I wake up to a maid’s morning call, blinking my bleary eyes as I look towards the dark curtains. We’re getting to the point where there’s the lightest touch of dawn there, but it’s still far from bright enough to do anything without a light on, my hand groping for the switch to the enchanted lamp. It comes on silently, no hum or crackle, and it’s a rather soft light that turns black to dim rather than illuminate.

Yet it’s enough for me to see Gwen’s card to me, my day already wonderful.

So I get myself out of bed and do the things that mornings require, taking my time to fill the hour before breakfast. Dawn creeps ever closer, but even as I head downstairs to meet up with my friends I wouldn’t say the sun has yet come up. I think sunrise is about a quarter of an hour earlier per week; it’s not something I keep track of, so don’t take it as fact. If I’m right, though, then we should be going for breakfast in actual sunshine by the end of the month. By the end of March, it’ll be light when we wake up.

I’m sure I must have these thoughts every year, yet they never stick. Maybe I should actually start a journal. Well, if I do, it really would be better to have an actual watch or clock to track the time.

Going through the day, I sometimes still feel pangs of pain from “breaking up” with Len, from knowing I’ll soon be leaving the café. However, they’re already muted. I think seeing Violet at that time helped me to properly resolve my emotions, the cut to my heart cleaned and dressed, and soon there’ll only be a thin scar to show for it. No regrets to keep opening the wound, no hatred to infect it.

If I really rack my brain, I think the only regret I have at the moment is Gerald, and even that is tempered by what Clarice said. That is, I know it’s unfair for me to be mad at him for not being perfect, but I’m not actually mad at him any more and so hardly think of him when he’s outside my line of sight. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. It’s not something I feel I should apologise over, just something I would handle differently if I could redo it.

My school day ends with water magic class—another thing I would redo if I could. Ah, maybe that’s too harsh, water magic still something I’d like to be better with, and Ms Rowhook does have practical lessons from time to time. Although, I wish she’d copy Mr Churt and alternate every week.

Whatever. There’s worse ways to spend my time.

I get to the classroom somewhat early, more because everyone else doesn’t rush to get here than because I hurried over. Still, I sit at the back. It’s not that I want sleepy prince Leo to join me, but I think he’ll join me wherever I sit, so sitting where his sleepiness won’t draw as much attention is best.

These recent weeks, he hasn’t been coming in time to actually talk—a greeting and a few words, that’s it. Well, he might have last week, but I wasn’t in any state for company, exhausted from throwing myself into the embroidery club project to distract myself from the letter I’d sent to my father; I can’t even remember if Leo turned up at all.

Huh, that was only last week, wasn’t it? Some weeks just drag on forever.

As if he could hear my thoughts from across the school, Leo plops himself down next to me. There’s a little smirk on his face when I look over. “Feeling better, are we?” he asks.

The last real conversation we had was the whole playing-hard-to-get stuff. But it sounds like he was here last week, and he (not unexpectedly) noticed my mood. If he wants to put me on the wrong foot, though, he’ll need better than that.

“Did you get any Valentine’s cards?” I ask.

He stares at me a moment and then bursts into a chuckle. A dry laugh, restrained and almost lazy. “As if women at this age would do something so childish,” he says.

Rather smugly, I reply, “I received one.”

“From your suitor who gifted you that hair clip,” he says, making it sound more a statement than a question.

Yes, that’s his play. He wouldn’t actually bother to learn anything when he can just guess based on intuition. One of those things where you only remember what he got right and forget all the things he got wrong, and you volunteer everything he wants to know as you go.

I mean, that’s if he’s not just bumbling along, amusing himself.

Whatever the case, there’s no reason we can’t both have some fun. “And what if it is?” I say, a touch of arrogance.

He laughs again, his wry smile settling somewhat crooked. “Perhaps I should pen out a poem. It isn’t too late, is it?”

“I couldn’t possibly accept that from you,” I say.

“Why? Does your mother have to read it first?” he asks.

“No, just that it will probably be rather awful,” I say, pausing while he snorts. “My cousin is attending here and knows how to read. If he can vouch for your poem, then I will look at it after my debut.”

Mouth pressed thin and eyebrows low, Leo looks like he has more than one question after what I said. “Your cousin… knows how to read?” he asks, I guess choosing to go with that one.

