Perhaps, I had murmured, I might consider you.
The bait took cleanly.
Vivienne moved. Whatever she did, we did not see. But the next evening, Bex's flame flared again, and this time it stayed lit through the night. And now Vivienne had done what she had not done in two years. She had come down off the mountain herself. Not her maid. Not a runner. Herself.
She was going to Bex.
My mother had been sitting by the window the whole time, her face in her hands, the line of her shoulders shaking. Her voice spilled through her fingers, soft, ragged, weighted with years of guilt.
"If I had not opened our doors to Vivienne when her parents died, if I had not pitied that child, none of this would have happened. Marianna would still be with us. Bex would have grown up in these halls. We would hav
