Like a stain on the kitchen wall, I saw him around sometimes. Or maybe more like a fly that refused to be swatted. Sure avoided me like one. Talked as much as one too. A couple of weeks scraped past before he finally had the gall to say anything. “It is rather like you don’t want to know me anymore.” A voice so grating it’d shred an entire cheese wheel in an instant.

  “I don’t know you anymore,” I said. In the chilly cloisters by the east library, flocks of students sweeping past and eagerly speculating rumours about two professors noticed together last night, I wasn’t inclined to say much more.

  “This is precisely about which I worried when I told you.” He had this way of looking at me, and it made sense now. I was one of his courtiers. Entertainment for him whenever and however he demanded it. Maybe even more of a jester to him. “Perhaps if you hadn’t been quite so intrusive, it wouldn’t have driven such a schism between us.”

  “I was just showing interest,” I shot back. “It’s your hang-ups that made you so suspicious of me. You thought I was, what, in espionage?”

  “That’s not how that’s pronounced,” he said mirthlessly.

  I glared at him. “I really don’t care anymore. And actually, that’s kinda the problem – you always have to be better than everyone. And always leading. For someone who can’t handle being second best, you’re not much good at being first.” Another pack of students shuffled past. I couldn’t help their stray glances but I still had more decency than to spill Kaspar’s secrets to their ears. However much hurt he’d caused, I couldn’t hurt him back like that. I couldn’t. “What’s so bad about being second?”

  “Perhaps if you’d lived a life where your success actually had meaningful and reaching implications, you’d understand. Call it a privilege if you shall, but I consider it a burden.”

  “It’s not because of privilege! It’s because you believe your privilege entitles you to have whatever, no matter what. ‘Now I’m free, I get to choose what I want and I get to have anything I want.’ Whatever you want, however you want it. Including, evidently, me. And when I didn’t meet your standards, you simply paid to improve me. Another problem you paid to fix. Got me out of the potato sack cloak. Pretended it was for my own benefit.” He scowled fiercely, and I glanced around us. Alone for a moment. “You always acted like you deserved me, just by being who you are,” I hissed. “By paying a high enough price, by speaking fancy enough, by doing all the princely things –”

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  “I am not a prince!” he snapped.

  I smiled deliberately. “So stop acting like one. Be nice to me. Then we can talk.”

  He stepped back and placed a hand on the wall like he was trying to crack through the stone brick. Just like he’d cracked that wooden block. “In retrospect it may have been naive of me, but I’d prefer to call it hopeful. I remember when I used to feel hopeful from you. From us… I thought you’d understand, of all the people in this place. Do you come from a family where everything’s fine? Where they accept you? Where you’re wanted?” Turned back to me, palm still imprinted on the stone. “If so, please do enlighten me on why you are here and reliant upon me to pay your fees? Which for elucidation’s sake, I am still doing.”

  “You insisted on that!” I said. “You can’t use that against me.”

  “Right now I’m feeling distinctly used. You received endlessly from me, and now you don’t have the slightest care for me. Despite everything I gave. I think if you cared about people more, they’d actually want to talk to you and wouldn’t keep kicking you away.”

  My hand jabbed between his collarbones before I had chance to stop myself. Jolted, pinned to the stonework by his chest and he’d barely even flinched. Looking down at me as if he’d expected it – no, as if he’d expected more. My left fist clenched, raised, pulled back by my shoulder, shaking with tension. Sights set on that perfect nose of his. Wanting to make sure it’d never be perfect again, nowhere near it. Boots scuffed behind me and a few students slipped past us. Very sensibly kept their distance. “I had to escape,” I growled. “The town. The war. Everything.” Pretty sure my claws were digging rips into his shirt. Pretty sure he’d pay more to replace it than the cost of every shirt I’d ever owned combined.

  “And what if they knew? What if they found out everything you’d done while you were here? Everything you’d taken from the world and how little you’d given back? Would they be proud?”

  I saw his head snap back and crack against the stone, dark eyes instantly glazed. I saw his nose crumple like paper under my fist. I saw all of that in my mind and I saw how much he’d look like what happened to Omen and I… couldn’t. I shoved him in the chest, enough to make my stance damned clear. “You’re sad you weren’t the older one,” I said, “but I bet the rest of your country is relieved.”

  I left him where he stood. I didn’t look back.