Reminding myself that the masks weren’t separate people but separate shards of one person, I took the knob again and, turning it, opened my door.

I stuck my head out first, surveying the empty hallway and red-tinted darkness swathing the landing as I tuned one ear to the soft sound of wailing. My bare feet sank into the plush carpet runner then as I made my way down the hall, stopping only when I rounded the top newel post.

She sat in the center of the steps, head in her hands, shoulders shaking, her emerald skirts fanned out around her, making her look like a toppled creampuff.

Gathering the skirt of my nightgown in my free hand, I steeled myself for whatever sort of interaction I was about to have with this mask . . . and began to descend.

Either oblivious or indifferent to my approach, Envy didn’t budge or lift her head. She didn’t stop crying, either. Not even when I came to stand beside her, the circle of light I’d brought with me no doubt alerting her to my presence.

“What’s happening?” I asked her in the whisper that the surrounding silence demanded.

I lifted the oil lamp so that I could survey the bottom of the stairway and the foyer. Though I searched for Spite—Envy’s until-now constant companion—I found no trace of her anywhere.

Just when I was starting to think this place had a normal . . .

Swallowing with sudden and growing unease, I returned my attention to the weeping masked figure at my feet.

“Answer me.”

Immediately, she stopped crying and peered up at me, her grasshopper eyes actually glistening in the glow of my lantern.

“You love him . . . don’t you?” asked the mask.

I froze with the question.

“Of course, why wouldn’t you?” she snipped, turning her head away. “Clearly, he would die for you.”

My knees weakening, I sank to perch on the step above hers.

“You mean Luc—”

Her hands rushed to cover her ears. “Don’t say his name.”

Frowning, I peered behind us, to the vacant foyer and the parlor’s pocket doors, but I saw no sign of Erik.

“Tell me what’s happening,” I demanded of the mask who had gone back to crying.

“It’s our heart,” said someone else.

I swiveled my head up toward where the second female voice had come from. And though I expected to see Spite, a different mask occupied the top step. None other than the one who had appeared to me in the open basement door that night. The one who had extended her gloved hand to me—a hand I had almost allowed to take mine.

She now stood hovering over us, garbed in an opulent white-lace wedding gown.

A gauzy, floor-length veil shielded her mask, the features of which too closely matched my own.

“I thought he didn’t have a heart,” I said, terrified by the change in this specter’s appearance.

“We don’t,” she replied. “There is nothing this time to break. And yet . . . it does.”