Passion

ELEVEN COUP DE FOUDRE

Splash.

Luce came out of the Announcer underwater.

She opened her eyes, but the warm, cloudy water stung so sharply that she promptly clamped them shut again. Her soggy clothes dragged her down, so she wrestled off the mink coat. As it sank beneath her, she kicked hard for the surface, desperate for air.

It was only a few inches above her head.

She gasped; then her feet found bottom and she stood. She wiped the water from her eyes. She was in a bathtub.

Granted, it was the largest bathtub she had ever seen, as big as a small swimming pool. It was kidney-shaped and made of the smoothest white porcelain and sat alone in the middle of a giant room that looked like a gallery in a museum. The high ceilings were covered by enormous frescoed portraits of a dark-haired family who looked royal. A chain of golden roses framed each bust, and fleshy cherubs hovered between, playing trumpets toward the sky. Against each of the walls—which were papered in elaborate swirls of turquoise, pink, and gold—was an oversized, lavishly carved wooden armoire.

Luce sank back into the tub. Where was she now? She used her hand to skim the surface, parting about five inches of frothy bubbles the consistency of Chantilly cream. A pillow-sized sponge bobbed up, and she realized she had not bathed since Helston. She was filthy. She used the sponge to scrub at her face, then set to work peeling off the rest of her clothes. She sloshed all the sopping garments over the side of the tub.

That was when Bill floated slowly up out of the bathwater to hover a foot above the surface. The portion of the tub from which he’d risen was dark and cloudy with gargoyle grit.

“Bill!” she cried. “Can’t you tell I need a few minutes of privacy?”

He held a hand up to shield his eyes. “You done thrashing around in here yet, Jaws?” With his other hand, he wiped some bubbles from his bald head.

“You could have warned me that I was about to take a plunge underwater!” Luce said.

“I did warn you!” He hopped up to the rim of the tub and tottered across it until he was in Luce’s face. “Right as we were coming out of the Announcer. You just didn’t hear me because you were underwater!”

“Very helpful, thank you.”

“You needed a bath, anyway,” he said. “This is a big night for you, toots.”

“Why? What’s happening?”

“What’s happening, she asks!” Bill grabbed her shoulder. “Only the grandest ball since the Sun King popped off! And I say, so what if this boum is hosted by his greasy pubescent son? It’s still going to be right downstairs in the largest, most spectacular ballroom in Versailles—and everybody’s going to be there!”

Luce shrugged. A ball sounded fine, but it had nothing to do with her.

“I’ll clarify,” Bill said. “Everyone will be there including Lys Virgily. The Princess of Savoy? Ring a bell?” He bopped Luce on the nose. “That’s you.”

“Hmph,” Luce said, sliding her head back to rest against the soapy wall of the tub. “Sounds like a big night for her. But what am I supposed to do while they’re all at the ball?”

“See, remember when I told you—”

The knob on the door of the great bathroom was turning. Bill eyed it, groaning. “To be continued.”

As the door swung open, he held his pointy nose and disappeared under the water. Luce writhed and kicked him to the other side of the tub. He resurfaced, glared at her, and started floating on his back through the suds.

Bill might have been invisible to the pretty girl with corn-colored curls who was standing in the doorway in a long cranberry-colored gown—but Luce wasn’t. At the sight of someone in the tub, the girl reared back.

“Oh, Princess Lys! Forgive me!” she said in French. “I was told this chamber was empty. I—I’d run a bath for Princess Elizabeth”—she pointed to the tub where Luce was soaking—“and was just about to send her up along with her ladies.”

“Well—” Luce racked her brain, desperate to come off as more regal than she felt. “You may not s-send her up. Nor her ladies. This is my chamber, where I intended to bathe in peace.”

“I beg your pardon,” the girl said, bowing, “a thousand times.”

“It’s all right,” Luce said quickly when she saw the girl’s honest despair. “There must just have been a misunderstanding.”

The girl curtseyed and began to close the door. Bill peeked his horned head up above the surface of the water and whispered, “Clothes!” Luce used her bare foot to push him down.

“Wait!” Luce called after the girl, who slowly pushed the door open again. “I need your help. Dressing for the ball.”

“What about your ladies-in-waiting, Princess Lys? There’s Agatha or Eloise—”

“No, no. The girls and I had a spat,” Luce hurried on, trying not to talk too much for fear of giving herself away completely. “They picked out the most, um, horrid gown for me to wear. So I sent them away. This is an important ball, you know.”

