All color drained from Geraldine’s cheeks, then returned as rapidly as it had left. Her eyes grew huge, and she stared up at her mother as if she’d just been given the best Christmas, birthday, and Boxing Day gift ever. Honestly, Pandy had only the flimsiest of grasps on what Boxing Day was, but she was almost certain it involved gifts, and thus the simile worked.

  “Really?” the girl gasped, turning to look at her father. “Really and truly?”

  Both of her parents smiled, though there was an edge of something that might have been concern behind them. “Yes, of course,” Lady Alice said, leaning down to kiss her daughter’s hair gently. “We wouldn’t tease you about such a thing.”

  Geraldine sent a blinding smile at everyone in the room, but almost immediately wilted again. She edged toward her mother, tugging at her sleeve. Rather than brushing her off, as the queen had done to Eleanor, Alice leaned down so Geraldine could whisper in her ear. As she listened, Alice gave a smile that held both pride and sadness.

  Straightening, Lady Alice wrapped her arm around her daughter’s shoulders. “I’ll speak to you about that after our guests have gone, Little Goose. Now, say hello to Her Highness, Princess Eleanor. In fact,” she drew in a deep breath, eyes flicking from the queen to her husband, “perhaps the children can go py while we talk?”

  The queen’s lips pinched again, ever so slightly, and then she smiled graciously. “They’ll likely all be good friends within a month, anyway. They might as well begin as they mean to go on.” Looking down at the tiny princess, she said, “Go ahead then, Eleanor. But you mustn’t get dirty. You want to be clean and tidy when you’re presented to the teachers, do you not?”

  Eleanor’s pale face was almost as pink as Geraldine’s by now, and she bobbed a shallow curtsey as Geraldine gave a deep, somewhat wobbly one. The princess didn’t seem to care that neither Thaniel nor Geraldine had a firm grasp on the differences in their stations, and simply hurried after the other two children as they exited the room.

  Geraldine paused just outside the room, her eyes lingering on the small crack where the door still stood slightly open. Dalton stepped in, closing the door with a firm click, and an equally firm smile. “Perhaps you should retire to the conservatory, Your Highness, Miss, young master.”

  The three children took this as the order it was intended to be, and soon they were closed into the hot, humid room, which was full of even more blooms than the gardens outside. These were almost all rge, showy flowers, though Pandy only recognized a few. There were birds of paradise next to hibiscus, and what Pandy was almost certain were several different varieties of orchids, but all around those were twenty or thirty other pnts that she had no name for.

  Eleanor stopped at the edge of the wooden floor that held the table and chairs the family often used for breakfast and tea. There was a short step down to cobblestones, where pots of all sizes held leafy occupants. The princess had clearly never seen anything like it before, and she stared around with wide eyes.

  “Whose are these?” she asked, unable to tear her eyes from a particurly grand hibiscus.

  “My mother’s,” Geraldine said, with a proud smile on her face. “She’s an Earth mage.”

  Pandy started. How had she not known that? Almost all of the nobles in Gacha Love were mages of some kind, with a few notable exceptions. Even many commoners had some magic, though it was rarely strong, and even more rarely did they receive any real education in how to summon elementals. That left them able to cast only a few very simple spells, or perhaps do things like sense water beneath the earth, or know when a bad storm was coming.

  As members of the nobility, minor or not, Lord and Lady Reedsley almost had to have magic of some kind, but try as she might, Pandy couldn’t remember a single mention of it. Of course, they were barely spoken of at all, other than the basic information that they were retively poor and that Lord Reedsley had been the captain of the soldiers who raided the Dunning estate and presumably killed Thaniel. Even in the event where Cra brought her love interests home for the winter break, the Reedsleys were absent without any real expnation.

  Eleanor started to step down, then paused and looked at Geraldine. “May I please look more closely?” she asked far too politely for a six-year-old.

  Geraldine was clearly flustered, but said, “Yes, of course,” accompanying the words with another little curtsey. She and Thaniel trailed after the princess as the other girl approached the hibiscus.

  Reaching out, Eleanor stroked the bright red petals of a bud, which quivered beneath her fingers. To everyone’s surprise, the blossom began to unfurl, revealing a tiny pink spark, which leaped to Eleanor’s fingers, before vanishing into a shower of glitter that hung in the air far longer than it should have.

  Thaniel held his breath so long that he finally gasped for air, clutching Pandy tightly to his chest. “Was that an elemental?”

