It takes a full minute to climb out of the bed, hands and knees sinking into the down as she scrambles toward the edge, tumbles gracelessly onto the rug. She steadies herself against a wooden post, delicate branches carved into the oak, thinks of trees as she surveys the room, deciding how to occupy herself. A glass door leads out onto the balcony, a wooden one leads into the hall. A chest of drawers. A chaise. A dressing table, topped by a polished mirror.
Addie sinks onto a cushioned stool before the vanity, her fingers dancing over the bottles of perfume and pots of cream, the soft plume of a powder puff, a bowl of silver hairpins.
Of these last, she takes a handful, and begins to twist up locks of hair, fastening the coils back and up around her face as if she has the faintest idea what she is doing. The current style is reminiscent of a sparrow’s nest, a bundle of curls. At least she is not yet expected to wear a wig, one of those monstrous, powdered things like towers of meringue that will come into fashion fifty years from now.
Her nest of curls is set, but needs a final touch. Addie lifts a pearl comb in the shape of a feather and slides the teeth into the locks just behind her ear.
Strange, the way small differences add up.
Perched there on the pillowed seat, surrounded by luxury, in her borrowed blue silk robe with her hair pinned up in curls, Addie could almost forget herself, could almost be someone else. A young mistress, the lady of the house, able to move freely with the safeguard of her reputation.
Only the freckles on her cheeks stand out, a reminder of who Addie was, is, will always be.
But freckles are easily covered.
She takes up the powder puff, the bloom halfway to her cheek when a faint breeze stirs the air, carrying the scent not of Paris, but open fields, and a low voice says, “I would rather see clouds blot out the stars.”
Addie’s gaze cuts to the mirror, and the reflection of the room behind her. The balcony doors are still shut fast, but the chamber is no longer empty. The shadow leans against the wall with all the ease of someone who has been there for a while. She is not surprised to see him—he has come, year after year—but she is unsettled. She will always be unsettled.
“Hello, Adeline,” says the darkness, and though he is across the room, the words brush like leaves against her skin.
She turns in her seat, free hand rising to the open collar of her robe. “Go away.”
He clicks his tongue. “A year apart, and that is all you have to say?”
“No.”
“What, then?”
“I mean no,” she says again. “That is my answer, to your question. The only reason you’re here. You’ve come to ask if I will yield, and the answer is no.”
His smile ripples, shifts. Gone is the gentleman; again, the wolf.
“My Adeline, you’ve grown some teeth.”
“I am not yours,” she says.
A flash of warning white, and then the wolf retreats, pretends to be a man again as he steps into the light. And yet, the shadows cling to him, smudging edges into the dark. “I grant you immortality. And you spend your evenings eating bonbons in other people’s beds. I imagined more for you than this.”
“And yet, you condemned me to less. Come to gloat?”
He runs a hand along the wooden post, tracing the branches. “Such venom on our anniversary. And here I came only to offer you dinner.”
“I see no food. And I do not want your company.”
He moves like smoke, one moment across the room and the next beside her. “I would not be so quick to scorn,” he says, one long finger grazing the pearl comb in her hair. “It is the only company you’ll ever have.”
Before she can pull away, the air is empty; he is across the room again, hand resting on the tassel beside the door.
“Stop,” she says, lunging to her feet, but it’s too late. He pulls, and a moment later the bell rings, splitting the silence of the house.
“Damn you,” she hisses as footsteps sound on the stairs.
Addie is already turning to take up her dress, to snag what little she can before she flees—but the darkness catches her arm. He forces her to stay there at his side like some misbehaving child as a lady’s maid opens the door.
She should startle at the sight of them, two strangers in her master’s home, but there is no shock in the woman’s face. No surprise, anger, or fear. There is nothing at all. Only a kind of vacancy, a calm unique to the dreaming and the dazed. The maid stands, head bowed and hands laced, waiting for instruction, and Addie realizes with dawning horror and relief that the woman is bewitched.
“We will dine in the salon tonight,” says the darkness, as if the house were his. There is a new timbre to his voice, a film, like gossamer drawn over stone. It ripples in the air, wraps itself around the maid, and Addie can feel it sliding along her own skin, even as it fails to hold.
“Yes, sir,” says the maid with a small bow.
She turns to lead them down the stairs, and the darkness looks to Addie and smiles.
“Come,” he says, eyes gone emerald with arrogant glee. “I heard the marquis’s chef is one of the best in Paris.”
He offers her his arm, but she does not take it.
“You don’t really expect me to dine with you.”
He lifts his chin. “You would waste such a meal, simply because I’m at the table? I think your stomach is louder than your pride. But suit yourself, my dear. Stay here in your borrowed room, and glut yourself on stolen sweets. I’ll eat without you.”
With that, he strides away, and she is torn between the urge to slam the door behind him and the knowledge that her night is ruined, whether she eats with him or not, that even if she stays here in this room, her mind will follow him down the stairs to dinner.
And so she goes.
Seven years from now, Addie will see a puppet show being put on in a Paris square. A curtained cart, with a man behind, hands raised to hold aloft the little wooden figures, their limbs dancing up and down with twine.
And she will think of this night.
This dinner.
The servants of the house move around them as if on strings, smooth and silent, every gesture done with that same, sleepy ease. Chairs pulled back, linens smoothed, bottles of Champagne uncorked and poured into waiting crystal flutes.
But the food comes out too quickly, the first course arriving as the glasses are filled. Whatever hold the darkness has on the servants of this house, it began before his entrance in her stolen room. It began before he rang the bell, and called the maid, and summoned her to dinner.
He should seem so out of place in the filigreed room. He is, after all, a wild thing, a god of forest nights, a demon bounded by the dark, and yet he sits with the poise and grace of a nobleman enjoying his dinner.
Addie fingers the silver cutlery, the gilt trim of the plates.
“Am I supposed to be impressed?”
The darkness looks at her across the table. “Are you not?” he asks as the servants bow, and draw back against the walls.
The truth is, she is scared. Unsettled by the display. She knows his power—at least, she thought she did—but it’s one thing to make a deal, and another to be the witness of such control. What could he make them do? How far could he make them go? Is it as easy for him as pulling strings?
The first course is placed before her, a cream soup the pale orange of dawn. It smells wonderful, and the Champagne sparkles in its glass, but she does not let herself reach for either.