Margot marched into Lieutenant Elton’s ward, still fuming. For a few steps. Then the steam dissipated. The pressure in her chest eased. Her eyes burned. She stopped, eyes fastened on a seam in the tile floor, and tried to regulate the ragged edges of her breath.

In—two, three, four. Out—two, three, four. Eight beats. Six seconds. One cycle. Two. Three.

Trace the seams. Measure the tiles. Twelve inches by twelve inches. Twenty-six tiles from one wall to the other. Three hundred twelve inches. Eight yards and two feet.

Hair tickled her neck in a way it hadn’t done since she was six—the first time she’d taken a pair of scissors to her hair, to eliminate the need for the ridiculous ribbons Maman had insisted on tying in it. That day, she’d learned what happened when she crossed one of Sophie De Wilde’s invisible lines, and she hadn’t been able to sit at her desk chair without pain for hours.

But Maman wasn’t here to see. To judge. To punish. Or to decide that it wasn’t deserving of punishment.

She had never drawn the lines in the same place twice. The second time Margot had cut her own hair, at age ten, it had simply been because it was annoying her, not in rebellion. Maman hadn’t punished her that time, and it wasn’t because she’d left it longer—below her shoulders, no ends tickling her neck. It had been because it hadn’t been meant to hurt anyone.

“It is the heart that matters,” Maman had said as she evened out the edges that second time. “The motivation.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. The matron was a narrow-minded hag. But Margot’s actions wouldn’t actually hurt her. They were merely a statement. So did it deserve punishment?

“Margot! What did you do?”

Apparently Dot thought it did. Or deserved outrage, anyway.

Margot opened her eyes to find that she’d apparently made it to Lieutenant Elton’s bed, more or less. Her friend had stood up, eyes as round as zeros, fingers reaching out to touch the blunt edges of Margot’s hair.

Margot swallowed. “Made a statement to the matron about the opinion in which I held her judgments, I believe.” Riding that wave of whatever-it-had-been. The one that left her empty when it ebbed.

For the first time in their acquaintance, Dot looked baffled by her. “Why? Why would you . . . Everyone will say you’re . . .”

“The better question is,” Drake Elton put in from his place propped against pillows, “what did the matron say to instigate the reaction? We all know she’s a judgmental nag.”