“Yes, Princess.”

“Could you find something for me?” Luce asked the girl, gesturing with her head at the armoire.

“Me? H-help you dress?”

“You’re the only one here, aren’t you?” Luce said, hoping that something in that armoire would fit her—and look halfway decent for a ball. “What’s your name?”

“Anne-Marie, Princess.”

“Great,” Luce said, trying to channel Lucinda from Helston by simply acting self-important. And she threw in a bit of Shelby’s know-it-all attitude for good measure. “Hop to it, Anne-Marie. I won’t be late because of your sluggishness. Be a dear and fetch me a gown.”

Ten minutes later, Luce stood before an expansive three-way mirror, admiring the stitching on the bust of the first gown Anne-Marie had tugged from the armoire. The gown was made of tiered black taffeta, tightly gathered at the waist, then swirling into a gloriously wide bell shape near the ground. Luce’s hair had been swept up into a twist, then tucked under a dark, heavy wig of elaborate curls. Her face shimmered with a dusting of powder and rouge. She was wearing so many undergarments that it felt as though someone had draped a fifty-pound weight over her body. How did girls move in these things? Let alone dance?

As Anne-Marie drew the corset tighter around her torso, Luce gaped at her reflection. The wig made her look five years older. And she was sure she’d never had this much cleavage before. In any of her lives.

For the briefest moment, she allowed herself to forget her nerves about meeting her past princess self, and whether she’d find Daniel again before she made a huge mess out of their love—and simply felt what every other girl going to that ball that night must have felt: Breathing was overrated in a dress as amazing as this.

“You’re ready, Princess,” Anne-Marie whispered reverently. “I will leave you, if you’ll allow me.”

As soon as Anne-Marie shut the door behind her, Bill propelled himself out of the water, sending a cold spray of soapsuds across the room. He sailed over the armoire and came to rest on a small turquoise silk footstool. He pointed at Luce’s gown, at her wig, then at her gown again. “Ooh la la. Hot stuff.”

“You haven’t even seen my shoes.” She lifted the hem of her skirt to show off a pair of pointy-toed emerald-green heels inlaid with jade flowers. They matched the emerald-green lace that trimmed the bust of her dress and were easily the most amazing shoes she had ever seen, let alone slipped onto her feet.

“Oooh!” Bill squealed. “Very rococo.”

“So, I’m really doing this? I’m just going to go down there and pretend—”

“No pretending.” Bill shook his head. “Own it. Own that cleavage, girl, you know you want to.”

“Okay, I am pretending you didn’t say that.” Luce laugh-winced. “So I go downstairs and ‘own it’ or whatever. But what do I do when I find my past self? I don’t know anything about her. Do I just—”

“Take her hand,” Bill said cryptically. “She’ll be very touched by the gesture, I’m sure.”

Bill was hinting at something, clearly, but Luce didn’t understand. Then she remembered his words right before they dove through the last Announcer.

“Tell me about going three-D.”

“Aha.” Bill mimed leaning against an invisible wall in the air. His wings blurred as he fluttered in front of her. “You know how some things are just too out-of-this-world to be pinned down by dull old words? Like, for example, the way you swoon when Daniel comes in for a long kiss, or the feeling of heat that spreads through your body when his wings unfurl on a dark night—”

“Don’t.” Luce’s hand went to her heart involuntarily. There were no words that could ever do justice to what Daniel made her feel. Bill was making fun of her, but that didn’t mean she ached any less at being away from Daniel for so long.

“Same deal with three-D. You’ll just have to live it to understand it.”

As soon as Bill opened the door for Luce, the sounds of distant orchestra music and the polite murmuring of a large crowd flooded into the room. She felt something pulling her down there. Maybe it was Daniel. Maybe it was Lys.

Bill bowed in the air. “After you, Princess.”

She followed the noise down two broad, winding flights of golden stairs, the music getting louder with each step. As she swept through empty gallery after empty gallery, she began to smell the mouthwatering aromas of roasted quail and stewed apples and potatoes au gratin. And perfume—so much she could hardly inhale without coughing.

“Now aren’t you glad I made you take a bath?” Bill asked. “One less bottle of eau de reekette punching holes in l’ozone.”

