With a quiet lift of his eyebrows, Mari went to the flower shop, still sipping his caramel. He was there for some time, while the boys continue to shout, then shove one another until one of them inevitably dumped his caramel onto another. Lovisa rubbed her aching head, hating this, but knowing that nothing better awaited her anywhere else. She wondered, briefly, what Nev was doing. Probably rescuing a needy animal from some needy animal fate, and feeling good about herself.

When Mari came back, his arms were full of lilies, pansies, and violets. “He grows them in a glass greenhouse he built himself, on the roof of the shop,” he said. “In winter, he pours water onto hot coals to make steam. Isn’t that interesting?”

He handed a bunch of flowers to Lovisa. Then he moved among his friends, passing a small bouquet to each boy in turn. Of course they found this hilarious, stuck them in their buttonholes and wound them into one another’s hair. One of them tucked a pansy behind Mari’s ear and kissed him. Some of the flowers fell, getting trampled and ground into the dirty snow. Lovisa understood that Mari had bought them as an apology to the flower vendor. She could see the flower vendor’s face, though, carefully blank, and she wondered if Mari understood that he might not enjoy watching a herd of rich boys destroying the flowers he’d grown, by turning winter into summer, with great care, in the glass greenhouse he’d built himself.

Without saying goodbye to the boys, she slipped away and went back to the dorm. She put her own flowers into a vase that she set beside a drawing she kept above her desk, one of Viri’s representations of the Keeper. Reaching into a drawer, she found a somewhat linty piece of samklavi candy someone had pressed on her a few days ago, sniffed it cautiously, then tried to eat it, thinking it might connect her to her uncle or at least shock her into a different state of mind. It was so vile that she spit it out, gagging.

Again, she tried to sleep. Again, it didn’t work. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw her father and that guard carrying Pari’s body in a blanket. She heard her mother saying, “You created this situation, and every nightmare before it.” Every nightmare before it. How many nightmares were there? “We had a plan!” her mother had screamed.

What was their plan?

That night, in her soft pajamas and fur-collared robe, she snuck down the corridor and tapped on Mari Devret’s door.

He opened it immediately, a pen in hand, yawning and bleary-eyed, but awake. “Come in,” he said, returning to his desk and sitting down, not seeming particularly surprised. “You’ve had something on your mind today. Out with it.”

“I need a favor.”

“Okay, I’m listening.”

“Sleep with me,” she said.