Perhaps we had never loved one another at all.

I placed the letter back in its envelope, then tucked it safely away among the other letters in the bureau. I wished it was the next morning so that I could go to my classes and immerse myself in the work.

I lay in bed for some four odd hours, staring at my ceiling and listening to the wind as it whistled through my window. Presently, I heard the scuff of shoes on my tower window, and shortly thereafter Artemis took a seat beside me on my bed. He let his hand rest gently on my chest.

"You should throw those letters away," he said without judgment. He knew without knowing, somehow, that I had looked at them again.

"I know," I answered.

I never figured out how he scaled the side of the tower the way he did. Its surface was smooth and without ridges or foot holes. That being said, Artemis managed to do many things that made me gawk (such as sitting through Belinda Caul’s class without getting belittled), and so this minor feat shouldn’t have startled me as much as it did.

It was still a curiosity, though.

He stretched out on the bed beside me and let his head rest on my shoulder, stroked his fingers gently over my chest. We spent many an evening this way, resting together and listening to the sound of our combined breaths on the air. Even on colder nights we would leave the window open, and wrap ourselves together in the thick quilts that I kept in my closet, watching the candles burn themselves away. Pure thoughts and emotions passed between us through the gift of mind that we both possessed, rendering words an unnecessary but pleasant luxury. Only the sound of our gentle kisses disturbed the aura of silence in the room.

A sense of wary contentment had settled on my shoulders. I was happy with Artemis. There was no tragic drama playing itself out before my eyes, for once, no skeletal hands pulling us away from each other, forbidding our love and affection. In fact, it was encouraged. Bessera and Irwin often asked me how things were, and Tobias pointed out on many occasions that when I turned eighteen, there were cities that would legalize our marriage in Kalaweinvyrismere. I of course laughed gently at this suggestion at first, though the thought of spending my life with Artemis often crossed my mind the more intense our relationship grew. I didn’t doubt that it would be a wonderful life indeed if we chose to do so.

But still I was tense. Still, I found myself, however dully, anticipating the bimonthly letter that Ulrich was sure to send, anticipating news of his dreary life even though it depressed me. I cherished Artemis and his easy way of accepting these letters without jealousy, cherished how he would entrap me in his arms and comfort me when it seemed a sure thing that my tears would come. I cried and pined for Ulrich less and less as the months progressed… and at some point I felt my love for him diminish as well. Of course I knew that it would never really vanish; such passion and fierce admiration are hard to forget.

It simply became less painful to picture him with someone else.

And Artemis loved me.

To be loved. I think that was the need that drove my passionate anger and misery all throughout my childhood and adolescence, into my early adulthood. I wanted with all of my heart to look into another person’s eyes and see love for me in their depths. I wanted to feel the comfort of arms around me and the gentle promises of eternity whispered into my ear. Ulrich wanted the same thing, and it was only a sly trick of fate that we stumbled across one another when we did. Maybe we did not miss each other, but the love that we felt when we spent time together. The safety.

Artemis introduced me to a different type of love. It was not desperate love, nor was it cruel love based on sadness and deprivation. It was a giving emotion, a true relationship with rules and unvoiced laws that seemed to be learned instinctively. I wondered where he had learned such things, how he had learned them, and when I asked he only smiled at me and told me how amazing I was.

I wished that Ulrich would have this sort of relationship with his Camilla one day.

But I have digressed from my story, once again. I do that often, don’t I?

Artemis sat up after a time and pushed his hair out of his eyes. He looked at the clock on my wall, which read eleven-thirty. "It’s late," he remarked blandly.

"It is," I agreed. I watched his silhouette in the darkness; the candle had long since burned itself out.

"You’ll sleep through your morning classes if I stay."

"I’ll never be able to get to sleep if you leave." I took his hand and squeezed it affectionately.

He voiced a small half-smirk, half-laugh, and I felt the radiant warmth of his smile though I did not see it. "You," he murmured in disbelief and leaned down to kiss me. "Don’t you ever grow weary of me?"

"Ridiculous notion," I responded dryly. I lifted one arm, wound it slowly around his neck and shoulders, and brought his face close to mine again. I kissed his mouth, his top lip specifically; I drew the kiss out for as long as I could, reveling in the familiar taste of his lips.

