Noelle keeps a subtle eye on Aidyn while the team works on the most recent reports required for the trial.
Well, she hopes it's subtle.
Subtlety isn't exactly her strong point in general, and in the last week, Aidyn seems to have started sensing more of her emotions through their bond.
Since she took him Memory Walking, there have been several times when she experienced a strong emotion and everything on Aidyn's side went completely still, like he was holding his breath, waiting and watching. She doesn't know exactly what he sensed or how clearly, but he can definitely tell more about what's happening on her side than before.
He's getting the hang of their emotional landscapes much faster than she expected. Is it because of the Memory Walking? Or is it because they work together so often here in The Library? Maybe it's both. There are similarities between the two experiences. Aidyn may have only relived one set of data as fully as she does, but he has still spent hours every day for the last year walking around inside her head. That type of exposure would provide considerable insight into her emotional workings.
Letting the team inside her mental construct terrified Noelle at first. Before them, the few people she'd ever invited inside had primarily critical things to say.
In college, her professors leaned heavily towards the opinion that three-dimensional systems put unnecessary strain on a Memorizer's magical strength. Her thesis, Memorizers and Mental Constructs: Spatial Methods for Navigating and Organizing Large Systems of Data, was met with little enthusiasm.
Aidyn, on the other hand, has always been fascinated by the way she uses her magic. She has large collections of data from their school days that she's fond of Recalling. A lot of her favorite moments are from the semester they were assigned to the same temporary Team Bond.
Aidyn always listened with interest and engaged with Noelle's unorthodox theories and ideas. He didn't treat her magic like their professors, who believed the primary purpose of Memorization was utility. They always pushed her towards more "practical" applications for her magical talent, whereas Aidyn responded enthusiastically towards her more creative ones.
Unfortunately, Collan ended up holding the same philosophies as her professors. It hadn't taken long into their marriage for Noelle to realize the engagement and support Collan offered came from a place of seeking personal gain, not from genuine interest like she'd thought.
That one hurt.
So much between them hurts.
Even though he's been gone for three and a half years, so much heaviness remains. Collections of data from their time together still sit as deeply lodged at the bottom of her heart as when they first sank, as unrelenting and unyielding as stone.
But Noelle isn't going to think about that right now.
Nope. She's going to think about Aidyn instead, and his team, which is now her team—a team currently preparing for her trial, which is only one week away.
All six of them already turned in reports about what happened the night Aidyn's, as well as twenty-three other people's, bonds broke. Noelle's magic made it easy to provide their individual perspectives of the incident. Since they'd been in the middle of an in-depth Memorization training exercise, the whole team was using her magic that night. As a result, all they had to do for those early reports was Recall and Download each of their personal data-sets. At Noelle's suggestion, they included both written and visually immersive versions of their data. That way even the members of the investigation without Mind Reading Magic could fully experience what happened. Those experiential accounts unequivocally cleared her teammates names as co-conspirators.
The reports for the trial are more time consuming. Ellyse, Brehanna, and Emmett work on character defense reports about Noelle. She and Aidyn, on the other hand, are tasked with compiling detailed descriptions of their relational history, including exactly what they each poured into their bond structure to make it activate.
Certain people—cough cough, the queen and parliament—are concerned about motivations, specifically how Aidyn and Noelle were able to form such a strong bond without having a romantic relationship.
For as common as Love Bonds are, it frustrates Noelle to no end how stuck everyone is on the fact that they didn't use romance. Love Bonds are never structured out of romance alone. The structure needs to be strong, and romance is notoriously brittle. Things like attraction and desire can change too much over time. Anyone who knows anything about Love Bonds should know it's things like trust and respect that them strong.
Those are exactly the types of things Noelle and Aidyn share. Their bond formed strong because Aidyn trusted her to save him and she trusted him to treat her just as respectfully in this bond as he does in their Team Bond.
Noelle sighs.
For once in her life she knows how to sum up a complex collection of thoughts, feelings, and experiences into a single sentence, and this is the one time she's required to explain it in as much detail as possible.
She rolls her eyes at the irony.
It's fine.
Noelle is great at amassing details.
If the investigation team wants details, she'll give them details. Noelle will give them so many details they won't be able to find a single reason in the entire Five Realms to doubt she is a suitable Love Bond partner for Prince Aidyn of Embermoore—and she won't even have to use romance to do it.
