The library was empty except for two figures hunched over separate desks.
Adrian looked up from his research, rubbing his tired eyes. Across the room, Margotte Chen was still bent over her books, her brown hair falling forward to hide her face. She'd been there for at least eight hours straight.
"You should take a break," he called out, knowing she wouldn't listen.
She didn't even look up. "Almost done."
"You said that three hours ago."
"This time I mean it."
Adrian stood, stretching muscles cramped from sitting too long. He walked over, trying to see what had her so absorbed. Some dense theoretical text, pages covered in her precise annotations.
"You know," he said, attempting casual conversation, "there's a faculty mixer tomorrow. We could—"
"Can't. Working."
"You're always working."
"So are you."
That was fair. But still. "When's the last time you did something just for fun?"
Finally, she looked up. Her eyes were bloodshot, her face pale. "When's the last time you did?"
He opened his mouth. Closed it. Couldn't remember.
A group of other students passed by the library windows, laughing at something. One of them waved at Margotte. She waved back, and for just a moment, her expression softened. Almost smiled.
Then she turned back to Adrian, and the walls went up again. All business. All competition.
"Did you need something?" she asked, tone clipped. "Or are you just here to distract me?"
"I—" Adrian started, but couldn't find the words. Why did she smile at them but never at him? Why did everyone else get warmth while he got walls?
Because you're the competition, a voice in his head whispered. You're not a person to her. You're an obstacle.
"Nothing," he said finally. "Good luck with your work."
He returned to his desk. Neither spoke again for the rest of the night.
That moment repeated, over and over, in different settings. Seminars where she'd laugh at someone else's joke but glare at his. Conferences where she'd chat pleasantly with other academics but give him curt nods. Every interaction painted the same picture: she had warmth for the world, just none for him.
The last image was her at her desk, head in her hands, the pressure finally too much. And even then, even in that moment of breaking, she wouldn't have called him for help.
Because he wasn't her friend. He was her rival. And rivals didn't help each other.
They just pushed until something broke.
***
Adrian jerked awake, heart pounding.
The dream faded slowly, leaving behind a hollow ache. He blinked, disoriented, trying to remember where he was.
Sunlight streamed through unfamiliar windows. Bookshelves lined unfamiliar walls. And in the bed across from him—
Margotte.
No, not Margotte Chen anymore. Margotte Ashford. With her wild red curls spread across her pillow, orange eyes closed in sleep, face peaceful in a way Margaret's never had been.
For a moment, the two faces overlapped. Past and present. Brown eyes and orange. Exhausted pallor and healthy color. The woman who never smiled at him and the girl who, just last week, had laughed so hard at his terrible joke that she'd snorted.
She smiles now, Adrian thought, still caught between dream and waking. She smiles at me now.
A knock at the door jolted him fully awake.
"Margotte?" Lady Rosalind's voice. "Are you awake, sweetheart?"
Adrian's eyes went wide. He was in Margotte's bedroom. Had fallen asleep here after hiding from his own lessons. If he was caught—
He dove under Margotte's bed just as the door opened.
"Still sleeping?" Rosalind murmured fondly. "That's alright. You've been working so hard with your studies."
Adrian held his breath, pressing himself flat against the floor. Dust tickled his nose. He was four years old now (well, technically twenty-eight and four simultaneously), and this was absolutely undignified.
But also necessary.
His tutors had become unbearably boring. Teaching him basic literacy when he could already read complex texts. Simple arithmetic when he could do calculus in his head. He'd escaped to the Ashford estate out of sheer desperation, seeking the one person who understood the frustration of being intellectually twenty-eight in a four-year-old's body.
Except Margotte had been napping, and he'd sat down to wait, and apparently fallen asleep himself.
Rosalind left. Adrian waited a full minute before crawling out, covered in dust.
"You look stupid."
He jumped. Margotte was awake, propped up on her elbows, watching him with amused orange eyes.
"How long have you been awake?"
"Long enough." She yawned, stretching like a cat. "Why are you under my bed?"
"Hiding from Mama. She'd make me go home."
"You're supposed to be at lessons."
"They're boring. I already know everything." Adrian brushed dust from his clothes. "Your lessons boring too?"
"Very boring," Margotte agreed. "But Evander is coming today. He teaches better things."
Something in Adrian's chest tightened. "Evander comes a lot now."