Luce didn’t answer. She had entered a long hall of mirrors, and in front of her, a pair of women and a man were crossing toward the entrance of a main room. The women didn’t walk, they glided. Their yellow and blue gowns practically swished across the floor. The man walked between them, his ruffled white shirt dapper under his long silver jacket and his heels nearly as high as the ones on Luce’s shoes. All three of them wore wigs a full foot taller than the one on Luce’s own head, which felt enormous and weighed a ton. Watching them, Luce felt clumsy, the way her skirts swung from side to side as she walked.

They turned to look at her and all three pairs of eyes narrowed, as if they could tell instantly that she had not been bred to attend high-society balls.

“Ignore them,” Bill said. “There are snobs in every lifetime. In the end, they’ve got nothing on you.”

Luce nodded, falling behind the trio, who passed through a set of mirrored doorways into the ballroom. The ultimate ballroom. The ballroom to end all ballrooms.

Luce couldn’t help herself. She stopped in her tracks and whispered, “Wow.”

It was majestic: A dozen chandeliers hung low from the faraway ceiling, glittering with bright white candles. Where the walls weren’t made of mirrors, they were covered with gold. The parquet dance floor seemed to stretch on into the next city, and ringing the dance floor were long tables covered in white linen, laid with fine china place settings, platters of cakes and cookies, and great crystal goblets filled with ruby-colored wine. Thousands of white daffodils peeked out of hundreds of dark-red vases set upon the dozens of dining tables.

On the far side of the room, a line of exquisitely dressed young women was forming. There were about ten of them, standing together, whispering and laughing outside a great golden door.

Another crowd had gathered around an enormous crystal punch bowl near the orchestra. Luce helped herself to a glass.

“Excuse me?” she asked a pair of women next to her. Their artful gray curls formed twin towers on their heads. “What are those girls in line for?”

“Why, to please the king, of course.” One woman chuckled. “Those demoiselles are here to see if they might please him into marriage.”

Marriage? But they looked so young. All of a sudden Luce’s skin began to feel hot and itchy. Then it hit her: Lys is in that line.

Luce gulped and studied each of the young women. There she was, third in line, magnificently wrapped in a long black gown only slightly different from the one that Luce herself was wearing. Her shoulders were covered with a black velvet capelet, and her eyes never rose from the floor. She wasn’t laughing with the other girls. She looked as frustrated as Luce felt.

“Bill,” Luce whispered.

But the gargoyle flew right in front of her face and shushed her with a finger to his fat stone lips. “Only crazies talk to their invisible gargoyles,” he hissed, “and crazies don’t get invited to many balls. Now, hush.”

“But what about—”

“Hush.”

What about going 3-D?

Luce took a deep breath. The last instruction he had given her was to take Lys by the hand.…

She strode over, crossing the dance floor and bypassing the servants with their trays of foie gras and Chambord. She nearly plowed right into the girl behind Lys, who was trying to cut ahead of Lys in line by pretending to whisper something to a friend.

“Excuse me,” Luce said to Lys, whose eyes widened and whose lips parted and let a tiny confused sound escape her mouth.

But Luce couldn’t wait for Lys to react. She reached down and grabbed her by the hand. It fit into her own like a puzzle piece. She squeezed.

Luce’s stomach dropped as if she’d gone down the first hill of a roller coaster. Her skin began to vibrate, and a drowsy, gently rocking sensation came over her. She felt her eyelids flutter, but some instinct told her to keep holding fast to Lys’s hand.

She blinked, and Lys blinked, and then they both blinked at the same time—and on the other side of the blink, Luce could see herself in Lys’s eyes … and then could see Lys from her own eyes … and then—

She could see no one in front of her at all.

“Oh!” she cried out, and her voice sounded just as it always had. She looked down at her hands, which looked just as they always had. She reached up and felt her face, her hair, her wig, all of which felt the same as they had before. But something … something had shifted.

She lifted the hem of her dress and peeked down at her shoes.

They were magenta. With diamond-shaped high heels, and tied at the ankle with an elegant silver bow.

What had she done?

Then she realized what Bill had meant by “going three-D.”

She had literally stepped into Lys’s body.

Luce glanced around her, terrified. To her horror, all the other girls in line were motionless. In fact, everyone Luce looked at was frozen stiff. It was if the entire party had been put on Pause.

“See?” Bill’s voice came hotly in her ear. “No words for this, right?”

“What’s happening, Bill?” Her voice was rising.

“Right now, not a whole lot. I had to put the brakes on the party, lest you freak out. Once we’re straight on the three-D business, I’ll start it back up again.”

