“The gowns,” I reply, as someone places a crystal flute of champagne in my hand. “Always the gowns.” And I glug the bubbly down. An invisible hand refills it before I can even blink.

We are ferried into a large dressing room with a three-paneled mirror, natural overhead light, and a fragrant bouquet of peonies.

“This is positively dystopian,” Saxim whispers in the dressing room as soon as he leaves. It’s just me, her, and the first batch of gowns: one sheer black tulle embroidered with stars and a corseted bodice, the other a pale water-blue silk with the most delicate straps, its train falling in a gorgeous pool on the thick cream-carpeted floor.

“Do you even know this manager?”

“Nope,” I reply, taking her glass of champagne and sliding it down my throat before burping.

“You’re drinking too much. You can’t just drink to not feel things.” She plucks the glass from my hand and moves it to the other side of the room, as if that will do anything. “This isn’t good for you, Tai.”

“I don’t need what’s good for me right now,” I snap back, even though I know she’s right—Mama drank too much to feel less, I remember it, I remember how it upset Dad—and I shove the pale blue silk into her hands before wedging my feet into the black and shimmying it over my hips. It’s flawless, but kind of too small, and seeing myself in it, I only want more—

“What’s taking so long?” I ask the room, and Saxim doesn’t answer, only watches me with her concerned eyes, so I crack open the door to the hall, and that’s when I hear the whispers.

“No one keeps me apprised of these things,” says the manager, a sheet of paper in hand. “How was I to know this? I don’t sully my hands with the foul ink of the tabloids—”

A sales assistant nervously toes the ground. “But you’re always reading TMZ on your phone—”

“Hush!” The manager massages his temples. “We’ve got to get her out of here until corporate advises us of their decision. It’s a PR headache unless they get ahead of it and spin it as some kind of … Americana-found-heritage immigrant-friendly campaign. To think our fresh Viloki face isn’t from Viloxin at all—”

His eyes snap to mine, lizardlike, and I shut the door and press my corseted back against it, ribs heaving.

“They know she’s Lady,” I hiss at Saxim, the dressing room around me dancing with black spots. I look back at the empty glass of champagne with this faint flicker of desperation that scares me, then force my eyes onto Saxim. For this long, lucid second, I know I don’t want to be that way, drowning myself in the fizz, but—