My disappointment at the club meeting fizzles away over the rest of the week. The ladies in my class were noisier than usual, muttering about how I abducted Evan along with pointed looks and crass laughter. I also had the fire magic class to check out. As I expected, it’s nothing new. When I went to the metal magic class, I was greeted by a sign that says it’s already been cancelled—not exactly unexpected.

With much thought and deliberation (about a whole minute), I put my name down for water and earth magic classes. It won’t be amazing, but it’ll help to pass the time.

Friday now, I happily sit through the day’s lessons, eager to get started on a pattern I’ve worked on the last few evenings. Not to mention, my hasty plan from Monday will surely bear fruit.

When the bell rings, ending the last lesson of the day, I quickly pack everything away and stand up. To my surprise, Evan is waiting for me. I mean, I know he’s obedient, but really? Does he want me to keep teasing him? I thought he would have run off as soon as possible.

Well, I’m not going to turn him away.

“Come on, then,” I say as I walk past. Since it doesn’t matter if he doesn’t follow, I’m happy to lead.

I glance back anyway and see he is following me.

My pace quick, I squeeze through the crowd that’s mostly heading the opposite way, luckily the corridor less crowded once we pass the stairway. I slow down to a normal walk for the rest of the way.

Like last time, we have to wait outside the room, but only a couple of minutes this time; Ms Berks doesn’t carry anything with her when she arrives.

And… I’m very disappointed. Not in Ms Berks, but Evan, fixing him with a stare that is probably more menacing than I intended. Well, he’s slid to the edge of his chair just to put a little more distance between us (us being sat diagonally across from each other at a table).

With a sigh, I look away from him. “I thought you were popular with the ladies,” I say, half a mumble and half a whine.

“W-what?” he asks.

I glance over and his eyes are wide. Letting out another long breath, I sink onto the table.

From her corner, Ms Berks lets out an “ah” and smirks. “By mascotte, you meant to use him to lure in other ladies?”

“Yes, miss,” I say, despondent.

She chuckles, hiding her mouth behind her book. An eccentric lady, yet definitely a lady. I wonder if I like her strange quirks because they’re a little like my mother’s. After all, just as Ms Berks seems happiest avoiding meetings, my mother would always arrange garden parties and pray for rain.

“Poor thing,” she says, her gaze set on Evan.

He shrinks back in his seat, moving that little closer to my side again.

Well, it was wishful thinking on my part, hoping that some ladies would come along and we could naturally become friends over sewing. I mean, I know that, if they came here for him, they wouldn’t be at all interested in sewing, but it really is better to try and fail than not try at all.

Besides, this does give me the opportunity to spend time with Evan. I’m still not entirely sure on my original plan (collect all the faerie kings’ hearts and wish myself back to Ellie’s world), yet being friendly can’t hurt. So I spend another half an hour teaching him to sew, managing to avoid the temptation to tease him and managing to avoid him stabbing himself. A few pricks, but barely a drop of blood drawn.

While we have a break from sewing, his finger firmly pressed against a loose bit of cloth, I remember I roped him in “because” of his talent for spirit magic. So I teach him the chant for braiding. Whispering those words, the threads tumble over themselves—the faeries such show-offs, my braid coming out neater than usual. Then I have him do it and, after a few goes to get the pronunciation right, well, the faeries really favour him, his braiding done twice as quick and twice as neat.

When the bell goes, I think of what to do next, and I realise I’m already at the library. Last Friday, I was too excited after talking to Ms Berks to do my homework and that had made Sunday night… stressful.

Let’s not do that again.

That said, I only have my books for geography. Better than nothing. Sending Evan off with a, “Good day to you,” and Ms Berks with a, “Thank you for your time, miss,” I then slip into the library.

Ah.

There’s a familiar grumpy prince lost in the paper in front of him. Cyril. We didn’t exactly part on the best of terms last time, and I’ve since been treated to that time with Lottie that gave me a thought. Last time, I know it was my fault.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

At his side, I softly say, “Lord Canterbury.”

He jerks up as if shocked, and he quickly brings over a book to cover whatever he was so busy writing. Maybe because I just spent time with Evan, I feel sorely tempted to stare at what words still show and ask him about them, but I put aside teasing him for now. That is, I already know it’s (probably) poetry.

When he realises it’s me, his embarrassment quickly turns cold. “Yes?” he says, voice flat.

“I would like to apologise for before. While I thought you disliked the time we spent together in the past, it was rude of me to assume your feelings. I am sorry for doing so, and I will listen more closely to you from now on.”

He continues to look at me with something like a glare for a couple of seconds, and then his expression softens, a bit of a crooked smile tugging at his mouth. “You apologise to people?” he asks.

“Of course. I had much opportunity to practise as a child,” I say.

A breath of laughter escapes him before he catches himself. “It’s funny, you can be so different and yet have hardly changed.”

