Disclaimer: Ever After High is owned by Mattel.
Author's Note: So, you can see why I decided to split this part into two chapters, right? (Also, comments are always appreciated. ^_^)
Class Confusion Redux (part 2)
Apple was pleasantly surprised to find that Home Evilnomics wasn't quite as bad as she'd been afraid that it would be. That wasn't to say that she was at all enjoying herself, just that she was pretty sure that she could handle it.
Of course, this was only their first assignment, on the first day...
No, she told herself. No negativity. She could do this. She could totally do this. She was going to pass Home Evilnomics (hopefully with a good grade, otherwise she'd have to just hope that her mother saw getting Raven back on the evil path as being worth the hit to her GPA), find a way to get Raven to be her Evil Queen, their story would resume, she'd get her Happily Ever After and ensure the safety and well-being of everyone in her kingdom, and everything would finally be back to normal...
"Miss White, what, precisely, is supposed to be evil about that animal?"
...if she could just get past Baba Yaga, first.
Their teacher had been surprised, to say the least, to see them coming back into the classroom maybe ten minutes after they'd left - and most of that had been travel time to and from the Enchanted Forest. To her credit, she'd been perfectly willing to let them get to work, despite the assignment not being due until tomorrow, at the earliest. (Apple had personally not had any problem with waiting, even less so if it meant not disrupting her teacher's lesson plans. Apparently, though, there really was no rest for the wicked.) "Oh, nothing," she said as she stroked the soft fur of the adorable bunny parked on the table in front of her, eating a carrot. She gestured toward her cage, more toward the middle of the table, adding, "That's my animal. This little guy just followed me back from the forest." While it wasn't something that happened often, that sort of thing wasn't without precedent, either. She'd hang onto him for now, then bring him to Ashlynn, or, failing that, Briar's younger cousin, Rosabella. One of them would be able to get the adorable little critter home.
Baba Yaga flipped open the latch on the cage door, pausing at the warning rattle that emerged from within. Being who she was, she didn't remain deterred for long, picking up the cage and dumping the rattlesnake out onto the table. Its rattle now going at a furious speed, it lunged at Baba Yaga. Apple momentarily froze - because, really, that hadn't been what she'd had in mind - but whether or not Baba Yaga's body was fast enough to deal with that, her magic clearly was. The snake abruptly froze in the air in mid-strike, mouth wide open, fangs glistening with poison. Madam Yaga eyed it, then turned her gaze upon Apple.
Stay calm, she told herself, barely holding herself back from a nervous gulp. She might not have expected the attack, but she had worked out what to say on the walk back from the forest, so if she stuck to that, she should probably be okay. She hoped. "I left it in the cage for everyone else's safety," she explained. The etiquette lessons had drilled into her since she'd been old enough to understand that she'd be Queen one day came to her rescue, letting her say that in a perfectly normal, almost casual tone. Not so much as a hint of her anxiety could be seen.
Baba Yaga made a thoughtful sound, then examined the frozen snake more closely. "You don't quite seem to have turned this snake evil," she finally remarked.
"But I went through every part of the spell carefully, step by step!" Apple protested. Technically speaking, it was true, she had. She just hadn't done any of them. Jaye had made it clear that if she tried pulling something over on Madam Yaga and got caught, she was on her own. Apple would never have tried shifting the blame for her own actions - or inactions, as the case might have been - onto someone else, so she'd agreed with that readily. Jaye had then remarked that it was a good thing she wasn't taking General Villainy with Mr. Badwolf, as nobility and honesty wouldn't go over big there.
(She'd also explained as they were going over the spell that it was far too simple to work on a being as physically and emotionally complex as a person, had Apple been thinking of trying something like that on Raven. She hadn't, naturally, but it was good to know that she had a ready excuse, should anyone ever ask her why she wasn't doing so.)
"That may be, but if the animal is already evil or just bad-tempered enough to start with, the spell won't work," Baba Yaga told her.
"It didn't say anything about that anywhere in the pages about the spell." Again, technically true. A warning about that was listed in the book's intro section, and Jaye had even pointed it out, saying Baba Yaga would bring that up. But since Apple would have had no reason to think to look there on her own...
Baba Yaga studied her for a good ten seconds. "Miss White, either you tried turning an animal evil on your first day of any villainy class ever and only failed due to being drawn to one already too evil to suit your purposes," she finally began, "or you're lying to me about what may well have been an attempt at killing me. Either way, I entirely approve!"
