LTSV - Side Stories - 3 - Boys and The Stairs (Patreon)

Cecily’s spring term in her second year was not starting on the same high note that her first year had. 

She was sitting in the last of her morning classes, waiting for the instructor to finish wrapping up the lesson, and reflected on where she was compared to where she’d wanted to be in terms of her goals. 

She had some wins; she and Viola had permission to room together again, she’d just sold four big laceworks, and she had a scholarship covering all her remaining school expenses plus some pocket money so Father couldn’t cut her education off whenever he felt like it. He’d already signed all the permission slips she needed and the school did not allow parents to renege on enrollment without their child’s agreement. She was almost finished with her application to graduate from Breckenridge early and there was a good chance that the scholarship board would agree to cover her first year of Compton if she could pull off both an early graduation and an early admission. They’d done it before, especially for the scholarship students who were receiving both need and merit based awards.

The less good news was that her mysterious bully hadn’t graduated last year or had persuaded someone to carry on harassing her in their stead. Just yesterday, she’d found strips of used ink blotting paper folded into a book she’d left on her desk during lunch. The bully knew all the readings for the upcoming week and had ruined those pages specifically. This did nothing to convince her it wasn’t Fergie, trying to ruin her school experience.

William Noir had come to her rescue with a brilliant little Motus spell that he’d refined to target ink that had been applied to paper within a certain timeframe. He’d made the waste ink dance around in the air for a second to make her laugh before tossing it out an open window and into the bushes. He never cracked a smile, the whole time, but Cecily was learning to pay attention to the things he did rather than how he sounded when he talked. There was a reason he and Alan got along so well. 

She’d been braced for the other girls to get annoyed with her for the continual interruptions, especially when the boys in class kept coming over to help her. Annette Lancaster was the one to finally explain to her, when she hesitantly approached their group with a box of cookies she’d made as a pre-emptive peace offering.

“This is going to keep happening until the Fourth Prince gets bored and wanders off,” she told Cecily, while biting into a caraway biscuit. She was a tall brunette with lambent violet eyes that suggested Cecily was going to school with members of two, if not three, of the secret Royal Bloodlines. Juliette Morrowood had purple eyes too, although hers were closer to a lavender-blue. “He tried to have a public flirtation like this in preparatory school too, but the high born girls wouldn’t have anything to do with him, just because of his background. He doesn’t have anything to offer that’s worth the humiliation of being the stick he uses to flog Lady Coventry with. That said, he does have a handsome face so there’s always someone’s third daughter who watches him play polo and gets delusions about becoming a Princess Consort through him. That type will gang up to lash out at whoever he’s trying to woo. They formed an entire unofficial club in preparatory school. You haven’t been out in society, so he probably thinks you’re an easy mark. The rest of us know him too well.”

That had pricked Cecily’s pride, but also fit with what she had been feeling whenever the prince came by to pick her up after classes or walk her to the dining hall. He’d tried to get her to come to the Salon with him, but letting him pay for her meals was a bridge too far and she’d refused.

Part of her didn’t want to believe it. Andrei cut a dashing figure and he’d saved her from several of the scarier bullying incidents during their first year and, right before they’d parted for summer break, he’d kissed her under the moonlight in one of the little pocket rose gardens that dotted the campus grounds. He’d left before she could say anything, but she’d been playing that kiss over and over in her head. 

It hadn’t felt anything like what the romance books said it would. There’d been no energy crackling between them. Her heart hadn’t beat faster when he drew near. The scent of his body didn’t make her head spin. It had just been lips touching hers and his fingertips digging into the small of her back.

Kissing Andrei hadn’t been bad, exactly, but she wasn’t so excited by the experience that she wanted to do it again.

A forbidden part of her wondered if kissing a different boy would be the same lackluster experience. She’d tried to picture the kiss again, but with other boys of her acquaintance inserted into Andrei’s place. 

Alan probably wouldn’t have tried to kiss her without permission. He kept his hands to himself unless there was an emergency. In fact, the only time he’d ever touched her without her initiating the contact had been when he came to help her with the tack in her foot. He would have never caught her by the waist and pulled her against him. He would have let her know what was on his mind and given her a chance to back away.

The same with Will. Will didn’t like to be touched, period. He would have chosen a different way to court her that didn’t involve hands, but he would have also let her know what he was about. He wouldn’t have acted like her friend until he suddenly wanted non-friendly things from her. William’s affection was subtle. He left snacks and fresh pencils on her desk and on Alan’s whenever he’d been to the school shop. He’d fix things that were broken and never waited around to be thanked after.

At least half the reason Alan and Will had started hanging around her was because they didn’t like Fergie. Both of them had younger sisters and that shaped the way they behaved around women. Will had caught Fergie fussing at her once and she’d had an escort from either him or Alan between classes ever since, unless Andrei had shown up to whisk her away on another of his impromptu adventures.

Randall… well, Randall was busy. He was a junior Student Council Member now and didn’t have time for romance. She was just grateful he still made time to eat his meals with her and study together. He probably had a fiancee lined up for him by his parents. He was their third son so he probably couldn’t indulge in any kind of relationship that wouldn’t help provide for his future. He definitely would marry a girl from a good family with a fat dowry and so there was no point in wondering if his lips were as smooth to the touch as they were to look at. Cecily wasn’t curious at all if she’d be able to feel the heat of his hands through her dress. If he was acting a little weird around Andrei lately, that was probably because he was trying to work past the fact that they were VERY different personalities and he was trying to be polite about it. Although, that reminded her; she’d meant to give Randall the lace collar she’d made for Auntie’s upcoming birthday so he could take it home with him over the weekend. She needed to wrap that and bring it to class in the morning so she could pass it to him. 

