Neither of us are the type for big celebrations. I guess if we were, we’d be partying with the rest of the class. I heard a rumour that Hannah had managed to procure some alcohol, which only made me more determined to stay away given that half the class aren’t of legal drinking age.

So the evening begins with Edward and I curled up in armchairs in the common room, staring at each other.

“We could play a game?” I suggest. The common room has a small shelf of games for shared use: cards, dice, a checkers-board.

Edward shrugs. “If you want to.”

I shrug back. It’s something to do, but playing games with Edward seems like it would be somewhat awkward. Especially given the notable lack of enthusiasm in his voice. “Or…” my voice trails off as I desperately try to think of other ideas. It scares me to realise how little time I’ve spent just having fun with other people. “Or we could talk?” I suggest, an idea occurring to me.

“About…?”

“There’s party games people play. Truth Trades – “ I wince a little as I mention the names – “I Have Never – though obviously we don’t have to use the same ruleset, we can do it the way we want to, but the idea of it – “

I stop, because Edward is looking at me blankly.

“You don’t know – how – “

“Because those are ways normal people entertain themselves, and I’ve never had cause to know that.”

That’s almost enough to make me give up on my attempts to teach Edward how normal people think in despair. There’s only so much any teacher can do with a student who doesn’t want to learn. And now I have to explain the stupid games to him.

“Truth Trades is a game where… you ask another player a question, and they have to answer it truthfully or forfeit the game. If they answer, then they get to ask the next question. And it keeps going until there’s only one player left, and they win.”

“How do you know the answers are truthful, though?”

“You don’t. But if you lie then that’s cheating.”

Edward is clearly wondering what the point of the game is if anyone can cheat and there’s no way to enforce it.

“Most of the time people ask… personal questions. About relationships, and so on. It’s supposed to be awkward and embarrassing for everyone. Though I guess if you played…”

“I wouldn’t play.” He pauses. “Though you seem to know quite a bit about this game…”

“I never played it,” I protest. Too quickly.

“Really?”

I grimace. “Is that the first question you’re asking me?”

“I’m not playing – “

“Then yes, really.”

Edward sighs. “Okay. But you already know all about my non-existent love life, and I’m not telling you state secrets.”

“I wouldn’t ask you to,” I say, grinning. “I want to just… find out little details I didn’t know about you. And you can do the same for me.”

The embarrassing explanation I’ll have to give now is just the price of getting him to agree to this.

“…fine. You already know my first question, then.”

I sigh and lean back in the armchair, wishing its depths would swallow me. It probably wouldn’t be that difficult to create a cursed armchair that actually did that, would it? “Okay. Fine. I’ve played before. It was in my first week at Genford, back when I still thought I could learn to fit in with those girls who were so different from me.” I pause. “It was one of the things that helped to prove I couldn’t.”

“You don’t have to keep going,” Edward says quickly. “I just wanted you to admit you’d played, not…”

I want to listen to him, to forget that day ever happened and banish it from my mind. I should just do that and think of something happy to ask him. But.

He told me the truth about his Fall, and I never told him about mine until it was too late.

I regret not telling him myself, even though it seemed impossible at the time. Objectively I know I don’t owe him anything, but it does feel as if things are uneven between us. And I do want him to understand me better.

“No,” I say. “It’s okay. I’ll tell you. Obviously I’d never had a boyfriend at that point, or even a crush. And I… you know how most of the Genford girls grew up. Rich family and all that. I didn’t ever have that sort of opportunity. Knew nothing about the latest fashion trends. You get the idea.”

Edward nods. I’m not entirely sure he does get the idea, since I’ve already discovered that growing up with access to effectively infinite money has given him somewhat warped ideas about it, but it’ll do.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“So no-one was really interested in my answers to anything, and I was terrible at thinking of what they called the right sort of questions. That meant they stopped asking me, and suddenly I was one of the last two people left.”

Edward is listening in silence. That helps a lot.

“The other one… it was this girl called Clarissa. The ringleader type. She’d asked some pretty mean questions to eliminate people, and then she got to me…”

If it had been a few years later, I’m not sure I could have avoided an active episode in that moment. “She asked how someone like me got into Genford. I answered, said I was there on a scholarship. And then I fled the room to cry in the nearest bathroom.”

“Who is this Clarissa? Where does she live?”

It takes me a moment to realise the implications. “Edward, you are not unleashing the wrath of the Blackthorns on this girl because she was mean to me once." More than once, really, but never seriously.

“I wasn’t going to,” he lies.

It’s obviously a terrible idea, but I’m still touched that he would do that for me.

“My turn,” I say, and then realise that just like that day, I have no good ideas for questions. There’s the boring things like what’s your favourite colour or favourite food, but that doesn’t really tell me much about him. I’m looking for a story from his past, really. But not the kind that involves Malaina or being kidnapped or the end of his parents’ relationship. A happy story.

And once I realise that it’s obvious. “Tell me about a happy childhood memory,” I say.

