Fione doesn’t answer me, preferring to nod at Yorl instead. The celeon in turn makes a cursory bow appropriate as a commoner. She finally focuses her cornflower blue eyes back at me.

“You’re here,” she says softly. “Which means you refused Lucien’s offer.”

My heart is just on the other side of that door, behind her, so close I swear I can feel it sink in its bag.

“We want to help you, Lady Zera,” she insists, murmuring softly. “Being what you are is a hard thing; I realize that now. All three of us—Lucien and Malachite and I—want to help you.”

I laugh under my breath. “And what, pray tell, can you do to help me?” I walk up to her, whispering over her shoulder so the guards can’t hear. My denial bubbles up, hot and strong. “You’re not witches. A witch is the only person who can help me now. One specific witch, to be exact. And you happen to be courting her.”

“There’s a way,” Fione insists. “Lucien is—”

“Lucien,” I interrupt her, “is a deluded fool. C’mon, Fione. We both know you’re smarter than to follow fools.”

Fione pulls away from me, her face riddled with shock. “He’s done nothing but think about you this whole time, and you call him a fool? What’s—” She looks me up and down. “What’s happened to you?”

I smile at her. “Haven’t you heard? I’m heartless.”

The irony sends me into a fit of despairing giggles. Fione looks frozen, unmoving even down to the slightest blink, and a tendril of guilt worms through my hard ice wall. She was so afraid of me, and yet despite all that, she’s offering her help.

One last time won’t hurt.

I know Varia hasn’t lifted the command, even at Lucien’s insistence. She loves Fione too much to do that. I move toward the archduchess, slowly, and she doesn’t move away. As gently as I can, I wrap my arms around her shoulders. An embrace. One last time. She smells like a hundred clover flowers soaking in the sun. But beneath that is some other scent—barely noticeable but just metallic enough. White mercury. I shake my head—it doesn’t matter.

“Thank you,” I whisper into her hair. “For trying.”

Her body is stiff, but when she hears the words, she relaxes ever so slightly. I pull away and walk past her, Yorl leading me into Varia’s apartments. The command regarding Fione is starting to take hold, but I rein it in as much as I can.

“Zera!”

I pause at the sound of Fione’s voice calling my name. But she’s behind me. All of it is behind me now.

“Are you sure,” I say without looking back, “that you want to call your enemy by her first name?”