Enrique’s face turned red. “I … um…”

“That is not a bad idea,” said Zofia.

“See?” said Hypnos. “I’m more than a pretty face.”

“Of course you are,” said Zofia.

Hypnos clapped his hands to his heart. “Ah, ma chère, so kind—”

“You have shoulders and feet, and a neck … though I do not know whether those would be considered pretty.”

Hypnos scowled.

“But who will be the couple?” asked Enrique. “And who will pedal the boat?”

Zofia looked at the two of them. She had seen them kiss more than once, and they seemed to enjoy it, so she didn’t understand Enrique’s hesitation.

“Oh,” said Enrique, turning even redder. “We aren’t—” He paused, gesturing between Hypnos and himself.

“We’re currently friends,” said Hypnos, not looking at Enrique.

“You don’t know how long you will be friends?” asked Zofia.

“Oh, we will always be friends, but whether there will be something more, who can say?” said Hypnos lightly. “So it will have to be you and one of us, Zofia. Which will it be? I vote me.” He bowed low. “First, I’m exceptionally handsome. Second, I’m certainly more handsome than our historian—”

Enrique frowned. “What does that have to do with—”

“And third,” said Hypnos, talking loudly over Enrique. “I am a wonderful kisser.”

He winked, which made Zofia laugh because it indicated that it was friendly and joking, but at the same time, Hypnos’s mention of a kiss summoned a strange gap in her plan that she had not considered.

With Séverin’s acquisitions in the past, acting was sometimes necessary. That did not bother Zofia. She liked being given rules of how to comport herself and what to say or do. It eased her mind to know all the rules in advance. But she had never acted romantically. She had never even been kissed. It was something Hela had teased her about before she left for Paris.

“Going all the way to Paris, and yet to kiss a boy! Don’t you want to kiss someone, Zosia?”

In truth, there were very few boys Zofia wanted to kiss. She knew how want felt … a low pulse in her belly, her heartbeat rising faster … normally, the thought of putting her mouth on someone else’s struck her as awkward and faintly off-putting, but the idea of touching mouths with certain people made her feel caught somehow. As if she had been running to a place, and had been stopped against her will, and now all she wished was to get there. It had first happened around a young professor who was very kind and had light brown hair, but Zofia could not bring herself to speak to him. Now, she had those same sensations around Enrique, but they were more intense. Around him, she felt unsettling warmth and twinges, odd skips in her pulse that left her pleasantly light-headed when he looked at her for too long. She liked being around him. And when he left, sometimes she felt sad. This was attraction, but what was its fulfillment? What happened after? What if those sensations became so heightened she fainted? What if she wanted more than a kiss? Then what?