Of course, eighteen for a human was quite different from eighteen for an elf. At eighteen, Leo had just been learning toread. The age of majority for elves was sixty, and relative aging slowed down even further past that threshold. There were tables comparing developmental milestones he could consult. Or there was always that formula his parents used: a fifth of your age plus seven prior to age 111, then a sixth of your age plus eleven prior to age 222, and on and on.
No. He was supposed to be coming up with reasons this was a bad idea, not rationalizing it.
Then she’d given him the answer herself: she was a princess. The princess of this very country, the country he’d hoped to make his home.
Well, that was taken care of. There was simply no possible way a Gallic son of elves so eccentric that their noble status wasn’t even certain among the elvish courts could possibly be a match for a Loegrian princess, not even a temporary one.
Problem solved. Crisis averted. Reason had, once again, won out, just as it was always meant to.
And then she had showed him her magic.
Oh, Gods, he was done for. How could he possibly stay away from her when she was capable ofthat? It would be unthinkable. It would be academic negligence to ignore such an avenue of inquiry.
No, he had to find a way to study her. He couldn’t let such an opportunity pass him by—not just magic, but dragon magic, forbidden magic that she practiced in secret, in quiet moments alone in her room—no, stop it; don’t think of her alone in her room.
Merde.
She walked away from him, cleaning up the mess he’d made (how humiliating), and he began scribbling down everything that had happened in his journal:
Friday, 9 days before Autumn Term
Entry 2
Managed to find book, but library ‘lectrics on the blitz again. Collision on the way out. A young woman of extraordinary magical ability—could be fascinating to measure. Strong, near-effortless grasp of magic.
He paused. He didn’t want to include too much information about her or anything identifying in case he ended up publishing extracts from the journal at a later date. He typically used initials when describing people: hers would be PC, he supposed, for Princess Ceridwen.
But that didn’t feel right. He didn’t allow himself to journal his thoughts and feelings; he was trying to be objective as a researcher, after all. But he thought if he didn’t put something down on the page that acknowledged what he felt, he might go crazy and try to express it some other way.
Hereafter “LBB.” Will ask LBB if I can take some measurements.
LBB: lovely beyond belief. It was the first thing that came to his mind.
Chapter Nineteen
RIPPED PAGES
Ceri
Ceri was growing increasingly frustrated with this journal.
She had gone all the way back to the beginning, but the entries over the summer had been inscrutable. It was all tedious observations about the objects and more numbers and calculations than seemed strictly sane. The script was incredibly neat, but that was about the only thing that kept if from looking like the ravings of a madman.
She finally found the first mention of LBB on the day of their library collision. It was definitely her, then.
But infuriatingly, there was no explanation for the initialism.
What could it possibly mean? Lonely Book Boy? No, she was a girl. ‘Lectric Back Burner? What did that even mean?
And then there were strange calculations in the margins. In all the other pages, the calculations were done in line, generally with explanations of their reasoning and meaning.
But here they stood alone. Far simpler calculations without all the strange symbols Ceri didn’t recognize:
66/5 + 7 = 20.2
66/6 + 11 = 22
66/3 = 22
