Matthew's hand moved.
He did not place his cup with the silent precision Alice practiced. Instead, the white porcelain met the saucer with a deliberate, ringing clack that cut through the humid hush beneath the glass vault.
Vivienne looked away from Alice, her gaze snapping toward Matthew.
Across the linen, their eyes met. Matthew held the contact for a single, measured breath before offering a slow, discreet nod—the kind of silent dismissal high-born sons used when signaling a confederate to clear the room.
Alice did not flinch. Her hand remained poised over the brass pot, her eyes round, warm, and entirely empty of comprehension. She smiled at the steam curling off the spout, playing the part of a girl whose cognitive world reached no further than the rim of her saucer.
"No need, Alice—I know how much you love tea," Vivienne said smoothly, gathering the velvet folds of her traveling coat as she rose. The silver fox fur rippled against the dying amber light. "Say, I just remembered that there was something I needed to say to Lady Cheryl over by the citrus arcade, so I must be taking my leave now. I'll send an attendant over with a new pot of tea if I see them."
"Oh, what a pity!" Alice chirped, rounding her shoulders into an innocent pout that vanished into a cheerful wave. "Don't let her keep you too long, Vivienne!"
Vivienne departed with practiced elegance, gliding across the damp pavers with the fluid grace drilled into every daughter of the Northern houses. As she turned into the wisteria-draped corridor, her profile caught the sunlight, revealing a faint, razor-thin smirk tucked into the corner of her lips.
Alice set the brass pot back onto its iron trivet without a sound.
She won't send a new pot of tea.
The silence settled between them, heavy and perfumed. Matthew leaned back against the wrought-iron frame of his garden chair, crossing one booted leg over his knee. The silver combatant epaulettes on his shoulders shifted, catching the glare of the conservatory roof.
"I see that you're still keeping up that charade, Alice," Matthew said, his tone dropping the polite deference he had maintained while Vivienne was present. It took on a smooth, calculated intimacy that made the skin along Alice's neck prickle. "But with your rare beauty and refined conduct, I'm sure you have had no trouble convincing the other students."
Alice lifted her cup again, drawing the warm, astringent amber past her lips.
He's trying to pursue me again.
Beneath the linen, her fingers curled tight against her skirts, though her face remained smooth as fresh enamel.
"It's too bad you met me two years ago, when you moved to Viera," Matthew continued, resting his forearms against the table. He leaned in, lowering his voice into an easy, conspiratorial drawl. "I saw your family. They were not high class—just merchants with a little bit more money than most commoners."
"Yes," Alice replied, meeting his gaze with wide, untroubled eyes, "we have been aware of each other's existence for a while."
She took another slow, delicate sip, letting the hot liquid burn the tip of her tongue.
Matthew's brow twitched. Her lack of fluster clearly grated against his script.
"Why is this the first time we've spoken since the first semester ended, then?" he asked, tilting his head with an injured, theatrical smile. "We're intimate friends, are we not?"
Intimate friends?
Behind her placid, docile gaze, Alice's mind flicked through every interaction she had ever suffered in his presence. Have we even conversed on five separate occasions?
Between hiding her unorthodox casting drills from the proctors, running endurance circuits under Ms. Noctiliene's suffocating watch, and trying to survive Clive's combat rings without blowing her cover, she hardly had time to share bread with Elara and Clara in the lower wards. She barely scraped together thirty minutes once a week to read a single chapter in the dark with a cooling kettle.
"It was not my intention, Lord Matthew," Alice gasped, her voice lilted with a breathless, apologetic sweetness that sounded entirely earnest. She clasped her hands beneath her chin, her eyes sparkling with exaggerated sympathy. "The work required of me in the Honor Class was simply too time-demanding. Perhaps if you worked hard to join the Honor Class, we could spend more time together!"
The jab was wrapped in so much spun sugar that it took two seconds to draw blood.
Matthew's jaw tightened. The easy complacency in his posture stiffened, his fingers curling into the fine leather of his gloves before he forced an airy, dismissive scoff.
"The Honor Class, right," Matthew countered, straightening his spine and puffing his chest so his family crest caught the light. "I heard that you've achieved quite the reputation there. Rank 6 overall—Rank 5, if not for that absent student. You even received Advanced-rank Blessings in Water and Earth elements!"
He leaned back, waving a gloved hand through the humid air as if swatting away a pest.
"But joining the Honor Class? That's unnecessary. As the second son of a baron, I already have my sweet, free life laid out for me. I can do anything I want."
"That's very reassuring, Lord Matthew," Alice murmured, her smile never wavering, offering the exact bland compliment a well-trained petitioner gave a stubborn superior.
Matthew's patience frayed. The polished veneer cracked, giving way to a hard, possessive sharpness. He leaned forward until his chest crowded the linen, his shadow blotting out the amber light warming her saucer.
"Drop the performance, Alice," he murmured, his voice pitched low enough that only the steam between them caught the vibration. "We both know precisely how fragile your standing here is. One quiet word to my people, and the entire Second Sector finds out where you actually come from. You spent all of last semester ducking behind stone pillars every time I walked into the quad—did you honestly think I didn't notice? I could have stripped that borrowed prestige off your shoulders months ago."
Alice kept her lashes lowered, her gaze steady on a pale wisteria blossom trembling on the edge of the stone table. Her fingers remained relaxed against the bone china, refusing him even the satisfaction of seeing her knuckles whiten.
"Yet I didn't," Matthew continued, his cadence softening into an intimate, conspiratorial purr. "I kept quiet. Because I understand what drives you. You crave this world, don't you? You want a name that carries weight outside some dusty merchant market in Viera. And who else among the houses would ever offer you an open door? You think these high-born sons would take a commoner as a spouse? They'd spit on the idea before they let you cross their threshold."
He smiled then—a wide, magnanimous curve drenched in self-congratulatory charity, radiating the sickening conviction of a patron tossing scraps to a stray.
"I'm different," he whispered, tapping a gloved finger against the rim of his cup with theatrical ease. "With me, you wouldn't have to spend the next four years looking over your shoulder, terrified of the next audit. You could actually belong. Think beyond these halls, Alice. When you graduate, an Honor Class badge won't buy estates or grease administrative wheels. You will have a title on parchment, but neither the coin nor the bloodline to sustain it. My house has both. I can give you the footing your family could only dream of."
He tilted his head, his dark eyes fixing onto hers with predatory certainty.
"All you have to do is—"