Over the next two days, I found there was no handicrafts club. However, the classes for spirit magic will be almost the same, but more focused on embroidery than actually repairing clothes. Though I don’t mind that, it’ll be small pieces of fabric, so I can’t exactly make more clothes for going out on weekends (unless it’s a patchwork dress, but I think that might be pushing it).

And it’s a small thing I’ve noticed, maybe all in my head, but I swear my hair dried quicker these last two days…. I’m sure it’s nothing.

Wednesday lunch break, I’ve moved on to investigating the library. I call it that, but it’s more a reference room, no bigger than a classroom and it simply has the books needed for class and little more. That includes books the seniors need, so there are some I don’t have. Nothing all that interesting. Otherwise, there’s a handful of tables and chairs, and a quiet that comes from being away from the noisier parts.

I poke around the books for the magic classes, but it really is more of a history class. I mean, each different magic only has one class a week, like in my old school, so there’s not much we could do anyway. And again, it’s not like us upper-class children are going to go around setting fires and hammering metal.

Still, when the classes start up, I’ll test my talent again and see about maybe trying the other types.

The bell rings. I stretch out, my shoulders stiff from hunching over the desk; the joys of youth, the stiffness doesn’t linger. Then begins my journey back to the classroom. The library is in a small building, along with a few storage rooms, to the side of the main school building (which looks just like a manor, two storeys tall with a gently slanted roof and five times as broad). A covered walkway, lined either side by a low wooden fence, leads me to the side entrance of the main building. My classroom is then just halfway down the long corridor.

Despite being further away than most, I’m still one of the first ones there. Well, the first bell is a five minute warning, so that’s no surprise. Of the people here already, there’s a group of girls chatting by the window (I take a second look and realise they’re not even in our class, just using the room) and there’s the clever prince, ahem, Gerald and a couple of his friends.

Ah.

I walk over to his group, and say, “Excuse me.” They’d already stopped talking, one noticing me and the others following where he looked, but it’s important to be polite.

Gerald recognises me. “Lady Kent, to what do we owe the pleasure?”

“I would like to start a club. Do you happen to know how to go about doing so?”

His polite smile seems to squash down, lowered eyebrows narrowing his eyes. “Why would you think I do?”

I’d like to tell him, but, well, it would sound like flirting if I say he knows everything, wouldn’t it? So instead I say, “Do you?”

He pinches the bridge of his nose, his eyes closed. When he opens them, I feel like he just wished me away and is disappointed it didn’t work. I don’t take it personally. With a sigh, he gestures as if to say he doesn’t know. “The clubs are run by teachers, so I suppose you would have to ask a teacher,” he says.

Since I am standing this time, I’m able to give him a proper curtsey. “Thank you.”

Nothing else to say, I turn around and go to my desk, sitting down with the elegance expected of me. His words bump about inside my head, and I guess I should wait for the magic classes to start and ask whoever teaches spirit magic.

Through the afternoon lessons, I half-heartedly take notes, which are really just page numbers for what the teacher is mumbling aloud, and then a few sentences when they say something that isn’t in the text or scratch something onto the blackboard. I don’t see any point to doing more than that. If I want to study, then reading the books is all I have to do.

At the end of the day, I lag behind while putting my stuff away, wanting to avoid the busy corridor. And my idle gaze falls on Violet, Lady Dover. She’s grown up to be beautiful and elegant—the princess I knew she would be. The purple tone to her hair has become more pronounced over the years, less a glimmer and more a shade now, a deep and dark purple that fits her name so well. I don’t listen to gossip (not that anyone’s trying to gossip with me), but it sounds like she’s still an overly serious and stern girl. Lady, I should say. Ah, not the title. I’m used to thinking of everyone as “girl”, but we’re treading the line between children and adults, so “lady” is best, right?

Despite my thoughts lingering on Violet, she doesn’t linger. Once her group of friends is ready, they all head out together, muttering between themselves, glancing at others.

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As usual, nothing interesting happens throughout the rest of the week and it’s Friday afternoon before I know it. My thoughts end up on whether I should go into town again tomorrow. The money situation hasn’t changed, and I’ve not even written to my father to ask for an allowance. I’m sure he would give me one, yet, well, it’s like that would ruin the magic. That’s how I feel. It’s childish, I know, but I’m dressing up to get away from being a duke’s daughter.

Anyway, it’s just me making excuses for my own pride. I’ll give in eventually.

Tomorrow, I think I want to go see Lottie and Gwen again. With a week to settle my feelings, I’d like to say a few words that I forgot to say last time, unprepared for the encounter. There might be an issue with finding the house, but I’ll leave tomorrow’s problems to tomorrow’s Nora.

For now, those thoughts thought out, I return to the papers in front of me. I’m spending the afternoon in the library doing the homework due early next week—so I don’t have to worry over the weekend.

