Thaniel looked uncertain for a moment, but Lian managed something that actually looked like a smile, and Thaniel brightened before handing Pandy off and hurrying toward the connecting door. As soon as water began to splash, Lian lifted Pandy so he could stare into her eyes.

  “What are you?” he mumbled, turning her so he could look at her fluffy, blood-soaked rear end. It was quite rude, actually, and Pandy wished she dared kick him, but that was very definitely out of the question.

  Releasing one hand, he prodded Pandy’s behind, sending a pang of pain through her. This time she did kick, though it was mostly involuntary, and he extended his arm, holding her further away from his pretty face. Oh no, it wouldn’t do to scar up his perfect skin, at least not until the event where that was meant to happen.

  Lian crossed over to the bowl of water resting on an end table next to the dainty wooden wardrobe. The water was probably meant for washing his face or hands, but he callously plopped her entire rear end into it, causing red to stain the water and making Pandy give an involuntary gasp. It was cold!

  Leaning down, Lian let her go, and Pandy sat shivering in the shallow pool as he looked at her intently. “Well?” he asked. “What are you?”

  Oh. That wasn’t a rhetorical question? How did she explain that she was just a dead girl mostly enjoying a second chance at life, albeit as an undead rabbit? Honestly, even the undead part had its perks, and if Lian would just go away and leave her alone, things would be perfectly lovely.

  Of course, Thaniel wouldn’t be happy with that solution at all, so Pandy sighed softly. Lifting a dripping back leg, she scratched at one ear, sending a spray of faintly red-tinged droplets onto Lian’s perfectly pressed shirt. He jerked back, jaw muscles flexing as he clenched his teeth, then glanced at the door into Thaniel’s room.

  Crossing the distance, Lian quietly turned the lock, ensuring that his little brother wouldn’t enter at an unfortunate moment. What that unfortunate moment might be, Pandy was a little afraid to guess, and she began eyeing the space beneath the bed, as well as the gap where the window was open slightly in order to allow fresh air into the room.

  Rather than doing something drastic, like trying to perform a – what was it called? Autophagy? Autopsy! – Lian rolled up his right sleeve, revealing his inner wrist. There, gleaming with soft silver luminescence, was the symbol of his magic.

  Instead of a flat image, like it had been in the game, this shifted, so slowly that even though Pandy could tell it was different from blink to blink, she couldn’t actually see it move. It also seemed to be glowing through his skin, not on top of it, as if it was actually inside of him. It was still fairly small, since this was three years before the game really started, but eventually it would cover his entire forearm.

  The symbols could begin to appear any time after someone summoned an elemental for the first time, though it usually took a year or two to be more than a smudge rising from beneath the skin. While some people proudly showed off their symbols, most members of nobility kept them hidden. This was in part because the symbols sometimes formed on parts of the body that were far more intimate than a forearm, but also because an enemy knowing what kind of elementals you could summon just wasn’t a good thing.

  When the main characters were in school, they all knew each other’s levels and magic types, but once you graduated, that was private information. Of course, Pandy knew pretty much everyone’s elemental type and summoning abilities, but she wasn’t the type to go around blabbing other people’s secrets, even when she wasn’t a rabbit.

  Now, Lian thrust his arm at her, and the glow beneath his skin intensified briefly, then settled back into its gentle glow. Judging by his expression, that wasn’t what Lian had expected, and he scowled, which was actually a good look on him. It was more honest than his usual bland agreeability, anyway. He shook his arm, as if the symbol was a malfunctioning television remote, and Pandy wondered with an entirely inappropriate but fortunately silent giggle if its batteries needed to be replaced.

  “If you were a demon, this should have burned you,” he growled. “Perhaps I’ve been too hard on Father, and he wasn’t trying to summon a demon after all. Not likely, given the things I found in his lab.” He jerked his sleeve back down, fumbling with the button at the wrist.

  “Are you an elemental? But you can’t be. Father was a Dark mage, and only the strongest elementals can take physical form. A powerful Dark elemental certainly wouldn’t look like,” he waved at Pandy with what she felt was an unnecessarily dismissive gesture, “that.”

