Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Two rules of Oletus Manor, carved into my skull by repetition:

No hunting survivors outside of matches.

There are no quiet mornings.

I was clinging to the loophole between those two rules, half-asleep with my eyes only mostly open, when thunder shook the corridor. It wasn't in the form of weather, but in the form of thundering footsteps. William.

“MOVE! MOVE! MOVE!”

He careened past my door like a runaway carriage, skidding the turn so hard the rug tried to escape under him, making the wall rattle and the picture frames chime like alarmed silverware. I cracked the door an inch in time to see him vanish around the next corner, laughing like he’d stolen the sun.

I stared into the corridor the way one stares into the mouth of a cave you’re not paid enough to enter, then shut the door and pressed my forehead to the wood. See rule number two again.

Clothes, boots, weapon... no, leaving the weapon behind would mean fewer screams in the breakfast line. I compromised with a coat heavy enough to count as a threat and set off.

Oletus Manor was already awake, as always. The big clock on the landing clicked out seconds with priestly patience, and somewhere below, cutlery chimed and laughter gathered itself.

The dining hall is a cathedral to bad decisions. High windows poured pale light over long tables crowded with plates. The coffee smell hit me as the survivors clustered in little constellations. The place sounded busy enough to be a market.

I located the quietest corner and began the delicate choreography of Not Elbowing Anyone while acquiring coffee.

“[Y/n]!” Emma has the kind of voice that skips like a stone and never sinks. She wove through the crowd with a tray brimming with muffins, cheeks rosy, apron smudged with flour. “You came!”

“I live here,” I said, because I’m a comedian when cornered.

She beamed as if I’d confessed to a crush. “Chocolate chip or blueberry?”

I eyed the tray. The muffins eyed me back. “…Are either of them poisoned?”

“Only in spirit,” she said, delighted with herself.

I took a chocolate chip, mostly to prevent her from following me around the room until I did. Up close, the sugar glittered unevenly. The tray shook a little in Emma’s hands, and I realized she was trying not to bounce.

“You’re up early,” she said. “For you.”

“For me,” I agreed. “Someone tried to sprint through a wall near my head.”

“Oh, that's William for you. He’s training speed.” Emma leaned in conspiratorially. “He was also racing Mike to the toast. High stakes this morning.”

“Toast,” I repeated. “Right.”

She tilted her head, gaze flicking over my face with the care of a gardener checking leaves for blight. “You look… softer today.”

“I left the blade upstairs,” I tell her.

“It shows.” She tipped the tray closer. “Pick a second one."

“I don’t...”

“Pick,” she said, the smile never leaving, the tone brooking zero dissent. And so, I picked. “Good,” she quipped, satisfied. Her hand lifted, hovered, just a brush touched my sleeve like she was patting a skittish cat. “Enjoy your day off.”

“That’s not a thing here,” I said.

“It could be,” Emma replied.

Before I could come up with a defense, a shadow lengthened across the table. I knew who it was by the way the room adjusted itself.

Martha doesn’t need an introduction. She leaned a hip against the nearest chair, cup of coffee in one hand, eyes on me like I’d said her name across a battlefield. “Look at you,” she said, warmth and mischief balancing in her voice. “Eating with the enemy.”

“It’s a muffin,” I said, begrudgingly.

The smallest smile tugged, then behaved. She set her coffee down and slid the seat opposite me with an unhurried scrape. “May I?”

“You already did,” I said, rolling my eyes.

“Good,” she said, like we’d reached consensus. She sat, and the table got smaller.

Emma’s eyes did that bright sparkle thing that makes you feel like you missed a cue. “Coffee for you?” she asked Martha, as if that mattered to anything. “It’s fresh.”

Martha lifted her cup. “Already armed.”

“Mm,” Emma said. Her gaze flicked between us, and because she is sunshine wrapped around cunning, she added, “You should take [Y/n] outside after breakfast. Target practice is more fun with a partner.”

“I’m not a partner,” I said.

“Not yet,” Martha said, so simply my ribcage forgot how to be a barrier for one very unhelpful beat.

Footsteps sounded advancing toward us. Joseph arrived like a rumor given legs, the edge of his smile sharpening as he took in the table: Emma’s tray, Martha’s coffee, my suspicious muffin. “My, my,” he purred. “Has détente been declared? Did I miss the treaty signing?”

“No treaties,” I inform. “Breakfast.”

“Ah, the most treacherous meal.” Joseph’s gaze slid to Emma. “Darling, do you have anything photogenic? I feel compelled to document this historic moment.”

Emma brightened. “They’re all photogenic!”

“They are… earnest,” Joseph corrected with a gentleness that meant he was about to cause trouble elsewhere. “Martha, you’re glowing. Is that the light, or the company?”

“The coffee,” Martha said, deadpan.

“I’ll log it as ‘company’ in the ledger,” Norton called, strolling by like he’d been there the whole time, holding a cup and a slice of toast with equal devotion. He didn’t stop, just angled close enough to drop his mouth beside my ear: “If you’re taking suitors, I have a sign-up sheet.”

“I have a weapon,” I tell him.

“Mutually assured flirtation,” Norton said cheerfully, and disappeared toward a cluster of card players.

“Ledger?” I asked the others, and immediately regretted it.

“Don’t worry about it,” Emma said, which is exactly the phrase one says when you should worry.

“Do worry about it,” Joseph said, tapping his temple. “Norton is compiling odds. I’m compiling narratives. Between us, we’ll have a book and a scandal by lunch.”

“Between you,” I said, “we’ll have a fire.”

“Then stand somewhere flattering,” Joseph said, and, somehow, made that not entirely a joke.

A soft presence slipped into the edge of the table like a blessing. Fiona Gilman didn’t displace air so much as ask it to make room politely. She folded her hands around a teacup that steamed. “Good morning,” she said, and the words laid a calm over the table for a second or two. “I hope you all slept well.”

“Define ‘slept,’” Martha grumbled.

“I dreamt I was running,” Emma said. “But my feet were muffins.”

“That tracks,” I said with a sigh.

Fiona’s eyes found mine as if they’d been searching there all morning. “You’re here.”

“I am,” I said, defensive out of habit.

“I’m glad.” She didn’t embellish it. Her smile touched the rim of her cup, gentle as steam. “I wanted to speak with you later. If you have time.”

Martha’s gaze slid to me; Emma’s did too. Joseph's eyes had never left. I experienced a moment of deep, primal prey-animal awareness: the sensation of being watched by several different species for different reasons.

“I might,” I said carefully.

“Wonderful,” Fiona said with a smile, as if I’d said yes to everything.

Breakfast should have been mundane after that. I ate half a muffin. Conversation eddied around us. William leapt over a chair for no reason except that a chair existed and he was a problem. Aesop carried a plate past like a procession, unbothered.

And then Margaretha Zelle swept by, trailing glitter the way comets trail prophecy. She paused just long enough to plant one manicured hand on the back of my chair and lean in, perfume cool and expensive as shade.

“If you get bored of breakfast,” she muttered, “I’m running lifts in the ballroom this afternoon. I’m missing a reliable counterweight with excellent posture.”

“I don’t dance,” I inform her.

“You do,” Margaretha countered, soft as a dare. “You just haven’t been asked correctly.”

