Harrow and Palamedes entirely one sided bitter rivalry is actually one of my favourite parts of this book. She goes the entire time stressing about not falling behind him or showing a hint of weakness that he can pounce on because he’s her most concerning competition. She’s terrified of slipping up around him because obviously he’s judging her entire house as inferior and beneath him and she can’t even contend with him, she’s so far behind and he must be gloating so hard.
Then for a decent portion of the book every time someone dies she thinks he killed them.
Every time he talks to her she’s so paranoid about him trying to manipulate her into giving something away or otherwise screw her over, she never accepts that he’d want to work together for anything other than sinister reasons.
Meanwhile Palamedes is casually telling anyone who will listen that he thinks she’s an incredibly cool genius who is objectively terrifying because she’s so amazing at everything she does but also he’d trust her with her life because she’s honourable like that.
And he’d really like to be her friend but it’s no problem if she doesn’t want to call it that and would prefer to hiss at him from the corner like an angry cat. They’ll get past this stage eventually and then he can be nerd friends with the cool and definitely traumatised autistic girl.
