Lucky Rabbit

Pandy’s first mistake was letting her guard down. Once she was in the carriage and headed for Avington House, she shifted back to her bunny-body and sprawled on the bench seat. There was no cushion on the nard bench seat of this carriage, and the curtains had definitely seen better days. Still, it was taking her home – for some definition of ‘home’ that contained the fact that the house had belonged to Pandy for approximately a week, and she had yet to stay there overnight.

Her second mistake was not planning ahead. In fact, she spent most of the drive thinking about Augustus and his little show that morning, followed by the heart-rending scene with Mira. She was definitely going to have to find some way to get a better healer to look at the woman. Augustus would probably help with that, but Lian had villain-powers that weren’t being turned to villainy, and he might as well use some of them to heal the lovely woman so her son didn’t have to watch her die slowly in front of him.

Pandy’s third mistake, as it turned out, was forgetting that ‘Killian the Villian’s’ whole schtick was the long-game. He spent three years plotting, planning, researching, and eventually murdering anyone and everyone he blamed for his brother’s death. A week was nothing to him, and he now knew that Pandy very much wasn’t… Well, whatever he’d convinced himself she was.

So when she got home and found Lian, Edgar, Kaden, and Dorian on her doorstep, she was absolutely flabbergasted. Not only flabbergasted, but caught so flat-footed that rather than walking forward and pretending she had no idea why they were there and what they might want to talk to her about, instead she tossed her packages in the air, jumped backwards into the thickest part of the tangled topiary, and dismissed Shifting Faces. Then, with a flick of her fluffy white tail, she turned and made a break for it.

A Very Large Hand came down, picking her up by the scruff of her neck before she could use any of her large amount of Agility to dodge, and she was held up, paws dangling, as Lian said, “I would very much like to speak to you, Lady Eurydice.”

Pandy stared helplessly at the villain, who stared back with one raised eyebrow, his face utterly neutral. She took encouragement from the fact that his eyes weren’t quite chips of blue ice, and nodded meekly. A glance from Lian had Dorian placing Pandy’s paws back on the ground before all four boys began picking up the scattered packages. Very helpful of them, but she didn’t miss the fact that they carefully examined each one as they did so.

There was something uncomfortably revealing about changing shapes in front of them, so Pandy gathered her tattered dignity around her and hopped up the front steps, raising a paw to scratch at the door in hopes that Nox would notice. Really, what was the point of having house elementals if they didn’t even pay attention when a rabbit asked to be let in?

But the door swung open before her paw could even touch it, revealing Nox, Nyssa, and Isidor. Isidor almost looked worried, Nyssa was wringing her hands again, and Nox was holding a sword that was as tall as he was, his face flickering from stiff butler to a warrior’s helmet without anything so comforting as an actual transition. It was more like both heads existed in the same space at the same time, and the effect was very disconcerting.

Dorian sucked in a sharp breath, shouldering his way to the front as his hand went to a sword sheath that had been hidden beneath his cloak. Pandy met Isidor’s eyes, shook her head, and hopped off toward the sitting room. Really, why hadn’t she bothered to fix it up when she could?

In the brief period when the others lagged behind her, she recast Shifting Faces, then sat down in the largest chair in the room, crossing her legs with what she hoped was studied nonchalance, but suspected looked more like a nervous tic. The chair was one of the worse ones, with spring-ends pressing into her back and buttocks, but she studiously ignored that as she gestured for everyone to sit.

Thankfully, even though the boys were the heroes of Gacha Love, they were also currently fourteen years old, and she was technically an adult. They were well-trained to be respectful to their elders, so they all trickled in and found seats. All except for Dorian, who was too large to sit in any of the ancient seats, and opted to hover awkwardly in the doorway instead. It was the first time Pandy ever found herself feeling sympathy for the sanctimonious would-be knight.

Of course, she hadn’t reckoned with the packages they were carrying, and there was a chorus of polite noises made as Nyssa – finally seeing something she could do – took each item and attempted to exit the room with it. Attempted, because Dorian was blocking the doorway, so the first time she went through the wall instead, and the package simply refused to go with her, thudding to the ground where she’d just been. After that, Dorian shifted out of the way, and the elemental was able to fulfill her function.

When Nyssa carried away the last package, Lian cleared his throat and said, “I believe that you-”

Nyssa floated back in. “Would anyone like some tea?” she asked, smiling with far more cheer than Pandy felt the situation called for.

Pandy’s panicked gaze went to Isidor, who gave a tiny shrug. What did that mean? Was he all right with poisoning the heir to the throne, a high-ranking noble scion, Thaniel’s brother, and Dorian? Or had something happened that would make it safe for the answer to that question to be “Yes”?

In fact, Dorian said, “Yes,” while the other three said, “No,” – Kaden with particular emphasis – which convinced the tallest boy to backpeddle, quickly changing his own answer. Nyssa looked disappointed, but Pandy waved her and Nox off. She would make sure to accept some tea and cookies once her uninvited guests ejected themselves from her home. Maybe she would even get a use of Minor Heal out of it.

“Are you certain all is well, my lady?” Nox asked. His face was back to his version of normal, and the massive sword was entirely absent, but he didn’t look any happier than Pandy felt.

She sighed. “No, but I’d better talk to them. It’ll be all right.”

His face stiffened into hard – or rather harder – lines of disapproval, but he gave a short bow and left the room. Pandy noticed he didn’t close the door behind him, and honestly, she was good with that.

Lian had only grown more glacial as he waited, and this time when he looked at her, it was with that Killian-glare that absolutely didn’t send a thrill through her, because that would be entirely inappropriate. Still, she’d spent a lot of time swooning over those eyes, so she should be allowed one last gasp of purely platonic appreciation.