“So … no one can see this right now?” Luce asked, waving her hand slowly in front of the face of the pretty brunette girl who’d been standing in front of Lys. The girl didn’t flinch. She didn’t blink. Her face was frozen in an unending openmouthed grin.

“Nope.” Bill demonstrated by wiggling his tongue near the ear of an older man, who stood frozen with an escargot poised between his fingers, inches from his mouth. “Not until I snap me fingers.”

Luce exhaled, once more strangely relieved at having Bill’s help. She needed a few minutes to get used to the idea that she was—was she really—

“I’m inside my past self,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Then where did I go? Where’s my body?”

“You’re in there somewhere.” He tapped at her collarbone. “You’ll pop out again when—Well, when the time is right. But for now, you’ve slipped entirely inside your past. Like a cute little turtle in a borrowed shell. Except it’s more than that. When you’re in Lys’s body, your very beings are entwined, so all sorts of good stuff comes with the package. Her memories, her passions, her manners—lucky for you. Of course, you also have to grapple with her shortcomings. This one, if I recall, puts her foot in her mouth with some regularity. So watch out.”

“Amazing,” Luce whispered. “So if I could just find Daniel, I’d be able to feel exactly what she feels toward him.”

“Sure, I guess, but you do realize that once I snap my fingers, Lys has obligations at this ball that don’t include Daniel. This isn’t really his scene, and by that I mean, no way the guards would let a poor stable boy in here.”

Luce didn’t care about any of that. Poor stable boy or not, she would find him. She couldn’t wait. Inside Lys’s body she could even hold him, maybe even kiss him. The anticipation of it was almost overwhelming.

“Hello?” Bill flicked a hard finger against her temple. “You ready yet? Get in there, see what you can see—then get out while the getting’s good, if you know what I mean.”

Luce nodded. She straightened Lys’s black gown and held her head a little higher. “Snap to it.”

“And … go.” Bill snapped his fingers.

For a split second, the party snagged like a scratched record. Then every midconversation syllable, every whiff of perfume being carried through the air, every drop of punch sliding down every bejeweled throat, every note of music from every player in the orchestra, picked up, smoothed out, and carried on as if nothing in the world had happened.

Only Luce had changed. Her mind became assaulted by a thousand words and images. A sprawling thatch-roofed country house in the foothills of the Alps. A chestnut-colored horse named Gauche. The smell of straw everywhere. A single long-stemmed white peony laid across her pillow. And Daniel. Daniel. Daniel. Coming back from the well with four heavy buckets of water balanced from a pole laid across his shoulders. Grooming Gauche first thing every morning so Lys could take him for a ride. When it came to small, lovely favors for Luce, there was nothing Daniel overlooked, even in the midst of all the labor he did for her father. His violet eyes finding her always. Daniel in her dreams, in her heart, in her arms. It was like the flashes of Luschka’s memories that had come to her in Moscow when she’d touched the church gate—but stronger, more overwhelming, intrinsically a part of her.

Daniel was here. In the stables or the servants’ quarters. He was here. And she would find him.

Something rustled near Luce’s neck. She jumped.

“Just me.” Bill flitted over the top of her capelet. “You’re doing great.”

The great golden doors at the head of the room were eased open by two footmen, who stood at attention on either side. The girls in line in front of Luce began to titter with excitement, and then a hush swept the room. Meanwhile, Luce was looking for the fastest way out of here and into Daniel’s arms.

“Focus, Luce,” Bill said, as if reading her mind. “You’re about to be called into duty.”

The strings of the orchestra began playing the baroque opening chords of the Ballet de Jeunesse, and the whole room shifted its attention. Luce followed everyone else’s gaze and gasped: She recognized the man who stood there in the doorway, gazing out at the party with a patch over one eye.

It was the Duc de Bourbon, the cousin of the king.

He was tall and skinny, as wilted as a bean plant in a drought. His ill-fitting blue velvet suit was ornamented with a mauve sash to match the mauve stockings on his twig-thin legs. His ostentatious powdered wig and his milky-white face were both exceptionally ugly.

She didn’t recognize the duke from some photograph in a history book. She knew far too much about him. She knew everything. Like how the royal ladies-in-waiting swapped bawdy jokes about the sad size of the duke’s scepter. About how he’d lost that eye (hunting accident, on a trip he’d joined to appease the king). And about how right now, the duke was going to send in the girls whom he’d preselected as suitable marriage material for the twelve-year-old king waiting inside.