She touched two fingers to the back of my shoulder and moved on, gathering awed looks like a train gathers air.

“Do not,” Martha said, without looking at me, “let her throw you into the rafters.”

“She won’t throw me,” I said.

“She will,” Emma said. “And you’ll like it, which is worse?”

“I...” I began, and then stopped, because the day was shaping itself without my consent, and I had learned, through hard experience, that arguing with a storm does not make it rain backward.

Joseph tilted his head in that way that meant a headline had just written itself inside his skull. “What a charming triangle we’ve started drawing.”

“Quadrilateral,” Norton called from his card table without turning. “Don’t erase Fiona.”

“Absolutely not,” I said, and stood.

The table did that thing where, once you decide to leave, it tests your resolve by offering three new conversations you’d be a fool to walk away from. Emma held out a paper napkin like it was a passport. Martha pushed her coffee toward me before thinking better of it and reclaiming it with a small, amused shake of the head.

I made it three steps into the aisle before colliding with Mike, who had misjudged the physics of a chair and was briefly entangled. We disentangled him; he thanked me with the sincerity of a rescued puppy and then tried to juggle three rolls to impress someone who wasn’t looking.

“Library,” I told myself, like a spell. “Library library library.”

On my way out, William jogged backward in front of me just to maintain eye contact while moving quickly, which is truly his entire philosophy of life in a single image. “Training later?” he asked. “We’re doing sprints. Or I’m doing sprints and Norton is timing his sighs.”

“I have plans,” I said.

“Oh-ho,” William said, smirking as if he’d caught me in a lie. “Plural. Nice.”

“Are you timing those too?” Norton asked, suddenly next to him, because he is the kind of person who appears when gossip achieves critical mass.

“I’m timing the moment he realizes he has plans,” Norton said, scribbling something in a small notebook he absolutely should not have been granted.

“Burn that,” I told him.

“You’ll need fire,” he said, unapologetic. “And a bribe.”

“Do you have no shame?” I asked.

“Not in the morning,” Norton lets know. “I warm it up by noon.”

I sighed and escaped from the situation. The corridor outside the dining hall felt like stepping from a theater into something quieter, the sound of my own breathing suddenly significant. I leaned against the banister and watched dust hang in a sunbeam like it didn’t know gravity personally.

Two things, I told myself. Two truths I could pin to the wall and not let slide. One: There is no such thing as a day off at Oletus Manor. Two: I am not developing feelings for anyone here.

I headed toward the library, already rehearsing the apology I’d need to make to the silence for being late. Halfway there, a pale ribbon slipped from the upper landing and drifted down like a small, deliberate omen. It landed on my sleeve. I held the end of it between two fingers, felt the smooth tease of silk, and looked up just in time to see Margaretha’s smile tip over the railing.

“This afternoon,” she called softly. “If you’re brave.”

“I’m busy,” I called back, because reflex is a kind of courage.

She laughed. “Everyone is. Until they decide not to be.” Her footsteps moved on while the ribbon stayed. I pocketed it like a mistake I would definitely make again and turned the corner into the library’s calmer light.

The library is my sanctuary, which is why I respect it enough to tiptoe.

Even the dust motes float quietly here. The great clock above the hearth ticks with soft authority, and every shelf smells of old paper and the comfortable weight of silence. If Oletus Manor has a heart, this is where it beats slowest.

I wrapped my hands around a mug that had finally found its way to me and took the first blessed sip. It was hot, dark, and uncomplicated. I shut my eyes and let it wash over my nerves. No shouting. No sprinting footsteps. No-

“[Y/n]! Just the person I was looking for.”

-Martha.

She doesn’t so much enter a room as claim it by posture alone. This morning, she leaned against the end of a shelf with a rolled map tucked under one arm, her jacket unbuttoned, her mouth settled into a professional line that did nothing to hide the amusement in her eyes.

“I came here to read,” I said, because sometimes stating an impossible wish out loud is the only power I have.

“Wonderful,” Martha replied. “You can read the trajectory notes I made and tell me where I’m overcompensating.” She unfurled the map onto a table; pinned corners sprang under her gloved fingertips. It wasn’t a territory map so much as a diagram of the Manor grounds littered with neat inked arcs and numbers.

I nursed my coffee. “Target practice. In a library. You know those words don’t belong together.”

“We’re not firing inside,” she said, as if that were the sticking point. “I want your eyes. You have a hunter’s sense for lines. I’ll indulge your coffee ritual if you indulge my obsession with efficiency.”

The bargain was so neatly framed I found myself stepping closer despite the early hour’s protest still clinging to my bones. She smelled faintly of gun oil and cedar. When she bent over the map, her shoulder brushed mine; I told myself I didn’t notice, then noticed it twice as much.

“These arcs,” she said, tapping a series of dotted lines, “work until someone like you changes pace at the last second. You always do that cutback that ruins a clean shot.”

“Adaptive movement,” I tell her. “Instinct.”

“Exactly.” The word softened on her tongue. “Walk me through the instinct.”

I did. We spent ten quiet minutes moving pieces, little carved markers Emma must have donated from some board game, across the paper. I talked; Martha listened with that intent stillness that makes every word feel heavier. Her questions were razor-precise. With anyone else, it would have felt like being tested. With her, it felt like being taken seriously.

“So if you were me,” she said finally, “you would…?”

“Anchor your stance earlier,” I said, nudging one marker a hair to the left. “Trust the first sightline, then adjust late. You hesitate half a heartbeat; it makes your shot a gamble.”

“Hesitation is a habit,” she murmured. The corner of her mouth tilted toward a smile. “I’ll have to unlearn it.”

“Good luck,” I said dryly. “Habits cling.”

“Some do.” She looked up at me; the sun broke across her irises in gold chips. For a moment, the library felt warmer. “Thank you, [Y/n].”

It would have been a clean, professional beat to end on if the door hadn’t banged open so hard the clock scolded it with a deeper tick.

Norton Campbell sauntered in, unreasonably pleased. “Did I hear the sacred phrase ‘target practice’? Because I, for one, would love to not be accidentally shot today.”

“You’re never accidentally anything,” I said.

“Flattery from the Hunter,” he said, pressing a palm to his chest. “My day improves.”

Martha rolled the map up with a crisp snap. “We’re moving outside. I need air. [Y/n], when you’re done being heckled, meet me in the training yard.” She left with that sure-footed stride that made everyone step out of her way without quite knowing why. Norton watched her go, then slid me a sideways look.

“You’re in demand,” he said. “Hopefully, you have a scheduling assistant.”

“I have coffee,” I state. “That’s as far as I plan.”

“Mm.” He raised his hand in salute. “Well, when you inevitably break hearts, please do it somewhere with good lighting. Joseph is very particular about his candid shots.”

“Don’t you dare,” I warn.

Norton grinned, already halfway to the door. “I won’t. He will.”

I did, in fact, try to make it to the training yard. I made it as far as the greenhouse.

Emma was waiting in the doorway like she’d sensed my approach, a sixth sense triggered by the faintest hint of “might be helpful and could be fed.” She wore her gardening apron and a look of triumph. “Perfect timing,” she chirped. “I need tall, gentle hands.”

“I have two of those words,” I said. “You get to guess which.”