"..." Apple honestly wasn't sure what to say in response to that. A quick peek showed that Jaye looked more bemused than anything.
"Still, that doesn't hexcuse you from doing this assignment properly," Baba Yaga continued.
Apple hadn't really expected it to. (Hoped, yes. But she knew enough about Baba Yaga not to count on it.) "I've been reliably informed that no one would be able to take an evil bunny rabbit seriously." She didn't actually look at Jaye as she said it, but she thought it was pretty obvious who would have been the one to tell her that.
"Hmm, true, true. It wouldn't matter for the purposes of your grade, but I can see how that might be a concern. Fortunately, the assignment isn't actually due until tomorrow, which gives you plenty of time to find a more suitable subject."
More like it would give her more time to think of something else to do, she thought. (That had been the whole point of this exercise, after all: buying more time.) That, unfortunately, was easier said than done. Nothing came to her during the rest of class, during which, with no other real work scheduled, Baba Yaga wistfully reviewed some of the evil spells she'd performed during some of her stories. (It had actually been somewhat interesting, if horrifying, and Apple couldn't help but wonder if someone else might be reenacting those, some day. What determined which stories did or didn't get added to the Storybook of Legends?) Nothing came to her during any of her other classes. Nothing came to her during lunch, or any of her trips to her locker to exchange books. When classes were over for the day?
That nothing kept right on coming.
Naturally, she once again didn't let any of that show on her face. As she'd reflected earlier, she was the Queen-to-be and future Snow White, which meant that she always had to present a composed front, with doubts and fears expressed in private, if they had to be at all. Her mother had been very clear on that over the years. Unfortunately, when she got back to her dorm room, she found she wouldn't be alone there, either. But she could let down her defenses a little around Raven, right? They were friends... even if Raven's attempt at finding someone else to take her place in their story said they weren't very close friends, at least on Raven's side.
That whole debacle still stung Apple. Not only had Raven immediately latched onto the idea of shoving her destiny at the first person who came along, one of the three pigs - the pig part wouldn't necessarily have bothered Apple, but her story called for an evil queen, not an evil title-less guy with no magic and no connection to her at all - but said pig hadn't even made it half the school day before ditching his "dream" of being an evil queen for one about being a "balloonatic". For all that Maddie had said Raven was trying to find someone to be the new Evil Queen to make her happy, to Apple it had come across more as Raven saying "Well, this should shut her up and get her to stop bothering me." She hadn't even attempted to find anything to say to Raven after the little guy had floated away, instead turning and leaving without a word so she could follow along and be ready for when he drifted back down to earth. Just because she was hurt, that didn't make it okay for her to allow anything to happen to him. (She was pretty sure Raven still didn't understand why she'd been so upset.)
Of course, Raven wasn't exactly likely to have noticed anything in her expression, right then. Evidently, when she'd gotten back from her last class, Raven had just flopped face down on her bed and stayed there. "So, how was Princessology?" Apple asked, dropping her bookbag on her own bed and walking over to sit down next to Raven. She wasn't the only one who'd been out of her element today, after all.
"Oww..." Raven rolled over to stare at the ceiling, a pained look on her face. "My cheeks still hurt."
"Not so easy, is it?" Apple had to ask. A number of people - Raven among them - had made comments over the years about how easy Apple's life was, how people did everything for her, how she never had to work for anything. Like she just went around smiling like a beauty queen for no reason other than inviting praise. At least some of her friends knew better, like Briar. She'd regretted not being able to room with her BFFA this year, but had viewed rooming with Raven and getting to know her future Evil Queen as more important. If anything, Raven's refusal of her destiny made it doubly important.
"How do you do that all the time? I mean, I smile often enough, but not like that."
"That was one of the many, many things Mom had me start practicing when I was a little kid," Apple said with a shrug, eyes briefly going distant in memory... and missing the concerned frown that flitted across Raven's face. "The way she hexplained it, the muscles that you use to smile are just like any of the others: they need to be developed. It's sort of like jogging every morning to be ready to run a marathon. As princesses, we might be hexpected to attend ribbon cutting ceremonies, tournaments, be in parades, and other such activities. As such, we'll have to be smiling for long stretches of time. If we start frowning or looking like we're in pain, it could reflect badly on our kingdoms, and someone else might try to take political advantage of that. That's what smiling practice is about: making sure your smile looks perfect, yes, but also hexercising your cheek muscles to make sure you'll be pain-free when the time comes."
Raven's eyebrows rose. "Huh. Never really thought about it like that, before."
