Even as Wren opens her mouth to retort, I’m already spinning on my heels, making for the house. I lurch blindly, soaked by the rain. The gardens are dark and the path is slick beneath my feet, and I skid on the wet cobbles, careening back, arms windmilling.
Wren is there in an instant. She catches me, fingers wrapping round my shoulders. “Please calm down.”
I let out a choked laugh. “How can I? You know what would happen if someone found us! We—we can’t, Wren. Me and you, this…” My eyes skitter away. “It’s not right.”
“Because we’re both girls?” she asks, and there’s hurt in her voice.
“No! I don’t care about that.” I pause, realizing only as I speak the words aloud how true they are. I’ve had time to think about it since understanding my feelings for Wren in Zelle’s first lesson, and each time it comes back to what Zelle told me about love and lust. How natural they are. How simple it should be. That’s just how my attraction toward Wren is: natural, and simple.
If you took away the minor issue of us being the King’s concubines, of course.
Something breaks a little inside me as I tell her, “Not because we’re girls. Because we’re Paper Girls.”
Wren shakes her head, still fixing me with that bold, defiant gaze. “Is it what you want?”
“That doesn’t matter.”
Her expression is fierce. “It’s the only thing that matters.”
The air between us vibrates, electric. Wren’s hands are still circling my arms, and her touch sears me, sends my pulse racing.
She pulls me nearer.
Our lips are a heartbeat apart.
“We’re Paper Girls,” I say again, like this is explanation enough—and it is. It explains everything, because it defines everything. The one terrible, inescapable truth.
“So?”
“Madam Himura and Mistress Eira made it clear to us from the start.” I’m whispering, even though the night is rain-locked and the garden is deserted. “What we want has nothing to do with it. We’re only here for the King.”
Under wet lashes, her dark eyes spark. “You fought him, Lei. You told him no, a man who is never told no. Even though you knew you’d be punished. You, more than anyone, understand that what we want is important.” She takes a breath. “When the world denies you choices, you make your own.” Her fingers skim to my wrists; she draws me even closer. “This is my choice.”
Rain patters all around us. It traces tiny beads down Wren’s temples and cheeks, clinging to the curve of her full lips. Her night slip is completely soaked through, revealing her to me, a cruel promise of what can never be mine.
Anyone could find us out here.
So what? part of me screams. Give them a show. They can sell tickets for all I care! But another part of me remembers the slaves at the party. Of what might happen if I humiliate the King again. Not just to me, but to my family.
Punish those who disobey me. Rid the kingdom of those who are not faithful.
I flinch, hearing the King’s threat as if he were standing right behind us, bull eyes bright and raging, glinting like daggers in the dark.
I untangle our fingers. “I’m sorry,” I whisper.
And then I’m running back to the house before Wren can stop me. Or rather, before I stop myself. Because the longing to kiss her, to lace my arms around her and bring our bodies together in the dark, is so strong it thrashes around inside me like something caged. And as I stagger back to my room, rain-soaked and defeated, a single word repeats in my head, shining darkly, slinking, serpentine.
Dzarja.
Never has it felt more true. Because it appears I have found a new person to betray, and it might be the worst one yet.
Myself.
TWENTY-TWO
OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS, the memory of my almost-kiss with Wren hovers over everything I do. I barely follow a word our teachers say. In the evenings it takes all my effort to keep from staring at her in whatever beautiful outfit she’s wearing, at how exquisite her face looks made up with paints and powders. How, even better, I have seen beneath that Paper Girl mask, the night when the rain washed away everything between us and left only the deep thrum of desire.
When dreaming of her isn’t enough, I creep to her room. Hover outside her door, fingertips resting on the wood. But I can never bring myself to go inside. Always, there is fear at being caught. And—just as frightening—the fear that once I’ve kissed her, I won’t be able to stop.
One morning a week later, Lill dresses me in a heavy, fur-trimmed overcoat. It’s the coldest outside that it’s been so far. It won’t be long until winter arrives. I say good-bye to her and find Wren in the hallway, waiting for me.
“Hello.” I greet her with our new awkward formality. She’s still been accompanying me to lessons as per Madam Himura’s request, but there’s been a terse politeness in our interactions since that night. Then I notice the coat she’s wearing.
White. Our kingdom’s mourning color.
“Here.” She hands me folded silver-white robes and a heavy brocade overcoat. “You should change.”
“What…？” I start, but she talks quickly over me.
“It’s a mourning day for both of us, remember?” She’s speaking more loudly than usual. As Zhen and Zhin pass, giving me identical smiles, I realize it’s for the other girls to hear. “Or have you forgotten about your own ancestors?”
I look blank.
“So kind of Madam Himura to give us permission to miss today’s lessons to pray,” she carries on, and finally I get it. Wren must have told Madam Himura that today is a day of mourning for the two of us, perhaps spinning some story about the funeral of an ancestor or a designated prayer day that both our families happen to observe at the same time. Spiritual commitments are one of the only things we’re allowed to miss our lessons for. But what would she want to show me in Ghost Court?
Chenna comes out from her room a few doors away. She catches my eyes. “Everything all right, Lei?”
“Just great. I’ll see you in a minute.”
Her eyes glide to Wren, but she doesn’t say anything, giving me a curt nod before turning away.
Once the corridor is empty, Wren steps in close. “You wanted to know where I’ve been going the nights I leave Paper House,” she says under her breath. Her brown eyes glint. “I’m going to show you.”
A short while later I’m back at Wren’s side, this time dressed in the clothes she gave me. Wearing white feels strange. More than strange—wrong. The color is heavy with the implications of what it should mean to wear it, and I can’t help but think of Mama. How even though she was lost to us, we never held a funeral, not even after the weeks turned into months, and the months into years.
It would have felt like an admission.
Wren and I take a carriage to Ghost Court, accompanied by Wren’s maid, Chiho. Despite its eerie name, Ghost Court turns out to be a lush landscape filled with manicured rock gardens, ponds, and clusters of trees. Winding steps and arched bridges lead between temples of varying design. Some are small, hewn from rock, with wide, squat bases. Others are tall and multitiered, with delicate curving roofs and colored tiles. Bamboo parcels offering food and packets of ghost money burn in braziers outside the entrances, and from some of the temples drift the unearthly songs of shrine maidens.