Star's Crossing

48: The Singular Lover of Remaining Alone

"Well? How is it going?"

Mare snapped awake, jolting so quickly she upset an inkwell. It toppled over and tumbled from the desk to the floor. Matilde stood over the desk, one hand on the edge and the other on her hip. She watched the inkwell loudly spiral to a stop, one brow cocked.

"Well," she said mildly, "good thing that was empty, hm?"

Mare rubbed her eyes, bewildered. "What happened?" She looked out the window—she'd mistaken the darkness for midnight, and now recognized the feathered pale at the fringe of the horizon as dawn. "Good Lord, I wrote through the night?"

Matilde flashed a rare, wide grin. "I watched you fall asleep only half an hour ago." She nudged a steaming cup of tea across the desk. "While you were dozing, I helped myself to your newest pages. It's coming along, little sister."

Mare was stricken, watching as Matilde straightened the most recent chapter of her novel and began reading aloud: "'She devoted herself to the singular lover of remaining alone, if only to instill in said relationship the passions she'd once felt for the less singular lovers which appeared in the shape of young men. Which, like lucky things, are prone to come in threes: one hewn of amber, another of onyx, a third of nameless, mystical beauty; none suitable for more than a fine tabletop decoration, to sit untouched, gathering dust, until the last chapters were read aloud and the book pressed closed.'"

Mare lost herself listening to her own words. She blinked up at Matilde when silence fell between them. "Well?" Mare asked her sister.

"It is phenomenal, Mare." Matilde, though she must have woken within the hour, was a picture of polish: pinned curls and made lashes, not a wrinkle in her hound's-tooth skirts. "It should see a publisher."

Mare blinked, not understanding. When her sister nudged the teacup closer, Mare sipped it pensively, then gave a quick shake of her head. "Publisher? It could never be so, Matilde. Unless I sold my name for another, a man's—"

"Times are changing, Mare. Help them."

Mare gazed at her reflection in the black surface of her tea: a pale smudge, no details visible, ripples cutting away her eyes and mouth, making her anonymous. When it settled, her own face stared back, curious and unmarred, unmade. Yet to be. She turned to look at the window, where the world was rising, the palest light anointing it all in inches and implications, nothing yet laid bare.

"How will it end, sister?" Matilde smoothed the pages on the desk before Mare. "What happens next for our dear heroine?"

Mare hesitated. It'd been weeks since she and Matilde left Star's Crossing. Weeks since she'd seen them; since she'd learned the truth. She'd missed plenty of calls and dinners, no doubt an old Star's Crossing courting tradition or two. But the masquerade remained, inching closer as fall began its alchemy.

"I'm afraid I don't know," Mare finally said, puzzling.

"The unknown is not something to fear." Matilde placed her hand on Mare's shoulder and turned her face toward the window and the world beyond. "It is something to welcome."

***

The farewells were made hastily on promises of soon meetings.

"Soften mother for us, won't you, dear?" Mollie brushed Mare's hair back from her shoulders, blue eyes sharp as daggers. "Anticipation does not travel well."

"Of course, dears," said Matilde, who might have departed at dawn had Mare not slowed her down. "Come now, enough kisses. Dry your eyes, Madrigal."