"Guess that sort of thing's not part of the Evil Queen curriculum?"
"Heh. To put it mildly." She sat up, turning her full attention on Apple. "Speaking of, how'd Home Evilnomics go?"
Apple hesitated momentarily, not immediately sure how to answer that. "Our first assignment was to get an animal from the Enchanted Forest and turn it evil."
"And how did that go?" Raven asked, her expression carefully neutral.
"For the most part, okay." She hesitated again, then told Raven about what she'd done. "Baba Yaga seemed weirdly happy about the idea that I might have tried to kill her," she remarked once she was finished, unable to hide her confusion.
A small, fond smile crept onto Raven's face. "She would be. She might encourage those students who have an evil destiny to follow it, but she hardly discourages everyone else from the path of evil." She shook her head. "So, what are you going to do?"
Apple sighed. "I don't know," she admitted. "I've been thinking about it all day, and I still haven't been able to make a decision. I suppose if worse comes to worst, I can just... do it. Erica said that the newly evil animals are brought to the Good Magic Mastery class so the students there can lift the curses. I do know who she is at least a little from Student Council, so I wasn't going to automatically believe that, but I checked with Farrah, and she confirmed it." And no one who knew her at all would really doubt the given word of Farrah Goodfairy. "I hate the thought of doing something like that to a poor, innocent little animal, but it would only be temporary, and Farrah swears they don't remember a thing afterward. I just..."
"Can't bring yourself to do it?" Raven finished for her when she trailed off, and Apple nodded wordlessly. "Not so easy, is it?" Raven echoed.
"I never said that I thought it was easy," Apple countered. "Just that it was necessary." She shook her head, not wanting to start a fight. "Look, if you're not taking any villain classes this semester, do you have a copy of Dumont's Spells and Curses I can borrow? I have a list of books to find, but that's the only one I need to have by tomorrow, and I'm honestly not sure if that would be in any nearby bookstores." She planned to order as many online as she could, so nobody would see her buying any of them and ask questions - or worse, spread rumors. She hardly expected the fact that she was taking a villainy class to continue going unnoticed, but the longer she could put that off, the better.
"I put all the evil tomes and spell books in a chest in my closet," Raven told her. "I'd planned on sending them back home - some of them are too dangerous to just throw out - but if any of them are on your list, help yourself."
"Thanks, roomie!" Apple chirped, giving her a big hug. Raven didn't say anything, but her smile was answer enough. (Especially since her cheeks had to still hurt doing that.) Apple kept it up a bit longer, then let go and hurried over to her bed to grab the list from her bag before heading for the chest.
It was her lucky day (though what kind of luck was debatable). If only because she'd taken that class herself previously, Raven had almost every book on the list. (The only one missing, something called the Necronomicon, was listed as "optional", so Apple decided not to worry about that one right then.) She carried her haul back into the room and spread them out on her bed, then sat next to them to look through them and see what her options were. Replacing one evil spell with another didn't exactly seem like a good thing, but they were the only magic books she had to work with. (Also, she was worried that if she tried using any good magic in class, Baba Yaga might just flunk her on general principle.) As much as she knew she needed to focus on her searching, though, she still had to ask, "Why do we need six books for this class?"
"The sixty-six spells, curses, and such that you'll need are spread out through them," Raven told her. A quick look showed that she'd moved over to her desk, presumably to get started on her own thronework. "Not sure why they don't just condense all that into one book. It's probably either proprietary issues on some of the spells, or Baba Yaga just likes it that way."
Six books and sixty-six... Yeah, Apple decided that was one subject she was better off leaving alone. She never would have thought there were so many evil spells and curses, she mused as she began searching through the books. Some of them seemed to overlap, achieving the same end result - more or less - with differences ranging from minor to severe in how they got there. One of the books had three separate sleeping curses, one of which, she saw, was the one from her story. She couldn't help but briefly pause in her search as she studied that one. It was far more complex than she might have guessed, and was designed to leave as little room for escape as possible, with no known antidotes except for True Love's Kiss, which the book noted was capable of breaking most any curse.