There was a method to Artemis’ lovemaking, and it had frustrated me beyond all measure during the first few months that we experimented with each other. It was the Kakarah way, Irwin explained to me (and it embarrassed me outrageously that he was aware of my physical relationship with Artemis!), simply because his people had such an eternity to go about things. There were men and women on the campus, I knew, who would make love two or three times in an evening (or five or six depending). With Artemis, it was once, if only because the process was so long and exhausting. I believe he took great pleasure in being a tease, in hearing me spout a litany of curses in no particular order when he would leave me right on the brink of my passion. Of course, dutiful as always, he would make it up to me, and I would have little room for complaint.

That night was no exception, and it was when the grayness of dawn was very clearly pronounced on the horizon that I finally gave in to him with an ardent, though muffled cry and collapsed against my mattress. Any and all possibility of attending class that morning was dismissed from my mind, and sleep was already making the corners of my vision blurry.

Artemis, content as a satiated cat, lounged beside me and watched me. "What shall I tell Dr. Faushe," he implored teasingly, "when you do not turn up for class?"

I made a half-hearted attempt at a glare, which quickly turned into a sleepy grin of amusement, before I fell asleep. I felt the comfortable warmth of Artemis’ body beside mine as I lost consciousness. It was the most wonderful feeling in the world.

Belinda Caul became my worst nightmare.

Her class was self-imposed torture, I realized. Belinda had the poise and grace to be a beautiful woman like her sister, but she lacked the personality. Where there was sweetness and understanding in Bessera, there was only vindictive anger and resentment in Belinda, and she took a particular pleasure in exercising that anger on me, her least favorite pupil.

I rushed into her class late for rather obvious reasons and slipped into a seat beside Tobias in a manner that I hoped was inconspicuous. He favored me with a knowing, though small grin and slid me his parchment, which had his haphazard scrawl poured across it. "Copy this," he whispered.

"Copy what, Mr. Ferrin?" Belinda sneered and stalked towards our table.

I felt as if I was back in primary tutoring every time I stepped into her classroom. In Irwin’s class, the students gathered in his attic and he lectured and held class discussions. In Bessera’s class, she took her students on little mini-adventures into her menagerie of animals to observe all sorts of magical creatures you wouldn’t see anywhere else. There were no real assignments. You were judged on how well you participated and retained knowledge. The important examination would be when you left the college for good and pursued your career.

With Belinda, everything was tedious and difficult and unrewarding. She favored her Chemistry and Alchemy students over everyone else and treated them as if Stell had blessed each and every one of their toes and fingers. She treated me as if Stell had defecated on me.

She snatched up the parchment from me before I was given the opportunity to copy the notes, and I formed my face into a mask of complacence. She watched me vindictively, but I would not give her the gratification of seeing my distress.

"Up late again, Mr. du Monte?" she said pleasantly, though poison laced her words. I could hear it in the sickeningly sweet tone of her voice.

"No, Madame," I answered, my voice the cultured and crisp tone of a nobleman raised in a Gem household. I smiled at her. "I merely wanted to avoid disrupting your class any more than was necessary."

Tobias and a few others snickered, but Belinda was clearly unhinged by my demeanor. I thought she would strike me with her hideously clawed fingernails, and the white cobra Nemawyre on her desk hissed at me and flashed his fangs. I ignored both of them. Were she to hit me, I could write a letter home to Aunt Jill and request the mailing address of her lawyer. I would have Belinda paying me generous sums of money for the rest of her life.

She realized this and stayed her hand, but the rage still broiled in her eyes like fire. I couldn’t keep the smirk off of my face.

Leaving the Alchemy/Chemistry tower behind us, Tobias and I wandered to what had become known as Our Courtyard, chatting idly and watching the sun traverse the blue sky. Tobias was melancholy; this year at Kalaven College would be his last, and then he would leave for Cavenwry to join his family on their farm. I found myself wistfully hoping that he would decide to stay on as an apprentice for, perhaps, Bessera or Irwin. If he were to leave, I knew that I would miss his company terribly.

I said so as we walked towards the courtyard. He sighed quietly and nudged my shoulder with his.

"You know I would stay if I were able, Rocielle," he told me, "but my parents are not as wealthy as your aunt and uncle. They do not have a bank of money stored away in a vault somewhere in the Rowena Mountains with which to fund my education. It put them into debt simply to send me here, and I can’t ask them to spend more money on room and board here when I will do no learning. And the meager earnings I gain with my part-time job in town don’t bring in nearly enough for me to pay for it myself." He looked at me sadly. "I’m sorry."