“Oh he can write too, but the reading is important in this case,” I say, a completely humourless response while he’s on the verge of laughing.

“I see,” he says. It takes him a moment to swallow his amusement, some semblance of poise returning to him; he uses that to ask, “And you would have him read about the sorts of things that go into love poems?”

I lightly shrug, gesturing along with my hands. “Well, as long as it begins with marriage to make any indecencies decent, it should be fine”

“With such wit, perhaps you should be writing poems,” he says.

“If only I could do so, then I would have no need for marriage,” I say, almost a sigh.

The mood changes in an instant as he leans closer and speaks, his voice soft and deep, almost throaty. “I wouldn’t think you wish to be so indecent.”

I can feel my cheeks start to prickle, perhaps already warmed by our conversation so far. I mean, just the way we’ve been talking and smiling and at times laughing, it’s an easy mood to get drunk on. He has rather a lot of practice when it comes to this, I guess; my mild teasing of Evan doesn’t really compare. I can’t tell if I’ve given him the satisfaction of blushing, my makeup hopefully concealing it.

However, I won’t give him the satisfaction of a timid response and instead let my anger play up.

“Is that supposed to be a joke?” I ask.

“Oh of course, just a turn of phrase,” he says.

If it’s a joke, then why is no one laughing? The immediate embarrassment I felt melts away and yet I’m left feeling shamed, uncomfortable, his words worming their way through my head. I mean, he called me a slut? That, that’s not a joke, it’s a humiliation. There’s nothing funny about it.

What was he trying to do? Was it really a joke, or does he do this to other women, chiselling at their dignity with these little phrases? I thought he was fundamentally a good person because of Snowdrop and the Seven Princes, but just how true to life is that book?

I’m saved from the conversation going any further by Ms Rowhook arriving, a hush coming over the classroom. While he settles back in his seat, I’m fighting the urge to move along to the empty chair beside me, still shuffling to the edge.

Ellie never learned to deal with bullies, only to duck her head and wait for the storm to pass. Eleanor could only cry and have someone else deal with it. Am I any better? Is there any better? For all that’s written about how bullies are cowards and you just have to confront them, that’s just not true. What Ellie knew was that things could get worse. She did her best not to escalate, not to put herself in situations where escalation could happen.

I thought that, if I couldn’t make friends with the other ladies, then it would be safe to be friends with the princes. That even if there is a lot of sexism in a lot of different ways in this world, that they would be good friends. Do I still think that now?

No.

And yet no sooner do I think that that there’s a feeling like I’m overreacting, that it was just a joke and I was playing along up until then. But, you know, Evan wouldn’t ever say anything like that to me. Julian, Cyril, they wouldn’t. I even doubt Gerald would. If Violet was here and heard that, would she laugh? No.

I don’t know what his intentions are. Whether that was really just him trying to be funny, turning around what I said back on me, or if it’s part of something else. Maybe it’s supposed to unsettle me, make it easier for him to control the conversation, make me feel submissive towards him. Maybe it’s supposed to, like, force his ideas onto me, make me think, “Is this how other people see me?” and start to act that way.

Ugh, it sounds crazy when I say it like that. Do I really think he’s some master manipulator? No, but he is a “prince”, naturally charming in his own way. However, no one said that natural charm couldn’t be misogynistic.

I thought it would be fun to talk to him, someone who is willing to tease me back and such. If this is his idea of acceptable, though….

To put it simply, I don’t want to talk to someone whose intentions I can’t trust. Maybe I should’ve known better from our last chat where he didn’t take me setting boundaries well. I’m not a prize for his game.

By the end of the lesson, he’s asleep (as always), and this time I leave him be on my way out. Yet I still feel unsettled. That feeling follows me all the way to the dormitory, only stopping once the door closes behind me. I don’t want to go to the lounge. For some reason, I don’t want my friends to look at me, a need to bathe building up as my hands keep fidgeting as if wiping dirt off each other.

Unable to sort myself out, I go up to my room. Slowly, memories from Ellie trickle forwards. The times when she would go into town or somewhere crowded, and she would notice men looking at her—even when she was only thirteen. She came to think that there probably were men looking at her when she younger that she just didn’t notice.

Those memories only make this sensation of needing to clean myself more intense, and I start to understand another unfortunate aspect of Ellie’s life I didn’t before.

Leo, you weren’t ever thinking of me as a friend, were you?