If he wasn’t coming back to the workshop, he at least could have had the decency to say so. But no, he’d left her to discover it on her own, which was somehow worse.

Oh, she hated him.

She fumed as she watched the captain assign the guards a lap around the training field, and as Arthur dropped his equipment and joined in. He jogged alongside Lance and a tall, handsome boy with a wide grin, dark brown skin, and some of the thickest biceps she’d ever seen. They were quickly joined by a stocky stocky, freckled, ginger-haired lad who struggled to match their brisk pace.

Ugh. Arthur was clearly trying to impress Princess Guinevere, because she’d caught him moping around the wizard’s workshop.

Well, fine. He could go swing around a sword and shoot arrows and be a dumb boy if he wanted. At least now she’d be able to study without his constant interruptions.

And with that, she gathered her books and stomped off to the workshop, where she wouldn’t be distracted by her view of the training field.

By the fourth day of Arthur’s absence from the workshop, Emry had to admit that she missed his company.

Her mornings felt empty without the prince smirking at her across the table as they worked. So she threw herself into her studies, glad for the distraction. And at the end of each day, drained and ravenous from all of the spellwork, she fell gratefully into bed, too tired to dream.

That Friday evening, Emry was walking back to her room from the kitchens, devouring a cheese sandwich and running over a new, complicated piece of spellwork, when she bumped into Gawain.

The prince’s cousin was dressed more restrained than usual, in a dark green jerkin and matching boots. A slightly shabby wool cloak and hood hung from his shoulders, which she wouldn’t have guessed he owned.

“Lord Gawain,” she said, hastily swallowing a mouthful of sandwich.

He considered her, and then his face broke into a grin. It made him look far more approachable. “I don’t suppose you’re free at the moment?”

“Why?” she asked warily, wondering what he wanted.

“Come and have a drink with me.”

Whatever she’d expected Gawain to say, that wasn’t it. “A drink?”

“I’m not Arthur,” Gawain said with a wry grin. “I can leave the castle quite easily. When I wish.”

“And you wish me for company?” Emry asked skeptically.

“We did fight bandits together. By my estimation, a drink is long overdue.”

Emry bit her lip, considering.

“Say yes,” he urged. “It’s depressing to go alone.”

She knew she should refuse, just as she knew Gawain was trouble. But she was bored. And lonely. And she’d seen so little of London in the weeks since she’d come to the castle. And she knew it would infuriate Arthur. The last one clinched it.