It also made her fear the day Evangeline might turn those weapons against her.

“I think you like your work, but you don’t feel respected for it. And it frustrates you. It poisons the whole process. I’m sorry they treat you that way—you deserve better.” Evangeline’s fingers darted out to tap against her cheek. “I wish I could give you better.”

Simone turned her head away from Evangeline’s touch, even though she craved it. “I don’t need your pity.”

“I’m not offering it. I just wanted you to know you aren’t some . . . passing amusement.” Her smile was lopsided—not at all the polished smile she wore around her father. Simone wondered if she was glimpsing Evangeline’s real smile for the first time.

“Look.” Evangeline pointed down the street to an archway made of bone. “The catacombs are open.”

Simone blinked a few times. Trying to follow Evangeline’s thoughts wasn’t so much chasing a train as winding through a labyrinth. She wanted to go back, back to the moment when Evangeline touched her face. Wanted to linger there a while longer and forget all the reasons she shouldn’t.

“I like to get lost in the catacombs when I need to think. They’re comforting.” Evangeline held out her hand to Simone. “Want to see?”

Simone nodded and took her hand.

Evangeline led her into the caverns, dark and moist as a mouth. They passed various tour groups who’d no doubt come there to appreciate the same. Skulls leered all around them, but the hollow eye sockets felt welcoming, somehow. No judgment, no eyes to see the humiliating infatuation she was sure burned bright crimson on her cheeks. She’d been to the catacombs once when her father still lived with them; he acted like they were something gruesome to put the fear of God into misbehaving children, to warn them that they ought to respect their parents, for death, and judgment, was always lurking around the corner. That it lived in their bones, just beneath their own skin.

Whether that constant reminder of mortality was what Evangeline liked about them, though, Simone didn’t know. She tried to see them through Evangeline’s eyes now as they crept, soft as cats, down a winding central corridor. More than bones, Simone now saw architecture. Structure. More than impermanence, she saw eternity, the power of enduring in a shifting world.

And she saw this magnificent girl she was hopelessly in love with. She saw a glimpse of something she never dared dream could be hers.

“I think they’re beautiful,” Evangeline said at last. Simone didn’t know how far down they’d gone, but they’d lost all other sounds of living things; the tour groups they’d passed were many turns behind. “I wish I could put my bones here someday. It’s a form of immortality, isn’t it?”