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He runs his hand through his thick mess of tousled, black hair, then leans in closer to the litalf he’s lured across the lesson’s glade. He whispers words I suspect are sweet nothings into her ear, and I do not trust him one bit.

Dare, his name is.

A friend of Daxeel, a soul-brother, like Eamon is to me.

For the Fae Eclipse, he doesn’t stay at the barracks, he stays with Eamon and his family, and I wonder if it’s crammed in his home now, or if they all fit in it comfortably since it’s such a large manor.

My home might collapse with that many folk in it.

Still, it might be a nice way to live. The song of laughter and chatter in the corridors, a full dining room with clinking glasses and friendly smiles. My home is quiet. Awfully quiet.

Lilith’s sugar-slicked drawl creeps into my thoughts. It snares my attention whole.

“Is Aisla not bedding Prince Affay? Suppose to be a prince does not mean to be a satisfactory lover.”

I hate this female. It shows in the roll of my eyes before I exhale my exhaustion of her.

First time I met Lilith, years ago in lessons, we sat together. Our friendship made it to the first break just after dusk, and she looked me dead in the eye, then said ‘you are too poor and too halved to be this ugly.’

I know she meant my heart.

I was quiet the rest of that lesson. Then I went home and cried. I thought of all the ways I would get her back. Cut her hair in lessons when she drifted off to sleep, or pour honey in her bag in bee season, or just push her into the bog some distance out into the woods.

But I never got the chance. The next lesson came, she was surrounded by more folk, and I sat alone.

It’s been that way ever since.

Even now, the space around her is peppered with litalves, changelings, halfbreeds, all hanging on her every word.

And I stand alone at the next tree over.

He is alone, too.

Daxeel.

Not alone in the way that I am.

I don’t fool myself in finding isolation misery in him.

His peers like him,respecthim. But he separated himself, as he always does when the dark fae invade our lessons just after dusk, and he fell onto his back under the thick leaves of a bushy tree, near where the wild daffodils grow.

He keeps to the border of moonlight, just out of the white wash of light, but close enough that he could reach out and touch the gleam with his honey-toned hand.

I wonder if he does that for me.

An invitation to join him.

He might think he is less intimidating if he is alone. But I’m not so sure I agree. Each and every one of them frightens me to my bones, alone or together, it makes little difference.

The way I see it is, if I stumbled onto a lone dokkalf in the woods, I would run just as fast as though it were a group of them.

Thoughts of fleeing are severed when the ugly clang of metal rattles the glade.

The lecturer rings the triangle.

Gasps and snarls rise up like a barbed cloud over the tensing litalves.

The lecturer lifts the little metal triangle, a cruel glint in his whitish eyes, then he hits it again, once, twice, and by the third time it’s feeling too much like a bell.