The bell rang for lunch break as she debated about which ribbon to tie the parcel with. She collected her books to take with her this time and followed the other girls out into the hallway. She had a really nice spool of green satin and the Zoranders loved all things green; green tea sets, green plants in the glass house, green carpets. That said, she had a short length of emerald green jacquard that she’d salvaged off a dress she’d bought at the secondhand shop to take apart for the trim. It was too short to be of use on a new dress, but she had just enough to make a clover-leaf bow with and…

It happened so fast Cecily didn’t realize that she was falling. She’d paused at the top of the stairwell to shift her books to one arm so she could hold the bannister and then, suddenly, she was airborne. She dropped her books on reflex and tried to grab the bannister, but she was too far forward to do more than graze it with her fingertips. Fear rendered her mind blank and she could only think to try one thing as her shoulder hit the first riser and she started to roll; flood her own body with Negetrophy magic so that she healed from any injury she received as soon as she got it. This was usually a self-defeating tactic that hurt her body to heal it. A combat medic who’d come to talk to the First Aid Club last year had laid problems like this one out for them in cold, practical terms; if the choice is surviving or not surviving, choose to do the thing that you can walk away from.

Cecily was battered by the stairs and could find no purchase to halt her fall until she landed heavily at the base of the stairs. Thank heaven, there was a thick carpet there to catch her. She laid there for a second, trying to assess her condition, before the first girl screamed. 

She looked blearily up at the top landing and it was like every girl she knew was clustered up there; Annette, Julia, Viola, Amelie, and even Senior Coventry had come to see what the screaming was about. She was towards the back of the crowd and flanked by two other girls that Cecily didn’t know, but who also wore Prefect badges. 

“Cece?” Andrei called from down the hallway, sounding alarmed, and she squeezed her eyes shut.

No, please. Not him. Not right now.

“CECE!” 

Having Andrei show up at the scene of her accident was exactly as awful as Cecily would have predicted. He did not, for a single moment, entertain the idea that Cecily could have just slipped. The second he saw Senior Coventry up there, it was over.

He’d been fulminating since last year about her. Ever since he found out about the bullying, he’d been convinced it was Senior Coventry and this was based on no evidence whatsoever. Privately, she thought it might be because Senior Coventry had been made Head Girl and he hadn’t been named Head Boy. The reason for that was because Senior Coventry had taken her responsibility seriously. She did her turns as hall monitor and held regular study sessions for underclassmen. Insofar as Cecily was aware, the only thing Andrei had done as a Prefect was arrange a few parties. They had been fun parties and the students were happy for an opportunity to blow off steam, but she could see how the faculty might not agree that his activities were as valuable as hers.

Unfortunately, because Andrei was always there with a finger ready to point at Senior Coventry, the school administration had never investigated the bully. They were afraid that it was Senior Coventry and, if they officially knew about that, then they’d have to do something that risked offending the Lord Warden. That left Senior Coventry and the Prefects to try and catch the bully in action. They’d doubled the hall monitors in Cecily’s building and still had no idea who was doing all of this.  

Andrei stared up at Senior Coventry’s pale face as she stopped in the middle of trying to get through the packed crowd of girls to get down the stairwell to Cecily. “This has gone on long enough,” he growled.

He stood up and pointed at Senior Coventry. “The school has protected you for too long. I’m going to stop you before anyone dies from your miserable jealousy, you vindictive witch! Prepare yourself. I’m taking this matter to my father. The Coventry name and your father’s money won’t save you this time.” He knelt again to help Cecily up with a gentle smile, “Come on. Bryn and I will help you to the nurse’s office.”

“Andrei…” she started to say, but was shushed.

“It’ll be alright,” he told her. “I won’t let her hurt you again.”

No one had said that she hurt Cecily in the first place!

Still, Cecily couldn’t help the small coil of doubt in her heart. She knew, in her head, that Senior Coventry had a much easier way to hurt her than to push her down the stairs. Her heart was starting to waver, though.

What if Senior Coventry really was the bully?

That doubt stayed with her as Senior Coventry all but vanished from the school for the rest of the year. Andrei was smugly convinced she’d been expelled, which Cecily wasn’t sure she agreed with. They usually put a notarized announcement up on the common room wall when something like that happened and the school would give a list of reasons why. That never happened for Senior Coventry and Randall was willing to swear he’d seen her around the North Tower with some of the other upperclassmen from the advanced manacrafts classes.

In her absence and in the absence of any commentary from the school, Andrei was the only source of information about her guilt or culpability. People slowly started to believe him and all the good work she’d done for the school was quietly forgotten in the wake of her scandal.

Most damningly, the bullying stopped when Senior Coventry stopped hanging around Cecily’s building. If the bully really was someone else, then they were smart enough to drop the harassment when someone else had already taken the blame and Cecily would never find out what their problem with her was.

‘I don’t really want it to end this way,’ Cecily thought, despondently. What she had wanted was proof that she had been right about Senior Coventry the whole time—and not just because none of her friends would listen to her. She wanted to believe that someone had been looking out for her with no expectation of the possibility of getting to kiss her afterwards. Cecily especially didn’t want the real bully to get off free if it turned out that she was right and the bully saw a chance to frame Senior Coventry because she’d been the one trying to come to Cecily’s aid. 

The Graduation Fete for the seniors was coming up. If Senior Coventry hadn’t been expelled, then she’d surely show up there and Cecily would have one final chance to ask her, to her face, if she really was the one harassing her.

-Fin | Cecily Side Story 3