dropping, and wiped my face. My sleeves came away damp. “What’s wrong, Coline?”
Coline was leaning against my headboard, one hand on the wall and one still outstretched to me. She was in a different dress than the one she had worn all day, this one a pale spring-green like fresh mint and spotted with little opalescent beetle wings. I hadn’t bothered changing.
None of them fit anyway. Vivienne had brought a tailor to the school to have me fitted for new dresses, underthings, and even a new corset. At least Emilie seemed to have worn only stays like me before this.
“You’re not getting better at ignoring the visions,” Coline said, no trace of kindness in her voice. “You’re only better at hiding your exhaustion from Vivienne, which may very well be part of the training given our expected comportment, but you need to eat real food, not only soup, a handful of crackers, and a sticky bun the size of your head.”
I finger-combed my hair and smoothed out the wrinkles of my dress. “You gave me that bun.”
“It was the bun or nothing, and so I picked the bun,” she said. “Isabelle, please ally with me.”
“Yes, Emilie,” said Isabelle, not raising her face from her mathematics notes and probably unaware of what we’d been talking about. “Coline is correct. Listen to her.”
Coline patted Isabelle’s shoulder. I rolled my eyes and stretched, back creaking. If Coline’s arrogance were rain, there’d never be a drought again.
“I’ll go find the kitchens,” I said. “Let me do it alone. I need quiet.”
I tapped my head, and Coline nodded. “Fine. Go eat, or I’m asking Germaine what to do about you.”
I wandered out of our room and down to the grand foyer. At night, the white marble was ghostly white, and walking across it was like gliding over ice, the cool breeze spilling in from the open windows the burst of air from pushing off. I checked the door for guards or servants, even though Vivienne said we were allowed onto the grounds so long as we didn’t try to leave the estate. Outside, there was only the night and me. I raised my hand to the dark.
“Mistress,” I whispered. “Please let tomorrow go better.”
Light flickered overhead. A moth smacked into my hand. I lurched, palm stinging. The moth bumped into me again, feathery black feelers rapping at my knuckles, and the midnight blue fluff of its body pressed into the little crack between my thumb and first finger. I turned my hand over, and the moth settled there, spreading out its wings in a crown of pale moonlight. The wings were as deep blue as its body on the underside, but the tops were pure magic, smears of trapped power. A creature of clear night skies.
A Stareater.
“Aren’t you a pretty thing?” I pushed on down a path I knew led to the kitchen buildings. “Hungry?”
Most moths were attracted to flames, but these went after magic. They fed on the power of midnight artists, churning the blood from their prey into pure power that glowed in them like stars. I’d only ever seen one before, and it had nibbled at Alaine’s fingers till she flicked it away.
“I’m not much of a snack,” I said to it. “You’ll have to find someone else.”
It folded up its wings, unfurled a single, long tongue from its head, and the light surrounding it faded. The tongue pricked the skin of my hand.
“Fine. Don’t bleed me dry.”
The dark had sunk beneath the leafy canopy and blanketed the whole of the grounds in the chilled smudge of night, rustling leaves and my soft breaths blurring the line between sound and silence. I glanced up at the starlight picking its way through the leaves in shaky slits. It was like Mistress Moon had reached out and run her thumb through the sky, smearing dark gray clouds across the purple night till only a dim moon remained behind. The yeasty scent of fresh bread hit me, and I followed it to a large, domed kitchen. The butter-yellow light of candles and fires leaked out the opened windows, steam dancing in the glare. I peeked through the cracked door.
Empty.
The kitchen was a small slice of chaos, bread proofing on one side and a whole course of things bubbling away above coals on the other side. There were five doors, three shut, and I crept inside enough to see. On one of the tables near my door was a basket full of vials that made my