We continue in this way for quite a while. I find that by the time we’re done I’m not as frustrated as I was before with Edward’s methods. It feels harder but somehow more rewarding to work things out myself with only the occasional guide or hint than to just be told things. And I think I’ll remember them better this way.

  But that can’t make me ignore the fact that we’ve been talking about wards for hours, and I inevitably reach the point where I’m too tired and restless to be interested. Edward manages to notice that before I say as much, and calls a halt to the evening’s work, much to my relief. He says we’ll continue with more practical work next session.

  I barely hold back a groan at that thought, and wish him a good night. It’s not quite early enough to sleep by the time I get back to my dormitory, but it’s certainly late enough that reading another entry of Georgiana’s diary is a bad idea. Not that that stops me from being tempted, but I buried it deep within my trunk beneath all the clothes I seldom wear after the last time I read it. My intention was to make sure no-one else can see my blank-titled books and get curious about their contents when I open my trunk, but putting that obstacle between me and them is also a powerful way to resist temptation.

  In the end I sleep a little earlier than normal, and am pleased to find that also means waking up a little earlier. I’ve adjusted well to actually having a need to get out of bed (and to actually having a bed instead of a sofa and a bundle of blankets), so I’m a little startled to remember it’s already the weekend and I don’t actually need to.

  By the time I’ve done that, though, I’m already awake enough that there’s no point in rolling over and going back to sleep. I wonder instead what I should do, and immediately half a dozen competing answers spring to mind. It’s almost more overwhelming, when you don’t have a crisis to deal with and you’re not utterly exhausted and so you have to face everything that will turn into a crisis if it’s neglected for too long.

  Probably the most important thing, I decide, is to make sure I’m properly prepared for my next conversation with Lord Blackthorn. It’s unnerving, his habit of unscheduled and unexpected meetings, and even if I can normally avoid a Malaina episode because of it now that doesn’t make it easy to deal with. I’ll have to work as if it could be any minute and I need to be done preparing as soon as possible.

  Which makes the next step getting out of bed, washing and dressing. That’s something I ought to do anyway, but the thought of Lord Blackthorn seeing me in this state provides plenty of added motivation.

  And I ought to have breakfast as well, which feels a lot easier to do by the time I’m clean and dressed and don’t feel like sinking back into the warmth of the duvet and shutting out the world. So I wander downstairs to the dining hall. Edward is there as usual, and I join him as usual.

  “Morning. Any interesting news?”

  He shrugs. “Not really. Sometimes it frustrates me, what the papers decide to focus on.” He shows me a headline analysing a duchess’s scandalous behaviour at the Feast of Stars. “A woman had too much to drink and did things she regretted later. Why is this a matter of public interest?”

  “I’m not sure it’s that simple,” I say. “If this particular woman is important, and if what she did while drunk offended other important people… then that matters, doesn’t it?” I wonder vaguely how many historical feuds were caused by little more than a drunken mistake. How many children were born who went on to change the course of history because of drunken mistakes.

  “It shouldn’t,” Edward mutters.

  “Reality and your ideal version of reality are quite different.”

  “I know,” he says sadly. Then he laughs.

  “What?” I ask, not seeing the path of thought that led him to amusement.

  “I just thought why can’t you just let me be annoyed without trying to logic me out of it? And then I realised how utterly hypocritical that was.”

  I laugh too. I know by now that empty reassurance isn’t what Edward is looking for here. “It kind of is, yeah. But we’re all kind of hypocritical sometimes.”

  “We shouldn’t – “ he replies, and then stops himself. “I wish,” he says carefully, “that I was less so.” He hesitates again. “So I’m sorry if I’ve done that to you. And I’ll do my best not to do it again.”

  Edward has a habit of surprising me with things like this sometimes. It’s one of the things I like most about him, its sudden unguarded sincerity. “Thank you,” I say. “I appreciate that. You… probably have done it to me, at least occasionally. But it’s okay.”

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  He hasn’t done it when it would really hurt, when I was clearly upset. But there’ve been little moments. And it’s nice that he’s realised it. That he’s learning… something.

  I don’t do much that weekend. Well, for a definition of “not much” which is probably quite a lot, looked at another way. I make a detailed list of questions and topics to bring to my meeting with Lord Blackthorn whenever he deigns to show up and talk to me. Then Edward sees it and tells me it’s sensitive information and should be burned, so I memorise everything on my list and then feed it to the fire. I’m still a little unsettled by how much I enjoy watching things burn.