“It’s the hands,” she said, breezing past my defensiveness like it wasn’t there. “Come on.”

Inside, the greenhouse pressed warmth against my skin. The air smelled like soil and sweetness and the sharp green of something freshly cut. Emma guided me between rows of pots to a table crowded with cuttings.

“These are shy,” she said, gesturing to a set of pale blossoms closed in on themselves. “They only open if you’re patient. Most people poke them and ruin it.”

“Then why ask me?”

“Because you look like you’d pretend not to care, and then watch until they do.” She gave me a sunny smile that shouldn’t have hit as accurately as it did. “Hold this stem. Gently.”

I did. The stem was delicate, and the blossom trembled. Emma’s fingers landed lightly on my wrist to adjust my grip, and any poised retort I’d been preparing dissolved into the humidity. “You know,” she said, voice dropping into a conspiratorial tone, “people talk about you a lot.”

“I’m aware,” I said. The Manor has thin walls.

“Not in a bad way,” she added. “Just… fascinated. You don’t hover in doorways the way the others do.” She laughed softly. “Well. Martha hovers very intentionally.”

“That’s one word for it.”

“She likes you,” Emma said, as if delivering weather. “A lot of us do.”

The blossom loosened; petal by petal, it exhaled into the air, small and beautiful. I watched it open and tried not to think of any parallels. “I’m not a project,” I inform, which came out more defensive than I meant.

Emma tucked a stray hair behind her ear with her pinky finger, because both hands were occupied: her left adjusting a sprout, her right still resting against my wrist like an anchor. “No one said you were. We can just… like you.”

Something in my chest stuttered. I coughed it back into place. “Martha asked me outside,” I changed the topic, which did not sound like the deflection I hoped it would.

“Of course she did,” Emma said with a laugh. “Tell her not to push too hard. She snaps when she gets stubborn.”

“Do you?”

“Oh, absolutely,” Emma said, bright and unashamed. “But I bake about it.” She let go; the absence of her touch was distinct enough to feel. She slipped a small paper bag onto the table, grease-spotted and warm. “For later,” she said, eyes softening. “Go on. Don’t keep Martha waiting. I’ll be mad if she starts shooting without a spotter.”

“I’m not her spotter,” I rebutted, already moving backward through the jungle of leaves.

“Sure you aren’t,” she sang.

The training yard sprawled behind the Manor, patches of trampled grass, a neat rack of wooden dummies, a scattering of crates that migrated daily depending on who needed them for what. Somewhere nearby, William was shouting about form to an audience that sounded resistant.

Martha stood in the shade with her jacket slung over her shoulder, measuring the distance to a series of targets someone had chalked onto a back wall. “You’re late,” she said without turning.

“I got kidnapped by plants,” I said. “They asked very nicely.”

Martha’s mouth twitched. “I’ll allow botanical emergencies. Stand here.” She tapped a spot beside her boot. “I want you to call my shots.”

“I’m not-”

“Not your spotter,” she finished, eyes cutting to me. “You’ve said. And yet, here we are.”

She lifted her weapon; the line of her arm was clean enough to draw. I stood at her shoulder and watched the world narrow into a path from muzzle to mark. The moment stretched and then broke cleanly with the report.

“High,” I said. “Half a hair.”

She adjusted. Fired again. “Better?”

“Worse,” I said, because honesty is the only easy currency between us. We settled into a rhythm: her body, my voice. Between shots, there was only wind and the audible click of Martha’s attention sliding into place.

“Tell me when you’d move,” she said after a while. Sweat had gathered along her hairline in a way I tried not to notice. “If you were on the other end of me.”

“When you blink,” I uttered.

“I don’t blink.”

“You do,” I tell her. “Right after you exhale.”

She went still. Then she laughed, soft and startled, like I’d tapped a private seam. “God help anyone who dates you.”

“No one is dating me,” I asserted.

“Mm,” Martha said, noncommittal. She fired again; the chalk burst directly on the center mark. She breathed out, then exaggeratedly refused to blink. “Better?”

I was rescued by Norton, who chose that moment to wander by with William at his shoulder and a half-eaten apple in his mouth. “Are you two flirting or aiming?” Norton asked, biting into the apple with theatrical crunch.

“Both,” William said cheerfully, because he always says the loud part out loud. “Look at them. It’s like a poster for competent people falling in love.”

I glared. Martha, to her credit, did not lower her weapon. “We’re working,” she said, but a pleased color had climbed into her cheeks that her tone failed to hide.

“I’m collecting for the betting pool,” Norton said to me, as if that were a normal thing to say in polite society. “If I put you and Martha at ‘two weeks to official,’ will you be offended?”

“I’ll be homicidal,” I let him know.

“Put me down for ‘tomorrow,’” William said. “I like underdogs.”

“Tomorrow isn’t an underdog, it’s reckless,” Norton said.

“Reckless is fun,” William said.

Martha fired again, and this time the bullet smacked into the exact center with such satisfying authority that every idiot within earshot shut up out of reflexive respect. "Go bother someone less armed.”

They went, laughing with each other. Their voices got caught on the wind and sent back like echoes.

“Thank you,” I said. It came out more sincere than I meant.

“Don’t thank me,” Martha commented. “Tell me if you’re free later.”

“For what?” I asked warily.

“For not target practice.” Her eyes held mine, teasing and steady at once. “You owe me one indulgence.”

“I owe you nothing,” I claimed, which was technically true and spiritually false. I hesitated, half a heartbeat, the habit she’d named in herself. “I… might be free.”

“Good,” she said, like that settled the world. “Don’t vanish.”

I vanished.

It wasn’t cowardice so much as survival. I made it inside, then ducked down the north corridor where the walls hold the cold even in summer. The chapel door stood ajar at the end, light pooling on the threshold.

“[Y/n]?”

Fiona’s voice belongs in places like this. It makes even your name sound like a secret. She stood near the little altar with her hands folded, gaze luminous and too kind. "I was looking for you," she stated.

“That is becoming a theme,” I said, and added quickly, “I don’t mean that to sound… ungrateful.”

“You sound overwhelmed,” she said gently. “May I?” She motioned to the pew; I sat. The wood creaked the way wood does when it has held people through too many seasons. Fiona took the place beside me with the sort of delicate gravity that makes sitting feel like a meaningful act.

“I said something at breakfast,” she began. “That you’ve been on my mind. I wanted to explain.”

I studied the dust that hung in the light above the aisle. “You don’t have to.”

“I’d like to.” She turned slightly, shoulder to shoulder with me, our knees almost but not quite touching. “Hunters are asked to carry heavy things. Blame. Fear. The story of a role, rather than the truth of a person. I’ve known a lot of burdens in my life. I recognize their weight on other people.”

I felt seen in a way that didn’t pin me to a wall. That might have been worse. “That’s very poetic for ‘you look tired.’”

Fiona laughed once, breathlessly. “You don’t look tired. You look… disciplined. Which is a cousin to tired.” She hesitated. “I don’t want you to feel alone."

I didn’t trust my voice; I let the quiet answer for me. After a moment, Fiona reached over and, with the same care she gave to portals and prayers, laced her fingers through mine. The chapel felt suddenly, impossibly, private.

“Is this allowed?” I asked because humor is a shield, and mine comes up reflexively.