* * *
Three hours later, Noelle hunches over a data-strewn table, still working on that same report.
It's not going well.
Her Recall System keeps pointing out problematic areas within her collections of data about Aidyn. It got so bad, she moved her workstation far away from the team area to avoid any unwanted embarrassment.
"Not again!" Noelle groans at the message flashing on the screen hovering in front of her. "How is that considered romantic?"
The Recall screen ignores her complaints and continues to flash.
"Aidyn's eyes are objectively beautiful," she argues. "Anyone can see that. Me pointing out the obvious isn't a sign of Romantic Intent."
The text on the screen updates:
Beauty is inherently subjective, andEyes are thematically romantic
Recall then pulls up citations for both objections from no less than fifty sources each to support its claims. Most of the sources for the second objection come from novels Noelle has read.
"Dang it." Noelle pinches the bridge of her nose and exhales in frustration. "I have a lot of data about his eyes…"
"What are you working on?"
Noelle jumps at the sound of Aidyn's voice. She'd been so focused on her report that, somehow, she hadn't noticed the Registered data of him pulling up the Navigation System to find and match her location.
He grins, clearly pleased that he managed to sneak up on her for once. "I thought you finished your Please Believe I Am Not, And Have Never Been, A Criminal report hours ago."
"I did. This is for my Please Believe I Am A Suitable Love Bond Partner report."
Aidyn's eyebrows raise and he sits down in a chair, as if taking in all the paperwork before him with new appreciation. He smirks playfully and lets out a slow whistle. "I had no idea you liked me so much, Noelle."
If he can joke about their bond, so can she.
Noelle flattens out her expression. "They didn't give me a page limit."
Aidyn barks out a laugh, the kind that makes his eyes sparkle with delight, prompting her systems to automatically add this new piece of data to her ever growing collections.
The message on the Recall screen flashes a new set of text:
Primary Problem Identified: Non-Memorizers correlate high quantities of data with high quantities of affection.
Oooooohhhh. That makes sense!
Noelle is a Memorizer Mage, so it doesn't mean anything that she knows all of Aidyn's different types of laughs, and what makes his eyes sparkle, and that he always smells like mint and lemon, and all the other tiny little details her Recall System warned were signs of Romantic Intent!
Relief washes over Noelle. Thank the Realms.
Noelle's knowledge has absolutely nothing to do with how she does, or does not, feel about him.
It's just her magic. It takes in every little detail, whether she wants it to or not.
Magic is the only reason Noelle has a table's worth of details about Aidyn.
It's all because of her magic.
That's it.
That's all there is to it.
Denial Detected, the screen updates.
Noelle hastily dismisses the screen, making it disappear.
Whatever. Love Bonds are annoying and romance is stupid.
Aidyn's laugh subsides to a gentle chuckle. "Not giving a page limit. Rookie mistake." He picks up the top piece of paper from a nearby stack. "The investigation team isn't going to know what hit them."
Noelle uses the Recall System to steal the page out of Aidyn's hand and return it to its stack. "Don't look! This report isn't for you. It's for them."
"I'll see it eventually. They're going to publish their findings publicly after the investigation closes, you know." He gives her a wry smile. His eyes remain sparkly though, so she knows he isn't being mean.
"Not all of it," she huffs. "Not the details."
Hardly any information from the investigation into Collan's death made it into the press… although that was probably because there was never a public trial. The navy actually ended up petitioning the Grand Magistrate to seal everything once the investigation completed.
Noelle doesn't actually know the privacy rules that trials normally follow, and the team's forced isolation has made it hard to get new information. Surely, given the personal nature of this trial, not many details will be released to the public.
Sudden movement from Aidyn brings Noelle's attention back to the present, as he snatches up another page from the table. Noelle can tell he's trying to read as much of it as possible before she takes it back. He doesn't get very far. She's too fast. This is her realm, and no one navigates her systems like she does.
Aidyn laughs again as the sheet disappears almost immediately. Instead of trying to grab another one, he stretches out his now empty hand and Recalls a folder of his own.
"I should know by now that I'll never be able to outmatch you in here." He holds up his folder. "How about a truce. I'll show you my report if you show me yours?"
