Spite and Envy—or, as I had once referred to their living equivalents, the Scorpion and the Grasshopper—represented a pair of debutants who had once dueled for the opportunity to win my betrothal. Though their representatives were now long dead, their doubles had taken it upon themselves to carry their predecessors’ venomous yet saccharine war into my damnation.

Appropriately, Envy wore the mouthless mask of a bug-eyed grasshopper while Spite’s mask reflected the likeness of an armored scorpion, her long braid, fashioned to resemble the creature’s lethal tail, draping one shoulder.

Moving in tandem, they plucked their saucers from the coffee table’s colorful biscuit-laden surface, pinching the handles of their respective teacups.

Ludicrously, they raised the tea-filled cups to the spots on their masks behind which their lips ought to have dwelled, pretending—as their counterparts had in life with so much other business—to sip.

Both phantasms exhibited enough of their once-living twins’ less-than-civilized characteristics that I was loath to think of them as ladies.

“Come now,” chirped Envy, “there was a time once when you thought of me as a lady.”

“There was a time also,” Spite replied, the purr in her tone suggesting she’d been waiting for just such an opportunity to strike, “when he thought of you as an abhorrent mollisher.”

“Well.” Envy gave an absent wave of her gloved hand. “You would know, seeing as you made it your business to know everyone else’s. And I daresay he never cared much for either you or me. Though I am certain that, between the two of us, he did prefer me.”

I turned my attention away from them, focusing on the subject of their previous debate.

The rose, which now lay atop the piano’s gleaming music shelf.

I had stolen it—extracted it from the dozen that had, in fact, not been a gift from Stephanie’s young man.

All this because Rastin had prescribed a heart.

The rose was an obvious choice. One that, because of what it represented to me, might find the strength to hold. Stephanie, after all, had brought the flowers here. And last night, at my devising, we two had been surrounded by roses, their heady scent assailing us, filling the moments I had stolen with her.

“Yes,” snickered Envy, “but he very nearly stole more than mere moments.”

“She very nearly let him, too,” replied Spite, scandalized. “Imagine what she will say—what she will do—when she learns the truth?”

“You mean that she was nearly kissed by the only true monstrosity among us?”

The two of them dissolved into titters. But, too preoccupied with the weight of my decision, I had little care available to give their words.

The rose. Miraculously, it had not died as I’d feared it might when I’d touched it. More importantly, it had not withered upon my bringing it into my world.

Nothing on my side of Moldavia lived. Nothing but the moths that had been summoned to coexist with me as yet another constant torment. Nothing until now.

If only she could live here.