“So cautious,” I said, “so protective of us both.”

“I am a hero.”

“And yet you have that pocket watch.”

Sid looped a finger around its chain. “This?”

“Isn’t that another version of the silver wine?”

“The watch doesn’t work anymore. I wear it because I like the style. Look, it’s still stuck on the same word from the last time I used it.”

Desire.

There was a crack of thunder. I glanced up. The mist gathered at the ceiling had condensed into a dark fist of clouds. Lightning flashed. Thunder rumbled again. Rain showered down. The music stopped. Frogs shrilled. Dancers shrieked and laughed and ran from the room. Sid and I followed, since it was that or get trampled.

We pushed past dripping High Kith clumped together in the hallway, some giggling, others complaining about their ruined clothes.

Sid’s sooty eyelashes were spiky with rain. Her mouth was wet with it. Her soaked white shirt stuck to her skin. I could see the ridge of her collarbone pressing against the cloth.

“Your hair,” she said distractedly, “curls when wet.” She brushed away a lock of hair that was plastered to my face.

For one mad moment I leaned into her hand, which was warm and steady.

“Tired?” she asked, stroking her thumb across my cheekbone.

I shivered. “No.”

Her eyes searched mine. “Lonely?”

I was lonely for her even though she was right in front of me. I worried that if I said no she would stop touching me, and that if I said yes she would pity me. “I’m cold,” I said, which was true, but the sort of truth that acted as a lie.

Her hand fell. Her expression closed, and she nodded, not really in response to my midnight lie but as if to a thought in her head. She glanced up and down the hallway, which was emptying of people, and said, “Maybe there’s a blanket of moss somewhere. Or, I don’t know … a coat of feathers in a hollow tree wardrobe.”

I missed her hand. I felt embarrassed that I missed it, that I had said the wrong thing. I shivered again, this time cold inside and out. I began to undo the tiny crystal buttons that ran down the front of my wet dress.

Sid’s attention swiftly returned. “Are you … taking your clothes off? I hadn’t thought we had reached that stage of our relationship.”

“It’s the whole point of the dress,” I said, glad that she was teasing me again. “It is many dresses.”

“But I like this one. You look like you’re wrapped in starlight.”

“It’s wet.” I shrugged out of the silver dress, revealing another one in pleated crimson faille.

“Ohh,” Sid said, “I want to see the rest.”

“You always want to rush everything.”

“Actually, I think I show a lot of restraint around you.”

“One more. This layer is damp, too.”

“Wait. Stop there.”