Dear Anders, Rora wrote

She looked up, checking to make sure that neither her class' Enchanter nor her seatmates were looking at her, then continued writing.

How are you? Do you remember me?

She glanced up again, brushing her cheek with the end of her quill. The Enchanter, deep into her lecture on healing energies, paced the room, and Rora, half listening, considered erasing the line she'd just written.

Probably "Do you remember me?" was a silly question. Either he remembered her or he didn't, and if he'd forgotten her, he might be embarrassed that he had. She crossed out the line and replaced it with, This is Rora.

She fidgeted in her chair, then scribbled,

I was wondering if you…

She stopped. "Was wondering if you…" what? Wanted to talk? Wanted to spend time together? Both ideas made a blush creep from her face to her neck, and made her a little dizzy. She crossed out this line as well.

I saw you the other day and…

She stopped again, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. Was it wise to bring up the other day?

She'd been walking past her favorite corridor of practice rooms when she'd heard muffled crying. When she went to investigate the door to the room had been ajar, and it was then that she saw him. He sat on the floor, face buried in his knees and shoulders shaking. It had been years since they'd last spoken but she recognized him immediately. Everyone knew Anders.

Thinking of the scene again, renewed shame washed over her. She immediately crossed out the line, scribbling over it until it was impossible to read. She didn't want Anders to know that she'd seen him crying, and didn't want to remind herself that she'd run away—like she always did—instead of seeing if he needed help.

She frowned, and poised her quill once more.

"Surana?"

She looked up. The Enchanter at the front of the room, and her classmates, were all looking at her. She felt the urge to shrink in her seat, but instead she blinked and said, "Hmm?"

Her classmates giggled, and the Enchanter looked surprised. It wasn't like Rora not to pay attention in class.

"As I said: in what year can we find the first recorded mention of a Mass Rejuvenation spell?"

"1:20 Divine," Rora said, without missing a beat. She'd learned that fact in a book when she was ten.

The Enchanter nodded, the class continued, and Rora went back to half paying attention, half thinking about her note.

ooo

Rora didn't manage to finish the note in class, and spent the rest of the lecture doodling cats in the margins of the paper. Hours later found her sitting on her bunk in her dormitory, studying the half-written note and still thinking about what else to say. That was, until someone called her.

"Rora, you want to join us?"

She looked up. The other apprentices in her year had clumped up on a few bunks that were near each other to form a kind of loose circle. As usual, they were talking and giggling about something.

"Maybe later," Rora said.

Immediate protests went up from several of the apprentices, "Come on, Rora," "You never want to talk," "Get over here."

Guilt, mixed with panic, filled her. It would be rude and awkward to refuse coming over now. Why didn't people ever understand that she just wanted to be alone sometimes?

Not sure what else to do, Rora tucked the letter into her book on early Andrastian martyrdom and came over.

Feeling clumsy and small, Rora took a seat between a bored-looking Jowan—who gave her a sympathetic smile as she sat down—and tall girl called Sharon. The others tittered and jostled, greeting her before going back to their conversation.

She and her year mates were new to this dormitory. Now that they were twelve they'd finally been able to move out of the "baby dormitories" and into the quarters for the eldest apprentices. Back in their old room there had been a mage assigned to look after them, but here there was no supervision aside from their older dorm mates—who usually ignored them anyway—and the Templars who patrolled outside.

Most of her friends had been excited to move, looking forward to the relative freedom of the new arrangement, but Rora missed her old room. She missed the mage who'd watched over them since they were small, and she missed how much more quiet and orderly things had been. Now that they were allowed to stay up a bit later all her friends ever seemed to want to do was sit around and gossip until well past their bedtime, mostly about who had kissed who and who probably wanted to kiss who.

As her friends talked around her about people Rora only vaguely knew, her mind wandered to the note she'd been writing, now tucked into her book. Had the note been a good idea, she wondered? Maybe Anders would just think she was being annoying. But if he really needed help—

A sudden nudge from Jowan. Rora looked up.

"Hmm?"

She thought the other apprentices exchanged amused looks. While Rora not paying attention in class might have been unusual, she was always forgetting to pay attention to conversations. Her face flamed with embarrassment, and she didn't even know what she'd missed.

"What?" she said.

Several of the other apprentices giggled, and Sharon nudged her as well.

"Do you fancy anyone, Rora?" she said.

More giggling. Rora shook her head, though even as she did, an image of Anders' smiling face floated across her thoughts.

"I think she does," said Lys, a round faced girl with pigtails. "She's blushing."

Rora cleared her throat, wondering how much pinker her cheeks had gotten. "It's a secret."

The other apprentices clamored at this. "Rora has a crush!" "Come on, Rora, who is it?" But Rora just shook her head again, face growing hotter and hotter, until they finally moved on to other topics.

Later, after everyone had gotten tired enough to start heading to bed, Rora was pulling on her nightgown—and trying to forget her embarrassment—when she felt another nudge from behind. She turned.

"Hey, Jowan," she said.

Jowan had grown quite a lot lately, so Rora had to crane her neck to look up at him. He tucked his hands in his pockets and shrugged his shoulders in a commiserating way.

"Sorry about earlier," he said. He nodded in the direction of their year mates' beds. "They were acting like children."

Rora shook her head. "It's all right."

Jowan frowned, then leaned closer, voice an amused whisper.

"So, do you actually fancy anyone?" he said. "Or were you just trying to get them to leave you alone?"

Rora looked around, checking to see that no one was listening, then turned back to her friend. If she told anyone, surely she could tell him.

"I kind of like Anders," she said. Speaking the words aloud made her dizzy, made her face flame.

Jowan smiled again, but it was a sort of kindly, pitying smile. He patted her shoulder.

"Aw, Rora," he said in a big brotherly tone. "Everyone fancies Anders."

Rora didn't say anything, but she felt her stomach drop all the way to her toes.

Not long after, she lay in bed and listened to her fellow apprentices shifting around her. Her eyes stung, but she didn't cry. Jowan's words shouldn't have bothered her so much. He'd just been trying to help, to look out for her like he always did. Also, he was probably right. Anders was very popular, so it only made sense that everyone would fancy him.

But even thinking all this, she was a little sick to her stomach. If she tried to check on Anders he would probably think her very silly and childish. If so many people liked him, he probably didn't need her help.

Rora sat up. She reached for her book in the dark and felt for the note folded inside it. Once found, she crumpled the paper into as tight a ball as she could manage and stuffed it into her clothes chest under the bed.

She lay back down, for some reason out of breath, and stared into the dark. She didn't feel better at all.