They talk for an hour more, occasionally making an effort to include me in their conversation. I don’t mind listening, though, while I try to find a way to raise the topic of my magic without sounding rude or interfering with their attempts to get to know each other. No easy opportunity presents itself, so I decide I can wait. Perhaps I’ll get Edward to ask on my behalf when he next sees her.

Whatever it is, it can’t be anything dangerous. She would have said something if it was.

Eventually we make our excuses. Edward and I have some ill-defined schoolwork we should be doing; Sylvia needs to go shopping if she wants to eat properly while she’s here. We arrange to meet again next weekend, same time and place. I’m invited, but I don’t know if I’ll come.

Edward and I don’t talk on the way back to the Academy, both lost in our separate worlds.

“Are you okay?” I finally ask once we’ve signed back in and are standing at the foot of the staircase, not sure where to go next.

He shrugs. “Yes.”

“I’m listening,” I say. “If you want to talk to me.”

He hesitates. “Not here.”

“It’s hardly a state secret – “

“It’s a secret from my dad. And I know for a fact he’s spying on me.”

That, I have to admit, is a valid point. Not for the first time, it strikes me that Lord Blackthorn really shouldn’t be using the kingdom’s spy network to keep tabs on his son. “So, meeting room?”

Edward uses a different room to normal, and casts privacy wards before speaking. “If my dad really wants to know what I’m up to, I can’t stop him. But I don’t think I’ve given him cause for suspicion. Well, other than the part where I nearly got myself killed saving you, but – “

“I’m sorry if – “

“Don’t.”

Apologising has become an instinctive reaction; even with Edward telling me off for it I struggle to not apologise for everything that is in the slightest way my fault. I bite my lip to avoid apologising for apologising, and let the silence linger until he’s ready to talk.

“I know who and what he is,” Edward says. “I know his work has to come first. Before everything else. Before his family. So why does it still hurt so much?”

“Because it’s not right – “

Edward flinches; I’ve said the wrong thing. Maybe he isn’t ready for harsh truths yet.

I wasn’t ready when he told me harsh truths, says a traitorous little voice in the back of my mind. But no; I can’t do that to Edward. Instead I pause, choosing my words carefully. “His work is important – of course it is – but – would the country really fall apart if he took more time off to be with his family?”

“If you asked him that, he’d say yes.”

I’m pretty sure he’d say something more along the lines of I don’t see why I should justify my life choices to you, but I don’t think pointing that out is a good idea. “And would he be right?”

“I don’t know what it’s like, having that much power and responsibility. Neither of us do.”

It’s what he doesn’t say that’s most important, and we both know it: yes, he would.

Because I’m confident that he would be wrong.

Edward sighs. “There’s too many things I don’t know,” he says. “That’s the problem. I can’t work out what I feel without knowing the full facts of what happened between them. And I can’t ask my mother any more than I have because she doesn’t want to talk about it. And I can’t ask my father for obvious reasons.”

“Let’s say, hypothetically, that these reasons are less obvious to me than to you.” I could make a few guesses, but I don’t want to work on shaky assumptions for a conversation like this.

“I’ve never asked him about my mother before. We don’t have those sorts of conversations. If I suddenly start trying to interrogate him about it, he’ll know something suspicious is happening.”

And then he’ll forbid Edward and his mother from seeing each other. That on its own should be enough to establish that Lord Blackthorn is in the wrong here. If that was going to convince Edward, though, it would have already.

“Isn’t there someone else you could ask?” I try instead. “Someone who was there at the time, who knew them both?”

He shakes his head slowly. “It would have to be someone I can trust. Not just to not try and turn me against my father for their own agenda, but to not tell my father.”

“And there’s no-one?” I feel a sudden surge of pity for Edward, which I hide as best as I can: I know he hates to be pitied. But not having any adult he can turn to for help and advice, not having anyone he can truly rely on… I know exactly how that feels.

“There’s Elspeth, but she wasn’t hired until shortly after the divorce. Or Rosie, but she was only twelve or thirteen at the time. Or…”

He trails off, staring into the distance in a way that makes it clear I’ve given him an idea.

“Or who?”

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“My grandmother. The Dowager Lady Annabelle Blackthorn. She and my father don’t get on, but she’s fiercely loyal to the family name. I don’t know how reliable her testimony would be, and she’d definitely try and influence me to be the sort of Blackthorn my grandfather would have wanted, but… she wouldn’t betray me. And she and my mother were close once; she’ll know at least one side of the story.”

“You should talk to her,” I say.

But he doesn’t look happy about the idea. “Maybe I should,” he says noncommittally.

I decide not to ask him what he doesn’t like about the idea. If he wanted me to know, he would have told me. Maybe it’s just that he knows what she tells him won’t be complimentary to his father, and he doesn’t want to hear it.

He really is a hypocrite, that uncharitable little voice remarks. Insisting that I face what he sees as the truth about my mother and then hiding from the obvious facts about his father.

“Just tell me one thing, please,” he says. “My mother cheated on my father. Knowing the consequences if she got caught. Knowing that she probably would get caught, because it is extremely difficult to hide things from my father.”

I say nothing, waiting for him to ask his question.

“Knowing,” he continues, “what it would do to me. Does it make me a bad person, if I wonder if that means she didn’t love me enough?”

“No,” I say immediately. It’s a dark thought to have, but I know that sort of darkness. It lurks inside everyone, especially people like Edward – and, much, though I hate to admit it, like me. “It makes you human.”