And Luce—no, Lys—was an early favorite of the duke’s to fill the slot. That was the reason for the heavy, aching feeling in her chest: Lys couldn’t marry the king, because she loved Daniel. She had loved him passionately for years. But in this life, Daniel was a servant, and the two of them were forced to hide their romance. Luce felt Lys’s paralyzing fear—that if she took the king’s fancy tonight, all hope of having a life with Daniel would disappear.

Bill had warned her that going 3-D would be intense, but there was no way Luce could have prepared for the onslaught of so much emotion: Every fear and doubt that had ever crossed Lys’s mind swamped Luce. Every hope and dream. It was too much.

She gasped and looked around her at the ball—anywhere but at the duke. And realized she knew everything there was to know about this time and place. She suddenly understood why the king was looking for a wife even though he was already engaged. She recognized half the faces moving around her in the ballroom, knew their stories, and knew which ones envied her. She knew how to stand in the corseted gown so that she could breathe comfortably. And she knew, judging from the skilled eye she cast on the dancers, that Lys had been trained in the art of ballroom dancing from childhood.

It was an eerie feeling, being in Lys’s body, as if Luce were both the ghost and the one haunted.

The orchestra came to the end of the song, and a man near the door stepped forward to read from a scroll. “Princess Lys of Savoy.”

Luce raised her head with more elegance and confidence than she’d expected, and accepted the hand of the young man in the pale-green waistcoat who had appeared to escort her into the king’s receiving room.

Once inside the entirely pastel-blue room, Luce tried not to stare at the king. His towering gray wig looked silly poised over his small, drawn face. His pale-blue eyes leered at the line of duchesses and princesses—all beautiful, all dressed exquisitely—the way a man deprived of food might leer at a pig on a spit.

The pimply figure on the throne was little more than a child.

Louis XV had assumed the crown when he was only five years old. In compliance with his dying father’s wishes, he’d been betrothed to the Spanish princess, the infanta. But she was still barely a toddler. It was a match made in Hell. The young king, who was frail and sickly, wasn’t expected to live long enough to produce an heir with the Spanish princess, who herself might also die before reaching childbearing age. So the king had to find a consort to produce an heir. Which explained this extravagant party, and the ladies lined up on display.

Luce fidgeted with the lace on her gown, feeling ridiculous. The other girls all looked so patient. Maybe they truly wanted to marry the acne-ridden twelve-year-old King Louis, though Luce didn’t see how that was possible. They were all so elegant and beautiful. From the Russian princess, Elizabeth, whose sapphire-velvet gown had a collar trimmed in rabbit’s fur, to Maria, the princess from Poland, whose tiny button nose and full red mouth made her dizzyingly alluring, they all gazed at the boy king with wide, hopeful eyes.

But he was staring straight at Luce. With a satisfied smirk that made her stomach turn.

“That one.” He pointed at her lazily. “Let me see her up close.”

The duke appeared at Luce’s side, gently shoving her shoulders forward with his long, icy fingers. “Present yourself, Princess,” he said quietly. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

The Luce part of her groaned inwardly, but on the outside, Lys was in charge, and she practically floated forward to greet the king. She curtseyed with a perfectly proper bow of her head, extending her hand for his kiss. It was what her family expected of her.

“Will you get fat?” the king blurted out at Luce, eyeing her corset-squeezed waist. “I like the way she looks now,” he said to the duke. “But I don’t want her to get fat.”

Had she been in her own body, Luce might have told the king exactly what she thought of his unappealing physique. But Lys had perfect composure, and Luce felt herself reply, “I should hope to always please the king, with my looks and with my temperament.”

“Yes, of course,” the duke purred, walking a tight circle around Luce. “I’m sure His Majesty could keep the princess on the diet of his choice.”

“What about hunting?” the king asked.

“Your Majesty,” the duke began to say, “that isn’t befitting a queen. You have plenty of other hunting companions. I, for one—”

“My father is an excellent hunter,” Luce said. Her brain was whirling, working toward something—anything—that might help her escape this scene.

“Should I bed down with your father, then?” the king sneered.

“Knowing Your Majesty likes guns,” Luce said, straining to keep her tone polite, “I have brought you a gift—my father’s most prized hunting rifle. He’d asked me to bring it to you this evening, but I wasn’t sure when I’d have the pleasure of making your acquaintance.”