“Nothing here is forbidden,” she said.

Something clicked. Literally, something clicked. The sound flashed white across the air. I looked up to see Joseph in the doorway, camera cradled like an infant he intended to ruin. “Don’t mind me,” he purred. “Just capturing the light.”

I yanked my hand free; Fiona’s fingers slipped, warm gone too fast. “Delete that,” I said.

“Art cannot be undone,” Joseph said. “But I’m happy to retitle it. ‘Hunter Finds Grace,’ perhaps? Or ‘Confessional Heat’... no? ‘Hand-Holding in Minor Key’?”

I stood so fast that the pew protested. Joseph took a leisurely step backward, smiling like a wolf with table manners.

“Joseph,” Fiona called, calm even now. “Please be kind.”

“Always,” he said, and vanished with the echo of his shoes and the ghost of a smirk.

I stared at the empty doorway, then back at Fiona. Shame and irritation and something far softer, all tangled up like thread I wasn’t patient enough to untie. “I’m sorry,” I apologised.

“For his lack of boundaries?” Fiona’s smile tilted. “Not your responsibility.”

“For… not knowing what to do with any of this.”

“You don’t have to know,” she said. “Just be honest.”

“That’s the problem,” I said, and the admission surprised us both.

We stood together, which felt like a decision without being one. As we reached the corridor, we nearly collided with Aesop, who blinked slowly at the sight of us emerging from the chapel like a headline trying to be discreet.

“Should I offer condolences,” he said dryly, “or congratulations?”

“Offer me a shovel,” I muttered. “I have to dig a hole and hide.”

“Garden is that way,” he said, pointing with funereal solemnity. “Mind the wildflowers. Emma insists they are special.”

By the time the clock rang out noon, word had warped into a creature with its own legs.

In the lounge, Norton and William, and Mike had constructed a command center out of cushions and a low table. Cards lay splayed like spilled secrets; a ledger of some kind was open to a page labeled THE POOL in Norton’s sharp handwriting, names and dates scrawled down the margin.

“I’m burning this,” I said, stopping dead.

“You’ll never find all the copies,” Norton said, unabashed. “We learned from past mistakes.”

William waved. “Friendly reminder that my ‘tomorrow’ prediction is still on the board.”

“Friendly reminder that you don’t understand the word ‘friendly,’” I rebutted.

Mike peered over the ledger as if it might sprout legs. “Does the winner get anything? Besides the thrill of being right?”

“Eternal glory,” Norton said. “And one of Emma’s muffins that was absolutely not stolen.”

“Stolen from where?” Emma asked, appearing like a morally outraged sprite, hands on hips. “I inventory those.”

Norton slapped the ledger shut. “No, you don’t.”

“Do too,” Emma said. “In my heart.”

The door on the far side opened; Martha stepped in, scanned the room, and found me like I was the only static point in a sea of motion. She didn’t smile, but something in her gaze answered a question I hadn’t decided to ask.

“Later,” she mouthed.

I mouthed back, “Maybe,” because I am incapable of conceding cleanly.

“Scintillating,” Norton said, as if watching silent-film subtitles. “I’m moving my money.”

“Move your hand away from that book,” Emma said. “Or I move your fingers off your hand.”

“Terrifying,” Norton said approvingly.

“Enough,” I told the room at large, which was like telling the tide to quit. “I am not dating anyone. I am not on a schedule. I am going to-”

“Rehearsal.”

The interruption came from the doorway in a voice warm as velvet stretched over mischief. Margaretha posed there like she’d been painted, one elbow propped lightly in the frame, her shorts dusted with glitter that had no logical source.

“We’re rehearsing in the ballroom,” she reminded, smiling directly at me. “I’m missing a partner for a lift. You have the center of gravity of someone reliable.”

I could feel Norton’s delight without looking. William made an ooooh sound he didn’t deserve to survive.

“I don’t dance,” I tell her again.

“You do,” Margaretha said, crossing the room. “Everyone does. With the right encouragement.” Her perfume was the cool of backstage and a touch of something citrus. “Come at three. If you hate it, you can call me a liar, and I’ll let you.”

“That’s a good deal,” Mike said.

“I’m not asking you, darling,” Margaretha told him, though her tone held no heat. Her attention never left my face; it was attention that could set tinder alight if left too long. “Three?”

I should have said no. I know this about myself in retrospect, how I collect obligations like talismans and then complain about the weight. Instead, I said, “Maybe,” because apparently I only know one word today.

“Lovely,” she said, as if I’d agreed to marriage. “Don’t be late.”

For the moment, though, I stood in the lounge and let the noise wash over me: Emma scolding Norton; Mike asking William to teach him how to slide down banisters; Martha’s composure at my periphery; Fiona’s quiet orbit intersecting mine for one light touch on the sleeve as she passed. I felt like a rock in a river, water shivering around all my edges until the shape of me blurred.

“I need air,” I muttered.

“You need a calendar,” Norton said.

“I need you to trip over your own ego,” I said, and he merely cackled in response.

The garden is quieter than the greenhouse, less curated. I found a bench and sat like my bones had been borrowing someone else’s posture all morning and were finally returned to factory settings.

I took Emma’s paper bag out of my pocket and unrolled the top. Inside: two small pastries shaped like hearts but imperfectly so, one corner collapsed, sugar dust uneven. I smiled despite myself. The first bite tasted like melted butter.

The second tasted like the sudden awareness of footsteps on gravel.

“Running away?” Martha asked, appearing with the bench’s shadow across her boots.

“Strategic retreat,” I said.

She sat, not too close, not too far. For a minute, we simply shared the sound of the fountain’s stubborn waterfall. “You don’t have to accept every invitation,” she said at last. “You’re allowed to say no.”

“I did,” I said. “I said ‘maybe.’”

Martha huffed. “That’s hunter for ‘yes.’”

“I hate that you know that,” I said, and she smiled triumphantly.

We watched a bird attempt to bully a larger bird out of a patch of sun. It succeeded. Confidence is contagious.

“I’m not…” I began, then stopped. The sentences in my chest felt like a drawer jammed full of maps and no sense of direction. “I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

“Then don’t,” she said, as if the world were that obedient. “Be honest. Be kind. The rest is… noise.”

“Noise is loud,” I mutter.

“Then come find the library when your ears ring,” she said, a casual offer dressed like a command.

Something loosened, like those shy blossoms in Emma’s greenhouse finding their courage under patient hands. “Three?” she asked, glancing at me. “Or are you booked to be lifted into the rafters by Margaretha’s ambition?”

“I said ‘maybe,’” I repeated.

Martha’s mouth tipped. “Which is yes.”

“I hate you,” I said, and meant: I don’t.

“I know,” she said, and meant: I’ll be here anyway.

We sat like that for a while, two forms claiming a bench and, miracle of miracles, not being interrupted. When we finally stood, the long morning had been sanded down to something almost manageable.

Back inside, a pale ribbon waited under my door. I picked it up, ran the silk between my fingers, and laughed quietly at the ceiling in a way that felt like surrender without being defeated. Three o’clock would come whether I wanted it or not, and maybe stands for yes.

Chapter Text

Three o’clock will come whether you want it or not.