“I believe,” he said again, more slowly this time, “that you owe me an explanation.” And he was right. She did. The problem was that she didn’t want to give it to him. If she did, there was no putting things back the way they’d been. According to Keros, his magic would put people in the situations that existed in Gacha Love, but it couldn’t force them to follow the script. That meant once these four boys knew the truth, they would have to choose to play along, and she knew them well enough to be certain that would never happen.

Closing her eyes, Pandy finally released the last vague hope that she might get to see her favorite game come to life before her eyes, and told him everything. Everything, including the fact that this had started as a game, at least from her perspective, that they were the love interests, that Killian was a sociopathic mass murderer who contracted with a demon to bring war to this country in exchange for helping him with his revenge, that Thaniel was meant to die, and that Pandy had been trying to prevent that from happening almost since she’d arrived.

Lian, being who he was, leaned back in his incredibly uncomfortable chair, steepling his fingers across his chest, and listened without a single twitch of reaction. All of the other boys gasped out loud at some point, with Kaden openly scoffing at the idea he might fall so completely for some girl, much less the one who’d pushed him off of Celestine Point, intentionally or otherwise. Though all of them except for Lian opened their mouths to speak at some point, they stopped themselves and continued to listen until Pandy was done, seeming to have reached some silent agreement that they were only there to support Lian.

Of course, as soon as she fell silent, Lian himself said, “That’s impossible. I’m a Light elementalist. There’s no possible way for my magic to be ‘corrupted’ to Dark. Someone’s elemental alignment cannot be changed.”

That was what he decided to nitpick about? It made sense, though, once she thought about it. There was no way to prove or disprove any of her claims up to this point, and what they did know supported what she’d said, however ridiculous it might seem. This, to Lian’s rational mind, was the lever with which he would expose her lies.

Drawing in a deep breath, Pandy desperately wished Keros was there to give her some advice. Not that she would take it, but at least she’d have someone she could argue with without being afraid he would murder her and everyone she cared about. Not that she really thought Lian would do that, but, well, there was always the chance.

“Are you certain you want me to explain this part now? It’s about-” she asked quietly, reaching up to touch her chest in the same place Thaniel’s heartstone rested.

Lian’s lips tightened, but Edgar’s hand came to rest on one of his shoulders, while Dorian’s gripped the other. Kaden shifted, leaning toward his friends, though he didn’t go so far as to actually reach out. With the smallest of sighs, Lian nodded.

For the sake of the other boys, including Isidor, who had moved into a patch of shadow where he blended in so thoroughly that she’d almost forgotten him until the others drew together, Pandy explained about the heartstone, though she started with Thaniel collapsing, and worked her way to their guesses that the stone was what caused – or perhaps enabled – Killian’s corruption.

“Thaniel says his father placed the stone there to replace his heart, which was damaged in the same crash that killed Lady Conroy,” she finished. “We can’t try to remove it without risking his life, and it causes him a great deal of pain whenever he tries to use magic. We’ve also recently begun to believe that… he might be a natural Light mage, but the stone has altered that alignment to the point that he seems to be Dark.”

“What did the essence stone show?” Dorian asked, pulling Pandy’s gaze from Lian’s paling face.

“What?” she asked.

“The essence stone,” he repeated. “During his revelation. Was his magic Dark or Light?”

Pandy’s mouth opened and closed several times. “He- I- We never-” She remembered how happy she’d been when Augustus announced that Thaniel wouldn’t have to hold the essence stone. Each of them had already been separately convinced that Thaniel was a Dark mage, and none of them wanted that to be revealed in front of the entire school on the very first day.

She was still sure that waiting had been the right thing to do, but why hadn’t they ever thought to try it later? But she knew. By the time they realized something was wrong, they were also frightened that anything they tried might upset the delicate balance of magic that kept Thaniel alive. She even found herself hesitating before she healed him, even though she’d done it many times before with no ill effect.

Lian levered himself up from his chair, nodding and showing none of the relief he must be feeling to be out of it. “Fine, then. We’ll start there. Lord Blackwood obviously knows what’s going on, so we can use the school’s stone. I’ll go now and arrange it.”

The other boys stood as well, with both Edgar and Kaden surreptitiously rubbing their backs and backsides. Kaden took a step toward the door, then stopped and turned back to Pandy. Bowing stiffly, he said, “Thank you for saving me. On Celestine Point. It went… some way toward encouraging my mother and me to trust you.”

Pandy, too, stood, nodding awkwardly. “I mean, I wasn’t the only one.” She glanced toward Isidor, who glared back at her in a very Don’t you dare kind of way. She cleared her throat. “Augustus and that knight with the cape helped, too.”

Kaden’s lips twitched. “Yes. Augustus.” For a moment, he looked very much like the future Prince Kaden, the one who could speak razor-sharp words with a smile on his face.

They all turned away, but Pandy hesitated, took a step after them, and said, “Lian?”

He looked back at her. His face was still even paler than usual, and beneath the perfectly tailored jacket, every line of his body was tense, but he didn’t entirely look like he planned to Purify her out of existence. Not just yet, anyway. “What?”

She swallowed hard. “Why did your mother run away? The day she died?”

He swayed as if she’d struck him, and again his friends moved to support him. Even Kaden brushed his fingers against Lian’s sleeve. No, this boy would never become the isolated and fanatical Killian. Not with Thaniel and friends like these still in his life.

Sighing, Lian returned to his chair and sat back down. With matching expressions of dismay, Edgar and Kaden followed suit, with Dorian looking as oblivious as ever as he settled into what would become his characteristic military rest position – feet shoulder-width apart, hands loosely clasped behind his back. Still, even she had to admit he’d had a good idea when it came to the essence stone, so there was that.

With something that almost looked like a hint of whimsy, Lian said, “I suppose I owe you all an explanation.”

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