"He's good teacher. Patient." Margotte climbed out of bed, padding to her wardrobe. "You could stay. Learn with us."
"Don't need teaching from a eight-year-old."
"Your loss." She pulled out a dress, eyeing him. "You really should go before someone finds you."
Adrian knew she was right. But the dream still clung to him, making him reluctant to leave. In that other life, they'd spent all their time together but never really together. Always competing, never connecting.
Now they were drifting apart again, just differently. Separate lessons, separate interests, separate friends.
"Do you ever miss it?" he asked suddenly. "Before? When we were always together?"
Margotte paused, dress in hand. "We were never together before. We were just in the same place."
"Same thing."
"Not same." She turned to face him. "Now is better. We have space. Room to be different people. Don't have to always compete."
"We still compete."
"Yes, but not... not desperately. Not like it's everything." She smiled, and Adrian's breath caught because that smile was for him. "We can be friends and rivals now. Better that way."
Maybe. Probably. But—
Another knock. "Margotte? Evander is here!"
"Coming!" Margotte called back. To Adrian: "Hide again or go?"
"Go," he sighed. "Before boyfriend steals all your time."
"Not my boyfriend."
"Sure."
"Adrian—"
But he was already slipping out the window, nimble as a cat despite his small size. He dropped into the garden below, landed in a crouch, and was gone before anyone could spot him.
Behind him, he heard Margotte's exasperated sigh and couldn't help grinning.
Some things never changed.
***
Two weeks later, everything changed.
"Adrian!" His father called him to the drawing room, excitement clear in his voice. "Come meet your Uncle Marcus!"
Adrian entered to find a man in military dress standing with his parents. He was tall, battle-scarred, and radiating an energy that made Adrian's new magical senses tingle.
"So this is my nephew." Uncle Marcus knelt down to Adrian's level. "Four years old and already reading military histories, your father tells me."
"They're interesting," Adrian said carefully. This was the first he'd heard of an uncle.
"Been deployed on the northern border for five years," Marcus explained, reading Adrian's confusion. "Finally got leave. Thought I'd meet the family I've been missing." He ruffled Adrian's hair. "Your father says you're sharp as a blade. Want to see something interesting?"
Before Adrian could answer, Marcus held out his palm. Light gathered there, coalescing into a small, spinning sphere of pure white energy.
Adrian's mouth fell open.
"It's called magic," Marcus said with a grin. "And I think you might have the talent for it."
The sphere expanded, filling the room with dancing light. It changed colors from white to blue to green to gold, each shade more beautiful than the last.
Adrian couldn't look away. This was nothing like the basic magic he'd seen servants use for lighting lamps or heating water. This was art. Creation. Pure possibility made manifest.
"Can you teach me?" The words burst out before he could stop them.
Marcus's grin widened. "I was hoping you'd ask."
***
The weeks that followed were a passage of discovery.
Uncle Marcus stayed at the Valemont estate, and every day brought new lessons. Not boring memorization or simple arithmetic, but actual practical magic. How to sense the energy in the air. How to shape it with will and intention. How to create effects that defied normal physics.
Adrian threw himself into it with the same intensity he'd once applied to his doctoral research. Finally, finally, something that challenged him. Something new to master.
His regular tutors were quietly dismissed. His father approved wholeheartedly, proud to have a son showing magical talent. His mother worried about him overdoing it but was assured by Marcus that the boy had natural limits.
Adrian had no intention of hitting those limits anytime soon.
"You're like me," Marcus said one afternoon, watching Adrian successfully conjure a small flame. "Creative. Flexible. Magic isn't about rules and formulas for people like us. It's about feeling, adapting, finding new ways."
"Show me more," Adrian demanded. "Everything. I want to learn everything."
Marcus laughed. "Ambitious. I like it. But pace yourself, nephew. Magic requires patience."
***
Meanwhile, at the Ashford estate, Margotte's education was taking its own direction.
"The key is logical progression," Evander explained, his eight-year-old voice taking on a teaching tone he'd developed over months of tutoring. "Each step builds on the last. Like..." he arranged wooden blocks, "...like stairs. You can't skip steps or the whole thing collapses."
Margotte nodded, absorbed. Evander had a gift for breaking down complex concepts into manageable pieces. Unlike her official tutors, who droned on about things she already knew, Evander challenged her properly.
