Hiding things from Stella wasn't as difficult as Kageo was worried about. She was fairly self-centered so she wasn't paying close attention to what her brother was doing. Yami, on the other hand, seemed to read Kageo without him even doing anything. That would have worried Walt if not for how close the Blackwood siblings seemed to be, and how unworried Kageo was by his sister knowing about them.
Not that Yami said anything out loud. The day after the ball she had looked at Kageo with her eyebrows raised, and Kageo just stared back at her for a moment where there seemed to be some sort of conversation passing between them before they both looked away from each other to focus on food.
Walt might have thought that she didn't know anything, except that when Yami got up to leave, she put a hand on his shoulder and he heard her voice in his head saying, "
Take care of and protect my brother and I'll be happy,
" before she left the table.
That might have freaked Walt out if he didn't already know Yami was as good of a person as her brother was. In fact, from that point onward, she treated Walt a lot like she had adopted him as another brother. And because of how sweet and gentle Yami was, everyone just assumed it was because Kageo had become friends with Walt.
Walt was deeply appreciative of Yami's acceptance, knowing instinctively that his family would never come to accept him so quickly or so completely. While they explored their mutual curiosities in private, though, Walt explored the esoteric knowledge available in the Academy library. He shared a lot of his discoveries and theories with Kageo but more than half of what he frequently gushed about was unintelligible to his Roomie. Most of what Kageo took away from the discussions they had involved the ways in which magic followed certain scientific parameters and thus could be studied.
Even if Kageo couldn't always keep up with it, he enjoyed seeing how passionate Walt was about explaining it. He loved the way Walt's eyes lit up with joy. It was something he was finding endearing, and so he loved listening to Walt talk about it while trying to see what he was talking about.
They were both also noticing things the closer they got physically that were out of the norm for each of them. It started slowly from the first night when they felt their auras mixing. Kageo would catch the faintest of colors in the air or around people, but it would disappear before he could get a good look at it, while Walt would every once in a while see a brief flash of an image when he was flipping through books or grabbing something from Kageo's side of the room. The images were so fast he almost didn't remember them, but some of them would stick in his head.
The more comfortable they got with each other, the more they let each other know about their powers as well. Kageo finally explained what he meant about an heir not being an issue, though he was embarrassed to show it. He could shapeshift, as could Yami. If he shapeshifted in the room, it was usually into a black cat or a black wolf, but he explained he could change his appearance and sex as well. When Kageo turned back from being an animal, Walt got brief glances at his naked body from behind.
Walt was surprised but also interested in the mechanism that allowed the change. It looked to him like Kageo surrounded himself with energy and then it sort of coalesced into a weird magical cocoon and that's when the change happened. It wasn't gradual, either, like his natural body becoming the other body, so much as he was himself one moment and the animal the next. Walt found all of this fascinating but did not want to demand that Kageo keep doing it so he could play scientist.
The reality was that Kageo was happy to keep showing Walt how he transformed if it would put that sparkle in his eyes he got when he was trying to work things out scientifically in his head, but the transformations wore him out if he did too many. Some nights he'd end up passed out up against Walt in his bed as a cat because he just didn't have the energy to turn back.
Walt certainly didn't mind, though they perpetually left the bathroom door cracked open so Kageo could run in there and change back and pretend to shower if company showed up. After roughly three weeks, Walt seemed to discover something. He woke Kageo up from where he was sunning himself in a shaft of light from the window talking excitedly about something that Kageo understood none of while he was a cat and even less of as a person.
Walt was talking very quickly and only half of his words seemed to be making sense to Kageo, but if he understood the gist of it, Walt finally understood the spellforms he had been seeing coalesce naturally as part of each person's power. This basically meant that he could duplicate anything that he had "seen" being done while using his Magesight.
Kageo's eyebrows rose at that, fascinated by this idea. "So, you can basically mimic other people's powers if you see it done enough?"
Walt shrugged self-consciously. "If I can see the spell-form, yeah," he said, looking down sheepishly.
"I think that's pretty cool, and could be very useful too," Kageo told him while putting a hand on Walt's shoulder. "We probably shouldn't let your dad and sister find out about it though."
Walt looked up at him. "Oh, they don't know anything about my powers. The designation testing was the first time he's ever had any knowledge of what I can do and even that is less descriptive than he would think. The professors here are apparently hard nuts for his spies to crack, too, because he has openly hated this place my whole life," Walt gushed.
Kageo gave a surprised laugh at that before he sat down next to Walt. He had slipped on some pants while Walt had explained everything to him so he at least wasn't naked anymore. His expression was thoughtful. "I can't imagine what that's like. My uncle and aunt have known our abilities the whole time. Adiran has taught me personally so that no tutor could turn spy for someone else. I've never had to worry my own family was a danger to me though. Are most of your siblings like Stella or...?"
