Eleanor puts the remote down, and on the television, an episode of her favorite fantasy series, Thorns of Berry and Briar, begins to play on the lowest possible volume. That’s the usual state of affairs when we spend time in Eleanor’s room—she must have watched this show a dozen times from beginning to end, and more so if you count the times she uses it for white noise.

“Okay. How does this sound?” Eleanor asks. She gets to her feet, leaving Danni with an empty space beside her (Why did she sit there in the first place, then?), takes her place in the center of the room, and lifts her chin as though she has a spotlight shining upon her. Then she grabs her cape in a handful by her heart, and bellows: “Your hand, your tongue. Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under it.”

“Context would be nice here,” Molly says wryly, head down.

Eleanor lets go of her cape, looking quite deflated. I fear she may have expected a standing ovation. “I’m auditioning for the play.”

Molly looks up from her work, brows furrowed. “… Why?”

“Because Dad says I need to beef up my resume before university applications next year. It’s not enough to be a straight-A student anymore.”

“A point which is highly relevant to you, as a straight-B student,” I say, raising a single eyebrow.

“Um, I get As in math, thank you very much,” Eleanor says. “Molly, back me up.”

Molly does not back Eleanor up. I suppose because she would have to acknowledge my presence to do so.

“Is Santi in the play?” Danni pipes up.

I hadn’t thought of it until the words left Danni’s lips, but of course this is about Santi. Everything is with Eleanor these days. As far as plans to court and marry the poor soul go, this one at least has more promise than her previous approach of staring at him across a crowded room and hoping for the best. Danni’s eyes flicker toward me, and we share a look of amusement.

“I’m not sure,” Eleanor says airily. “Couldn’t tell you what Santi’s doing. We haven’t even had auditions yet. Anything could happen.”

I don’t believe a word of it.

“Rose, I have a proposal,” Eleanor says, brandishing the script at me.

Glancing up, I raise my eyebrows. “Eleanor, we’re far too young for marriage, I must respectfully decline.”

She wisely ignores me. “I propose that when you’re queen, you introduce a law that if a lover needs something reasonable to happen in order to potentially win over her soulmate, she can demand it. Like, say, under the lovers’ law, if you needed a place in the school play, you could just … cite the law discretely and, boom, you’re in.”

“The ‘lovers’ law’?” muses Danni, looking to me for my reaction.