An Education

IV.

She left him soon after being laced up again, walking out the door of the conservatory with a noticeable lack of care of being seen. Her stride was confident - if with the occasional tremble - and then she was gone.

It happened in an instant, too quickly for him to figure out how she'd done it. The last thing he remembered seeing was the door opening, and then a swirl of ice-blue light as she made her exit. At first, he was stunned; then, when he had a chance to catch his breath, he sighed, suddenly understanding how she had managed to meet him without anyone noticing.

In spite of the wonder of her magic, he found himself pondering over her parting look for longer than he would've liked. Had she been enraged? Or just embarrassed? It could've been anything, and he had to acknowledge that for all the time he'd spent with the Snow Queen, he still didn't know her well at all.

The idea that he was nowhere near such a place of confidence was irritating. He prided himself on being able to find out little-known details about other people through his powers of persuasion, and initially, he'd thought he could do the same with Elsa.

It had become clear to him, however, that his usual tactics weren't working with her (or at least not as well as he'd hoped). There had been moments here and there when she'd been vulnerable with him, but they'd been only that—moments. In fact, when he looked back on the last few days with a clear head, it became obvious that very little of substance had been said between them.

But he wanted more, and he wasn't sure why.

**

He received word from her around noon the following day.

It was again delivered via a hastily-scrawled note, slipped under his door—though this time he was in his room reading a tragically terrible romance novel, and heard (and saw) the paper slide along the wooden floor below him.

He jumped up from his seat, slamming the book shut and tossing it aside as he opened the door, hoping to catch the messenger before (s)he had gotten away. His head whipped from side to side, surveying the dark corridor to whence he'd been relegated for the last two years, and thought he saw the very edge of a dress as it skirted around the corner.

He was half of mind to go and chase the person and demand to know for certain if all of this was really happening completely in secret, or if he was being made a fool of by Elsa and the entire court while he brooded and pondered over her "true" feelings. Not being sure if he had seen someone, however, he found that the other half of him was more desperately curious to go back and read the note.

You're an idiot.

He cursed himself even as he closed the door behind him, staring at the folded paper with a mixture of anticipation and resentment. He was giving her exactly what she wanted by reading these, meeting her at her chosen locations, pleasuring her, "teaching" her... and whatever physical benefit he got out of it, it didn't seem like it was enough to justify fulfilling her whims.

She's winning, whether you read it or not.

The idea made him frown, and he was tempted to just pick the thing up, rip it in half, and not think about any of it for a second longer. After all, he certainly hadn't agreed to any of this as some way of "repenting" for his sins towards her, and she never directly said or even implied that that was what she really wanted from him, at the end of all of this. In addition, she hadn't given him any more useful information about her time in the Isles than he could've deduced on his own.

(More to the point: he hadn't allowed himself yet, in all this time, to find any release, and his constant, aching need for it was slowly driving him mad.)