Chapter 48: Garnet Eyes and Grammar Books
By the time most children learned the alphabet and traced shaky letters with crayons, Eva had mastered basic Latin sentence construction.
She was three years old.
Mornings began early in the Liore "Ainsley" household. Sunlight filtered in pale through tall windows as birds warbled outside, but Eva never needed an alarm. She woke naturally, with a yawn and a stretch, slipping into soft slippers and brushing her wild hair back from her face. Her bunny plush waited at the end of the bed, but these days she didn't cling to it as much.
There was always something new to learn.
Her schedule was not cruel or strict—her mother would never allow that—but Eva's lessons filled every hour between breakfast and evening tea. Her tutors, each vetted, patient, and used to teaching advanced students, had quickly learned to toss out conventional curriculums. By now, she had completed everything through the sixth grade, though her age said she should barely be in preschool.
Languages came first. French and Mandarin alternated between days. Then Latin, which she begged for when she saw an old leather volume on her aunt's bookshelf. German came next, though she had trouble pronouncing certain consonants. Japanese was waiting in the wings.
Between lessons, she read.
Thick volumes. Encyclopedias. Old folktales. Myths and linguistics guides. Books too big for her lap and too heavy for her arms unless she lay flat on her belly to flip the pages one by one. Sometimes she copied diagrams just for fun. Sometimes she drew pictures of strange words she liked the sound of—"serein," "halcyon," "ephemeral."
It was quiet work, and yet Eva never grew tired. Her mind buzzed with questions and connections, lighting up with every new discovery. She moved like a star on the edge of bursting, her curiosity never resting, her hunger never quite satisfied.
And still, always, there was her.
Seraphina Yue Langford.
No matter how high the stack of books or how tangled the sentence structures grew, Eva's thoughts floated back, again and again, to the girl who lived behind the hedge.
She didn't see her often—only from her window or during brief moments in the garden. But whenever Seraphina appeared, it was like something clicked into place. Like gravity tilted. Like the air shimmered.
Eva tried not to let it distract her.
But sometimes, when she practiced handwriting drills, she'd find herself writing the same word over and over without realizing:
Seraphina. Seraphina. Seraphina.
One afternoon, as she practiced conjugating French verbs in the study, her aunt swept in with a tray of lemon tea and shortbread.
Vivienne was dressed in a flowing burgundy blouse tucked into high-waisted cream trousers, her hair pinned up in an artful twist. She paused when she saw the scrawl on Eva's notebook.
"Oh my," she said, setting the tray down with a delicate clink. "That's quite a bit of vocabulary."
Eva's hand flew to cover the page, cheeks flushing. "It's for language practice."
Vivienne peered over the edge of the notebook, smirking. "Mm. You've conjugated 'aimer' thirty-two times."
"I'm making sure I remember it."
"I'm sure you are," her aunt said, a glint in her eyes. She poured a cup of tea and added just the right amount of honey, handing it to Eva. "And the subject is Seraphina, I presume?"
Eva went pink again, clutching the cup tightly.
"She's just easy to spell," she muttered.
"Darling," Vivienne teased, "do you plan to fall in love before your fourth birthday?"
Eva didn't respond. She stared into the steam rising from her tea. Her heart did that odd thudding again, like it didn't know what to do with itself.
Vivienne reached to ruffle her hair gently. "You know I'm only teasing. But I must say—this is no ordinary fascination."
"She glows," Eva said, almost to herself. "Even when she's sad, she looks like she's glowing."
"Have you seen her sad?" Vivienne asked softly.
Eva nodded once.
Vivienne paused, her teasing quieting. "You notice everything, don't you?"
Eva didn't answer, but her eyes flickered up—serious and old in a small face.
Later that evening, Vivienne sat at the long mahogany dining table with her brother and sister-in-law, sipping her second glass of white wine as Eva napped curled in a chair nearby, her cheek pressed to an open book on Renaissance architecture.
"I know we always said she was brilliant," Vivienne began slowly, "but she's beyond that now. She finished every elementary-level textbook I gave her. Languages, sciences, history… She absorbs them like breath. I started giving her university-level vocabulary drills today."
Reginald Leonardo Ashlee Liore, always the quiet one, raised his brows but said nothing.
Evelyn Margaret Claire Maxwell—Liore, tall and poised with her hair swept back, did not look surprised. She only nodded.
"I saw it when she was two," Evelyn said. "She kept pointing at a physics text I left on the table. She couldn't read the words yet, but she memorized the diagrams. She asked me what the arrows meant. I explained them once. The next day she drew them from memory."
Vivienne blinked. "She's three, Evie."
"I know," Evelyn said simply. "That's why we homeschool her. That's why we don't tell anyone who we really are. She needs protection more than attention."
Reginald set down his wine glass. "But she also needs companionship. She's not lonely yet—but what happens when she realizes no one her age understands her?"
Vivienne tapped the rim of her glass. "She's already realizing it."
Reginald and Evelyn looked at her.
"She talks about the Langford girl more and more," Vivienne said quietly. "She hasn't even spoken to her, but… it's like she sees a light there. She doesn't understand it yet, but it's important to her."
There was a pause.
"She's still a child," Evelyn said at last.
"She is," Vivienne agreed. "But she's not like other children. You both know that."
They glanced at their daughter—fast asleep, rabbit clutched in one hand, the edge of a Latin book drooping over her lap.
"She reads words like limerence," Vivienne said softly. "I don't think she knows what it means yet. But one day…"
"She'll feel it before she defines it," Evelyn said.
"Yes," Vivienne agreed.
*****
The next morning, Eva woke early again. She stretched her arms, climbed out of bed, and tiptoed to the window.
The Langford estate shimmered in the early mist. Dew coated the grass. The hedges looked soft and green and endless.
And there—near the edge of the fence—was Seraphina.
Wearing a soft white dress and reading a book under the tree.
Eva stood frozen.
Her heart twisted.
She wanted so badly to go outside, to walk across the lawn and say hello. But her feet wouldn't move. Her hands trembled.
Instead, she turned away, breathing fast, and padded down the stairs to find her aunt.
Vivienne was in the sunroom, sipping jasmine tea again and flipping through a gardening catalog.
"She was outside," Eva blurted.
Vivienne looked up. "Seraphina?"
Eva nodded quickly, hugging herself.
Vivienne tilted her head. "And?"
"I couldn't move."
Vivienne smiled gently. "That's alright."
"I wanted to."
"I know."
"But I was scared."
"Of what?"
Eva hesitated. "What if she doesn't glow up close?"
Vivienne's breath caught.
She reached forward and gently cupped Eva's cheeks. "Then you'll find out if she's human like you, or something else entirely."
Eva blinked.
Vivienne kissed her forehead. "Either way, she's real. And when you're ready, you'll find out."
Eva leaned into the touch.
She didn't speak again that morning, but during her lessons she worked even harder than usual. As though proving herself might make her worthy of one day walking across the grass.
And that night, in her diary—the one no one knew about—she wrote only one line:
I want to be her friend. But I think she's my favorite poem.