  This time when water sprayed across him, it wasn’t an accident. Pandy shook herself hard, making sure a good amount of the water that had soaked into her fur found its way to the annoying young proto-villain. And to think, she’d once written a very, very bad fanfic about Clara saving him from himself so they could run off together, get married, and have seven children!

  Lian spluttered angrily just as the doorknob jiggled, and Thaniel’s reedy little voice called, “Lian? The door’s locked!” The rising note of panic in the boy’s voice caused Lian to turn away from Pandy after one last dirty look. By the time he opened the door, Lian’s face had settled back into an expression of imperturbability. That mask was promptly shattered as his little brother threw himself into his arms, sobbing loudly.

  “Lian, are you all right? I thought something happened to you, too!” Thaniel cried, rubbing his teary face against Lian’s crisp white shirt.

  Lian lifted his hand, gingerly patting the soft blonde curls. He cleared his throat. “The door must have locked accidentally. We’ll have to be careful when closing it.”

  Thaniel sniffled. “Let’s just leave it open from now on. Can I sleep with you?” He turned his face up, teary eyes wide and hopeful. Even ‘Killian the Villian’ wasn’t proof against a look like that.

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  “Of course,” the older boy said with a sigh. He stepped back, gently disengaging the little arms, and looked down at his wet, snotty shirt. “I suppose I should change now, too.”

  Nodding eagerly, Thaniel grasped his hand and pulled him toward the wardrobe. “They cleaned all our clothes, and even fixed the holes! Well, Cassie tried to fix ‘em before, but she never got the stitches small enough. But now you can’t even tell where I slid down the big hill and tore my best pants!”

  Pandy remembered that one. They’d been playing tag, and Pandy hadn’t even thought about how steep the hill was as she hopped away. Then Thaniel had let out a terrible little shriek and tumbled right past her, into a thicket, which fortunately stopped him from rolling straight into the river that circled the estate. Cassie had gotten into trouble for leaving Thaniel unattended, and in turn Pandy and Thaniel had been stuck inside for five whole days while Thaniel’s bruises and scratches healed.

  Lian opened the wardrobe door, staring at a tidy row of hanging shirts. They were all identical: white, with long, cuffed sleeves and a pressed collar. Beneath them sat a single pair of polished black shoes and one pair of riding boots, also made of gleaming black leather.

  Pulling out the sleeve of one of the shirts, Lian examined it closely, but apparently even he couldn’t find anything wrong with it. His lips tightened, but he pulled the shirt out, followed by a simple gray dress jacket.

  Flinging these across the bed, Lian began to unbutton his shirt, and Pandy clapped her paws over her eyes. It was one thing to see his wrist, but something else entirely to see him half-naked. Even if he was meant to be devastatingly handsome and sexy when he was seventeen, he was currently fourteen, and a strange adult female watching him undress was just icky.

  Rustling noises were followed by familiar little hands gripping Pandy’s belly. Thaniel hefted her, wrapping a small towel around her dripping body before turning so they could both see Lian, who was fully clothed again. Pandy had just heaved a sigh of relief when a tapping came at the door.

  “M’lord Killian? Lady Alice wishes to know if you’d like the doctor to see to Master Thaniel’s rabbit as well?”

  Lian’s eyes narrowed, and he looked over at Pandy, who was now snuggled against Thaniel’s chest in her usual position. He crossed to the door, opening it to reveal another maid, dressed in the same frilly blue and white uniform as Becca.

  “Is the doctor a mage?” he demanded.

  The girl blinked, but recovered quickly, bobbing a curtsey. “Yes, sir.”

  Which meant the doctor was probably a Water or Nature mage, the two elements most suited to healing other than Light. Of course, Light mages were so rare that they were found almost exclusively in the cities, where they could demand higher prices for their services. After all, being a Light mage didn’t automatically mean a person was kind and selfless. Even Clara could be played as Dark Clara, making only choices that benefitted her, though it was much more difficult to set the romance flags on that path. Pandy had only done it once, for the sake of seeing scenes that were only available in a Dark Clara playthrough, but she hadn’t enjoyed it.

