Page 80 of The Beautiful Ones

Cécile screamed for her.

The chandelier fell.

Blue light consumed the foyer, and the front doors closed upon it.

Cécile struck the panels with both hands. She called her mother again and again, each attempt tearing differently through her throat. I wrapped my arms around her from behind when the bronze handles grew too hot to touch.

“She chose,” Adrian said from the garden.

“Do not speak of choice to me!” I shouted.

“Elin.” Cécile turned in my arms. Tears and soot streaked her face. “He is right.”

The admission did not make the death gentler. It merely returned the cruelty to the person who had committed it.

We moved away from the doors as the portico began to groan. The columns cracked along their painted seams. Behind the house, the gardenias lifted their white faces through smoke that smelled of old paper and summer rain.

Adrian had not followed us. He waited where Cécile had left him, his hand lowered at his side.

She walked back to him.

That second crossing mattered more than the first.

She had chosen him before losing her mother. Now, with every reason to blame the Fairhavens and every opportunity to run from them, she chose again.

“What are you?” I asked.

Nicholas glanced at Octavia as though the question had amused him for several centuries.

“What men call us changes whenever they require a new explanation for fear,” he said.

“Nathaniel called us friends,” Adrian replied.

“And what will Cécile call you?”

“Whatever we prove ourselves to be.”

It was not an answer that comforted me. Perhaps none could have.

Octavia approached Cécile and began removing the pearls from her hair. One by one, she drew the pins free and allowed the dark curls to fall naturally around her shoulders. She did not comment upon the soot or the torn cotton dress. When the last pearl lay in her palm, she cast them into the blue fire.

“Those were my mother’s,” Cécile said.

“Yes,” Octavia answered.

Cécile watched them disappear. Then she touched her unbound hair and gave the smallest nod.

Nicholas led me toward the garden gate.

My Swedish trunk stood beneath the rose arbor.

The gray wood was scorched along one corner, but the iron bands remained secure. My mother’s Bible lay on top, its leather cover blackened along one edge. Beside it rested a plain wool cloak, a pair of sturdy shoes and a purse heavy enough to bend the leather drawstring.

“I cannot take your money,” I said.

“It is not ours.” Nicholas lifted the purse and placed it in my hand. “Nathaniel left instructions with his letter. Étienne destroyed the page, but not the intention.”

I thought of the commander writing my name while his own danger gathered around him. Perhaps he had meant to free me. Perhaps he had merely wished to provide enough money for passage home. The dead do not always explain the kindness they leave behind.