I felt sorrow in that he would leave me, and so soon, but the words he spoke were true. I nodded somberly, then said, "But you will, of course, write to me every day?"

"Did you ever doubt it?" he smiled.

During the winter months, there were fewer classes, and that gave me more time to spend with both Artemis and Tobias. We included him on the trips we took to the theater, simply because he would not be there next year. If Artemis was jealous of the attention that I lavished upon Tobias during his last year at Kalaven College, he masked it well and only looked at me with adoring eyes free of envy. I believe that through me, the two of them discovered that they could, in fact, become friends, and it made the three of us all the closer.

And then it was not just a pair of lovers and a friend they dragged along for the ride; it was three very close and affectionate friends, two of whom were lovers. There were no secrets between us—only truth and honesty and trust. The last year I had to spend with Tobias was a wonderful one.

All through this time I watched as the enigmatic Alecielle de Lemiux slowly faded from the spotlight. But he did not disappear entirely. He remained in Kalaweinvyrismere with his lady companion, frequenting the cafés and dark taverns by moonlight, chatting with the artists and intellectuals of my age, sometimes arguing vehemently with them and sometimes simply observing. All the while the woman sat beside him in benign silence, her pretty face generally expressionless though her eyes were alert and almost severe in their azure clarity. I glimpsed the blonde seraph on several occasions when he sat outside the café that I often frequented. I was too afraid to approach him when I did see him, though I watched as he engaged all who did venture over in conversation. If they bored him, his elegant raven-haired lady would rise from her chair and escort them away.

On one occasion, however, Tobias, Artemis and I sat inside a rather quaint and unknown coffee shop just outside the city limits of Kalaven City, drinking our warm beverages and reading over the latest book of published poetry that Artemis had procured, when the silver bells tied to the doorknob to the café jangled. Mildly curious, I glanced up to see who it was that entered—

And discovered that it was him. Alecielle.

To see him out and roaming the streets at such an ungodly hour of the night made the hairs on the back of my neck rise nervously. Artemis immediately sensed my anxiety and looked at me, his brows raised questioningly. Tobias watched me too.

Without a word, I gestured to the tall, blonde man as he lingered in the doorway. Without a pause, his delicate lady followed him inside, eyes searching benignly.

Artemis’ jaw fell agape, and Tobias simply buried his nose in the poetry, hoping to remain inconspicuous. I could not hide my awe. I had never been so close to the actor in all my months of admiring him. And had I been closer, I doubt I would have had the courage to speak to him.

I didn’t now. But I didn’t have the courage to look away as his eyes settled on me.

He was truly a magnificent being, as Artemis and I had always agreed. This night he was attired in a crimson velvet frock coat, shockingly blonde hair tied up in an elegant bow away from his face. How beautiful and angelic he was, white-gloved hands resting on the cap of a walking stick he surely didn’t need. His lady was just as elegantly attired, her gown of a pale mint cream color that was cut low to expose the pale flesh of her cleavage. The gloves she wore stretched up to her elbows, the lace accenting her slender build and the white fabric making her fingers appear slender and fragile. Everything about her seemed delicate, as if she were a porcelain doll.

The woman watched me as soon as she noted where her companion’s eyes were, and I felt a chill run through me. Such intense, unblinking stares… I had never felt such intensity before, and it wasn’t a comfortable intensity. Irwin had been right, I realized quite suddenly. Whatever these beings were, they were not human.

But a radiant, cordial smile broke out across Alecielle’s cherubic face, and he walked quietly over to our table. I could hear the heavy fall of his leather boots against the wooden floor.

"They can’t be coming here," Artemis whispered in disbelief.

But he was. Alecielle paused a respectable distance from our table, his eyes darting from me, to Artemis, to Tobias. He bowed elegantly, a courtly movement that almost deigned the presence of a hat atop his head. "Good evening," he greeted us, his voice liquid and silky. It reminded me of rich berry wine. "Would it bother you gentlemen too terribly much if we joined you?"

I stared at Alecielle wordlessly, before looking to Artemis. He gave me a glare that seemed to say, ‘As if you need to ask!’ I looked back at Alecielle and smiled shakily. "N-not at all, sir. Shall I fetch you and your lady friend a chair?"