She had the king’s full attention. He was perched on the edge of his throne.

“What’s it look like? Are there jewels in its butt?”

“The … the stock is hand-carved from cherry-wood,” she said, feeding the king the details Bill called out from where he stood beside the king’s chair. “The bore was milled by—by—”

“Oh, what would sound impressive? By a Russian metalworker who has since gone to work for the czar.” Bill leaned over the king’s pastries and sniffed hungrily. “These look good.”

Luce repeated Bill’s line and then added, “I could bring it to Your Majesty, if you’d just allow me to go and retrieve it from my chambers—”

“A servant can bring the gun down tomorrow, I’m sure,” the duke said.

“I want to see it now.” The king crossed his arms, looking even younger than he was.

“Please.” Luce turned to the duke. “It would give me great pleasure to present the rifle to His Majesty myself.”

“Go.” The king snapped his fingers, dismissing Luce.

Luce wanted to spin on her heel, but Lys knew better—one never showed the king one’s back—and she bowed and walked backward out of the room. She showed the most gracious restraint, gliding along as though she hadn’t any feet at all—just until she got to the other side of the mirrored door.

Then she ran.

Through the ballroom, past the splendid dancing couples and the orchestra, whirring from one pastel-yellow room into another decorated all in deep chartreuse. She ran past gasping ladies and grunting gentlemen, over hardwood floors and thick, opulent Persian rugs, until the lights grew dimmer and the partygoers thinned out, and at last she found the mullioned doors that led outside. She thrust them open, gasping in her corset to draw the fresh air of freedom into her lungs. She strode onto an enormous balcony made of brilliant white marble that wrapped around the entire second story of the palace.

The night was bright with stars; all Luce wanted to do was to be in Daniel’s arms and flying up toward those stars. If only he were by her side to take her far from all of this—

“What are you doing out here?”

She spun around. He’d come for her. He stood across the balcony in simple servant’s clothes, looking confused and alarmed and tragically, hopelessly in love.

“Daniel.” She dashed toward him. He moved toward her, too, his violet eyes lighting up; he threw open his arms, beaming. When they finally connected and Luce was wrapped up in his arms, she thought she might explode from happiness.

But she didn’t.

She just stayed there, her head buried against his wonderful, broad chest. She was home. His arms were wrapped around her back, resting on her waist, and he pulled her as close to him as possible. She felt him breathe, and smelled the husky scent of straw on his neck. Luce kissed just below his left ear, then underneath his jaw. Soft, gentle kisses until she reached his lips, which parted against her own. Then the kisses became longer, filled with a love that seemed to pour out from the very depths of her soul.

After a moment, Luce broke away and stared into Daniel’s eyes. “I’ve missed you so much.”

Daniel chuckled. “I’ve missed you, too, these past … three hours. Are—are you all right?”

Luce ran her fingers through Daniel’s silky blond hair. “I just needed to get some air, to find you.” She squeezed him tightly.

Daniel narrowed his eyes. “I don’t think we should be out here, Lys. They must be expecting you back in the receiving room.”

“I don’t care. I won’t go back in there. And I would never marry that pig. I will never marry anyone but you.”

“Shhh.” Daniel winced, stroking her cheek. “Someone might hear you. They’ve cut off heads for less than that.”

“Someone already did hear you,” a voice called from the open doorway. The Duc de Bourbon stood with his arms crossed over his chest, smirking at the sight of Lys in the arms of a common servant. “I believe the king should hear of this.” And then he was gone, disappearing inside the palace.

Luce’s heart raced, driven by Lys’s fear and her own: Had she altered history? Was Lys’s life supposed to proceed differently?

But Luce couldn’t know, could she? That was what Roland had told her: Whatever changes she made in time, they would immediately be part of what had happened. Yet Luce was still here, so if she’d changed history by ditching the king—well, it didn’t seem to matter to Lucinda Price in the twenty-first century.

When she spoke to Daniel, her voice was steady. “I don’t care if that vile duke kills me. I’d sooner die than give you up.”

A wave of heat swept over her, causing her to sway where she stood. “Oh,” she said, clasping a hand to her head. She recognized it distantly, like something she’d seen a thousand times before but had never paid attention to.

