Rosalita hums thoughtfully as she considers her answer. Voices drift from below, bawdy and loud and thick with drink. Glasses chime faintly from the parlor on the ground floor, the clink of cup against cup ringing through the night. Rosalita’s perfume masks the pungent scents of the street. It’s soft and familiar, a smell I wouldn’t mind wrapping around myself and having a nap in.

After a lengthy moment of contemplative silence she says, “I have a new beau.”

This piques my interest. “Oh?”

She blushes. Rosalita. Blushing. Perish the thought.

In that moment, she’s the picture of girlish innocence, no matter what she does for coin. “He isn’t like the other men I see, Ana. He’s smart and kind and gentle.”

She sighs, leaning back to lay beside me, her eyes resting on the heavens like she’s looking at something more magnificent than the stars. “I never thought I would find a man like him.”

“He sounds like a catch.” I try to keep the skepticism out of my voice, honestly, I do, but from the way Rosalita huffs indignantly, I can tell that I have failed.

“And you sound like an awful cynic.”

What can I say to that? Love is a painful illusion, and we’re all going to die alone? Probably not what she wants to hear in the moment. So I settle on a truth I can support: “I’m happy for you. I mean it.”

She smiles softly, toying with the thin golden chain around her neck. I hadn’t noticed it earlier but it’s new. Not a part of her normal work wardrobe. A fragile golden locket rests in the valley of her bosom as if she’s deliberating hiding it from view.

“Did he give you that?” I ask.

Her hand flies to the locket, her fist closing around it. “He did.”

There’s such tenderness in her voice that I almost relinquish the death grasp I have on my skepticism. Almost. Not quite, but I flirt with the notion.

“Will you tell me his name?”

She shakes her head, pulling her lower lip between her teeth as she smiles. “Someday. But not today.”

I don’t push. I simply nod, and lace my fingers together atop my stomach and gaze at the stars.

At least one of us is happy, I think.

For now, that will have to be enough.

CHAPTER 7

Kiki

The wind in my hair as my horse gallops toward the golden glow of the city’s lanterns is almost enough to make me feel like myself for the first time in days. The reins feel natural in my hands, as if the horse was not another being but an extension of myself. I am not a girl, chained to a fate written by an author who knows not my wants or my needs or my truth.

I am a woman of action.