Edward hesitates for a long while. “My dad and I used to play a puzzle-game,” he says finally. “Not unlike this, at least in principle. We’d take turns to set each other a puzzle or a riddle. Something you had to learn or figure out. In hindsight he was training me to think like a magician should, but when you’re young you don’t realise that sort of thing.”

I try to imagine Lord Blackthorn answering questions and puzzles set by his young son. It’s surprisingly difficult. In my mind he’s the ruthless, efficient politician who doesn’t have time for such trivialities. But a man who’s entirely that couldn’t have a son who loves him as Edward clearly does.

“There was one time when I was… nine or so, I suppose… and he set me a really hard problem. Well, really hard for a nine-year-old, anyway. A cubic equation, and I only knew the very basics of algebra at the time. One of the rules of the puzzle-game was that I couldn’t ever give up, and I couldn’t ask him for hints.”

That does sound like the sort of game Lord Blackthorn would create. “Then – what happened if you got stuck?”

“I tried a different approach or thought of a new idea. He never gave me anything that I’d be completely unable to do, though. Well, not until this equation. I asked Elspeth and she didn’t know – but then, she’s not a magician and she’s never been a numbers person either. After a day and a half I realised I wasn’t going to be able to solve it on my own.”

“So you asked for a hint?”

Edward shakes his head. “So I went to the library. I’d been told that I couldn’t go in there just to explore, only to research something, and that I had to be careful with the books and not tell anyone else what was in them. But looking up how to solve cubic equations didn’t go against any of those rules.”

I laugh. I would definitely have done the same in his position.

“Only the family mathematics collection was not organised for the benefit of a nine-year-old who wanted to know about cubic equations, and I didn’t really know what I was doing. So I grabbed the first book I could find with equation in the title. Which turned out to be about differential equations.”

I have only the vaguest idea of what those are, but I’m reasonably sure they’re a lot harder than cubic equations and definitely not something any nine-year-old should be exposed to. Unless, of course, said nine-year-old happens to be Edward Blackthorn.

“It was surprisingly approachable, actually. Started with an introduction to elementary calculus which was at a level I could understand.”

“Of course you taught yourself calculus aged nine.”

“It’s very important in sufficiently advanced magical theory,” he says defensively. “But yes, that is what I spent the rest of the afternoon doing. Until my dad found me.”

“Ah.”

“I thought he’d be angry. Even though I wasn’t technically breaking the rules… I was gradually realising this stuff I was learning probably wasn’t directly relevant to the puzzle. He wasn’t angry, though. He was impressed. Asked me a few questions about what I was reading, and I got them right. And then he said that even though that wasn’t the intended solution of the puzzle, he was proud of me. And I could come back to the library whenever I wanted, and read any of the books I wanted.”

I grin. I can understand why that’s his happiest memory. I still want to figure out a way for me to get into the Blackthorn family library, preferably without having to become part of the Blackthorn family. It would probably be one of my happiest memories if I succeeded.

But… no. Edward isn’t me, though we’re similar in surprisingly many ways. That isn’t his happiest memory because of the library. It’s because he impressed his father. Because his father was proud of him.

Stars. I hate Lord Blackthorn in that moment. Not because of the many awful things that he’s done, but because, even if he’s trying, he’s not a good enough father to his son. Edward deserves more. He deserves a father who always has time for him and will never hesitate to say how proud he is of his son.

I don’t say that, of course. I just joke that I’m jealous about the library and ask whether he’s read its entire contents yet (he hasn’t, not even close; staying at the Academy is slowing him down since none of the books can be removed from the library).

“My turn again?”

“Is that your question?” I tease.

“Same question. Happy childhood memory.”

I feel a faint flicker of relief that he’s not asking about anything related to Elsie, and ignore it to focus on picking a story. I don’t think about my life pre-Genford that much. It’s as if starting there made me a different person, as if it divided my life into two parts.

Three parts, now, I suppose. I wonder if twelve-year-old me would even recognise the girl sitting here next to her best friend Edward Blackthorn. No – focus – I need to think of a happy memory, not to be dragged into melancholy wonderings.

“I’ve always had really good history teachers,” I say after a few moments. “That’s probably part of why I love it so much. In junior school, there was Mr Alberts. He was my favourite teacher, and I was his favourite student. My classmates called me a teacher’s pet. It was just a joke, though, I did get on well with them. He used to buy all his students little presents when they left his class. Things he knew they’d like.”

Edward once again listens in silence, but it’s much more comfortable this time.

“Only… what he got me wasn’t anything little.”

“Let me guess,” he says. “A book?”

I laugh. “Am I that predictable?”

“Yes. Yes, you are.”

“Not just any book, though. A History of the Kings of Rasin.”

Edward has never read it – heresy – so I sketch out the concept for him, and try to give him a sense of how much it meant to me. He even inscribed its title page: to Tallulah. Never stop being curious.

I hope I’ve never stopped.