I tried to dodge it by lingering in quiet places, the library, the stairwell landing, the shadowy strip of corridor where the wallpaper peels like it’s trying on new personalities. Time didn’t care. The clock on the landing sounded especially smug as it tolled the quarter hour, then the half. By five to, I’d given up pretending I wasn’t going. I’d even, God help me, fished the pale ribbon out of my pocket and tied it around my wrist. It looked like a promise I had no business wearing.

The ballroom sits on the Manor’s south side, where the light goes golden first. It’s a room with a vaulted ceiling, a pair of chandeliers that creak, and mirrored walls that make you deal with more versions of yourself than you came prepared for. Someone had chalked soft marks on the floor, arcs, and numerals. A gramophone crouched near the wall like a waiting dog, its horn a brass flower.

Margaretha already had the room measured and obeying. She wore rehearsal clothes, which for her meant a fitted bodice, an airy skirt, and hair pinned back. Glitter dusted her collarbone as if the sun had tried to take up residence and she’d agreed.

“You’re early,” she said, without looking at the clock.

“I’m right on time,” I said.

“For me,” she said, and smiled like we both knew what that meant. She crossed to me in three steps that ate the space. She took my left hand and turned it palm-up to consider the ribbon. Her thumb pressed lightly over the knot, like testing a pulse.

“You kept it,” she said, pleased rather than surprised. “Good. It suits you.”

“I’m armed with silk now,” I said. “Formidable.”

“Formidable and liftable,” she said. “Perfect.”

She spun away to the gramophone and wound it; the needle landed with a friendly hiss, then strings unfurled. Not a waltz, but something meant for breath and control. She returned and let her hands find me with practiced ease, one at my shoulder, one offering my other hand a place to be.

“Before we defy gravity,” she said, voice lower to fit the space between us, “we have to agree on basic physics.”

“I don’t dance,” I reminded her, but it came out softer now, like habit rather than truth.

“You move for a living,” she said. “Dancing is just moving while admitting you’re being seen.” She tipped her head. “May I?”

It took me a heartbeat to realize what she meant. I nodded. She stepped closer. The ballroom expanded to the edges of us and then stopped. My palm found the exact span of her shoulder blade. She guided our first steps, and I learned three things in quick succession:

One: My boots are a problem.
Two: Margaretha is an unrepentant flirt, even while giving technical notes.
Three: Being held at exactly the right distance feels like safety disguised as spectacle.

“Weight here,” she commanded, shifting a fraction of an inch. “Good. Spine like a string from your crown to the ceiling, but not stiff. We’re not posing; we’re ready to respond.” She glanced up under her lashes. “You’re a responder, aren’t you?”

“I’m a Hunter,” I said.

“That’s not a contradiction.”

We traced the chalk arcs with our feet. My left shoulder tried to hunch. She smoothed it with two fingers and a small, satisfied hum. Every time I anticipated where she would go, she went somewhere else, just enough to make my focus earn its keep. The music thrummed through the floorboards and up my bones. Mirrors caught us from unkind angles, but her presence made them kinder.

“Breathe,” she uttered. “You forget to, when you’re concentrating.”

“I don’t forget,” I said, exhaling because apparently I do.

“Mmm.” She eased us into a turn. “You like control. So do I." She smiled. “Trust me?”

“I barely know you,” I said, which was both the truth and irrelevant.

“You know enough,” she said, and then, before I could build a better argument, she shifted her weight, counted softly, and we were already doing it: the small preparation step, the grounding, my hands finding their placements the way she’d shown me, and then Margaretha’s weight rising. For a second, she was lighter than her glitter, held above the inevitability of the floor, the silk of her skirt sighing against my forearms, her laugh a quicksilver thing close to my ear.

“See?” she said as I set her down, steady. “Perfect center of gravity.”

“It’s you,” I protested automatically.

“It’s us,” she corrected, pleased. “Again.”

We did it again. And again. Each time, my body spoke a little more fluently. We found the place where her cue and my timing met and shook hands. She didn’t praise when it wasn’t earned. When it was, her approval hit like sunlight.

Of course, we weren’t alone for long.

Emma appeared first, as if pulled by some kind of “is [Y/n] attempting something difficult?” magnet. She hovered at the edge of the room with a towel and a bottle of water and the world’s most supportive smile.

“I brought supplies,” she whispered, wincing at the way sound carries in here. “Also, a first-aid kit, but I’m sure you won’t need it. Probably.”

Martha arrived next, not intruding, exactly, but taking up residence in the doorway with her arms folded and her expression halfway between analytics and amusement. She watched the placements with a focus that would have made me nervous a week ago.

Fiona drifted in small and quietly, gravitating to a column where she could be present without pushing. Her gaze moved between our hands and our faces.

And then, in a demonstration of natural law, Norton and William also showed up, because gossip produces gravity, and those two are iron filings. “Ah,” Norton said, setting a tiny ledger on the piano with revolting delicacy. “A live event.”

“Ten to one he drops her,” William stage-whispered to Norton, then looked at me and paled.

I would have answered if Margaretha hadn’t leaned in just then and said, in a voice cut for only me, “Ignore the balcony. It doesn’t dance with us.” Right. Balcony doesn’t dance. Mirrors don’t dance. The gramophone, which had developed a faint rhythmic skip, definitely doesn’t dance.

We went again. My boots slid a hair on the waxed floor; my balance compensated. Margaretha rose, and the world narrowed to hands and timing and the exact moment where she trusted me enough to let her center go. When I set her down, our faces were closer than anyone had a right to, and for one unsupervised second, we did nothing about it.

“Better,” she said. Her breath touched my cheek. “Again-”

“Hold,” Martha called, like a range instructor halting fire. Her voice didn’t break the moment so much as set it on a shelf for safekeeping. “Your right hand is too high.”

Margaretha turned her head just enough to arch a brow at Martha, and I felt the shift across my palm. “Is it.”

“If you want stability, yes,” Martha said mildly. “If you want drama, carry on.”

“Sometimes they are the same,” Margaretha commented, but when she looked back at me, she adjusted, and damned if Martha wasn’t right: the next lift felt like a secret understood.

“Excellent,” Fiona complimented quietly, which is somehow the loudest praise.

“Unfair,” Norton muttered, scribbling. “Joint coaching advantage.”

William cupped his hands. “Spin them!”

“No,” three voices said at once: Martha, Fiona, and I. Emma just made a soft, distressed noise and held up the first-aid kit like a talisman.

We took a water break. Margaretha guided me to the side like a prize she’d borrowed and intended to return intact, eventually. Emma pressed the towel into my hand, gentle and matter-of-fact. “You’re doing great,” she praised. “Don’t let Norton narrate in your head.”

“He already lives there,” I grumbled.

“I pay rent,” Norton said from across the room.

Fiona tipped her head at my posture, coaxing my shoulders down with nothing but a look. “Release tension,” she said. “Keep intention.”

“It’s a dance, not a sermon,” Margaretha teased her.

“Why not both?” Fiona returned, eyes bright.

We went back out. Margaretha whisked my towel away like a magician, tossed it to William (who, to his credit, caught it with a little bow), and stepped into my space as if it had been pre-reserved.

“Ready?” she asked.

“No,” I sighed.

“Good,” she purred, and counted us in.