Walt shrugged. "Of the seven of us, only one is somewhat close to me and that's just because he's pretty sure I'm going to off our father and become head of the family sooner rather than later. Stella is a bit of a special case with her..." he gestured in her general direction, "that. Each of us is pretty individual and very independent. I don't believe that
all
of my sibs want me dead, at least not most of the supposititious ones, but enough do that I don't risk close kindredship with any of them."
"I see why Uncle Adiran and your father don't get along," Kageo commented.
Walt nodded his agreement with that sentiment. "I only know a little about your uncle but I know enough to recognize that."
Kageo looked a little sad as he considered that. "The Adiran Blackwood you'll have the chance to know is not the same Adiran Blackwood that existed when my parents were still alive. Dad used to joke with Uncle Adiran all the time that he was too carefree and happy. That he needed to have some life happen to him and then he'd be more serious."
Kageo turned his head toward the window, and Walt was able to see the deep grief in his eyes as they unfocused slightly, like looking back at a memory. "Dad was the more serious one. Grandma used to tell him he was a brooder, and it was why all the women would swoon over him. Adiran was the jokester, the silly one. Then dad and mom were murdered, and when Adiran stopped me from going with the man who came to tell us they were dead, he looked so different. Later, I could tell he'd cried, but any of the grief he was probably feeling when he got into the car to go to the Capital was unseeable by us. He just looked...angry. His eyes were steely in a dangerous way, and he looked like he was calculating every single little thing that was done, from every condolence, to every person who came to the funeral, and more.
"I vaguely remember your dad showing up to it, and Adiran telling me to stay far away from him. He had some kids in tow, but I don't know if any of them were you. I wasn't allowed near your family during the funeral. I wish you could have known the carefree, happy Adiran though. I wish he could have stayed that way."
Then he seemed to think about the last part and added, "Then again, I'm probably a lot different too, thanks to their murder."
Walt tried to remember if he had gone to a funeral, but some of his memories were blurry. He found it odd because he could remember a great deal in vivid detail, but other folks around the keep and his tutors had explained that memories were finicky and elusive critters sometimes and he shouldn't worry too much about it. He didn't know specifically when the Blackwoods had been murdered, but he remembered plenty of boring carriage rides around the time frame that seemed to fit most closely.
It occurred to him then that Kageo, with his powers to be able to read memories and recall them, might be able to help him clear up some of those blurry ones if Walt wanted him to. He filed it away as something to mention later, then said, "While I truly wish your parents had lived a long, fulfilling life with you and your siblings and that your Uncle had kept his carefree demeanor, I also feel that the experiences we have shape us into different people than we would have been. Who knows? Maybe I never would have met you."
"Yeah, that's a good point. I can't imagine a timeline without you in my life now, though, so..." Kagro agreed, and then his face flushed when he realized what he said but decided not to take it back. The reality was that he
couldn't
picture his life without Walt in it now, and he didn't really want to. Kageo didn't really believe in fate or destiny, but sometimes it did feel like sitting next to them in the train and being roomed together was a form of kismet. He wasn't going to say that part out loud though.
This conversation sparked an idea for Walt but it was unrelated to the main thrust of what they were talking about, so he shelved it for later. Instead, he addressed the timeline comment. "I couldn't imagine a life without you in it either," he said to Kageo, emboldened by the coloring in Kageo's face.
Kageo looked up at Walt in happy surprise. His face reddened more, this time more because it made his heart beat faster than because he was embarrassed. He leaned over and kissed Walt in response, bringing up his hand to caress Walt's cheek as he did so. They had slowly, but surely, been testing the waters with each other since that first kiss, though so far they had only gotten as far as making out and exploring with their hands while mostly clothed. Neither of them had ever been sexual with anyone before, so they were moving in that direction while still being cautious.
Walt smiled at Kageo when he pulled away again. "I swear I had thoughts in my head before you did that," he said sweetly.
"I have no doubt of that," Kageo replied with a smirk. "I won't pretend I'm not proud of my ability to derail all of them with just a kiss."
Walt laughed, the sound clear and heartfelt. It was one of the things Kageo loved about him: he did everything with such joy and honesty, even when dealing with his family. "Maybe not all of them, but certainly the more distracting ones," Walt admitted.
"Oh?" Kageo teased. "Which thoughts stayed during that?"
"Not the most innocent ones, I'll tell you that!" Walt laughed. "But I had an idea about a temporal spell that