“Lys,” he whispered. “Do you know what’s coming?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“And you know that I’ll be with you until the end?” Daniel’s eyes bored into her, full of tenderness and worry. He wasn’t lying to her. He’d never lied to her. He never would. She knew that now, could see it. He revealed just enough to keep her alive a few moments longer, to suggest everything Luce was already beginning to learn on her own.

“Yes.” She closed her eyes. “But there’s so much I still don’t understand. I don’t know how to stop this from happening. I don’t know how to break this curse.”

Daniel smiled, but there were tears brimming in his eyes.

Luce wasn’t afraid. She felt free. Freer than she’d ever felt before.

A strange, deep understanding was unfurling in her memory. Something becoming visible in the fog of her head. One kiss from Daniel would open a door, releasing her from a loveless marriage to a bratty child, from the cage of this body. This body wasn’t who she really was. It was just a shell, part of a punishment. And so this body’s death wasn’t a tragedy at all—it was simply the end of a chapter. A beautiful, necessary release.

Footsteps sounded on the stairs behind them. The duke returning with his men. Daniel gripped her shoulders.

“Lys, listen to me—”

“Kiss me,” she begged. Daniel’s face changed, as if he needed to hear nothing else. He lifted her off the ground and crushed her against his chest. Tingling heat coursed through her body as she kissed him harder and deeper, letting herself go completely. She arched her back and tilted her head toward the sky and kissed him until she was dizzy with bliss. Until dark traces of shadows swirled and blackened the stars overhead. An obsidian symphony. But behind it: There was light. For the first time, Luce could feel the light shining through.

It was absolutely glorious.

It was time for her to go.

Get out while the getting’s good, Bill had warned her. While she was still alive.

But she couldn’t leave yet. Not while everything was so warm and lovely. Not with Daniel still kissing her, wild with passion. She opened her eyes and the colors of his hair and his face and the night itself burned brighter and more beautiful, lit up by an intense radiance.

That radiance was coming from deep inside Luce herself.

With every kiss, her whole body edged closer to the light. This was the only true way back to Daniel. Out of one mundane life and into another. Luce would happily die a thousand times just as long as she could be with him again on the other side.

“Stay with me,” Daniel pleaded even as she felt herself incandesce.

She moaned. Tears streamed down her face. The softest smile parted her lips.

“What is it?” Daniel asked. He would not stop kissing her. “Lys?”

“It’s … so much love,” she said, opening her eyes just as the fire bloomed through her chest. A great column of light exploded in the night, rocketing heat and flames high in the sky, knocking Daniel off his feet, knocking Luce clear out of Lys’s death and into darkness, where she was ice-cold and could see nothing. A shuddering wave of vertigo overtook her.

Then: the smallest flash of light.

Bill’s face came into view, hovering over Luce with a worried look. She was lying prone on a flat surface. She touched the smooth stone beneath her, heard the water trickling nearby, sniffed at the cool musty air. She’d come out inside an Announcer.

“You scared me,” Bill said. “I didn’t know … I mean, when she died, I didn’t know how … didn’t know whether maybe you might get stuck somehow.… But I wasn’t sure.” He shook his head as if to banish the thought.

She tried to stand, but her legs were wobbly and everything about her felt incredibly cold. She sat cross-legged against the stone wall. She was back in the black gown with the emerald-green trim. The emerald-green slippers stood side by side in the corner. Bill must have slipped them off her feet and laid her down after she’d … after Lys … Luce still could not believe it.

“I could see things, Bill. Things I never knew before.”

“Like?”

“Like she was happy when she died. I was happy. Ecstatic. The whole thing was just so beautiful.” Her mind raced. “Knowing he’d be there for me on the other side, knowing that all I was doing was escaping something wrong and oppressive. That the beauty of our love endures death, endures everything. It was incredible.”

“Incredibly dangerous,” Bill said shortly. “Let’s not do that again, okay?”

“Don’t you get it? Ever since I left Daniel in the present, this is the best thing that’s happened to me. And—”

But Bill had disappeared into the darkness again. She heard the trickle of the waterfall. A moment later, the sound of water boiling. When Bill reappeared, he’d made tea. He carried the pot on a thin metal tray and handed Luce a steaming mug.

“Where did you get that?” she asked.

“I said, let’s not do that again, okay?”

But Luce was too wrapped up in her own thoughts to really hear him. This was the closest she’d come to any kind of clarity. She would go 3-D—what had he called it? cleaving?—again. She would see her lives through to their ends, one after another until in one of those lives, she found out exactly why it happened.

And then she’d break this curse.