  Lian cut his eyes back to Pandy, smiling slightly. “Yes,” he said, “we wouldn’t want poor Bunny’s wounds to get infected.” The maid curtsied again before hurrying back down the hall, leaving Pandy to wonder what Lian was up to this time. It took only a few minutes to find out.

  The doctor was a surprisingly young man with deep brown skin and a cheerful smile. He prodded Pandy’s backside a few times while she glared at Lian. Parts of the examination were quite personal, in fact, and the smirk on the villain’s face said he knew she was aware of that fact.

  Eventually, however, the doctor, whose name was Edwards, handed Pandy back to Thaniel with a reassuring smile. “Quite a healthy female rabbit,” he said. “You’ve done a good job taking care of her, young man. I can hardly even tell she’s been in a fight, which matches up with what young Miss Geraldine said about Miss Cupcakes only playing with her.”

  Playing? That cat had been out for blood, and she’d gotten it! If not for Pandy learning Minor Heal, she’d still be oozing all over the place. Pandy knew whose side Geraldine was on, not that there’d ever been much doubt.

  “You don’t see anything else…odd about her?” Lian asked, leaning forward.

  Doctor Edwards frowned. “No,” he said thoughtfully. “Her heart rate is quite slow for a rabbit, but she obviously feels safe with young Thaniel here.”

  That was news to Pandy, especially since she hadn’t been aware she had a heart rate. In fact, she was sure she didn’t have one, so maybe something about the magic that animated her made it seem like she did? She’d made sure to breathe while the doctor was examining her, though that was pretty much a habit by now. She’d sometimes forgotten for the first week or so, and poor Thaniel had been terribly worried about her.

  Lian tried again. “Doesn’t she need some medicine or something? Maybe a healing spell?”

  Was he trying to see how someone else’s magic reacted to her? Fortunately, it didn’t seem like it was going to work, because Edwards smiled apologetically. “I’m afraid my magic is all done with plants. I can offer you a salve to numb the wounds, or leave a poultice in case it begins to look inflamed, but I really think she’ll be fine without them.”

  To Pandy’s delight, Lian actually looked frustrated. He was definitely trying to get the older mage to do something, and Doctor Edwards wasn’t cooperating.

  “Well, I’ll be going, then,” Edwards said, picking up the bag he’d laid on Lian’s bed. He reached into it and pulled out a little packet, which he handed to Lian. “As I said, I don’t think she’ll need it, but here’s a drawing poultice. Only use it if the wounds begin to look red or swollen, and you’ll have to make sure she doesn’t lick or chew the area. It won’t hurt her, but it could make her feel quite nauseous, and rabbits can’t vomit, so it would take a day or more to work through her system.”

  Lian’s expression had closed down into his mask of civility, but his fingers clenched around the packet. Thaniel, on the other hand, looked very relieved, and followed the doctor to the open door.

  “Sir?” the boy asked as the doctor started to turn away.

  Doctor Edwards looked back, his expression startled, and said, “Yes?”

  “Is the kitty all right?” Thaniel asked in a rush. “Bunny bit her paw pretty badly, and even though she was mean, I don’t want her to be hurt.”

  The doctor smiled, crouching down so he could meet Thaniel’s eyes directly. “Miss Cupcakes did require a few more medicines than Bunny, and she won’t want to use that paw for a week or so, but she’ll be fine. In a few weeks, she’ll be getting into Lady Alice’s plants and leaving mice for Miss Geraldine again.” He leaned forward, lowering his voice conspiratorially. “That kitten is a bit of a handful, you see. I believe I’ve spent as much time with her as any of my human patients.”

  Thaniel giggled. “Oh. All right.” He hugged Pandy to his chest. “It’s just, it’d be awful if Bunny really got hurt, and I didn’t want Geraldine to be sad, either. I don’t think she likes me much, anyway, and if Bunny hurt her kitten, she’d definitely hate me. But I think she’s pretty.”

  A choked little gasp came from the end of the hall behind Doctor Edwards, and as the man straightened, Pandy caught a glimpse of green skirts and a white-stockinged ankle as someone ran off. Neither Thaniel nor the doctor seemed to notice, but when Thaniel returned to Lian’s door, Pandy saw the older boy watching the now-empty hall with narrowed eyes.