The subjects are, um, boring? I’d give up way too easily if I was in my bedroom. As it is, I’m barely focused and instead thinking about how boring it is. Oops.

I rub the procrastination off my cheeks, and then settle into the work. It’s a mix of copying out of the book and a little essay sort of stuff and a bit of reading comprehension. Mathematics is easy, like riding a bike with how it all comes back to me. Um, comes back from Ellie? Whatever.

The other hard part is keeping the nib of the fountain pen from snapping or anything, no sign of ballpoint pens, pencils only for art.

Well, I work through most of what’s due, at least getting all of Monday done. For history class on Tuesday, Mr Bolton wants a passage on the attempted Norman invasion copied out, and my hand aches at the thought. You really can’t call a whole sheet of paper (front and back) a “passage”.

Just as I’m convincing myself to give up, I sort of feel someone nearby. Turning, I spot a distantly familiar face, and a distinctly unfamiliar smile.

“Lady Kent,” says grumpy prince, sorry, Cyril.

“Lord Canterbury,” I say.

As I said, he’s smiling, which is unsettling. I mean, it’s a very slight smile—maybe I’m just so used to his scowl that a neutral expression looks like a smile? Otherwise, he looks like a bigger, stretched version of when I last saw him. Not gaunt or anything, but a bit tall and slim. If his hair has another shade to it, I can’t tell, a proper black colour that isn’t just dark brown. I never really got to look at his eyes when we were kids, but he has no problem meeting my gaze now: they’re pale blue. Not all that different to mine, I realise. It might be something we both inherited from our great-grandparents. That’s, yes, second cousins have great-grandparents in common.

I’m getting distracted. He has a gloomy look to him, but the girls (ladies) start calling him a prince because he is, by their definition, handsome. I don’t know if that’s started yet, but it probably will soon. I’m sure there’s an evening planned for all the junior ladies to have a sleepover and rank all the guys in order based on hotness, my invitation tragically lost in the mail.

“How are you settling in?” he asks.

Pulled out of my fantasy, I tilt my head, suddenly suspicious. “Are you really that same little Cyril?” I ask.

He gives me a grin-smirk. “We are family—is it strange for me to ask?”

“Yes,” I reply, no hesitation.

A chuckle slips out of him before he catches himself. “I see,” he says, rubbing the (very patchy) stubble on his chin. “I suppose I did leave you with quite the impression.”

I idly check if anyone else is here, but it’s only the librarian, and she is fixing us with a rather stern stare. It’s a good reminder that I shouldn’t talk carelessly. “If you’ve been asked to check on me, then please pass on that I am doing well.”

“You think that’s why I have come to see you?”

He doesn’t show what he’s thinking. Really, I liked that little boy who couldn’t look me in the eye more. “I wouldn’t deign to think of why you’re here.”

It’s a long second later that he softly says, “I see.” After a sigh, he stands up and says, “If that’s how it is, I’ll take my leave.”

“Good day to you,” I say, bowing my head.

He looks back at me and says, “And you,” but I know he doesn’t mean it, that slight smile gone. Shortly after, he’s gone too.

I just want to… ugh. Who lets me go outside? I’m an idiot who doesn’t even know what she did wrong. I mean, it was something I said, but what? His father probably did tell him I was coming here. If not that, then I really can’t think why he’d want to check on me. I mean, I used to boss him about and he’d pout—not exactly what I would call childhood friends.

These thoughts weigh heavily on me while I pack up my things and shuffle back to the dormitories. There, I flop onto my bed, an urge to scream into the pillow building up until I calm myself with deep breaths.

It’s, well, I thought about getting the faerie kings’ hearts, but I still don’t know what to do. I mean, I have this notion in my head that maybe I can get close to them without them falling in love with me. Maybe that’s enough. But, I don’t know, can we be friends? Won’t I send the wrong message if I try to spend time with them? Will they even want to be just friends with a girl? It’s easy for others to get the wrong impression, so isn’t hanging out with a girl more trouble than it’s worth for them?

Question after depressing question comes to me, answers not so much. If I go by Ellie’s memories, there were boys and girls who were friends, but it was usually like… a group of boys and a group of girls that were friends. If a boy and girl were by themselves, then they were dating. There wasn’t a reason for them to not be with everyone else otherwise.

And I feel it’s worse here. There’s no reason for girls and boys to be friends past a certain age. I can say blah about marriage prospects and image, but, really, it’s like inertia. If I talk to a boy, the girls will try to pull me back because it’s “not normal”. I don’t mind a bit of noise, but it’ll probably come from the other side as well—like his friends teasing him. Everyone will try to separate us or to normalise us as a couple.

Ugh, I’m a lot better at imagining everything going wrong than going right. It probably won’t even happen that way if I do try.

I guess… I should take things as they come and, right now, that means going into town tomorrow. Collecting up my shattered determination, I put my effort towards that.