“I really don’t know.” Scratch downed the last bit of wine, letting it splash over the rising doubt in her throat. What if. “Something else. And you?”

“Me?”

“What do you want?” Scratch murmured, reaching down to push an unruly hair behind Brella’s ear. Brella tracked the movement with her head, depositing a kiss on Scratch’s palm that lit her up like spirits.

“My preference would be your mouth, but the lads are here.” Brella’s breath ghosted warmth over Scratch’s fingers, and she found herself caught between a laugh and a gasp. “Have you seen the bath chamber?”

In the dark, they tiptoed across the rugs, stifling giggles. The bath chamber hid behind a door cleverly disguised as a bit of wall. Brella pressed it open and darted into the darkness. Soon, the room began to emit a yellow-gold glow.

“Gas lamp,” she explained, pulling Scratch inside. “The advancements this country has made are incredible.”

When Scratch’s eyes adjusted to the light, she found herself in a large room lined with shining square tiles. Some were painted with flourishes of blue and white, swoops and dots forming a pattern at the intersection of flora and fauna, reminding Scratch inexorably of the Between’s magical plant life and dancing Sweets. Others depicted scenes, tiny bathers soaking in identically tiled tubs, the patterns repeated in meticulous miniature. Along one wall, underneath a line of small, flickering lamps, a mirror stretched, doubling the space. Opposite, a grand window let in the night sky.

Scratch blinked at her own reflection. She looked thin, the angles of her face sharper, the hollow of her clavicle deep and shadowed. Her eyelids were puffy, her under-eyes blue-gray and cobwebbed with capillaries. Her cheeks were pink and wine flushed, her stomach a little bloated from finally having a proper meal. There was a new timbre to her expression, too. Something strange. With a jolt, she realized that the little lines had disappeared from between her brows and beside her mouth. For the first time in years, Scratch saw her own face relax.

Despite the disconcerting weight loss—she had never had much spare heft to begin with, and was loath to give any up—she looked younger than she had in years.

Additionally, she was a mess. She had dressed so carefully in Ivinscont, always trying to appear exactly as a female guard ought: much like a man, without claiming to be one. Masculine trousers with a feminine cut. A jacket that squared her shoulders in a color that turned her blue eyes piercing. Reminders to the men above her that she was a woman, yes, but not quite. Nonthreatening. Not the same as the men, nor so very different. Palatable. Respectable. Unobjectionable.

As she stared at her wilted, filthy clothes it struck her how much each day of her professional life had been shaped around absolute bullshit.