He propped himself up on his elbow and stared at her, hard. “What kind of question is that?”

“Like you did with Nev,” she said, shrugging.

“I did not!” he said. “I never did any such thing!”

“Okay, but everyone else isolated her, as a matter of course.”

“But I didn’t tell them to do that!”

“You didn’t tell them not to do it either. You saw it happening, and you could’ve stopped it with a word, but you didn’t. I need a promise you won’t do that to me. You know I’d have to retaliate, right? It would make a huge mess of everything.”

Mari was staring mulishly at the bedsheets, thinking. Lovisa knew how slow he was to offense, how hard he considered everything, sometimes tortuously, before deciding what he thought. Unlike her. She was a little ashamed of herself.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I mean, I’ve isolated her too.”

He sighed, still looking confused. “Regardless of whether you’re right about her, I won’t do that to you,” he said. “I never would. I promise.”

“Okay then,” she said. “And I won’t retaliate.”

Mari rolled his eyes. “What a lovely future we’ve planned for ourselves.”

“We’ve promised each other friendship, haven’t we?”

“Yes, I guess we have.”

“Why do you trust me, anyway?”

“I don’t trust you with everything,” he said, with a small smile. “But I do with this.”

—

When Lovisa woke again, her stomach hurt with emptiness and anxiety.

Tea, she thought, remembering the preventative tea against pregnancy. And then she remembered that she didn’t have any. She tried to keep it on hand, it was easy to get from the academy infirmary, but the last time she’d been anywhere near the infirmary, it had been snowing, slippery, windy. Lovisa had spent too much time shivering outside in the cold lately.

She knew a lot of girls who’d have the tea on hand, but they were gossips.

Finding her robe, she left Mari’s room, slipped through the corridors, and tapped on Nev’s door.

When nothing happened, she tapped again and kept on tapping. Finally, the door opened a crack and Nev peered out, looking annoyed and rumpled. Lovisa remembered that it was Sunday morning.

“What do you want?” Nev said.

“Preventative tea,” said Lovisa. “I’m out. Do you have any?”

Nev groaned, opened the door fully, then climbed back into bed. “In the window. It’s that bushy one on the right that looks like the leaves are dying.”

The room was dark, the pink glow of sunrise beginning to illuminate frost on the windowpanes. Lovisa couldn’t tell the plants apart. “Seriously? You have it growing in your window?”

“Like I said.”

“Are the leaves dying?”

“No, that’s just how it grows.”

“What do I do?” said Lovisa, not moving from the doorway.

“What do you mean?”