We don’t have any schoolwork to finish, despite what Edward told his mother. Both of us are up to date on everything. So Edward decides it’s time for another lesson in advanced enchantments. I’d rather rest, but I know he enjoys teaching me; after that meeting, he needs the enjoyment more than I need rest.

The next lesson is in beginning to develop different kinds of triggers for enchantments. There are dozens of different approaches, most of which are beyond my current abilities and some of which are beyond Edward’s (“yes, I did just admit I can’t do something magical. I’m hardly at the level of original enchantment research just yet, Tallulah, and you know that.”)

One that’s not too complicated, though, is an enchantment that will only be triggered if a small amount of magic is channelled into it; larger amounts will be dissipated into the ambience.

“It’s quite useful for Malaina to have a device like that,” Edward says. “If you get the thresholds right, it can really help you practice precise control. And I thought you’d like to have something you made for yourself, rather than something I made for you.”

He’s right. Much though I appreciate everything Edward does for me, I do also need independence from Blackthorns.

That does rely on me being capable of making this device, though. Edward agrees to let me practice on a few things before choosing the object I want to keep – it’s not good to keep purging the same object of enchantments. Purging-spells aren’t perfect: a little magic is left behind each time, and over many failed attempts that could build up into something that destabilises the object.

He gives me a few of his collection of marbles to practice with, and I set about enchanting them to fly upwards when a little magic is channelled into them. But this is much harder than anything I’ve tried before: I need an enchantment that will do two different things depending on how much magic is channelled into it, one of which I’ve never done before.

“I’m not even sure I know how to dissipate magic into the ambience,” I say. “Can’t we practice that first?”

“It’s just the inverse of an enchantment that absorbs ambient magic.”

I give him a stare that he should be able to read by now and wait for him to work it out.

“…oh, right, you haven’t actually learnt enchantments that absorb ambient magic, have you? And for that matter, have you covered inverse enchantments in Magical Theory?”

“Yes,” I say, “but it’s called Magical Theory for a reason. I don’t have the faintest idea how you’d actually go about inverting an enchantment in practice.”

I can almost see him re-evaluating his lesson plan based on the reminder that, unlike him, I am very much not a magical prodigy. “It would probably help, then. It’s not strictly necessary to know all the components of a spell or enchantment to cast it, but… you’re not the type to take things on faith, are you?”

I shrug. “I guess not. Why does it… oh.” Because that’s effectively what I’m doing, trying to cast this enchantment I don’t understand. It works because Edward says it works, that’s all. And while he’s probably right about these things, I don’t think that’s quite enough for the complete confidence required to make magic work.

“I should have thought about that, then. Sorry. It’s a good thing, though – might not feel like it now, or if you get bad teachers who expect you to cast on faith, but you’ll have a much better understanding of why things work than you would otherwise, and that’ll serve you well later.”

Later. He says that as if I’m going to be a proper magician some day, as if grappling with enchantments far more complex than this will be part of my everyday life. I very much doubt that will be the case. Why does he think –

I suppose because for him, it will be. Because he’s forgotten somehow that despite everything that connects us, Edward and I are very different people with very different futures ahead of us.

“Anyway,” says Edward. “I’ll give you a lesson in the theory of enchantments that dissipate magic into the ambience – not the logical way to do it, but that’s my own fault for trying to teach you this one first – but practice will be a little harder.”

“Because it’s hard to check if it’s working?” I guess.

He nods. “The expected result is for nothing mundanely observable to happen when you channel magic into it, which is also what will happen if the enchantment doesn’t work – unless you channel enough that it could start having destructive effects, which I don’t recommend.”

I don’t particularly want to have to explain to anyone that I didn’t destroy the marble because I was in a Malaina episode, I destroyed it because I was testing an enchantment. He has a point. “So how do we test it, then?”

“I’ll have to source a basic enchantment-detection kit. My dad can get hold of one – he’ll be happy to, for educational purposes.”

“Or we could ask your mum,” I point out. As a sensitive, Sylvia would be able to immediately see how much magic the marble stored after I channelled some into it and thus whether the enchantment worked.

He shakes his head sharply. “You remember what she said about the Sirgalese government?”

I’m confused for a second, but it fits into place: they wanted to make use of her talents as a sensitive. “You think… she’ll think you’re using her? Just because of something small like this?”

“Obviously we’re not,” Edward says. “But if you’ve been scared of people trying to use you your entire life… I wouldn’t be surprised if she thought that way, if we asked. Better not to.”

I wonder how he can be so sensitive in some ways and yet so utterly blind in others.

That also makes me realise that it’ll be awkward to ask her about my signature, for the same reason. And then that I was caught up enough in helping Edward sort through his tangled feelings about his parents that I didn’t tell him about that.

“My signature,” I say. “She noticed.”

“What do you – oh! When she first saw you – when she hesitated like that – “

I nod.

“Of course. I should have made that connection myself.”

“It does fit, then? It’s not just that Doctor Wandsworth’s device malfunctioned, and we’ve been reading too much into it?”

“Probably not, but we can’t be certain. You want to ask her, don’t you?”

I nod. “I know it might make things awkward for you, but – if there’s something wrong with me, I want to know what it is.”

“There is nothing wrong with you,” Edward says, and the intensity appears in his voice so suddenly that I jump and wonder if his father had appeared without us noticing. “Maybe there’s something unusual about your magic, maybe there isn’t, but you are not wrong, or broken, or a failure.”

Stars help me, I think I believe him.