“Just a moment.”
I’d felt stiff, my limbs too heavy to move. Get up, I told myself. I dragged my body from the bed and staggered to the vanity mirror. A tear-stained girl with big, hollow eyes stared back. I took a moment to compose myself, to calm my frantic heartbeat. It didn’t make a difference; as soon as I turned the door handle, terror gripped me at what might be waiting for me on the other side.
Bel stood across the hall.
I collapsed against the doorframe, relieved it was him and not Sido and Sazerat or Alastair. I waited for him to demand answers. Instead, he held himself at a distance, barely making eye contact. Then it hit me: there was no way he knew Alastair’s ink didn’t work.
He gave me a cordial nod. “Good morning,” he said. “I’m Bel. I’ve come to—”
“You could have warned me,” I choked out.
“Warned you?”
A raw rush of anger rose up, forcing me to breathe through my nose. I gulped back a sob. “You could have warned me before I walked into Alastair’s office.”
His features sharpened. He gripped my forearms and pulled me forward, searching my face. “You remember me?”
“How could I forget the person whose neck I want to wring?” I managed, then sucked in air through my teeth as another sob wracked my chest. The green flames on the hall candles sputtered.
“Hush,” Bel whispered against my ear. He pushed us into my room and shut the door behind him.
“What are you—”
“Chef is coming for you in a manner of minutes.”
“Chef?”
“You work in the kitchens now,” he said. I hadn’t even seen the kitchens before. I opened my mouth to question him, but he held up a hand. “I want to help you, but first I need you to tell me about last night. Quickly.”
Bel’s face pinched as I went over the events leading up to Alastair’s office, the purple ink. “My guest contract has to be faulty.”
“It’s not,” he said. “Alastair’s ink does exactly what he writes without fail. There must be some explanation for why it didn’t work on you.”
I tried to think of one, but I was too overwhelmed. My mind kept snagging on the image of Zosa onstage. Her pale skin and golden dress. Her voice. Then how easily Des Rêves had turned her into a bird, locked her away. And yet I remembered her. If Alastair’s ink had worked . . . If it had worked, I would’ve lost my sister entirely.
I glanced at the bed. The pillows Zosa had knocked off were still scattered, floating above the floor. She had slept here the night before last, beside me like she had done every other night for as long as I could remember.
An image came to me of our last morning in Durc, waking to Zosa’s slim fingers tangled in a lock of my dark hair. She would often reach for it in her sleep, like she was trying to hold on to me while she dreamed. Sometimes, instead of untangling her fingers, I would wait to see if she would let go on her own. Tears sprang up.
“Here.” Bel offered me the edge of his jacket.
I gaped at him.
“I’m not your enemy,” he said.
I believed him. Still, it would be much easier for him to cut his losses and leave me, and yet he stood there as I took his offering and wiped my eyes. I didn’t know what to think about him, but I knew without a doubt that I was grateful for him.
“It gets easier,” he said. I didn’t see how, but I didn’t have time to argue because a second later, he leaned close. “Now listen carefully. I’m going to give you a lesson in pretending to be someone you’re not, and you must do exactly as I say.”
* * *
Over the following five weeks, Bel sent for me every few days, always with a note slipped beneath my door. Tonight’s note was the first one he’d left in my delivery cart.
Velvet darkness cloaked the sixth floor, giving way to a round slice of night sky. The moon window. As I waited, my fingers drummed against his note, those four little words. Minutes later, my nerves prickled at the sound of an exhale. I turned. Bel leaned against a settee, quiet as a wraith. He’d been watching me.
“Still find me endlessly fascinating?”
“Keep telling yourself that,” he said. But his lips curved in a half smile and my pulse jumped, my body hyperaware of how close he stood. I bit the inside of my cheek until the feeling washed away.
“What do you see?” he asked. He wanted to know if Alastair’s ink had suddenly taken hold.
I looked out the moon window. “An erupting volcano. Amazing we’re all still people and not puddles of skin-colored goop.”