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Bringing her focus back to the human sized bulge in the wall, Pearl brought her hands together as if in prayer and then spread them wide enough for Fred’s face to appear. “Hello, there. Why did you punch Corvus in the face? I know I’ve been tempted to do it plenty of times. Maybe you had a good reason?”

Raising his eyes to heaven, Corvus knew his prayers were in vain. Fred wouldn’t be able to resist stirring the pot.

“Well, you see Corvus is rather heart sick over some girl his parents won’t approve of, and I thought I’d knock some sense into him.”

Narrowing her eyes, Pearl continued her interrogation. “Who’s this girl?”

A wicked smile spread over Fred’s face. “Don’t know her name. She’s wicked smart, American, feisty - looks a bit like you actually.”

Corvus decided it was time to jump in. “You know what, maybe we should call the campus officers.” But the damage was done. Pearl drew her hands fully apart and Fred fell out of the wall.

“Corvus. Explain. Before I actually suffocate your friend here.”

Fred groaned from the ground. “Why don’t you suffocate him and leave me out of it?”

“A fine idea. Corvus. Explain. Before I suffocate you.”

That would probably have terrified Corvus more if he hadn’t been inordinately pleased to have gained her full attention. And wasn’t that rather embarrassing? Somehow righteous indignation made her look even more beautiful. He decided teasing was in order to try to reestablish some sense of control over this situation. “Didn’t your parents teach you not to use magic when you’re fighting?” Corvus heard Fred laugh as he made his escape out of the alley.

“Didn’t your parents teach you not to get your friends to punch you in alleys to get the attention of a girl?”

Wincing, Corvus rubbed his swelling cheek. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist a damsel in distress.”

“You’re not a damsel, you absolute idiot.” It was said with mostly exasperation, but Corvus was sure he heard the faintest hint of a laugh in her words.

“Ah, but you did enjoy feeling gallant, yes? Seeing you ride in on your white horse to save me made my heart all aflutter. How else was I going to get your attention?”

“You are absolutely insufferable. If you wanted to talk to me, you could have just come up to me like a normal person and said, ‘Hey! A few friends and I are going to the pub, and you’d be welcome to join.’”

Corvus narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “And you’d have said yes to that?”

Opening her mouth to argue, no sound came out as he could see Pearl wrestling with whether it would be worth it to lie. She must have ultimately decided a lie would be worth it just to keep from seeing the smug look on his face, but her uncertain “yes” did nothing to prevent a wicked smirk from spreading across his face.

“Ah. My noble knight - lying does not become you.”

Sighing, Pearl didn’t argue. “Shut up, and let me look at that bruise.”

Gentle hands touched the spot where Fred had hit him, and soft green light surrounded him as he felt the tightness in his face dissipate, and he looked at Pearl in surprise. “You know healing magic?” Healing was complicated and took practice and training, so the fact that she could heal even a simple bruise was impressive when he already knew her concentration was cursebreaking.

“Shh. I need to focus, or you’ll end up with something nastier than a bruise.”

Corvus dutifully held still, but as soon as her hands lifted away, he turned to her with the same question on his tongue. “How do you know how to heal?” When her hand dropped back to her sides, he was tempted to hold one in his, but he didn’t want to spook her.

“My parents weren’t crazy about the idea of me cursebreaking. They think it’s deeply impractical. I think they assumed that it was just intellectual stimulation I needed, so they bought me every book on magical healing they could get their hands on along with weekly trips to the library for books on anatomy. And it worked for a bit, because it is a fascinating subject, so it kept me quiet for a while, but it couldn’t draw me away from my first love. I can’t do much more than heal bruises and small cuts and make headaches go away, but it’s a handy skill to have.”

“I’ll say. I can make your ears pointed - I liked learning entertaining magic rather than anything actually useful, much to my mother’s chagrin.”

“Well, maybe there’s something useful about having pointy ears? They do look rather dashing.” Embarrassment flushed her face at the admission.

Corvus immediately pulled on his magic, and brought his ears to a fine elvish point. It was terribly satisfying to make her laugh. “You can touch them if you like.”

To his surprise, the rather obvious attempt to get her hands back on him worked, and she gently ran a finger around the point and to his ear lobe. It made him shiver, and when he looked at her, their eyes caught. Hers were wide and blue and beautiful, and just for a moment before she pulled her hand back and broke the spell, he knew in his heart she wasn’t as disinterested as she made out. Oh, this was going quite well, indeed.

A question that had been pushed out of his mind by all of the events returned to him. “Where were you rushing off to in such a hurry?”

The frantic energy with which she had rushed out of class returned with a fury at his words. “My job, for which you’ve made me horrifically late - I don’t usually schedule work so close to class, but I’ve been trying to pick up some extra hours so I can get enough money to go home for the holidays in a few months.”

“You have a job?” Corvus could have kicked himself when he saw the look that spread over her face. It only took him four words to sound like the most entitled prick. And he knew she had a job – he'd been trying to learn more about her to see how he could best win her over. It was just that no one their age had jobs in the circles he ran in, so it was easy to forget how different her life was from his.