Bloom was still overthinking her missed kiss at one in the morning as she waited on the sofa for Stella. What she had wanted was for Brandon to wrap his arms around her and press his lips against hers until she forgot the rest of the world existed. But seeing Musa, and realising that they would have an audience, had flooded her with panic and she hadn't been able to jump away from him fast enough. That was so embarrassing. She must have looked like a nervous wreck and there was no way that that was attractive.

As well as worrying about how much of an idiot she looked, she was also starting to worry about Stella since she didn't think lunch dates usually went on for this long. Bloom might have been concerned about another kidnapping if the princess hadn't sent her a text that all was well at dinner time. After all, Stella had her Simulation Chamber exam the next afternoon.

The others had gone to bed but, since she couldn't stop herself worrying, Bloom had decided to stay up and wait for Stella. After what the Trix had done to each of them she wasn't sure that she could go to sleep without knowing that her friend was safe. Instead she distracted herself by looking over her history books now that she had the context for the Sparks/Domino debacle and reading about the ceremony and the rituals of the royal family.

For what was essentially a feudal system the traditions afforded a lot of responsibility and power to the royal women. It did seem to be expected that the King and Queen would have a lot of children since there were at least seven sovereign positions for princes and princesses that couldn't be doubled up on, although there was a note that often the leftover roles were given to important members of the court or extended family members. Along with the Heir Apparent, there was the Princess Royal (although if there were only girl these could overlap), the Supreme Overseer (a legal role), The Representative Fairy (also called the Fairy of Sparks), The Keeper of the Dragon Flame (a religious role concerned with protecting the remains of the Great Dragon's power), The Royal Tribute (a diplomat that went to Magix), and The People's Ear (someone whose job it was to listen to the complaints of the common people, although the book noted that this had been turned into a whole department in later years).

The part about the Dragon Fire interested her, mostly because the way it was described was made out to be some sort of myth. It seemed weird to her that in a magical universe people were so dismissive of the possibility of a certain type of magic existing, after all, it was cited as the reason that the Ancestral Witches attacked in the first place.

She was about to start on the next page when the door to their suite creaked open ever so slightly and Stella slipped in. The princess had a grin on her face as she carefully closed it behind her. Bloom cleared her throat and made Stella jump.

"You didn't have to wait up!" She hissed, but she didn't look like she minded too much.

"I wanted to make sure you were okay," Bloom whispered. "And I wanted to know how your date with Daniel went."

Stella looked surprised.

"Daniel? Oh, right. Yeah, it was awful. All he wanted to talk about was this band that he fucking loves and how they are the best thing ever. Might have been acceptable if they were some kind of alternative genre like metal… but they're just some indie pop band that make knock offs of the top forty." Stella flopped onto the sofa next to Bloom and put her feet up on the coffee table, knocking the history books to the side with her shoes.

"So, if you weren't with him, what were you doing?"

"Well, wouldn't you know it, Sky was coming into the city and texted me. So I had him bail me out." Stella was grinning and Bloom realised she was fishing for questions.

"So you've been with Sky all this time instead?

"Yeah, and it's been great!"

"Come on, stop being coy, tell me what happened."

"Oh Bloom, it was amazing. I basically straight up told him about Daniel but that he was such a drag that it didn't really matter anyway and he said he'd take me on a date instead. We spent the day getting pizza and he took me shopping for clothes, he even had some good critiques about the outfits I was modelling.

"And then we took a walk by the beach and had a really good talk. Like, I confronted him about how distant and flaky he was being and he actually spent time telling me about it. It's all to do with being royalty and the assassination threats that he's received. He has to obey ridiculously strict security measures because there is a real chance someone might just pop up and try and kill him, they caught someone in the palace two months ago with an ice pick trying to murder his father."

"Oh my god!"

"Yeah, I know. Pretend I didn't tell you that; it's not actually public knowledge, whoops. But yeah, he apologised for jerking me around even though I don't think he had to, not after telling me all that was happening. Since we were having this deep, meaningful conversation I asked him what his hesitancy about sex was."

"You didn't!"

"I did. I told him it made me feel shitty and unattractive that he wouldn't at least give me a real answer as to why he didn't want to. I said that I'd leave it after this because I didn't want to make him uncomfortable but I needed us to be open with each other if we were going to keep dating."

"And?"

"And he said that it was several reasons. Strictly speaking he's not allowed to be apart from Brandon and that makes having sex kind of weird, he said that he has a lot of pressure on him at the moment and didn't want to start sleeping with me and not be able to make me a priority. Also there are a lot of expectations on him about who he's with and he has to be willing to change who he is to fit the roles his parents give him. Then he admitted that he was worried I only liked him because he's a prince and I laughed at that because I really don't care."