She'd leave off the curses, she decided. The point of all this was to not have to curse one of her animal friends, after all, and most of the possible alternatives she found were worse than the one she was trying to avoid. Spells could be harder, as a number of them required one to have magic of their own to perform them. Most of the rest weren't terribly helpful, either - how would summoning up a plague of locusts help her pass an assignment to turn an animal evil? Potions, charms, amulets... Nothing she was finding would help. Finally, after much futile searching, she sat back, massaging her forehead. She wasn't sure how long she'd been looking, but it must have been longer than she'd thought: her stomach was starting to growl, her throat was dry, and a dull throbbing had started up somewhere behind her eyes. (Some of the text in that last book - she wasn't sure what language those pages were written in, never having seen it before - had been oddly headache-inducing all by itself, which wasn't helping matters any.)
Either she'd made some noise, or Raven had been watching her, as her roommate remarked, "You know, you can wear your glasses, if you need to. I've already seen you in them, and nobody else is here."
Despite everything, Apple had to smile. She knew she probably shouldn't encourage such kindness from Raven if she wanted the other girl to be her Evil Queen, but she couldn't help it. (She also still wasn't in the mood to start a fight.) "I don't need them anymore, actually, but thank you."
"Oh? Why's that?"
Should she explain? Well, she hadn't been sworn to secrecy or anything, so why not? "Did you know there's a whole class dedicated to just healing magic?" she began.
"It's on my "If I can ever get my magic under control, I am SO taking this class" list," Raven replied with a small smile. She'd evidently finished whatever she'd been working on - making Apple again wonder how long she'd been lost in her research - and had turned around in her desk chair to face her roommate.
"I hadn't known there were enough people at school whose magic could be used to heal to justify it, but apparently there are. One of them being Farrah."
"Ah. I was wondering why you would have gone right to her to ask about a class you wouldn't have known she'd be taking, given that I've never really seen - or heard about - you two hanging out." Raven paused, then frowned as something occurred to her. "Wait, doesn't her magic usually only last until midnight?"
"Or noon, whichever comes first," Apple confirmed. "Or, at least, her fairy glamours do. Not sure if there are any restrictions to her healing magic, but what she did was conjure up some kind of device and use that to fix my eyes. It was her Final, actually." It was Apple's turn to frown. "I still don't know how she even knew that there was something wrong with my eyes. All she said when I asked was, "Future fairy godmothers just know things like that." Which was a little odd, given that you know as well as I do that our story doesn't have a fairy godmother anywhere in it, but since she was doing me a favor, I didn't push her on it." Maybe Farrah had meant they had some kind of sixth sense about what a person needed help with? Ultimately, she supposed it didn't matter.
"I have to admit, that was pretty clever of her," Raven said. "I didn't know fairy magic could do that sort of thing."
"Neither did I. The Fairy Queen was pretty impressed."
"I can see why." Raven paused, then changed the subject. "So, how goes the search?"
"It could be better," Apple admitted. "Though, since I haven't figured out what I want to do, yet, I've mainly been looking for inspiration." And not finding it. "Was the whole "turning animals evil" thing something you had to do when you were taking this class?" she asked abruptly.
Raven sighed. "Unfortunately, yes. I wound up with a... badger, I think it was. I hated everything to do with that assignment, so I just tried really hard not to think about any of it. I'm glad to know the little guy was uncursed later on. I kinda thought Baba Yaga just... dumped them in the Dark Forest, or something. With all the evil animals in there, who'd notice a few more?"
Apple had been glancing idly at one of her books, but at that she whipped around to face Raven again so quickly that she felt a twinge in her neck and had to swat her hair away from her face. "There are animals in the Dark Forest that are already evil?" she asked urgently.
Raven was able to follow her train of thought easily enough. "Not all of them are - I'm not sure it's even most of them - but yes, some, at least. I thought about getting one of them and trying to pass it off as my project, but while the school won't stop students from going into the Dark Forest, they do watch to make sure you don't bring anything dangerous out with you."
"Yeah, that was... actually a decision the Student Council made," Apple said, fighting down the urge to facepalm. It had made perfect sense at the time - it still did, really - but it wasn't really helping her right then. She still thought she was onto something, though, so she'd just need to find a way around that little rule. It was for a villain class, so that was appropriate, right?
Right, she told herself.
There were other problems to be dealt with, of course. Home Evilnomics was early enough in the day that, if she wanted to find an appropriate animal, she'd have to do so that evening, and searching the Dark Forest at night - by herself, no less - trying to find an evil animal would be foolish and incredibly dangerous. "How well do you know the Dark Forest?" she asked. If Raven had hated doing the assignment herself so much, surely she'd be willing to help Apple come up with a workaround, wouldn't she? Sure, it wouldn't exactly be helping the cause of trying to convince Raven to be more evil - really, if anything, it would be doing the opposite - but this was only the first day. She had plenty of time, yet. If she pushed too hard too quickly, she'd just end up making sure Raven wouldn't be able to approach the situation logically enough to see reason.