  But I’m happy that I’ll at least know what I want to say to him. I spend a little while reading political theory, hoping to get some insights into the balance of power in present-day Rasin. But most of the works I found only analyse examples from before the Second Civil War. There seems to be an underlying idea that the current system is perfect, above criticism, and so no-one dares even discuss its strengths and weaknesses. I disapprove of that idea, but I’ve already badgered Edward enough about politics for a little while.

  Instead I let him badger me about wardwork. I’m surprised to find I manage to get the light-blocking ward I’ve been struggling with working within a few minutes of starting practice. Maybe all the theory Edward crammed my brain with was helpful after all. He reports that it’s eerie being within the ward, where the darkness seems absolute as we positioned the chalk circle such that there’s no light source within the boundary.

  It's just as eerie looking at it from the outside, where it seems like a circular black pillar as the ward absorbs all the light that touches it. Edward says that the light carries energy which is absorbed by the ward, and it’s an active field of study whether it can be converted into magical energy and used to power other ward components. He experiments with casting a light-spell inside to confirm that I can’t see it, and then insists I take my turn inside.

  He's right. It’s… disconcerting, to say the least. The only darkness I remember as absolute was that in the tunnels beneath the Abbey Royal, when I fled the protest with Elsie. But even then it was broken by our light-spells and the occasional chink of light from above. Here it’s as if light itself has ceased to exist.

  And then I step out, and it’s perfectly normal.

  Once I’ve recovered from that experience, I spend the rest of the day working on homework. I try to do it as early as I can. I’ve been doing that for a long time, but now there’s an extra urgency to it. I never know when the next crisis is coming, so I need to at least make sure I’m not worrying about late homework during it.

  “You know,” Edward points out, “you’re a model student. You could easily get away with turning in homework late a few times without any consequences.”

  I remember the Rasina essay I forgot at Genford way back at the start of the academic year and silently disagree with him. But then, I reflect, what was true there isn’t true at the Academy. He might have a point. Not that I plan to get in the habit of turning in homework late regardless.

  Most of the assignments are short review pieces which I get out of the way fairly quickly. Edward spends a good ten minutes interpreting one Enchantments question as literally as possible to point out a flaw in its reasoning, insisting that it’s the imprecise wording at fault rather than his own relentless pedantry. I just give the answer that was clearly intended and move on.

  Electra’s assignment is what she probably considers a short review piece, but she’s Electra so it’s far from simple. You are given a white box, which is locked by magical means. Describe how you would unlock the box in the most safe and efficient manner possible, breaking your description into cases as necessary.

  Edward stubbornly refuses to help me. He says it would defeat the point of the exercise, which is that we’re supposed to think through all the possibilities ourselves. I’m not all that happy with the semblance of an answer I put together, and seeing that he’s written nearly a full page in tiny handwriting does little to reassure me. Electra, I think, might well appreciate Edward’s pedantry in an instance like this.

  I set what I have aside, deciding to keep the problem in the back of my mind and add to my response whenever I think of something new or find a technicality that I hadn’t considered that makes the problem more complex (of which I am sure there would be many).

  The other more interesting assignment is Magical Law and Culture. Sam wants a short essay-like piece writing up some of the arguments we discussed in our last class. So it’s thankfully interesting in the genuine sense rather than the Electra-italics-and-suggestive-pause sense, and I take my time thinking of which points I want to make and how to emphasise them. I can’t decide whether I should quote sources; we didn’t in the actual debate, except in a general sense, but I think there are definitely points in the suggested reading which would add to what I’m saying.

  I do quote them in the end, though briefly to make an attempt at staying close to the intended length. By the end of the weekend I’m done, and only a couple of paragraphs over. I get quite a bit of the essay done in the hour or two I spend studying with Robin. We don’t really talk much, just each doing our own thing in the same room. But I think – or at least hope – she appreciates the company.

  And of course I also spend a few hours in the company of Georgiana Blackthorn. Longer than I intended, naturally, but at least I don’t lose too much sleep. No, it’s the present Lord Blackthorn who causes me to sleep badly without even intending to. I know he promised that he wouldn’t interrupt my sleep, but part of me struggles to believe he’d keep to that promise given his previous behaviour. And when it’s always in the back of my mind that he could appear at any moment, it’s hard to sleep peacefully.

  But he doesn’t disturb me at night. Or during the day, either. The anticipation is hard to deal with.

  Other than that, though, it’s a nice weekend. Well, other than the fact it’s far too short.