"Alas."

"Since I should not cast any spells today and should also not be given my very own aura of inconvenience, is there anything else productive to do today? I wonder if those protective spells you mentioned will give me some kind of aura."

"Royal and this house both have plenty of protective spells cast on them, and neither seems to do what Tea's harmonic-sight spell has been doing," says Castle.

"That's true... although I didn't try to map Royal's immediate environs."

"If she was producing this much nonsense, I think you would have noticed something, but if her effect is more sedate or covers a smaller area it could have passed you by."

"Yeah. Are the ones on the house very similar to the ones on Royal?"

"They're all protections, but the casting and intended effects are somewhat different," says Castle.

"So maybe I should surround Royal with tiny lights before putting on anything I can't take off."

"Reasonable. She's busy right now, but I can ask her to meet with you later if you want."

"Sure. How much later?"

"Does tomorrow evening at the school library sound like a reasonable time and place to you?"

"Sure."

"I'll arrange it. Anything else for now?"

"Nothing particularly comes to mind. I guess we can just go to the library again."

Tea shrugs agreeably.

So Promise stands well away from the hallucinating harmonics in one of the more regularized parts of the house, turns invisible, and goes with Tea to the library to read things.

Tea reads fiction. And is available to help explain assorted mortal phenomena.

"Good morning," says Tea. "This is Arcane. He says that he is the Queenscourt's best sorcerer, that we have a hundred and ninety-two days before anyone comes looking for him, that I am outrageously good at crafting orders for a mortal but that he could likely get away from me eventually if I started letting him do things, that he found your gate over the Valley Continent because he can sense harmonics, and that if I hadn't overpowered him he would have been compelled to conquer the planet because a mortal world where sorcery can be done is a nearly unparallelled threat to the Queenscourt. He is currently permitted to breathe and nondeceptively speak. What do you suggest I do with him?"

"Hello," says Arcane.

"You could let him sit up," Promise tells Tea.

"I quote, 'as little practice as you have giving orders, anytime you attempt to command or permit something of me you might instead make the mistake that sets me free'," says Tea.