone to. There was nothing but an unusual amount of dopamine in my brain in that moment.

***

Multiple people noted that I seemed ‘off’ for the rest of that day. Most people said it was because I looked dazed. Ethan, being Ethan, said I was ‘too happy so something must be up’. I didn’t tell him.

The only other thing of importance that I could remember was a conversation with Cecilia. Even she said something was different.

‘You look like you’re not even thinking,’ she said about halfway through Potions. ‘It’s like you’re staring at something far away. That’s not there.’

‘Pardon?’ was my, admittedly stupefied, response. ‘I haven’t been able to hear anyone pretty much all day, sorry.’

‘Yeah, because you look half-awake. In a good way,’ she added the latter sentence rather hurriedly.

‘This is what happens when I’m happy,’ I explained, smiling at her.

‘Oh yeah?’ she leant towards me slightly, making my heart race. ‘What happened to make you so happy?’

‘You’ll find out soon, Cecilia, don’t you worry.’

And I was praying to the Gods that she did, in fact, find out soon. I did not want Maltor ruining this confession.