"I'm so glad you guys got the chance to talk, it's made you seem much happier." Bloom reached out to squeeze Stella's hand and she squeezed Bloom's back.

"Oh that's not the reason I'm so happy," she teased and winked at her friend.

"What…?"

"After all of that we started making out on the pier and he was super getting into it, I was basically straddling his lap and, you know, I could tell. I asked if he needed to get back to Red Fountain and he said 'no' so we ended up going to a short stay hotel."

Bloom's jaw dropped. Stella was grinning ear-to-ear as it dawned on Bloom what that actually meant. No wonder she was so happy, she'd finally got her guy into bed.

"Was… was he any good?"

"Oh yeah," Stella giggled. "He insisted on going down on me first and like, made me cum really quickly with that."

Bloom was sure that her face was bright red. She knew that she was very inexperienced, the furthest she'd ever gone was when she'd been making out with Andy on his bed and he'd exposed himself to her. She had freaked out a little because it had been the first time she'd actually seen a penis, ever. He'd coaxed her into touching it but she'd barely made contact before her hand had jumped back on its own and she asked him to cover up. Obviously she knew that there were other 'bases' outside of penis-in-vagina sex but it was alien to her to be able to talk about it so freely, without any embarrassment.

"I'm… glad?" She didn't know what she was supposed to say to that.

"Sorry, I don't want to embarrass you."

"No, I'm just surprised. It's not what I was expecting when you got back. I'm pleased that it's made you so happy."

"It has. He got a call from Brandon after though and he had to get back to Red Fountain so we checked out of the hotel and I came back. Do you have any other questions?"
She teased. Bloom thought for a moment; in general she did have questions about sex, and she did want to know more about what Stella and Sky had done since Stella clearly wanted to spill all the details.

"Do you promise not to make fun of me if I do?"

"Cross my heart, babe."

"What position?"

"Missionary to start and then I got on top and rode him. I got him to make some truly incredible noises." Stella attempted to mimic them and Bloom playfully slapped her arm to get her to stop.

"Did you use a condom?"

"Yeah, I'm not an idiot. I'm on birth control myself but, honestly, I can't be too careful. Could you imagine if the heir to Eraklyon got the heir to Solaria pregnant at seventeen?" Stella laughed. "The tabloids would have a field day with that."

Bloom listened with a mix of curiosity and horror as Stella went into more details of her love making with Sky. They reached three am before they decided that it was probably best to head to bed and carry on with this conversation later. Bloom moved as quietly as she could when she went back into her room but still managed to wake Flora. She apologised and was able to reassure her roommate that Stella had come back and was alright.

Flora paid her back when she got up early for her exam slot in the Simulation Chamber. Bloom went with her to get breakfast to calm her nerves and be a good friend, pouring herself black coffee to keep her eyes open and dumping several spoonfuls of sugar in it to make the drink more palatable.

"Don't worry," she said to console a fretting Flora. "The potion we made together went really well. That's the first step and you'll have the momentum from there. You've prepared so well for this you'll pass with flying colours."

She walked Flora to the chamber before returning to her suite to help Musa revise for their transfiguration written exam. Predictably, Musa already knew everything and really didn't benefit from the flashcard test. Bloom always felt out of place sandwiched between the princesses and the girls who had worked so hard to earn their scholarships and their place at Alfea; she'd just sort of turned up with her birth certificate and got in on novelty.

Flora came out after her half hour slot to the news that she had passed, as expected, and Tecna came along with Bloom to meet her out of the chamber with a small celebration cupcake. Bloom had queried bringing a cake on the very slim chance that Flora's nerves had got the best of her but was told that, if that was the case, it would have been a comfort cupcake.

She needn't have worried, of course, because Flora came out looking tired but flushed from happiness since she had received a passing grade. They took her out to the gardens for a little while so that she could relax in the sun and fresh air. They sat on an ornate iron bench next to a large tree so that Tecna was in the shade as she read a book on her tablet. Bloom was told all about the different flowers that Alfea grew there in between bites of cake, from the creeping Androsian ivy that flowered a bright blue in the spring to the winter roses that turned from pink to silver in the snow. Listening to Flora talk really hit home to Bloom how much botany wasn't a hobby for the Linphean fairy; it was a way of life.

"Hey Flora," she said thoughtfully. "What's life like on your planet?"

"What do you mean?" Flora looked amused. "Linphea isn't that much different from Magix."

"Yeah…" Bloom tried to explain herself through embarrassment. "But Magix is already so much different to Earth that I really don't have any context to begin with. Everyone seems to know what's going on but I'm a bit lost."