"Not very," Raven told her, which really wasn't what she wanted to hear. "You'd have better luck with someone who would have learned their way around there in preparation for their story, like Cerise or Blondie."
Apple blinked. "Cerise?" She was pretty sure the future Red Riding Hood was firmly in the Rebel camp, though she wasn't quite sure why, given that her story would be giving her a Happily Ever After.
"I'm not sure how well she knows the forest, but she'd be a lot better equipped to anything hostile you might come across than Blondie would," Raven said, which was true enough. As much as Blondie was one of Apple's friends, her main defensive tactic would be running away. Smart when it came to not being eaten by a gruesome creature in the Dark Forest, not terribly helpful when it came to fighting and/or capturing one of them.
"Would she be willing to help me, though?" Raven was one of only two Rebels that Apple could really say she was friends with, the other being Ashlynn. (Assuming she really counted. It certainly seemed like she'd defected for love, but they were only in high school, so who knew if her relationship would last? Apple didn't want to see any of her friends get hurt, but she also didn't know what the future held, and Ashlynn didn't seem overly bothered by any part of her story aside from that.) She liked Hunter well enough, even despite him placing Ashlynn and everyone in her story in danger, but they'd never really spent any time hanging out even before the Royal/Rebel split. Maddie was nice, if odd, and she clearly wanted to follow in her father's footsteps, making her presence on the Rebel side confusing. Presumably, she was just there to support Raven. As for Cerise? She and Apple knew each other, but that was about as far as it went. Apple couldn't even remember the last time she'd spoken directly to the hooded girl.
"I can't guarantee it, obviously, but I think so," Raven said with a shrug. "She generally likes to help, and I doubt she'd mind helping you try to pull one over on Baba Yaga - especially when it would mean uncursing an already evil animal."
Apple had to admit, the thought that she might be able to help reduce the number of evil animals with what she was doing, even if only by one, was rather appealing. She even had an idea about how to go about smuggling it out of the forest, if they could find an appropriate animal. She'd have a lot of work to do in order to gather up all the materials she was going to need, and even then it wouldn't be even remotely easy to pull off.
But then, as her father often said, "Nothing worth doing is easy."
Jaye hated to admit it, but part of her was honestly curious to see what White had come up with.
The simplest - and quite possibly smartest - thing for her to do would be to simply find another animal and use the spell to turn it evil, like she was supposed to. Considering how opposed she'd been to doing so yesterday, however, Jaye doubted that would be happening. (Why White wouldn't just do it when she knew the animal would be fine afterward, Jaye honestly couldn't understand.) Another attempted deception? Possible, but given that the snake hadn't fooled Baba Yaga even for a second, White would have to seriously step up her game, and Jaye wasn't sure she had it in her. Most of the spells that would help her even try to pull something like that off required the one casting them to have magic of their own, and the rest called for ingredients that she highly doubted the pure and innocent White would be able to bring herself to even touch, let alone use.
So she had no idea what was going to happen. It had been a while since that had occurred - even if she didn't know what they were going to be covering that day in any of her classes, she had a solid enough grasp of the course that whatever it turned out to be didn't really surprise her - and she found herself actually looking forward to finding out the answer.
Naturally, she kept that to herself.
White had clearly settled on some kind of plan, that was for sure. When Jaye walked into the Home Evilnomics classroom - to her mild annoyance, White's belongings were sitting on her usual table, again - White had curtained off a good chunk of the front of the room, not far from Baba Yaga's desk. "She was already back there before any of us got here," Erica murmured as Jaye passed by her table. "I'm not sure Madam Yaga even beat her here."
Jaye made a thoughtful noise as she continued on to her own table. Technically, no one should have even been able to get into the room before Baba Yaga took down the protective spells that she used to keep everyone out when she wasn't around. She might have kept most of her sensitive and dangerous magical items in her hut, but there was enough in the classroom to warrant precautions like that. White had to have gotten some kind of help in order to bypass them, but why bother when she could just walk into the classroom when the rest of them did?
Reluctantly, Jaye had to admit: her curiosity was officially piqued.
When the whole class was present and White still showed no signs of getting on with... whatever she was doing, Baba Yaga finally prompted, "Miss White...?"
"One more minute," White's oddly almost pained-sounding voice replied. "Just getting ready to cast a really evil spell, here."
