“She can still learn,” Valka says, as if I weren’t standing right there. “And she’ll have to at least a bit. You can’t go through life all wide-eyed and expecting the best of everyone and not get hurt.” She turns to me. “You really must start learning to politick. Your brother and I can’t always be protecting you.”

I force my lips into a smile and dip my head. Protecting me? I suppose it must feel like that to them, since they don’t visit their little jokes upon me. At least not much—only when they cannot help themselves, as Valka has said before. Or when I incite my brother’s annoyance.

“Did you not like Edlyna’s boots either?” I ask, just to gauge his reaction.

He eyes me as if I am stupider than mud. “Her boots? What do I care for those?”

Valka rolls her eyes, but there’s a tightness to her expression that tells me she’s hoping I’m just smart enough not to blather her reasons to my brother. “Edlyna is always putting on airs, Alyrra.”

I nod knowingly. “So then . . . ?”

My brother huffs a sigh, annoyed to have to explain even this to me. “You know how her family was going on about their new luminae stone—Edlyna made sure to tell me it was fashioned by the mage of the Faransin court, and spelled to last at least five years. Now you tell me, why would she say that to me?”

I shrug. The luminae stone arrived a good two or three weeks before Edlyna’s new boots. I doubt my brother realizes how he was used. I say only, “Perhaps Edlyna was happy about it?”

“She was rubbing in the fact that she has one in her room, and I do not!”

“She does share a room with her parents,” I point out. “And Mother has two, so we still have more than they do.”

“Valka,” my brother says, turning to her with disgust written across his features, “why do we even try?”

“Because she’s your sister,” Valka says philosophically. “We can’t exactly give up on her.”

“I have to go back to my studies,” I say, to stop their discussing me again. “My tutor is waiting.”

“What, right now?” Valka asks, her eyes flicking to my brother.

He catches my arm as I make to step around him. His grip is tight, ungiving, but not hurtful. It’s just a warning. “Don’t go, little sister. You know I’ve only just joined you, and if you leave now, Valka must as well. You had better stay.”

“As you like,” I say, looking away.

He laughs and drops his hand, and a moment later he and Valka are arm in arm. I follow along a foot or two behind, and try not to listen to their words.