"Oh," Flora patted her hand sympathetically. "Well, it's the origin of earth, plant and animal magic. For a long time a lot of highly advanced technology was rejected but now it's just kind of permeated into society and it's only banned in the sacred places. A lot of our older, traditional houses were created by stone mages but most people build them out of brick now since it's easier to hook up the electrics and plumbing."

"So where do you live?"

"Well, my mum's a scientist so we kind of move wherever she needs to be for her research. My grandparents live in the City of Trees and that's where I stayed when I was studying for the Alfea entrance exam." Flora was starting to look a little uncomfortable and Bloom realised that this was probably the first time that her roommate had spoken about her family, other than showing off a picture of her younger sister. She shouldn't be surprised that she kept putting her foot in it, and yet she was.

Thankfully, Tecna was also with them and was paying enough attention to know it was time to move the conversation on.

"You're getting quite into your research on the different dimensions," she observed and put her tablet away. "Finding it interesting?"

"Yeah… I've been reading about the Great Dragon and the creation of the magical universe but it seems like lots of people are very dismissive that its power exists. I don't really understand that."

"Why not?" Tecna cocked an eyebrow. "It's a creation myth. Doesn't Earth have its own creation myth?"

"Several, actually…"

"Well, Zenith says that the universe was created by the sweat droplets from our patron deity. Linphea's version is that there is a life tree whose branches link all of the planets. Domino claimed that the symbol of their magical element is god… although Solaria does, traditionally, also believe that."

"Speaking of which," Flora interrupted before Bloom could say anything else. "Shouldn't our princess be getting ready to take her Simulation Chamber exam?"

They all paused for a moment and looked at each other.

"What time did she come in last night?" Tecna asked Bloom.

"We went to bed very late…"

"We should wake her up," Flora said and got up off the bench. "Hopefully we can get her to the chamber before she fails as a no-show."

"Do you think she'll skip the twenty minutes it takes her to get ready if it means being on time?" Bloom asked with not much hope as they walked at some speed back to their dorm. Tecna made a 'psh' noise and shook her head.

"I'm not sure there's anything that would persuade her to skip all of her hair and skincare steps, but maybe if we move her out of the door fast enough she won't have time to say anything…"

"What was she doing last night, anyway?" Flora asked. "I know you came back alone, well, without her, because Musa said she saw you and Brandon at the bus stop."

"Oh er," Bloom tried not to look like she was panicking. "She was with Sky."

"Until the early morning? Wait, did they…?" Bloom was not doing a very good job of keeping her face neutral as Tecna and then Flora realised the implications.

"I don't want to say anything…" she said weakly, and was met with wide eyes from both and an excited squeal from Flora. So much for letting Stella tell her news to everyone herself. Bloom was bad at this. "I'm sure she'll explain once she's up."

There wasn't much chance for that before Stella's exam though, since it took all three of them to coax her out of bed and into clothes. The princess was so sleepy that she didn't even want to eat a quick breakfast before being pushed down to the Simulation Chamber. Flora was able to make sure she took her prep bag with her but she didn't seem to register what she was supposed to do with it before she was ushered inside by Palladium, who seemed shocked that Stella was wearing her bedhead rather than a blowout.

"What do you reckon her chances are?" Flora asked Tecna.

"Depends how quickly she wakes up."

They studied for their remaining exams in the main hall until Stella was done with her simulation. It concerned Bloom that she came out almost twenty minutes late, lugging her bag after her.

"No," she said in response to Bloom's expression. "I did not pass. But I've agreed with Palladium that I'm going to stay over the winter break to retake it."

"You're not going to go home?"

"Nah, I'd rather make sure I get a better grade. And I'm not in the mood for my parents' bickering… besides there's a pageant for Miss Magix that I want to enter."

The rest of the week was spent finishing up their exams, having a winter feast, and packing up to return home. Faragonda had arranged for a transporting spell to take Bloom back to a safe spot in Gardenia with all her stuff and set her homework to study the incantation in theory so she could replicate it to return at the end of the holiday. Bloom had blanched at that suggestion until the Headmistress assured her that, should anything go wrong, a member of staff would be able to fetch her.

And so she packed up her things with help from Stella and got ready to go home with a report card from her classes and exams that was, in her opinion, not too shabby.
She wasn't as academically gifted as some of the other scholarship girls (Flora's results could barely be improved upon) but they were good enough that she was proud of them and wanted to show Vanessa as soon as she got back.

Bloom knew that leaving Magix meant leaving the range of her friends' phones and that made her want to send a goodbye text to Brandon, but she didn't know what to say. She hadn't heard from him since Musa interrupted them and she didn't want to annoy him or make a fool of herself. In the end, she decided that she'd left it too late to try and start a conversation since they were about to be out of contact for several weeks. She made a promise with herself that she would get back in touch with Brandon once term started again and hopefully this time she could act normal in front of him.