Being with Flauvic turns me into a hopeless bundle of clichés.

Kissing him only makes it worse.

I would marry him right now only on the strength of the dizzying shivers that shoot through me when he is near me, when he touches my hand. I would marry him on the spot even if I didn’t love him for all the things he is, the things I love about him- for just the way he talks to me, for how he knows me so well, how he knows how I react, how he knows what I will say- and how delighted he is when I surprise him. And for the bitter little broken boy that is hidden deep under the surface... oh, I love him for all these things, and I need him, somehow, to know that.

When he kisses me like he is now, he makes me feel- I hate to say it, but he makes me feel that I’m perfect, that he’s perfect, that the world’s perfect, that there are no obstacles in our way...

...And that’s where the cliché part comes in.

But I know that love is the greatest cliché of all, that it makes you feel these things.

Suddenly, Flauvic breaks away from me, and I can feel him going still.

‘Flauvic, what-’

He lays a finger on my lips. ‘Wait.’

I watch how his coin-gold eyes glint in the darkness even as I cock my head to listen as he is- and then I hear it.

‘Elestra!’ My mother and sister are calling me from inside, from my rooms. They are back from the concert, and no doubt wondering why I had left halfway through.

With a light kiss on my lips, Flauvic climbs the balcony railing and is about to leap to the bushes below, a rose among the thorns. We have an unspoken agreement, he and I- Mama and Papa have adjusted to the idea of us, but even so, we aren’t about to test things by having them find us kissing on the balcony outside the Residence.

‘Flauvic...’ Something in me needs to ask it, though I do so shyly, like the awkward young girl that I no longer am. ‘Flauvic, will you come to me if I call for you?’

His answer is properly romantic and nonsensical- clichéd- as befits the occasion. ‘Elestra,’ he says. ‘I will go there and back again.’

I can see him grinning wryly in the darkness as I try to decipher his answer-

-And then he is gone, moving noiselessly through the gardens, and I turn to face my family with a smile, for I know now that he loves me as much as I love him.