"BUT ALSO," Lysander shouted, bursting into the lesson as he always did, "sometimes you can JUMP stairs! Like this!" He demonstrated by leaping over Evander's careful block arrangement, scattering them everywhere.
"Lysander!" Evander sighed.
"What? I'm just showing different methods! Margotte needs to know BOTH ways! The careful way AND the fun way!"
Despite herself, Margotte giggled. Lysander's chaos was exhausting but also oddly liberating. He reminded her that not everything had to be perfect and systematic.
"How about," Evander suggested diplomatically, "we learn the careful way first, and then Lysander can show us creative applications?"
"CREATIVE APPLICATIONS!" Lysander seized on the phrase. "Yes! I'm EXCELLENT at those! Like, did you know you can use blocks as CATAPULT ammunition? Or build a tower so tall it becomes a TRAP for unsuspecting siblings?"
The lesson devolved into a combination of serious instruction from Evander and chaotic demonstrations from Lysander. Somehow, Margotte learned from both.
The twins came twice a week now. Lady Helena seemed grateful for the break, and Margotte genuinely enjoyed their company. They were different from Adrian as they were less competitive, more collaborative.
Though she'd never admit it aloud, sometimes she missed Adrian's sharp edge. Missed the way he'd challenge her assumptions, push her to defend her positions, force her to be sharper.
But he was busy now. They both were.
***
Weekends became their compromise.
No matter how busy their separate weeks were, Saturdays were for meeting. Sometimes at the Ashford estate, sometimes at the Valemont property, sometimes in the gardens that bordered both.
"Watch this!" Adrian crowed one Saturday morning, conjuring three small flames that danced around his hands. "Uncle Marcus says I'm progressing faster than any student he's had!"
"That's good," Margotte said, genuinely impressed despite herself. "Look at this." She showed him a complex logic puzzle Evander had taught her. "Solved it in under two minutes."
"Two minutes is slow."
"You couldn't solve it at all!"
"Because it's BORING. Magic is better. More useful."
"Logic is useful! You can't just magic your way through everything!"
"Watch me!"
They bickered, as they always did. But there was warmth in it now. Neither was desperately trying to prove superiority, they were simply sharing. Maybe showing off, yes, but in the way friends did.
"Your boyfriend teaching you other things?" Adrian asked casually, making a flame hop between his fingers.
"Evander is not my boyfriend," Margotte said automatically. "And yes. History, languages, philosophy. Things my tutors are too slow with."
"Does he teach you magic?"
"He doesn't know magic. Neither do I." She paused. "Could you... could you show me? Sometime?"
Adrian's flames guttered out in surprise. "You want to learn magic?"
"Want to learn everything. Magic is part of everything."
Something shifted in Adrian's expression. The competitive edge softened into something almost pleased. "Yeah. Okay. I can show you. Uncle Marcus probably won't mind."
"Really?"
"Really. But you have to show me that stupid logic puzzle trick. The one Evander taught you."
"It's not a trick, it's a method—"
"Same thing!"
"NOT same!"
They argued all through the morning, taking turns teaching each other what they'd learned. Adrian demonstrated basic energy sensing. Margotte explained systematic problem-solving. Both insisted their way was superior. Neither convinced the other.
By lunch, they were both grinning, energized by the intellectual sparring.
"Same time next week?" Adrian asked.
"Obviously. Someone has to keep you from getting too proud of your fire tricks."
"Someone has to keep you from thinking logic solves everything."
"It does solve everything!"
"Does not!"
"Does too!"
They parted arguing, as they always did. But also smiling, as they rarely had before.
Four years into their second lives, Adrian and Margotte were finally learning what they'd never managed in their first: how to be rivals without being enemies. How to compete without destroying. How to push each other while also catching each other when they fell.
How to be friends who also happened to drive each other crazy.
It wasn't perfect. Adrian still got jealous when Margotte talked about Evander. Margotte still got annoyed when Adrian was deliberately obtuse about logic.
But it was better.
And as Adrian walked home, the dream of Margaret's emotionless face faded further. Replaced by the memory of Margotte's genuine smile.
She smiles at me now, he thought again.
Even if he'd never say it aloud, some things were too important for words. The magic in his palm flickered to life, responding to his joy.
Yeah. This life was definitely better.