They moved in tandem, as if to a song sung only for their ears. The bride’s frost-colored gown trailed over the cloud-white steps of the Bridge of Sighs. She had light brown hair, neatly pinned beneath a capped veil, and pearls wrapped around her forehead. Her groom, a weak-chinned man with wide eyes who became nearly handsome when he smiled, stared at her as if he had never beheld color until this moment. Behind the bride and groom, their friends and family cheered and laughed, throwing rice and petals in the air.

Laila moved back against the railing as they passed. She hadn’t meant to end up at the Bridge of Sighs, but her walking path away from the Piazza San Marco and past the Doge’s Palace had led to her being caught in the rain, and this was the fastest way back to the safe house. Beneath her, the white stones were still rain slick. The bride, unheeding in her joy, tripped and would have sprawled onto the stone if her husband hadn’t caught her. As her bouquet of snowdrops tumbled from her hand, Laila, unthinking, reached out and caught hold of the blue ribbon that held the flowers in place. The wedding party cheered, and she blushed without knowing why.

“You dropped this,” she said, trying to hand it to the bride.

But the girl shook her head, grinning. “No, sua buona fortuna per te.”

Laila had very little grasp of Italian, but she understood buona fortuna. The bride was saying it was good luck for her. Laughing, the bride folded Laila’s hands over the bouquet.

“E tuo,” she said.

It’s yours.

The bouquet’s memories knifed through Laila. She saw the snowdrops bound by a blue ribbon that had once adorned the bride’s blanket as a child. She saw the bride’s mother weeping softly into the flowers, whispering prayers into the petals. She heard the bride laughing as she took it from her sister—

Laila yanked her consciousness back. When she glanced down, her garnet ring looked like a fat bead of blood. Five. Five days were all she had left.

She stared at the snowdrops in her hand.

Laila tried to imagine a future where she was a bride. She tried to picture her mother, still living and weaving jasmine through her hair. She imagined aunts she had never known sliding gold bangles onto her wrists. She conjured the scent of henna, like rain-sweet hay, adorning her hands and feet, her bridegroom’s name hidden in the design as a secret invitation to touch her skin for the first time. Laila imagined the antarpat curtain that separated them slowly falling, her bridegroom’s face concealed behind a sehra of pearls. In her daydream, a pair of violet eyes met hers, and in his gaze, Laila felt that she was all the wonder and color in the world.

Laila nearly dropped the flowers.

“Foolish,” she told herself.

She would never be a bride. With every hour that passed, Laila realized the garnet ring would be the only ring she ever wore. Laila clung to her hope, but every day she felt it collapsing a little more. Every minute, she felt the space between her consciousness and the dark waters of oblivion vanishing. Sometimes, it was as if those dark waters were whispering to her, taunting her that it would be so much easier to let go. To drown.