  Pandy could have answered that, because the little creatures were one of the more common elementals in the game. One of the love interests was an Earth mage, and in almost every romance scene, he and Cra were surrounded by colorful little Bloomshine, who were born – or possibly created – in the moment when a flower blossomed for the first time, and faded when it reached its peak.

  Geraldine shook her head, while Eleanor bit her lip, backing away from the flower. “It must have been waiting for Lady Alice,” the princess said. “I’m sorry I disturbed it.”

  But Thaniel and Geraldine were already petting each closed flower with fingers that weren’t quite as gentle as Eleanor’s, clearly hoping for a repeat performance. The strongest reaction they got, however, was when a bird of paradise broke at the base, leaving the sad remnant dangling from the stem. They both stopped after this, and Geraldine tucked her hands behind her back, looking guilty.

  “I’ve never seen that happen before,” Geraldine said, looking chagrined. “Perhaps Mother will know what kind of elemental it was. I’ll ask her when-”

  “No!” Eleanor said. Her face was pale, and she drew herself up to her full height, which was about as tall as Thaniel, which was not tall at all. “I…I forbid it! You mustn’t speak of this. Ever.”

  Geraldine opened her mouth as if to demand what right Eleanor had to order her to do anything, but snapped it closed again when Thaniel attempted a very awkward bow. As he did, Pandy slipped through his fingers and plopped onto the floor with an ignominious thump, instantly becoming the focus of all eyes.

  Trying to look nonchant, Pandy licked a paw, then passed it over her ear, as if cleaning it. She knew from long evenings spent in front of a mirror, practicing looking like she was alive, that this was one of her most adorable poses, showcasing as it did her fluffy cheeks and long, velvety ears. On cue, all three children cooed and crouched down.

  Thaniel started to reach for Pandy, but Eleanor was already offering the rabbit her hand to sniff, so Pandy dutifully did so. To her surprise, the girl didn’t smell of perfume, though there was a hint of that, perhaps as a result of being closed into the carriage with her mother. No, Princess Eleanor smelled of crushed mint and petrichor, which was a word Pandy knew only because of an extremely brief side-gig spent creating crossword puzzles for a penny paper.

  Carefully, Eleanor scrootched Pandy’s ears, then drew them through her fingers, appreciating their silky fur. “She’s so soft!” the princess said, edging forward as children tended to do. Pandy didn’t back up, but only because this was a princess, and she didn’t want Thaniel to look bad if his rabbit was rude.

  Thaniel smiled. “She gets a bath every day, ‘cause she always gets dirty when we py pirates.”

  Eleanor looked up, attention caught. “Pirates? Like Wayward Pirate Pete?”

  Geraldine and Thaniel exchanged grins. “Exactly like that!” Geraldine said. “We pretend we’re terribly nice pirates, who are very nicely terrible, just like Pete. But something always happens so Bunny and Miss Cupcakes are captured by not-nice-at-all pirates, and we have to go and rescue them.”

  “I didn’t know cats could get stuck in trees,” Thaniel admitted, flushing. “It took forever to get Miss Cupcakes down out of the crow’s nest in the old pine tree.”

  “And it turns out pine sap is awfully fmmable,” Geraldine said, fingering a section of her hair which was quite a bit shorter than the rest. Recently, the children had been drinking grog – actually water in rge wooden mugs – when a candle caused a bit of sap stuck in Geraldine’s hair to combust. In the ensuing panic, Pandy had been able to knock water all over the girl’s head, putting it out without looking at all like her assistance was intentional. She still wasn’t sure if that was another attempt by the god’s magic to kill Thaniel, but it was quite possible, since the boy had been absolutely covered in sap as well.

  “Where is Miss Cupcakes?” Thaniel asked, looking around as he seemed to notice the kitten was missing for the first time.

  Geraldine made a face. “Mother said she had to stay in my room, since we got paint on her while we were making the pirate fg.”

  Pandy barely held in a snort. ‘Got paint on’ indeed. More like deliberately dipped the kitten’s tail in paint while she was sleeping, then used pine needles to trace a Jolly Roger onto her back. Really, even good children could be terrible when they were trying to be pirates – even nice ones.

  Thaniel nodded as if that made complete sense – which it did, and the skull on Miss Cupcakes’ back was really startlingly well done – and asked Eleanor, “Do you read Wayward Pirate Pete, too? Captain Reedsley says there are eighteen books in the series, and we’re only on the second one! Have you read any of the others? What are they about?”

