Page 203 of Saint Céline
“No,” she said softly. “You got close to another kind of cage.”
I looked down. The silence that followed was gentle and unbearable.
Then she said, “But maybe France will be different.”
My breath caught. “Is that a yes?”
“It is a maybe.”
I held her hand tighter. “That’s enough.”
* * *
Sophia and Anya found me packing three days later and reacted exactly as I expected. Sophia stood in the doorway of Vincent’s guest room, silent for so long I thought she might actually choose murder as her opening statement. Anya did not bother with silence.
“France?” she said. “France? You’re just casually fleeing to France like a depressed heiress in a gothic novel?”
Miss Astoria, curled inside my open suitcase, meowed in agreement.
Anya pointed at her. “Do not support this.”
“She’s coming too,” I said.
“Obviously she’s coming too. That cat has the soul of a duchess and the morals of a landlord.”
Sophia stepped into the room slowly. “You’re serious.”
“Yes.”
“With him.”
I folded one of my sweaters. “With myself.”
Sophia ignored the distinction. “And school?”
“I’m withdrawing.”
Anya sat down hard on the bed, as though her legs had given out.
“Oh.”
That was the first time she sounded truly sad. I stopped folding. The room softened around us, and suddenly I was painfully aware that leaving Blackwater did not only mean leaving the rain and the rumours and the life I had built badly. It meant leavingthem—the girls who had chosen me before I deserved it, who had kept my secret when Katherine tried to turn it into a weapon, who had locked doors for me, sat withme through panic, inspected Vincent’s apartment like a hostile embassy, and loved me in ways that never asked to own me.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Anya looked up sharply. “No.”
I blinked.
“No,” she repeated. “You do not get to make that face. I am devastated and angry, but I am not another reason you have to stay somewhere that is eating you alive.”
Sophia’s expression cracked just enough for me to see the grief beneath the poise.
“She’s right.”
Anya sniffed. “I usually am.”
I laughed. Then I cried—not beautifully, not quietly enough to preserve dignity. I sat on the edge of the bed beside Anya and cried into my hands. Anya wrapped herself around me at once, dramatic and warm, muttering that if Vincent hurt me in Europe, she would weaponize international law. Sophia sat on my other side and took my hand, her thumb moving once over my knuckles in silent comfort.