"Deal." Noelle takes the folder when he holds it out over the table. "But you only get to choose the same number of pages from my report as there are in yours."
His smile widens. "Fair enough."
Noelle opens his folder and flips through the pages. "Thirty-two. You get to pick thirty-two pages from the table."
He reaches his hand out but she grabs it. "Once you touch a page, you can't put it back to pick a different one, so choose wisely."
Noelle releases Aidyn's hand to let him peruse the table in peace, and sits back down to read his report.
"Sorry mine's so much shorter than yours," he says with a frown.
She can't tell how much of his expression comes from his words or his consideration of which pages to pick.
"Mine won't actually include all of this. I know I can't send a report this long. You've managed to teach me that much in the last year. This is just what I'm considering."
"I might have to disagree with myself this time." Aidyn smirks, and this time the sparkles in his eyes do disappear. "I'm quite angry with how my mother, parliament, and the military are treating our new bond."
Aidyn chooses five of his thirty-two pages before continuing. "You saved my life. You already have the top security clearances since we share a Team Bond. And we've known each other for years."
He carefully pulls free a piece of paper sticking out from the middle of a stack. "Given the situation, everyone should be thrilled, not treating it like a scandal."
Noelle reads the first page of Aidyn's report, which says as much.
He chooses four more pages from the table and Noelle registers the sparkles light up again in his eyes again. Aidyn glances up at her from between the stacks of paper. "I think the investigation team, and everyone else required to read it, deserve as thorough a report as possible, don't you think?"
Noelle nods, returning his sentiment with a smug grin of her own. Paperwork. It's the bureaucratic equivalent of a sword. Depending on the timing, placement, and who wields it, it can either save someone's life or inflict a lot of pain.
"You wrote more than I expected," Noelle murmurs to Aidyn as she returns to reading his report.
"But yours is so much longer…"
"Meh," she flaps a hand dismissively. "I have magic on my side. Your poor, regular brain has probably forgotten most of the grand times we've shared. Like all those long, cold, miserable walks you'd take to make sure I made it back to my dorm safely after our late-night study groups with Collan."
She means it as a joke, but Aidyn stiffens.
Noelle doesn't usually refer to Collan by his first name with the team. She checks, and Recall confirms she's never used it in front of Aidyn. However, it feels appropriate this time. Collan wasn't a captain yet when they were in school. Obviously it makes Aidyn uncomfortable. She opens her mouth to apologize, but he speaks before she can get a word out.
"I always hated that he wouldn't walk you home."
Not only does anger register in his tone, but its there in his facial expression as well.
This is not the reaction she expected, so much so that it takes her several seconds to shift gears before she can respond.
"But we usually met for study groups in his dorm," she says. "I lived all the way across campus from him, and that's a long walk just to have to turn right around and go back to where he started. Your dorm was in the middle. It was logical for him to stay, and it was kind of you and your guards to escort me home."
"Why do you keep defending him?"
Heat rises in Noelle's face and neck. "It was inconvenient! I understood."
"Noelle, loving you is not an inconvenience."
As Noelle clamps her mouth shut so fast her teeth clack together, Aidyn's eyes go wide for a split second before his expression settles and he corrects himself.
"When you love someone, you don't treat them like an inconvenience."
Noelle looks down at her hands. "What are you saying?"
Aidyn takes a deep breath and sits down in the chair across the table. "I'm saying, I hated how he treated you. In school… and later."
Noelle squeezes her eyes shut.
Did everyone see these types of things and simply never tell her? Was she truly that blinded by love and romance, that everyone—including a blazing Prince of Embermoore—saw what she hadn't? Is she so ill-equipped and unskilled that even as a Memorizer she didn't seen the signs? Is her magic, is she, truly so useless?
The mortification and shame of this moment becomes another piece of data dropping like a stone into the depths of her heart, a stone that threatens to carry the rest of her down with it.
Faster than the blink of an un-sparkling eye, Noelle accesses the Navigation System. As she chooses a different spot to flee towards, Aidyn reaches out to her, both physically and through their Emotion Bond.
Noelle sends a massive wave of her emotions towards his end of their landscape to push him away. In the same instant the wave crashes into him, she disappears from her seat, leaving his report fluttering to the ground.