the kitchen, where the cook immediately chided her for having brought the infernal pups in with her, but Nina shrugged and threw them a piece of sausage while she stole a piece of bread. Her mother insisted a proper breakfast consisted of a boiled egg a day, followed by a couple of slices of cheese, but Nina seldom complied with these instructions.
Nina went up to her room and fell upon the bed, stretching her arms above her head. She dozed for a while, and when she woke she went around the room, looking at the reading material piled by her bed. Her horrid habit of leaving books here and there was obvious to any casual observer, and the maids often complained they could not dust properly because Nina hoarded too many volumes and she grumbled if they took them back to their shelves.
Nina grabbed two books and decided she should return this pair to the library as a gesture of goodwill.
Soon enough she reached her destination and opened the door.
She saw Hector and Valérie standing in the middle of the library, but at first she thought it couldn’t be them. They were kissing, his arms entwined around her, and Valérie’s lips rose to meet him, like a flower turning toward the sun, and he held on to her tight.
Nina thought she had a fever dream, such as when she was seven and had spent a whole night writhing in pain. Why, that couldn’t be Valérie. Why, that couldn’t be Hector.
A book slipped from her hands, and when it crashed against the floor she realized, wide-eyed, this was real. This was happening.
They both looked at her.
She’d read about hearts breaking in books, and it had seemed a curious business to her because it was physiologically impossible for a heart to crack like a piece of porcelain. But now Nina felt pain, actual physical pain assaulting her as if someone had thrust a dagger into her flesh, and it hurt so badly, she did not know if she could remember how to breathe. This, too, was a physical impossibility. Breathe she must, and yet she stood like a woman drowning, her breath burning her throat, caught in her mouth.
Unwittingly, she sent several atlases and volumes of poetry flying against the floor.
Finally she was able to breathe, gulping, like a swimmer breaking through the surface of the water. Nina turned around and hurried out of the library.
She moved with rapid, almost noiseless steps, a hand pressed against her stomach.
“Antonina,” Hector said behind her.
She lifted her skirts to move faster, though she did not run. She could not manage the proper functioning of her limbs. She wished she could run. She wished she could run forever.
She saw the faces of maidens and knights painted in the colored windows of the hallway, blazing greens, reds, and yellows upon the floor.
“Antonina, please stop.”
Flowers and an apple tree sparkled, the sun shining bright through the glass. There was a lamb, too, in a long panel of opalescent glass. It grazed on a perfect meadow.
“Antonina, will you stop and speak to me, please.”
“Nina!” she shrieked, turning toward him and flinging her hand down, opening it, her fingers splayed so wide, they almost hurt.
Panels of glass shattered. The docile sheep was turned into fine bits of crystal, the knight tumbled upon the floor, the maiden was destroyed. The glass fell and she willed it to crash again and again, wanting to grind it into the finest sand. A shard bit into her flesh, sinking into her palm, and she stopped. She felt spent, a flame that had guttered out.
He’d avoided or repelled any damage and stood in the middle of the hallway unscathed while her hand throbbed.
“Nina, for God’s sake, you are injured,” he said, moving toward her.
She raised her hand, stopping him in his tracks, then shoved him back, hard, with a motion of her fingers. “Don’t come near me. Don’t speak to me. Never, ever, speak to me.”
She ran back to her room—she’d remembered how to run, could instruct her legs to do this once again—avoiding the startled servants who muttered and wondered what that infernal racket had been. The door locked, she went into her bathroom, staring at her injured hand.
Nina willed the glass shard to move and slid it out of her skin; she made it float before her eyes, examining it. It was a thin piece of green glass, now tinted crimson with her blood.
She opened the faucet. The cold water comforted her. She