without magic—mostly, though Madeline said it made me very grumpy—and Charles, as so often happened, had been struck by the same inspiration as me. I opened the door as quietly as I could and peeked inside. He was writing on the glass board, one hand running through his hair and the other smeared with ink. His coat was thrown over one of the chairs.
“We are horribly predictable.” I stepped inside and shut the door behind me.
Charles glanced over his shoulder, dropping the ink brush. “I love it. I was hoping you’d show up. I can’t get this equation right.”
“No math, please. I dream in mathematics now.” I held up my hands in defeat and sat on one of the tall stools near him. “It’s my least favorite class and the one with the most reading.”
“You adore those classes.” Charles stepped forward, slowly, and smiled. His legs nudged open my own till he was standing between my thighs and our lips were even. His fingers gripped my knees. “You’re a very bad liar.”
“I know,” I muttered, nose brushing his. “It made this week very hard.”
“May I kiss you?” asked Charles. “First, that is, assuming your news isn’t life-shattering?”
“Please.”
His lips pressed against mine. His hands slid up my thighs, my stomach, my chest, till he clutched the collar of my shirt in his hands, and I hooked my feet behind his back to pull him closer. He shuddered and pulled away. Only a hairsbreadth. Only far enough for us to breathe.
“I have a present for you.” I kissed him, quickly, and uncurled his fingers from my collar; they started tugging the bottom of my shirt from my trousers. “Remember how you had an idea to test out infection rates but not how to actually do it?”
Charles laughed. His hands stilled, and he laid his forehead against my shoulder. “Really? Now?”
“Really.” I ran my fingers through his hair, the little smolder of contentedness cooling at the base of my spine. “I know you Charles du Ravine as well as I know myself. You’ve been bored since dusk. Parties are not our thing.”
He laughed again, the sounds rumbling in his chest and seeping into mine, hot and heavy. “We don’t have to work. We can—”
Hurried footsteps raced down the hall outside. Charles untangled himself from me, and I straightened his suit and he straightened mine. His hair was a mess, delightfully so, and my fingers caught in the strands at the nape of his neck. He chuckled, leaned back against the table. It was our work space.
Surely no one would mind.
The door flew open. Madeline darted inside, locking it behind her. Back to the door and chest heaving, she held up her hand to her lips. Soft voices outside—the dreadfully attentive group of new physician assistants she had helped pick out and decided to tutor—called her name, and Charles opened his mouth to shout. I wrapped both hands around his lower jaw.
“Play nicely,” I muttered.
He glared. His tongue flicked against my palm.
“Is that a promise?” I unwound my hands from his mouth. “Or a threat?”
“Promise,” he whispered and cleared his throat. “Madeline, what are you doing?”
“I made the mistake of mentioning I needed to check on something within earshot.” The right side of her lip pulled up in a sneer. “I wanted a break. Everyone keeps asking about what happened, and I do not want to talk about it.”
“Join us,” I said, waving my hand to Charles’s glass board, “as we fail at equations.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What even was that?”
Charles and I turned back to the board. The ink he had used had dripped until the equation was unreadable.
“If I can’t even make ink correctly, I doubt I can do math right.” Charles pulled away from me, head tilting as he tried to read what was left. “Oh well.”
Madeline sighed. “Thank the Lord. I need something new to do.”
“Yes.” I leapt from the table and picked up a brush. “Let’s see what we can do next.”
Epilogue
Annette
Coline fiddled with the hem of her dress. The dress was violet, dark as night and sewn with gold threads. Coline hadn’t wanted gilt at the expense of the people she’d have to swear to serve after what her father had done, but looking good was sometimes more important than being good. The dress was Vivienne’s refitted, the seamstresses well-paid and spreading the rumors we wanted them to spread, and Coline looked, for all I could tell, good enough to be queen. She looked better than her father at