She took in my face and slanted a smile. “Dear me. Have I offended you?”
“Only by your ignorance. I’m not his lover. I’m not—anyone’s anything.”
“But you could be, if you wished it. If you looked at him the way he looks at you …”
“You’re imagining things.”
“I’m not. Everyone’s noticed.”
“What does it matter to you?” I flashed.
Sophia’s smile faded; she gazed at me thoughtfully. “It matters to Chloe. Isn’t that enough?”
I glanced around the room. Lillian and Stella were watching us from a table by a window, worry etched along their mouths. Mittie and Caroline stood taut nearby. What was their queen bee doing talking to the worker drone?
I smiled back at Sophia, pleased to etch their worry a shade deeper.
“You’re right. It’s enough.”
“I like you, Eleanore,” she said, straightening. “Believe me, I’m just as astounded by that as you are.” She took a couple of steps toward the others, then paused, sending me a pale-blue look from over her shoulder. “But my head is not tiny.”
• • •
I laid back against the smooth clamminess of the embankment. Water purled near my feet, the sound a balm against my skin. Without the light of a lantern—I hadn’t chanced carrying one—the entire cavern glowed with its unearthly cool light, as if the moon had sunk to the bottom of the sea and now shone upward at me, silvery and serene.
Better. Much better here. Even the press of stone against the back of my head and shoulder blades didn’t bother me. It felt like relief.
I could try to become smoke again, I realized. I didn’t need Jesse for that. Did I?
As soon as I thought it, the itching returned, ten times worse than before.
“All right,” I said aloud.
… right-right-right …
“Smoke,” I whispered, staring hard at the stalactite directly above me. “Smoke.”
Graceful and thin. Weightless. Less than air, less than …
It happened.
And once again it happened without pain and before I could fully even take it in. One second the stalactite loomed over me; the next I was sliding sideways toward it, rising in curls. No more itch, no more gravity. No more Eleanore, just the outline of my clothing below me, still laid out on the stone.
I wanted to laugh. I wanted to dance! I could see myself, how I’d become like vapor. I could control—mostly control—all the tendrils of me. My density.
I heard that celestial song beckoning again from beyond the roof of the cavern, the summoning of the stars, and I ached to reach them. I coiled and tumbled, wrapped around the fangs of rocks, and searched for a fissure to slip through. I was going to fly so, so far away—
The hidden door inside the grotto creaked open. The boy who stepped through it wasn’t Jesse but Armand Louis.
I churned in place for a moment in confusion, concealed in the toothy pattern of the ceiling.
Armand, not Jesse. Armand, who’d spoken to me once about the grotto, who was likely the only other person alive who knew the secrets of the castle as well as Jesse did.
He saw my garments straightaway, crossed to them, and bent down, lifting my blouse in his hands. I wouldn’t suppose him to think they belonged to anyone but me. He’d seen me wearing them at least twice before, and the mud brown of Blisshaven was distinctive.
The golden flowers of my cuff gleamed up at me like a smile.
“Eleanore?” he called, looking around. But the grotto was echoing and empty. There wasn’t exactly anywhere to hide.
“Eleanore!”
He was searching the water now, so close to the end of the embankment, his shoes were getting wet.
I’m not here, I thought, frantic. Don’t look up; go get help, just go, just leave, so I can come down and get my things.
He was stripping off his coat and then his waistcoat. He was yanking at the laces of his shoes.
Yes! That could work! I could assume my human body again while he was underwater, snatch up my clothes and boots, and dash for the tunnel—
Yet it was only my second time transforming to smoke, and it appeared there were aspects of it I hadn’t precisely mastered. As Armand pulled off his first shoe, I began to thicken.
I could not prevent it. I could not slow it. And I didn’t even make it down to the ground before I was a girl again. I dropped from the ceiling with my arms and legs flailing, a surprised yelp wrung from my throat, and hit the water