That's about what she expected, really.

Then she returns to her room and gets to trying to look like she wasn't recently stabbed. Because that's the sort of weakness it doesn't pay to show. At least she hasn't permanently damaged a set of clothes with her misadventure. Blood removal is fortunately one of the few practical spells the school deigned to give her, and mending the dress with a hole in it is fairly easy from there. Mending is a spell everyone gets, affinity or no. She changes, then washes the newly repaired and exsanguinated dress and hangs it up. Uses the void, casts her hygiene spells, reties her hair, reapplies the poison detecting lipstick, the usual. Well, and inspecting her stab wound. It looks... well, like she was recently stabbed, but it seems to be healing well enough. For the first day after being stabbed. Maybe she can buy a proper healing potion off someone, or one of those little healing cookies everyone seems to be hoarding.

And by then, her entourage has returned, Alexei's drill is handed over, and away she goes. Totally fine. Barely a wince when walking, even. (Ow.)

Scorpius would offer to help her walk but... the hit to her image would probably be worse.

...right? He's hovering a bit, perhaps.

She's sure she has no idea why he might be doing that! And see, she's walking fine. The cafeteria is a long goddamned way away from the junior dormitories and there are far, far too many stairs and she is in fact a touch slower than normal, but. She's fine. Totally. Totally fine.

... but she does have dibs on holding the cafeteria table. Because. Doing more walking to acquire food and then playing the 'is it poisoned or is it murderous' game sounds even less fun.

Yeah they don't even discuss it, even Sofia looks sympathetic by the time they get there. They're late enough their usual table has already been taken by a group of Italian juniors but when they spot the Russians and Yvette and, most importantly, Scorpius, they're more than happy to share the space.

Which means that Yvette doesn't need to hold the table, so it's extra meaningful that the other four let her do it anyway.

She'll take it. It bothers her a bit, that she's probably only getting such royal treatment because Scorpius is around, but. She'll nonetheless take it. Because ow.

Not belonging to any of the major language student clusters, the Italian kids mostly hang around Spanish- and English-speaking groups. Yvette could go for either, being French, but what they do instead is talk to each other—in English, it could be considered attempted murder to speak a minority language in public given the school's tendency to give you material in any language you know an iota of, so they only speak Italian amongst themselves—and completely ignore her.

Yeah, that's about what she expected. She will not go so far as to think that she is allowed to join in on any of their conversations. That would be silly.

Table sitting: kind of lonely even when she's surrounded by people! Hooray.

The others return soon enough, Scorpius having actually filled a whole-ass second tray for Yvette. He carefully places it in front of her before taking a seat next to her, between her and the Italians.

Natalya and Sofia sit across the table from her, but Alexei sits on her other side. The girls were talking (in English, probably for Lake's benefit) about some gossip involving a New York junior called Jermaine who seems to be in a competitive love triangle with Geoff from Atlanta, both of them vying for attentions of one of the top alchemists in their year, a girl called Theodosia.

Alexei does not comment on the goss, though, and just starts eating his breakfast quietly.

Scorpius showing up with an entire extra tray (how the hell is he managing to balance two of them?) earns a smile and a snort. And also a somewhat shy, "Thank you."

This is kind of weird? But nice. Weird but nice. ... Where's Liu, Yvette wants her here too, can she leverage her shiny new Scorpius influence to get everyone to tolerate Liu?

Liu steps out of the junior queue five minutes after the others have sat down, and when she looks at their table she clearly decides they won't want her and starts looking for the losers in the Mandarin-speaking group—

But Scorpius himself catches her eye and waves her over with a smile.

Oh. Okay. She's doing that, then, she guesses? She can sit next to Sofia, across the table from Alexei, and say a shy, "Hi," to everyone. She also does not have Russian so it seems this table is now an English-speaking table.

And the Italian kids now want to talk to Scorpius about something so they can properly integrate into the rest of the table (well, no, so they can have Scorpius's attention, but clearly they're a package deal right now, so).

Nkoyo, Cora, and Jowani see the little group of losers-except-for-Scorpius and honestly this is a golden opportunity so they'll go sit there, too.

Honestly Nkoyo, Cora, and Jowani taking advantage of the situation is pretty fair, really. And... she's glad Scorpius noticed that Yvette would like to have Liu. Good Scorpius, she is slightly less wary of your extreme knowledge of everyone around you.

"So Westing snapped and tried to do another murder," says Yvette, to Liu and also the trio who will totally have to tolerate her haunting them later for this. "This did not go well for him, and he's dead now and will not be missed."

"Another?" says Liu immediately before deciding that words suck and she should instead stuff her face.

    "Was that what your little scene with him the other day was about?" wonders Nkoyo, directing the question at Scorpius.

Who is currently talking to the Italians so this is kinda rude but he knows Nkoyo is doing it on purpose to coast off on his popularity. To the extent there is a cross-language-cluster pecking order, Nkoyo is absolutely above these specific Italian kids.

He turns to look at her and says, "Yeah, pretty much, but Yvette has all the details," before turning back to his conversation.

Oh, boy. Okay. She can do the talking thing. Sure.

"He was responsible for Luisa," she says, somberly. "And then when this had consequences, and somehow did not make all of his problems go away, he was very upset at the apparent unfairness of the world. Naturally he decided to solve his problems by attempting to kill me. So now he is dead."

    "Luisa... the mundane girl who vanished a couple of weeks ago?" asks Nkoyo.

Liu nods to her silently as a response, then looks down at her plate and says, "I'd thought it was him but..."

    "But you don't accuse people of maleficing like that, of course, that's just smart," she nods, looking for all the world like she's oblivious about her company. It's probably on purpose. "So, he tried to kill you and Lake saved you?" she asks Yvette.

That's a reasonable assumption to make, but also kind of insulting? She purses her lips.

"... No. He tried to kill me, I killed him first, and Scorpius helped with the aftermath. Which I admittedly might not have been able to live through without the help, but Westing sealed his fate all on his own."

    Nkoyo's eyebrows shoot up. "Oh? Good job, then, sounds like he needed the killing."

        "Not a very nice thing to say," comments Sofia, her tea about the love triangle clearly less hot than Westing's death is about to be, if her instincts for these things are right.

"But it is true," Alexei says quietly.

"It is. And he did." She sniffs with distaste. "I think he thought he was being romantic. Madman."

"—trying to kill you was romance?"

"To him," she repeats, a little wryly. "I don't entirely get it either, and I was there. But he did seem to think that, somehow, stabbing me was an important stepping stone on the path to a grand maleficer future." Snort. "But we see how that went for Westing."

"And then Lake decided to spend the night with you," finishes Sofia, which is not itself an argument or anything but it sounds like she considers it to mean Yvette must be a maleficer who has bewitched Scorpius. Or something. Who knows.

    "Wait, he did what? And you're still alive?" gasps Cora.