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“Was it? I don’t recall.” I recalled every word, every moment in startling clarity. And she was right.
“You go to their graves, as though searching for something.”
“Elisabeth, please… let it go.”
“Something happened fifteen years ago.”
“Nothing happened. The toymaker’s family died. I didn’t even meet them.”
She peered at my face, searching for the smallest crack in my mask. “You call out to him—”
I jolted from the chair, then marched back and grabbed my wine to drink and pace at the same time.
“Who is Devere to you?” she asked.
“Stop.” I paced some more, back and forth. “Don’t say his name. Don’t bring him here. I have something, I have this, I have us! It’s real and it’s a life, and that’s all that matters.”
“All right. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.” She rose, and now I feared I’d said something wrong, hurt her somehow.
“Elisabeth.” I set my drink aside and crossed the lounge to take her hand. “I wouldn’t be here without you. You showed me kindness that day, and it was everything. Without you to guide me, I do not think I’d be here. I… Well… I am forever grateful, and I wish I could do more to thank you, but I have so little to give you, just my friendship, and that you will always have.”
“Marry me,” she blurted.
“What?”
She barked a giddy, high-pitched laugh. “Oh gods, I just… I mean, we could, couldn’t we?”
“I erm… I don’t think… It’s just I… Well, friendship is all I can offer. I’m not really…” I gestured between us and tried to form the correct words, or any words. “You’re lovely, and I wouldn’t want to stop you from marrying someone who can give you more than I can, someone who can love you in a way you deserve. I don’t really… erm… with women, you see.”
She chuckled. “I know.”
“You do?”
“I prefer it this way. I don’t need that—don’t want it, in fact. But I like this, I like us, and I don’t want to be alone, and I don’t think you do either. We could live a life like this. The townsfolk already believe we are together, and it would mean we would never have to be alone again.”
I puffed out a breath. “Well, then… I suppose… it’s an idea.”
“Will you think about it?”
What was the harm in that? “Yes, of course. I’ll think about it.”
She squealed and flung her arms around me.
Get married, settle down, have a life. That was how it should be. I could hope for little more than a kind companion to share a humble life.
Why then did it feel so wrong?
ChapterForty-Four
Devere
Time wore on, and I began to wish Adair would take my memories again. The monotony was its own kind of torture. When I wasn’t at the masquerade, Rochefort Manor was my only domain, or a version of it with no exit and no escape. When I asked Adair to take me to faerie, he refused. I was not fae, he said. I was a toy.
And so in the mansion I stayed, like a dollhouse, and I loathed every corner of it, every room, every corridor. I despised its thick carpets, its elaborate wallpaper, and hated the enormously ugly grandfather clock standing at the end up the upstairs hall, with its heavy pendulum tick-tocking every second.
I’d heard once of how traveling fairgrounds gave away goldfish to children who won silly games. They’d go home and keep that goldfish in a bowl until the poor thing died. I was like that fish in a glass bowl, only I remembered every moment of every day.
Forgetting would have been a blessing, but I did not want to forget Valentine. I should have hated him for our final moments together, but I didn’t. Any hate had worn away. I’d feared a life without him, my own life, and I’d been right. Trapped in Adair’s dollhouse with closets full of mannequins was no life at all.
