but people are angry, and it’s hard not to be pleased. What are you going to do after?”
“I like looking at other people’s futures.” My back bumped the counter. “Not mine.”
She laughed and paused, arms on either side of my hips, trapping me between the counter and her, lips so close, I could feel them brush mine when she whispered, “May I kiss you?”
“Yes, please,” I said without thinking, and then the burn of her hand on my hip shocked me out of it. “Wait. Wait. No.”
She reared back and removed her hand.
“Don’t apologize,” I said quickly. “It’s not you. I just want to, I mean, I like you, and I want to be clear about something so we’re both happy—I don’t want to have sex.”
Yvonne’s head tilted to the side. “We don’t have to.”
“Ever. I don’t want to ever. I don’t think about it. I’m not attracted to people in that way, but I like touching and romance and flirting, and I really like you but sometimes people think you can’t have one without the other.”
There’d been a boy, once. I’d liked him and he’d liked me, and Maman had even talked about marriage, but when he kissed me and called me pretty, he said I owed him. I’d stopped talking to him. Maman had told me he was wrong, but that one day I’d change my mind. That all girls learned to like it.
“Oh.” Yvonne stepped back, and I loved her for it even though I missed her closeness. “That’s fine. We can talk about it.” She winced. “I mean our relationship, not sex. If you don’t want to have sex, we won’t. Ever.”
“I got it.” I smiled. “Last person I liked didn’t think you could have romance without sex.”
That I was obligated.
“We can,” Yvonne said. “We are our own, and we will define what our love is, Emilie.”
And the lack of my name, my real name, with those words killed me.
Mistress, let me die.
“I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “While I’m being honest, I have to tell you who I really am.”
Yvonne froze, her mouth slightly open. “What?”
“My name’s Annette. The real Emilie didn’t want to attend, so she had me come instead of her, and she’s off being a physician’s hack. I’m not noble or anything. I’m just Annette.” I stepped toward her. “I didn’t mean to hide it from you. No one knew. No one could know. I’m not really anything, and you were—”
She stepped back and held up her hand. “You signed papers for me as Emilie des Marais.”
The words and hurt within them were an avalanche, and I was drowning in cold.
“That won’t hurt anything, will it?” I asked. “If I’m found out.”
“I don’t know.” Yvonne pressed her hands together, palms flush. “I don’t know anything, and apparently I know you the least.”
“You know me better than anyone here.” I ran the back of my hand beneath my nose, tears catching on the bow of my lips, and sniffed. “Talking to you is like breathing. Everything I told you is true, and you are the only one who understands half of what I feel. I don’t have to pretend to be anyone with you.”
“But I did.” She covered her mouth with one hand. “All that time I worried about you being a comtesse, all that time I spent on edge, and you never told me?”
“No,” I whispered. “I’m sorry.”
“Then why didn’t you?” She lurched forward, halfway to me. Her eyes glittered wet in the light. “Why?”
“No one ever wanted to talk to Annette. I was scared you wouldn’t either.”
“I can’t right now.” She held up her hands in defeat. “I can’t talk to you and do my job, and frankly, it’s more important than whatever this is. So tomorrow, we will talk, and you will explain. Then, you’ll listen because I don’t think you understand how much this hurts.”
I left.
I didn’t need to divine the future possibilities to know what would happen.
So I wrote a note instead, a cowardly thing, but Coline was in the room and I’d no words left in my chest. Isabelle hadn’t come back.
Coline walked past me once and asked softly, “Your alchemist?”
“Everyone’s cross with me.”
Lies were easier when you were face-to-face. Nerves rattled them out of you. The truth and all its terrible details took time to set out straight.
“Sometimes lying is the only thing that keeps us alive.” Coline set her half-eaten bowl of blackberries that she’d been working on all day next to me. “Let them cool