I smile, tilting my head. “Is it not you who has changed?”

“Perhaps so.”

Before we say any more, I catch sight of a certain librarian and her stern look. I feel pressured by it, much like last time, but choose my words more carefully. “This isn’t the best place to talk, so if you would excuse me,” I say, bowing my head.

“Ah, would you walk with me? I’m curious how aunty has been,” he says, hastily putting back his things.

Every time he stops speaking, careless words try to fall from my lips. Constrained. I put together something more proper. “You do not mind being seen walking with a lady?”

“We’re family,” he says simply. Everything packed away, he slings his bag onto his shoulder and gestures for me to go first. “Or do you mind being seen walking with me?” he asks.

There’s no maliciousness in the turnaround, sounding like an honest question much as mine was. So I say, “Not at all.”

Still, I can’t help but wonder what those who see us will think, what they’ll say. It’s not that I’m worried, more that I just naturally think about these sorts of things. I mean, if I don’t, then I end up saying or doing something that really is “shameless” in this world. That’s what it is to be a woman, at least here. Everything I say and do judged and graded.

Those thoughts go quickly once we leave the building and start along a pathway that goes around the front of the main building. Despite what we both said, it’s a very public path and wide enough that we can walk side-by-side without being close.

“So, how is aunty?” he asks.

Technically, my mother is his first cousin once removed. However, she insisted on “Aunt Leena” (her first name being Kathleen) back when he and I had the dance lessons together. It took a while for him to give in, but he did. My mother isn’t someone to be easily dissuaded or disobeyed.

I’ve been told I resemble her in some ways.

“She’s well,” I say. “Over the last months, she has been rather busy preparing Clarice for her debut.” I glance over and see him nodding.

“Her debut, is it?”

He probably has no idea what that is. Well, a general idea, but without a mother or sister, it’s likely something he’s never talked about. “Yes. Our aunt has sponsored her, so she will be attending the Queen’s Ball at the start of the new year.”

“It takes that much practising?” he asks, a hint of his surprise leaking through.

My smile wry, I say, “Quite so.”

He draws in a breath and (or so I would like to imagine) he has flashbacks to our months of dancing lessons. No doubt, he is rather empathising with my sister.

“Do send your sister my sympathies.”

Ah, I was right. Covering my giggle, I try not to let it (or my imagination) get out of hand. “I shall.”

After that, he asks after my brother and father as well, and asks me to send them his regards, but he hardly met them and so I don’t say much more than about their good health. Still, it’s… weird. We’re family and the same age, and yet we’re so distant in how we speak. Stranger still, we’re so sensitive to this distant distance that, when we last spoke, he easily picked out how I thought he didn’t care for me.

It’s so different to my time with Iris. She spoke her mind, thoughts candid, and left me the one feeling teased. Ah, she reminds of Violet in that way they both seem to say whatever comes to mind. Though, even if I say that, Violet does coach her words a bit to befit her station.

Anyway, I’m getting distracted. Family, he said, and yet not in the same way Clarice and Joshua and my mother and father are. Really, he said it more as a pretext. Like, “If anyone asks why we were talking, it’s because we’re family.” He doesn’t mean that we’re close. Or maybe he does, his own situation warping what he thinks. Or maybe he simply means it as a bond.

I would ask him, but I don’t feel we’re close enough. At least for now.

The conversation about how my family is doing reaches its end, and he follows up by asking, “And how have you been?”

“I’ve been well,” I say. With a smile, I add, “However, homework for history class has been quite the pain in the wrist.”

He chuckles, and it’s really at odds with his gloomy appearance. “I understand. It seems like I never quite have enough ink for it.”

Closer, step by step. “And you?” I ask.

His expression fades to blank, the kind of blank that looks a touch angry. “I suppose I have been. With time, I will slowly learn what those feelings were.”

Unable to help myself, I giggle into my hand. While he looks over at me with narrowed eyes, he’s no more intimidating to me than he was those years ago. “You should visit over the break. My mother would love someone to talk poetry with,” I say.

His body tenses up even as his face shows nothing. Oops, I guess I wasn’t supposed to know he likes poetry. How he can talk like that and not expect me to know, though, I don’t know.

“That is… something I will consider,” he softly says.

Despite our slow pace, we’ve finished a half-loop, on the other side of the main building and with the ladies’ dormitories ahead of us. I imagine he doesn’t want to go this way. This feeling like a good place in our conversation to end, I come to a stop.

“Thank you for walking me here,” I say, curtseying.

A smile tugs at one corner of his mouth. “It was my pleasure.”

“Then, have a good day, cousin.”

“And you.”

So I turn around and walk back amidst the looks and whispers of the handful of ladies around to see me and him together. But all I’m thinking about is homework, with one bit of my brain trying to remember to send home a letter and include his regards in it.

The end to another mostly uneventful school week.