We found the pocket where movement stops being a series of instructions and becomes one thing happening. My hands learned her edges; her balance learned my stubbornness. The gramophone’s skip became part of the rhythm we accounted for without discussing.

On what must have been our twelfth attempt, we rose into the lift so cleanly the room itself seemed to take a breath for us. Margaretha’s eyes lit up like applause. I felt the laugh building in my chest, the kind that comes out when you surprise yourself by not failing.

That was when Joseph’s flash turned the mirrors white. Click. The sound ribboned through the room, delicate and deadly. I didn’t drop her. I didn’t. But my left hand twitched, a hair, a heartbeat, less than thought, and that was enough for Margaretha’s balance to reconsider our life choices.

She didn’t fall. I didn’t fall. What happened was an improvised, indelicate, frankly impressive grace failure: she slid, I lunged, the two of us tangled and righted, and we ended up with Margaretha half in my arms, half upright, fully laughing. My heartbeat attempted to leave my body via my throat.

“Beautiful,” Joseph said from the doorway, lowering his camera with satisfaction. “Title: Almost, Darling. Almost.”

“Get out,” several of us said, Martha’s version carrying the kind of quiet that makes grown men rethink their hobbies.

Joseph tilted a penitent hand. “I go. But know that posterity thanks me.”

He went, the air unspooling behind him like a relieved ribbon. Norton made a choked noise that might have been laughter; he was trying not to let me see. Emma rushed forward three steps, then retreated when she saw we were both still upright; Fiona closed her eyes for half a second like she was filing a prayer.

Margaretha’s hand was still on my shoulder. She squeezed once, reassurance disguised as pressure. “Again?” she asked. “We don’t let him have the last image.”

“Again,” I said, because defiance is a transferrable skill.

We did it again. The lift held. And when I set her down, the laughter in her face turned into something softer and more dangerous, gratitude wrapped around delight, attention sharpened into invitation.

“Good,” Martha said from the doorway, which I didn’t realize I needed until she said it. “And your hand stays where it is.”

“It’s staying,” I said.

“It is,” Margaretha echoed, eyes still on mine.

The gramophone wheezed the song to a close. We didn’t move for a second or two after the music ended, not clinging, just choosing not to make a moment smaller than it was by hurrying it away. Then Margaretha stepped back, collected herself, and clapped her hands once.

“Partners, break,” she announced to no one and everyone. “Hydrate. Admire. Plot."

“Admire,” Norton repeated, dutifully scribbling. “Plot later.”

Emma scuttled in with water; I drank like a person who had lifted a comet and wasn’t smug about it. Fiona smiled the kind of smile that says she’ll remember this hour. William started reenacting our almost-fall with Mike as his unwilling prop until Aesop walked through, set down a box of bandages on a table with pointed neutrality, and kept going.

“Tomorrow,” Margaretha said to me, quiet amid the noise.

“I didn’t agree to-”

“You did,” she said, nodding at the ribbon. “Same time.”

I should have said “maybe.” The word crouched on my tongue, my favorite shield. What came out was, “We’ll see,” which is just “maybe” in a coat and hat.

She reached for my wrist. Her fingers turned the ribbon, tightened the knot with a deftness that made my pulse behave badly under her touch. “Don’t lose it,” she said. “I’d be offended.”

“I’ll try not to offend you,” I murmur.

“Impossible,” she said, and it somehow sounded like a compliment.

She glided away to scold William for improvising lifts on Mike (“you will tear him in half, darling, he is made of springs, not sinew”). Emma pressed a biscuit into my palm as if I were a child who had successfully not cried at the doctor’s office. Fiona touched my shoulder in passing and said nothing, which said enough. Martha angled out of the doorway finally, intercepting my escape route with the patient inevitability of weather.

“Good work,” she said. No smile. That was the compliment.

“It’s heavier than it looks,” I tell her. “All that glamour has ballast.”

“She makes it seem easy; that’s her precision,” Martha said. “Don’t let it bewitch you.”

“Are you jealous?” I asked more bluntly than I intended.

“Of her?” The faintest twitch near Martha’s mouth. “I prefer tangible outcomes. She prefers applause.”

“I gave her both,” I said.

“You gave her trust,” Martha said. “That’s the rare currency.” She glanced down at the ribbon, then back at my face. “Keep some for yourself.” I didn’t have an answer to that. She didn’t wait for one. “Tomorrow, my range, at nine,” she said. “We recalibrate your footwork before she teaches you to fly.”

“I’m not-” I began.

“You are,” she said, and wandered off with the certainty of someone who had already penciled me into her day.

Norton sidled up, ledger under his arm like a baby bird he inexplicably loved. “Update?”

“No,” I firmly turned down.

“Just the headline,” he begged.

“You heard Joseph,” I said. “He already wrote one.”

Norton’s grin spread, slow and terrible. “That’s the thing about headlines. There can always be more.”

I left the ballroom before the room could develop subplots without me. In the corridor, the air felt cooler on my flushed skin. The ribbon lay precisely around my wrist; chalk dust left a pale print on my fingers where I’d steadied Margaretha’s waist. A laugh, the one that had threatened during that perfect lift, finally got out, quiet and disbelieving.

I was not planning to enjoy this. I was not planning anything.

Down the hallway, the big clock struck four. Somewhere in the greenhouse, Emma’s watering can sang against terra-cotta. In the chapel, I could almost hear Fiona setting a cup gently on wood. On the back lawn, a shot cracked the air with Martha’s signature patience.

The Manor does this thing where, after you survive one dramatic event, it rewards you with a different dramatic event wearing a funny hat. Today’s hat was Game Night.

I found out when Norton slid a thick card under my door: glossy, embossed, and entirely too confident in its own importance.

“MANOR GAME NIGHT — Teams by lottery. Challenges by whim. Cheating is encouraged, but only if amusing. Report to the lounge at seven.”

Beneath that, in smaller handwriting that I recognized as Emma’s, there will be snacks! Please come! Also, bring your best self!

And, beneath that, in a different ink I recognized as Joseph’s: And bring your worst self, for balance.

At 6:55, I showed up with neither. I brought myself, which was questionable enough.

The lounge had rearranged itself to look festive. Someone (Emma) had garlanded the mantle with paper stars; someone else (Norton) had converted the coffee table into a command center piled with cards, chalk, and a nightmare ledger. A satin hat sat like a trap in the center, its brim bristling with folded slips of paper.

“Welcome, contenders,” Norton intoned as if opening court. He wore his normal clothes and an air of unearned authority. “Tonight’s format is Rotating Pairs & Quests. You draw a partner, you draw a challenge, you go earn points. Highest score buys breakfast: Emma’s list, not mine.”

Emma waved from the snack table, where she’d lined up bowls of sugared almonds and little pastries that smelled like nostalgia. Her apron read KISS THE COOK in letters someone (William) had altered to say MISS THE COOK and then KISS again. She’d stopped fixing it after the third revision.

“Questions?” Norton asked.

“Are bribes allowed?” William asked.

“They’re encouraged,” Norton said.

“Boundaries?” Aesop asked mildly from an armchair, like a man resigned to watching a fire but committed to holding a fire extinguisher.

“No mortal wounds,” Norton added. “No supernatural trauma. No breaking the gramophone again. And no making the Priestess cry.”

