“Oh?”

“They like them because they’re pretty.”

“Well, I’m pretty, and Montparnasse definitely doesn’t like me.” She stretches out her legs and wiggles her toes, frowning. “When you were healing, I asked him to teach me how to fight so that I could protect you if Thénardier ever came for you again. He struck me in face and told me it was my fault, that I had to learn to block properly.”

“That’s probably Montparnasse’s way of declaring true love.”

And we laugh, the two of us under the covers, until our sides and our jaws hurt. Then we lie there in the darkness, side by side, until her voice comes again, quietly.

“Sometimes I close my eyes and think I should just let the Tiger take me. If he kills me, at least this will all be over, and you’ll be safe.” She’s shaking, trying to be brave.

“It wouldn’t be over.” My voice comes out uneven, broken. “If you give yourself up to the Tiger, he won’t kill you.”

“But you said—”

“I lied. The Tiger doesn’t kill people. He—he breaks them.” The moonlight reflects off Ettie’s eyes as she looks at me. “But they don’t die. He destroys everything that’s good,” I say, taking a deep breath. “I know because he took my sister Azelma.”

“You have a sister? Can you rescue her? You’re the Black Cat. You can get in anywhere. You freed the Dead Lord from the Châtelet!”

Ettie’s unshakable faith in my abilities should warm my heart, but she’s wrong.

“I tried,” I say, fighting back tears. “But she wouldn’t come. He fed her the poppy, and now she’s a slave to him. Even if I could get her out, she’d fight to get back to it, to him. That’s what the poppy does. She doesn’t remember who she is anymore. She doesn’t remember me.”

I can’t go on. I can’t bear to put the evil into words.

I pull my dagger from under my pillow and open my hand. I put the blade to my palm and run it across in one swift movement. Droplets of blood bead across the line I’ve made.

“I won’t let him do that to you.” I hold out my hand to Ettie. “I swear it.”

Ettie takes the dagger and, wincing, draws the blade across her skin. She wrinkles her nose in pain as I put my bleeding palm to hers and we clasp warm, wet fingers, our blood mingling.

“You are my sister now.”

“You are my sister now,” she whispers.

And I try not to think about Azelma. She was my sister too, once.

We let go and Ettie wipes the dagger blade on her satin pillowcase and hands it back to me. I shake my head.

“Keep it. Montparnasse gave me a new one.”

Her eyes light up and she hugs the dagger close to her. Then she throws me a look of pure mischief. “I told you he likes you.”

We laugh, talk, and sleep very little. Ettie forces me to tell her more stories.