Chapter Eleven #2
Our small talk was stilted. Eventually, I extracted myself from the huddle to retreat into the bookshelves, at a loss on how to proceed.
For once, I found myself sincerely missing my fiancé.
Where was Noé this morning? He had yet to make an appearance in the library, and as much as I disliked him, I had to admit that questioning my fellow maidens would be a far easier task with him aiding me.
I snorted. For all his talk about partners, he was suspiciously absent when I needed him.
“Oh—Miss Lovett. Forgive me.”
I tensed at the sound of another voice, Anais’s warning ringing in my head, then calmed once I registered the speaker.
Manon Blanc was clutching a book to her chest protectively, its cover turned away like it was a precious object to be guarded and obscured from view.
She’d vanished from the group shortly after I’d joined it; I should have guessed she would have made her way here, where the shelves stood as close as soldiers in their ranks, their contents ripe for the picking.
My shoulders lowered. Of all the silkwitches, Manon was the only one I hadn’t dreaded seeing when Mia had first whipped the library doors open earlier. I wouldn’t term her a friendly face, exactly…but safe. Certainly safer than the ones which awaited me back in the sitting area.
“There’s no need to apologize,” I replied. “I came here in the hopes of respite. I assume you did the same?”
Manon’s grip on her book did not relax, though her nose twitched in wordless agreement. “They do wear on the nerves, do they not?”
Her tone was sharper than I’d come to expect from the mild-mannered girl I’d admired during the Vainglory. Surreptitiously, I let my attention dip to Manon’s ring finger: bare. The contrast was obvious when compared to the gaudy gem which adorned Anais’s own.
“I was speaking with Miss Tremblay earlier,” I ventured carefully. “She appears quite changed.”
There—a quiver, as fast as a reflex, yet nonetheless incriminating. “Ah,” Manon said. “I wouldn’t know. We don’t—I’m afraid we have not talked much since we left Fortblanche.” She bit her lip. “The joys of courtship keep one rather busy, it seems.”
Again, there was bitterness in her speech, a resentful tang like tea left to steep too long.
It made sympathy rise within me. Frankly, I’d never been able to tell what my fellow maiden had seen in Anais.
My discovery of their secret relationship had proven a useful tool during the Vainglory—mostly because I’d been able to use my knowledge of it, and of Anais’s tryst with Dorian Drake, to manipulate Anais into doing my bidding—but still, it saddened me to see Manon looking so…
withered. All her sweetness stolen from her, like fruit dried in the sun.
“I should know,” I answered. Glancing over my shoulder—one of the other girls was certain to come looking for me soon, and I didn’t fancy the idea of being cornered—I decided to take the opportunity in front of me.
“Miss Blanc, would you like to take a stroll with me?” I asked.
“I fear the other girls will track me down here, and I cannot bear to entertain their inquiries any longer. They seem more fascinated with my fiancé than I am.”
Manon smirked. I felt a jab of relief go through me as she nodded, following me out of the library and into the corridor beyond.
In comparison to the space we’d just exited, the hall was blessedly silent. Noé, I noticed, was not out here, either. Most likely, I wagered my fiancé had not yet risen at all, but rather was still lounging in his bed, unaware of the burdens placed on me in his absence. Fool.
“It’s funny.” Manon’s voice scattered my thoughts. “Only a few months have passed since the Vainglory, and yet these halls seem so…foreign to me. As though I walked them in another life.”
Her eyes roved over the corridor as she spoke, dreamy and distant and—sad. It practically radiated from her, a flat muteness like paint stirred with water, and witnessing it made my heart sink. What had happened to the cheerful girl I’d known in the time she’d been away?
“I traverse them every day, and still I feel the same,” I replied. Glancing down at her, I asked, “How have you been, Manon? You are not engaged, I see.”
She blinked, taken aback by my use of her first name. Flexing her left hand, she examined her naked fingers. “I received one offer, but the boy was so…horrid…”
Her mouth twisted into a grimace, her words trailing off.
“You are fortunate, with Mr. Noé,” she resumed abruptly a moment later. “He seems the type to leave his wife be.”
It was, I couldn’t help but think, an odd quality to envy in a husband, but I did not press her. “You’d be surprised,” I remarked instead. “He can be rather persistent when he chooses.”
Manon chuckled. My steps hitched as, without warning, she glanced up, her stare traveling to meet mine. “Do you ever wish,” she said in a soft, trepidatious tone, “that there was a third option? Beyond marriage, or the cloisters. Another path.”
The flesh on my neck prickled at her words.
Immediately, I was thrown back into the opera house, crowded into the unlit box with Eliot after Lucie had left us.
Rather than arranging meetings with women like Lucie Dabos, we should be attempting to contact the rest of the silkwitches who competed in the Vainglory.
The rest of the silkwitches. Eliot had told me that plan was an impossibility—that the society witches’ parents guarded them too closely to allow for in-depth conversation. And yet, here Manon was now, and here I was with her.
Alone.
My pulse picked up. Why hadn’t I seen the opportunity earlier?
“There is always a third option,” I answered steadily. “You need only the willingness to pursue it.” Gesturing ahead of us, I went on. “Let’s keep going. Perhaps somewhere more private?”
Manon held my gaze for another second, her mouth pressed into a line as if debating something, but eventually turned away.
“Yes,” she agreed quietly. Shrugging, she gathered herself, nodding to a break in the hall ahead of us.
“This way?” she suggested. “There is a little balcony I know of—Miss Tremblay showed it to me during the competition.”
I nodded. Turning down a side corridor, we walked until we reached a weather-beaten door, set into the exterior wall.
The structure on the other side of it was less of a balcony than an outcropping—a stone landing, the first in a series of rocky steps, carved directly into the cliffside abutting Fortblanche and winding down toward the sea.
Around us, the sky extended, a clear, unblemished blue.
At the sight—the sheer space of it all—my muscles relaxed. Stepping out onto the landing, I inhaled, drawing in a breath of salted air.
“Manon.” I swallowed, then picked up again. “There’s something you should know—”
“I’m so sorry.” Manon’s voice interrupted me. Her words were hushed, little more than a whisper. “I turned him down at first.”
I looked over my shoulder. The other silkwitch’s hands were extended, reaching toward my back. Alarm plucked in me, too late, as she stepped forward—
And shoved me off the ledge.