Fiona smiled, small and amused. “I don’t cry.”

“Right,” Norton said, scribbling, “new rule: no making Fiona ‘breathe differently for a second.’”

Joseph lounged on the chaise like a cat with an inheritance. He’d brought his camera. He always brings his camera. “And if someone happens to glow under the chandelier,” he said, “I simply cannot be held responsible.”

“Put the camera away,” Martha told him without looking. She’d claimed the corner nearest the fireplace, all spare lines and steady composure. Every time I glanced her way, I remembered I was supposed to be at the range at nine tomorrow. The knowledge settled like a plan and an invitation.

“Shall we?” Norton flourished the hat.

I stepped forward, hand hovering over the slips, Emma’s eagerness bright as sugar, Fiona’s calm like a held breath, Margaretha’s attention a cool ribbon along my wrist where her ribbon already sat tied, Martha’s gaze the weight that makes a shot honest.

I drew a slip.

Partner: Vera Nair (Perfumer)
Quest: “Bring back the scent of something that doesn’t exist anymore.”

I looked up. Vera was already gliding toward me, all lace and lavender, a bottle resting in her palm like a secret weapon. “How poetic,” she said, voice as soft as the silk on my wrist. “And how cruel.”

“Cruel?” I asked.

“Because it’s easy,” she said, and smiled.

We slipped out of the lounge into the corridor, where the Manor’s noises bled to a manageable hum. She led us toward the small tea salon, the room with the peacock wallpaper and two too many chairs. The lamps pooled amber light.

“Scent,” Vera said, stopping near the window, “is memory, but not obedient memory. You can’t grab it. You have to coax it.” She opened her bottle and let one clear bead fall onto her wrist. “What do you miss?”

“I don’t...”

“The first thing,” she cut in gently. “Don’t edit.”

A thought struck before I could build a defense: the clean resin smell of the workroom in my old life, before the Manor, before the role fit too tightly. Wood and smoke and the ghost of rain in stone. I told her.

Vera closed her eyes, mouth tipping into a small, private curve. “I can’t give you rain on stone,” she said. “But I can give you the suggestion of a room that refuses to be lonely.”

She uncorked two more vials, dabbed two notes on the inside of my sleeve, then lifted my wrist to her nose and mine. Something opened: resin, yes, but held on a ribbon of smoke and something faintly green in the edges, the way a door lets in a draft even when it’s closed.

“That’s cheating,” I said softly.

“It’s craft,” she corrected, and then, because she is who she is, she added the faintest kiss of something warm to the pulse point at my wrist and watched me discover it. “There. Loss, but not absence.”

The room spun once and righted itself. I swallowed. “We should go back."

“We should,” she agreed, not moving. “One more thing.”

She reached for the ribbon at my wrist, touched the knot like a button that might open a hidden staircase, and smiled without claiming anything. “Bring that scent to the hat,” she said. “Let Norton decide if memories earn points.”

Norton decided they did. He leaned in like a critic at an absurdist play, sniffed with exaggerated flair, and declared, “Five points for olfactory necromancy.”

“Don’t call it that,” Aesop said, not looking up from his book.

Joseph snapped a photo I didn’t have the energy to forbid, and Margaretha’s glance slid to the damp gleam on my wrist with territorial amusement. Emma pressed a sugared almond into my hand “for courage,” and the hat went around again.

Partner: Tracy Reznik (Mechanic)
Quest: “Retrieve the crank from the basement without waking the automaton.”

“I hate this one,” Tracy said immediately, then scowled at herself for admitting it. She wore her work gloves tucked into her belt, goggles shadowing her forehead.

“Why?” I questioned as we headed toward the service stairs.

“Because I built the automaton’s temper,” she admitted. “And it’s bad.”

The basement smelled like metal. Tracy led fast, feet knowing which floorboards would lie about their creak. We slipped into her workshop: low ceiling, scattered tools, diagrams pinned everywhere like constellations trying to be helpful.

At the far end, under a canvas sheet, the automaton hummed to itself in a sleep that felt like a dare. “The crank is under there,” she whispered. “Third board from the left. If you step wrong, it thinks you’re playing.”

“What happens if it thinks we’re playing?” I asked.

“It wakes up and plays,” she answered, grim.

We mapped the floor with our eyes. Tracy crouched, gestured: her two fingers meant your step, three meant mine. We moved in a little duet of trust and breath. At board three, I slid my hand under the canvas. Something cold met my fingers.

“Got it,” I breathed.

“Careful, careful, careful,” Tracy breathed back, because sometimes three is a magic number. On the way out, a tiny gear rolled off a shelf with the sedate inevitability of a cat pushing a glass. It pinged on the floor, and the automaton’s hum hiccuped.

Tracy’s hand was instantly on my sleeve, pulling me sideways behind a pillar. I felt the movement of her, a quick darting thing, a pulse of focus. We waited. The hum settled. She let go slowly, as if my arm were a lever.

“Sorry,” she said, cheeks pink, eyes steadfast. “I forget humans don’t have screws.”

“We do,” I said. “They’re just harder to find.”

She huffed a laugh that felt like electricity deciding to be kind. “Come back later? I want to calibrate something. I need… your gait.”

“My what?”

“Your gait,” she repeated, businesslike to hide the flush. “Your stride length, ankle angle. For research.”

“Is your research labeled ‘how to outrun a Hunter’?”

“It’s labeled ‘how not to trip over someone I like,’” she blurted, then immediately pretended to examine a bolt as if bolts were her religion. “Go. The crank. Points. Go.”

Back upstairs, Norton gave us four points and a lecture about “ethics in stealth.” Tracy vanished the second he started monologuing. I pocketed an extra sugared almond and tried not to decide anything about my ankles.

The hat came back. The slips dwindled. The room felt warmer; the game’s gravity had us in its pleasant chokehold.

Partner: Helena Adams (Mind’s Eye)
Quest: “Find the quietest square of the house.”

Helena approached with her cane, a small smile turning her mouth into a punctuation mark that could end arguments. There’s a way she stands that centers a room without owning it. “We’re not actually listening for silence,” she said, as if continuing a conversation we’d started an hour ago. “We’re listening for what stops making noise when we arrive.”

Together we moved along corridors where the house wore different moods: the coat of the library’s hush, the bright clatter of the dining room, the tired heartbeat of the stairwell. We paused in the music room; the gramophone sighed in its sleep. We stood at the kitchen door; laughter leaked under it like warmth.

“Here,” she said at last, leading me to the little antechamber outside the ballroom, the one with the mirror that always insists it’s larger than the wall. The chandelier in the big room tinkled far away.

I listened. The fountain in the garden was a memory. The clock’s click was down the hall, thickened by carpet. Even my worries seemed to lower their voices. I felt Helena tilt her head.

“Your heartbeat changes with each of them,” she said, matter-of-fact. “It speeds up near the dancer. It evens near the soldier. It becomes careful near the priestess.”

“I...” I started, then realized she wasn’t showing off. She was offering me a map I didn’t know I could ask for.

“And here,” she finished gently, “it is not pretending. That counts as quiet.”

We brought the quiet back in the form of our presence. Norton tried to quantify it; Fiona declared six points and told him to hush.

