He sets down my slice and the flames lick at my face. They burn through the alcohol soon enough, but I still can’t bring myself to move.

The Baked Alaska is fine, but I can only manage a few bites, my appetite having vanished.

The waiters come around asking if anyone wants sherry. Hedda declines. “The wine has already gone to my head,” she laughs. “I could have sworn I saw a spoon and a butter dish move themselves by the end of the meal.”

I lower my face and pray she doesn’t see how my cheeks flush red.

Hedda and Rose leave us with, “Good night, dears, don’t study too hard!”

“We never do!” Maxine chirps back.

We leave soon after, abandoning the Count and Countess of Essex to their sherries alone.

The minute the door closes to our suite, I’m confronted by Maxine.

“That was reckless.”

I sigh and sink down on the hard velvet settee. “First, you started it. Second, I didn’t mean to do it.”

Lena’s brows furrow in confusion as she sits down next to me.

I’m mostly just embarrassed. I don’t want to be someone they have to take care of.

“Shh, breathe.” Lena rubs my back in slow circles. “It was just a stupid game, don’t be too hard on her, Maxine.”

“I’m sorry.” It comes out a little broken, too pathetic for such a minor incident.

Maxine walks to the bedroom, stripping off her gown as she goes. “No apologies needed. I just thought you were going to give that poor woman a heart attack.”

We follow her to her room, and together we help one another out of dresses and corsets and hairpins.

We collapse into Maxine’s bed, and if it weren’t for the rocking of the boat or the strange incident at dinner, this might be a perfect moment.

We fall asleep like that, tangled in one another, Lena’s breath on my neck and Maxine’s arm thrown across my belly.

Lena and I have our own beds, and I’m sure we’ll sleep in them tomorrow night, but for now we allow one another this. The tactile reminder we’re together once more.

The darkness shimmers, ripples, moves.

“Hello?” I whisper to the emptiness.

There is no answer, just the rhythmic rushing of waves.

Shhh, they whisper, shhh.

“Hello?” I call once more. It’s dark here. Dark like Forest Park on a cold November night. Dark like the part of myself where I bury the things I don’t want to face.

It’s navy blue in every direction, like I’m in the middle of the sea or a starless sky.

It bends, the world bends, ripples once more.

And then—a figure appears.

It’s small at first, out of focus as it crests the horizon of the dream space.