  Eleanor’s fingers stilled on Pandy’s back, and she looked down so her hair fell around her face. Pandy could still see it, though, and the girl was biting her lip so hard it looked like it might start bleeding. Was it wrong that she hoped it did? Because the princess almost certainly counted as an Innocent, and Pandy could always use more Corruption Points.

  “Mother says members of the royal family don’t have time for common fiction. I’m only allowed to read books about history, science, art, and things like that.”

  Now Thaniel and Geraldine both looked horrified. “So you’ve never read Wayward Pirate Pete? Or The Quest for the Lost Left Sock of Destiny?” Geraldine asked.

  “And what about The Adventures of Captain Fluffykins and His Magical Beard?” Thaniel demanded.

  Eleanor peered up through her hair. “I’ve heard other children talk about Wayward Pirate Pete. Are those other ones real books?”

  “Of course they are!” Geraldine said, clearly trying not to be too offended at a princess of the realm. “Well, mine is. I’ve never heard of Captain Fluffykins.”

  Now it was Thaniel’s turn to be insulted. “It was one of Mother’s books! I read it after she… It was on my shelf at home.”

  “Oh,” Eleanor said. “You got to have some of your mother’s things? Mother says children shouldn’t have too many reminders of their parents if they, you know. Because then we can’t forget about them, so we’re sad all the time.”

  Even Thaniel and Geraldine knew that King Fergus was dead, and Pandy thought it must have been fairly recent. In Gacha Love, Prince Kaden was, at seventeen, very nearly ready to become king. In fact, if Cra chose him, she was crowned queen at the end of the cutscene where they got married. Kaden had mentioned losing his father when he was fairly young, but didn’t give a precise age. Eleanor obviously remembered the king, though, so he had probably died in the st year or two.

  Thaniel’s eyes were gssy, as they often were when he thought about his mother, and for a moment Pandy thought he would let a few tears fall. Then he sniffled and wiped his nose and eyes with the back of his sleeve, and she sighed in defeat.

  “Daddy and Lian said I should take anything of hers I wanted,” he said. “So I took the bnket she always used when we snuggled together, and when I learned to read, I took all of her books that Lian didn’t. He likes boring books, but she had a lot of good story books.”

  Eleanor looked down, scrunching the cy flounces of her skirt in a way that would have appalled Lady Alice. “When Papa sent for your clothes and such, did you get those books, too?”

  Thaniel shrugged, but for a moment Pandy thought the tears might fall after all. “They’re on the shelves in another room. The soldiers only brought things from my bedroom.”

  Geraldine leaned forward, ying her hands over Thaniel’s. “I’ll tell Father to have someone send them. Surely it should be obvious that they’re yours, if they’re for children.”

  A sniffle made them both turn to the princess, whose presence they had clearly forgotten. She touched a dainty handkerchief to the corner of one watery gray eye. “You two are such good friends. I wish I had friends like you.”

  Thaniel and Geraldine exchanged a look, then smiled at Eleanor. “We’ll be your friends, if you like,” Geraldine said.

  “And we can read The Adventures of Captain Fluffykins and His Magical Beard together when I get it,” Thaniel suggested. “When we’re at school, no one will know if you read a little fiction.”

  “That’s…that’s true,” Eleanor said, face lighting up. “And I’ll introduce you to Winston Howl. He’s a puppy, and he has the most adorable droopy ears.”

  “All right, then,” Thaniel said, scooping Pandy into his arms. He looked around, then back at the girls, and Pandy knew by his expression that he was Up to Something. “Now, your mother said you shouldn’t get dirty, but hostages almost never get messy.”

  “Unless they get paint on their fur,” Geraldine said, and Thaniel gave her a Look that said she wasn’t pying along properly.

  “I guess maybe there was a really pretty princess sailing across the sea, and Wayward Pirate Pete set out to catch her and hold her for ransom. But when he reached her ship, some bad guys had already taken her, so he had to save her before he could ransom her. So you go over there by the really big flowers that look like wax, Ellie… Do you mind if I call you Ellie?”

  Eleanor shook her head, looking rather shocked at the speed with which the friendship was progressing, now that it was official.

  “All right, so Ellie is on the Really Evil Pirate Drake’s ship. I’m Drake, ‘cause I’m still all dirty, and the bad guy has to get beaten up in the end, and Bunny is my first mate. Geri, I guess you’re Pirate Pete this time-”