By then, the room was buoyant with sugar and victory and friendly envy. People sprawled: William on the hearth, Mike on the rug, Aesop upright. It couldn’t last.

The lights flickered once, then twice, and steadied. Mary stepped out of the tall mirror by the mantle as if mirrors had always been doors and she had always owned the hinges. Red lips, immaculate dress, the glint of a smile.

“Were you missing a queen?” she asked, amused.

A chorus of reactions followed: Emma’s delighted gasp, Martha’s jaw setting by a millimeter, Margaretha’s eyes glittering in immediate appraisal, Fiona’s polite nod of recognition. Joseph sat up a fraction.

Norton clapped his hands exactly once. “Wonderful. Late entry. The hat?”

Mary did not consult hats. She consulted mirrors. “I’ll take the Hunter,” she said, looking directly at me. “And the challenge is where we pretend not to flirt.”

“I don’t think...” Norton began.

“Excellent,” Mary said smoothly. “We’ll do The Three Keys.”

“The Three-” Norton blinked. “That wasn’t... fine. Fine!”

“Keys?” I asked.

“Metaphorical ones,” she said, offering her arm. “Come along.” I didn’t take her arm. I followed. That felt like enough concession for a first date with authority.

She led me down the long mirror corridor, the one that manages to reflect things that haven’t happened yet if you look wrong. “Three keys,” she said. “One you can hold. One, you can’t. One that will only let itself be found if you stop looking.”

“Are we playing, or are you teaching me philosophy?” I inquired.

“With me, those are synonyms.”

The first was simple: a literal key tucked into the frame of a mirror with a tarnished corner. Mary guided my hand to it, and when I withdrew it, my fingers buzzed.

“The second,” she said, “is attention.” She stepped closer, close enough that I could count the precise, tactical flakes in her enamel and the way her perfume lay like an invitation around the bones of her throat. “Hold mine.”

I forgot to breathe. Then I remembered. Then I forgot again. After some time, embarrassment insisted was five minutes, but was probably five seconds, she nodded, as if I’d passed an exam.

“And the third,” she said, stepping back, “is surrender.”

“I don’t do that,” I protested.

“You do,” she said, amused. “You just renamed it trust.”

We stood in front of a mirror that showed the ballroom behind us, when both of us knew we were nowhere near it. The reflection’s chandelier swayed in a draft we couldn’t feel. I stared until my eyes smarted. I stopped staring.

The key sat on the baseboard ledge, obvious as a joke.

“Unfair,” I said, picking it up.

Back in the lounge, Norton wrung his hands over scoring philosophy while Joseph pretended to calibrate his camera and actually calibrated his glee. Mary returned the two metal keys to him by placing them on his ledger with a tap that made him wince as if she’d set down a bomb. The third key, attention, she kept. Obviously.

I was reaching for a glass of water when something sticky brushed my shoulder. I turned to find Violetta perched on the arm of the adjacent chair, a spool of silk thread winding lazily between two of her fingers. Soul Weaver. A fellow Hunter. Gentle and quietly terrifying when she remembers she is.

“Careful,” she said in that breathy, lilting way of hers. “There are webs tonight.”

“Yours?” I asked.

“Some,” she admitted, pleased. “Some not mine.” She tilted her head, eyes getting soft in a way that always reads as dangerous on most people and reads as affection on her. “Little moth. You’re very… catchable.”

“I am not...”

“You are,” she said, like a scientist noting a fact. She leaned in and, with a single deft motion, plucked a strand of glitter from my shoulder, the echo of Margaretha’s rehearsal, and held it up for me to see. “They’ve been decorating you.”

“Don’t call it that,” I urged. “And don’t call me little.”

“Mmh,” she said, smiling. “Then I won’t say you look better with threads.” She hopped down, lighter than anyone with that many legs has the right to be, and drifted off to drape an unsuspecting Norton in a tasteful cobweb. He didn’t notice until Emma did, at which point Emma clapped and declared him “festive.”

The hat made one last lap as the night tilted toward the soft chaos that means people feel safe.

Partner: Eli Clark (Seer)
Quest: “Predict a choice someone will make and be right.”

Eli wandered over with his owl settling on his shoulder like judgment with feathers. He always looks slightly apologetic for knowing things you don’t. “This is ethically thorny,” he murmured. “We have to pick someone whose choice won’t harm them if we nudge it.”

“Pick Norton,” I said. “He’ll choose chaos.”

“Too easy,” Eli said, smiling. His eyes slid to the snack table where Emma was indecisively hovering between two trays. “Watch.”

She reached for the almond cookies, paused, reached for the fruit tarts, paused, reached for the cookies again, paused.

“She wants to choose the thing that looks prettier,” Eli murmured, “but she will choose the thing that feels made for this night. She baked the cookies this morning. She bought the tarts last week. She will pick the cookies because they carry the day’s story.”

Emma picked the cookies.

“Stop being right,” I told Eli.

“I’m wrong about most things,” he said, petting the owl. “Just not this.”

We turned in our small prophecy and were awarded three points and a polite warning from Norton about “insider trading.” Eli wandered off to throw a crumb to the owl, which refused it anyway because owls are prideful.

The ledger gave up around nine. Norton declared a tie “for narrative satisfaction.” Emma passed out cocoa. Aesop collected empty cups with the solemnity of a man who has witnessed worse parties. William taught Mike how to slide down the banister with only three minor injuries.

Margaretha drifted by, repinning a bobby pin that hadn’t actually moved. “Tomorrow?” she asked, voice a promise and a threat and a veil.

“Range first,” Martha said from nowhere and everywhere at once.

“Then me,” Margaretha remarked.

“It’s not a signup sheet,” I told them, then glanced at Norton, daring him to contradict me. He held up both hands, ledger clutched like a shield, mouth protesting innocence.

“Title for the evening?” Joseph asked the room, camera balanced on his knee like a cat he intended to annoy.

“Game Night,” Emma said.

“Statistical Improbability,” Aesop said.

“Hunter Acquires Keys,” Mary said.

“Keys Acquire Hunter,” Vera corrected, amused.

“Between Shots & Steps,” Fiona offered gently.

“Ribbons & Webs,” Violetta added.

“Tomorrow Is Booked,” Martha said.

“Maybe Is Yes,” Margaretha sang.

“Stop,” I said, covering my face with both hands and laughing into my palms because my body had not yet learned other options.

When I finally retreated to my room, the corridor had gone mostly to whispers. I shut the door, leaned against it, and listened to the Manor settle around me: pipes ticking, far voices folding themselves away, the big clock deciding what kind of night to become. I untied the ribbon and set it on the table.

On my pillow, someone had left a small metal key that did not belong to any door I knew. I held it in my palm and felt nothing mysterious happen. Then I placed it beside the ribbon and the sugared almond Emma had slipped into my pocket when I wasn’t looking. Together, they looked like a language I was beginning to read against my will.

Tomorrow, nine o’clock: Martha and the range.

Three o’clock: Margaretha and gravity.

Somewhere between: Vera and memory, Tracy and gait, Fiona and honesty, Emma and heart-shaped pastries that refuse to bake evenly, Mary and mirrors that think too much, Violetta and threads, Helena and the quiet square, Eli and the owl who approves of nothing.