Jaye tended to doubt that, but something was clearly going on back there: Jaye could sense some kind of magic rising, cold and precise, and Billy the Goblin's nose was flaring the way it always did when he smelled blood. That combination suggested some kind of ritual, but if White had balked at casting a simple spell to turn an animal evil, what kind of dark ritual could she have found that she'd consider an acceptable alternative?
Well, they were about to find out. The magic Jaye was sensing spiked, and the air seemed to almost vibrate somehow, for a few seconds. Both quickly faded away, then were gone. Shortly after that, White pulled back the curtain, proclaiming, "Ta-da!" Most of the class didn't seem to notice that, however.
They were a little too preoccupied with the massive brown bear standing next to her.
Even on all fours, it was almost as tall as White herself. Its eyes were glowing a baleful red, an almost subsonic growl was emanating from within its chest, and it was sweeping its gaze around the room, as if trying to figure out who had brought it to where it was, and thus who needed to be killed. Why it wasn't tearing White apart on general principle, Jaye wasn't sure. The bear stood up on its hind legs - effectively doubling its already huge size - let out a savage roar loud enough to cause people to flinch in pain outside the school, and promptly launched itself at Baba Yaga.
Jaye was barely aware of White's exasperated "Oh, come on!" - though when she looked back on it later, she would admit to finding White's poor luck where her animals were concerned rather amusing - her attention locked on the oversized ursa.
Fortunately, however huge and outright evil it may have been, Madam Yaga was able to freeze it in place as easily as she had the rattlesnake the previous day. She studied the bear for a moment, then turned and raised an eyebrow at White.
Jaye had to admit, White hid whatever anxiety she must have been feeling flawlessly. "I didn't tell it to do that," she insisted.
Similarly, Baba Yaga gave no sign whether she believed White or not, instead simply indicating where the bear had been standing with a gesture and asking, "And that?"
Now that the bear wasn't in the way, anymore, Jaye was able to get a good look at what White had been doing... and felt her own eyebrows shoot up underneath her bangs as she recognized enough components to start figuring it out. "Well, I obviously couldn't bring it in through the front door," White said with a simple shrug, as if performing a Level 20 ritual by herself was something one just did. The more Jaye studied the purple sigils she could see from where she was sitting, the more she was impressed.
And as she'd noted to herself the previous day, she didn't impress easily.
Arranging to magically transport something into a carefully prepared circle would have been difficult enough, but White had gone beyond that. If Jaye was remembering correctly - she'd seen the ritual White must have used in Byrne's aptly-named Rites and Rituals, though she'd only glanced at it once while she'd been seeking out something else entirely - the ritual could indeed send whatever was inside one circle to its twin, but once that connection was formed, the caster could use whatever item they'd linked to each circle to send something - even themselves - to either circle, from anywhere. And after the blood offering to power each one up (Jaye could see the bandaging wrapped around White's left hand), they would stay powered up, until they were forcibly dismantled. Even washing away the ink or paint White had used wouldn't matter.
It was rather overkill for something like this assignment, but given her lack of any kind of magic of her own, Jaye knew White's options had been limited, and this at least wouldn't tie her to any dark entities.
"Miss White," Baba Yaga began at length, "I believe I recognize this animal from my own trips through the Dark Forest."
White momentarily froze. Given the control she'd displayed previously, Jaye interpreted that as her fighting down a burst of pure panic.
"I also recognize that you just performed a piece of magic that you absolutely shouldn't have been able to," Madam Yaga continued. "That particular ritual was far, far beyond your current level. And another murder attempt, no less!"
White twitched. "But I didn't-!"
"It's becoming clear that you have a real aptitude for this type of coursework, and tremendous potential." The genuine sincerity in her voice only seemed to be confusing White more. "I look forward to seeing you live up to it. B-Minus."
"Um... Thank.. you...?" White momentarily looked utterly lost, then gave her head a sharp shake before heading for her seat, seemingly back in full control of herself.
Jaye wasn't sure she bought that, but as far as she was concerned, if the purest and fairest princess of them all was told she'd make a great villain, she was allowed to be confused. If she didn't want to show it, that was one less thing Jaye would have to deal with. "Hmm," she mused quietly as Baba Yaga levitated the still-frozen bear out of the way so she could begin that day's lessons. "I may have misjudged you. This semester might just be more interesting than I hexpected it would."
White was silent for a thoughtful moment. "Does this mean you'll call me Apple, now?"
Jaye's lips twitched in response. "We'll see."