When she was a child, her parents had often refused her iratzes after training sessions, especially when her injuries were caused by her own mistakes. Let the pain remind you to do better next time, they told her. All these years later, she was still making so many mistakes.

Céline was halfway down the precarious staircase when she realized she’d forgotten her wallet. She tromped painfully back up, then hesitated outside the door, stopped by the sound of her name.

“Me and Céline?” she heard Stephen say.

Feeling slightly ridiculous, Céline withdrew her stele and drew a careful rune on the door. Their amplified voices came through loud and clear.

Stephen laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“It sounded like a pretty good kiss….”

“I was under the influence!”

“Still. She’s pretty, don’t you think?”

There was an excruciating pause. “I don’t know, I never really thought about it.”

“You do realize that marriage doesn’t mean you’re never allowed to look at another woman, right?”

“It’s not that,” Stephen said. “It’s …”

“The way she follows you around like a drooling puppy?”

“That doesn’t help,” Stephen acknowledged. “She’s just such a child. Like, no matter how old she gets, she’s always going to need someone else telling her what to do.”

“I’ll give you that,” Robert said. “But Valentine seems convinced there’s something more to her.”

“Nobody’s right all the time,” Stephen said, and now they were both laughing. “Not even him.”

“Don’t let him hear you say that!”

Céline didn’t realize she was in motion until she felt the rain on her face. She collapsed against the cool stone of the building’s facade, wishing she could melt into it. To turn herself to stone; to shut down her nerves, her senses, her heart; to feel nothing … if only.

Their laughter echoed in her ears.

She was a joke.

She was pathetic.

She was someone Stephen had never thought about, never cared about, never wanted. Would never want, under any circumstances.

She was a pathetic creature. A child. A mistake.

The sidewalks were empty. The streets shimmered with rain. The searchlight beacon atop the Eiffel Tower had gone to sleep, along with the rest of the city. Céline felt utterly alone. Her leg throbbed. Her tears would not stop. Her heart screamed. She had nowhere to go but could not go back upstairs, back to that room, to that laughter. She set off blindly into the Paris night.

Céline was at home in the dark, slumbering streets. She wandered for hours. Through the Marais and past the hulking Pompidou, crossing from the Right Bank to the Left and back again. She visited with the gargoyles of Notre Dame, those hideous stone demons clinging to Gothic spires, awaiting their chance to devour the faithful. It seemed unfair that the city was so full of stone creatures who could feel nothing, and here she was, feeling so unbearably much.