"As if I were so inept a gentlemen," he chided me lightly and pulled up two chairs from another table. He seated his elegant female companion, then took the seat beside her. Casually, he placed one arm around the back of her chair, a subtle message of possession, and turned his glowing blue eyes on me.

"I glimpsed you at several of our performances," he remarked. "I take it you enjoyed the show?"

"It was definitely singular," Artemis said with an uneasy little laugh. "You’ve raw talent, sir."

"Please," he said and held out a hand to Artemis. "Call me Alecielle. May I have your names?"

Artemis accepted the extended hand and shook it tremulously. "Artemis Jezera."

"Splendid," Alecielle smiled, then looked to my reticent and anxious friend Tobias. "And who might you be? I think I spotted you there on a few occasions."

Tobias loathed being put on the spot. Crimson color rushed to his cheeks, then to his tapered Fellahin ears. "Tobias Ferrin," he said meekly, but never looked up from his book of poetry. "I enjoyed your show as well."

"Wonderful!" Alecielle’s animated face turned to me, and I sensed something in his stare that had been absent when he spoke to my companions. There was a new intensity in his eyes, one that he seemed to reserve for me. "And you," he said almost coyly, his eyebrows raising towards his hairline. "I would call you a sycophant if you weren’t so genuine in your admiration of the theater. Please, I must know. What is your name?"

"Rocielle du Monte," I said without hesitation. "I come from Crystal City."

"Crystal City," he repeated. He winked, then placed a hand on his lady’s arm. "Darling, introduce yourself."

"Certainly." Her smile was entrancing. She offered one of her slender, silken hands out to me. "Vishali de Musé. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Master du Monte."

Though Tobias spoke relatively little, the five of us spent the majority of the night in deep and pensive conversation with each other. Alecielle seemed to find all of us intriguing and worthy of his time, which was more than I could ever have hoped for. Judging by the elated expression on Artemis’ face, he felt the same way. And when at last it was time for us to part for the evening, Alecielle gave the three of us another of his courtly bows.

"It is my sincere wish, gentlemen," he said seriously, "that we meet again some day and continue this conversation. You are, all three of you, delightful people."

We managed a nervous "thank you" in reply.

As we left the coffee shop, I couldn’t help but notice Vishali’s eyes watching me from where she lingered by Alecielle’s side. As he waved us off, Vishali was still and without movement, her expression critical and almost predatory. It made me shiver.

I decided then that I did not like that woman at all.

There were no classes the following morning, and despite my late night out, I rose early to pay Irwin a visit in the Astrology Attic.

I found him, as usual, diligently at work on yet another philosophical documentary, quill scraping gently against the parchment. I sat down on a stool by his table and let my chin rest in my hand while he worked.

His spectacles rested low on the bridge of his nose, glittering emerald eyes rereading what he had just written while his lips softly formed the words though he did not speak them. One of his feline ears had swiveled in my direction; a bird he had recently procured, a little yellow canary, chirped at me from a delicate golden cage suspended from the ceiling.

After another minute or so, he set down his quill and rose to prepare himself a cup of tea. I rarely if ever saw that man eat; I wonder if he lived off of tea. When the drink was ready, he returned to his seat and reclined in it, inhaling the steam slowly before turning his large eyes on me. He waited for me to speak.

I sighed heavily. "I think you were right about Alecielle," I admitted.

He raised his dark brows curiously. "How so?" he asked and set the cup down beside his ink canister.

I shrugged. "He’s beautiful," I said nonchalantly. "He’s elegant, he’s almost too immaculate, and his mannerisms are so… strange. And his skin is flawless and his eyes are too bright. If he is something other than human, then so is his female companion. They are, as you would put it, of the same ilk, though I believe she has more malicious intentions than him. I think that she may be manipulating him to gain something."

"Could it not, perhaps, be the other way around?" Irwin suggested mildly.

"I doubt it," I answered. I tried to explain why I felt this way. "He seems too gregarious to be anything short of an incredibly generous and intelligent man who simply enjoys acting. Vishali… she seems to be the sort of person who might plot her own demise if it might in some way be of use to her. There is something between them, but I doubt it is love."

"Interpret it as you will," he told me with a vague gesticulation of one arm. "But I advise you to be careful. I believe it would be in your own best interest not to see this man anymore."

I hated it when Irwin played the overprotective father. I sulked and picked at the wood of his desk. Seeing my silence, he moved to pick up his quill and continue his work, but I said suddenly, quietly, "Why do you distrust him so?"