She could still see them the way the Empire had seen them: two formidable blond knights in armor, a man and a woman, their swords crossed above a castle like a badge on a banner.
She wondered what those two had been like as children — and then their younger selves came into view at the end of the corridor.
The blond girl looked her over with a stern expression. "She's younger than I expected."
The blond boy beside her waved brightly, cheerfully, with his whole arm.
Introduced as the newest and youngest member of the Adrien family, the small pink-haired girl stood in front of her new siblings and said nothing at all.
It was strange. The other girl's presence pressed on her like a weight.
The boy, Lucas, was tugging at his sister's sleeve, trying to get her attention, laughing at his own joke. Lucas was easy to read.
The second child was a different story. Standing there with her arms folded, Isabelle seemed to have something enormous behind her, a lion mid-roar with its jaws open.
She's a beast, Rosette thought.
Daniel stepped forward and made the introductions formally. "This is Rosette. From today she's your younger sister. Rosette — your older sister Isabelle, and your older brother Lucas."
"I'm — I'm Rosette," she managed.
"So?" Isabelle said.
She stared down at the smaller girl, and her voice went cold. "Why did you come to our house?"
Rosette froze. She's terrifying. And I'm weak. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps an orphan of unknown origin had no business being adopted into a house like this at all.
Until this moment, she reflected, every single person she had met here had been surprisingly kind to her. She sat down on the edge of the couch beside Daniel and made herself accept it. She had always known that sooner or later somebody would dislike her.
She stood again, her face in shadow, and wondered what on earth she was supposed to say.
"Belle, that was harsh," Lucas said.
"Was I wrong?" his sister asked coolly.
Maybe I should just stay quiet, Rosette thought.
Then she thought of her drawings — the cloaked figure, the shattering castle — and remembered why she was here. She had come back to fix the mistakes of her past. She had come to repay Duke Adrien, the kind man with the purple eyes, the first person in either of her lives who had ever shown her kindness.
She looked around the grand room and steeled herself. She was not going to back down over a challenge as small as this one.
"I can use magic!"
A flash of light burst off her fingertips, and both Isabelle and Lucas jumped.
"I can't use it properly yet," she said in a rush, "but everyone says I have talent. His Grace said so too. I'll learn quickly, I promise, and then I can be helpful."
Isabelle stared at her. "What?"
"I can do all sorts of things," Rosette went on, counting them off. "I could style your hair for you. I could keep your tea warm so it never goes cold." Her cheeks went scarlet. She looked up with hopeful eyes. "So — please don't hate me too much."
Isabelle said nothing at all. Her face was shadowed and unreadable.
Then her composure cracked. "Huh?"
Rosette stood in front of her new sister and waited patiently for a real answer.
Above the hall hung another banner, this one bearing the crest of a deer.
Isabelle knew her family's history better than she knew her own name — a long and prestigious line that had produced generation after generation of knights and swordmasters. She looked at the small, fragile creature standing in front of her and could not work out how someone that weak was supposed to endure the life this house demanded.
An older blond woman spoke quietly at her shoulder. "Better that than having the new girl crying every day because she can't keep up."
Rosette, passing the doorway, stopped in her tracks. Wait.
It dawned on her, slowly, that Isabelle might actually be worried about her.
In her head she could picture it perfectly: her new sister with her arms crossed and her chin up, declaring to nobody in particular, I'm not worried about her. Not at all.
"If you want to suffer, that's your choice," Isabelle said. Then, formally, she inclined her head. "Welcome to the Adrien household."
She lifted a finger, and her tone turned into a lecture. "But understand this. A noble does not do menial chores. Never offer to serve tea again."
"Yes, Lady Isabelle," Rosette said meekly.
"Call me sister!"
Rosette jumped. "Yes! Sister!"
Isabelle pointed at her, commanding. "And stand up straight. If you keep acting like that, I'll have you sent back."
"She decorated your room herself, you know," Lucas said. "Picked out every single thing in it."
"Shut your mouth," Isabelle snapped, rounding on him with her fist raised — and at the same time reached out with her other hand and patted Rosette gently on the head.
Rosette stood very still under that hand and wondered whether her new sister really had chosen the toys and the ribbons and the little wooden case of crayons herself.
Lucas smiled at her, bright and warm. "And you can call me Brother Lucas."
He pointed forward with a confident grin while Isabelle watched from behind him with a flat expression.
"Rosette, you should know that—" Lucas began, and his stomach interrupted him with a growl loud enough to echo.
He grinned, unembarrassed. "Let's go eat. Training makes me hungry."
Having survived her first challenge, Rosette was seated at the long table of the Adrien estate and immediately confronted with her second.
A salad, heaped with shrimp.
I'm allergic, she thought, staring at the plate in quiet panic. I'm allergic to shrimp.
"No appetite?" the Duke asked from the head of the table.
"She doesn't like vegetables," Lucas guessed.
"That's not it," Rosette said quickly.
She looked at the pink curl of shrimp on the end of her fork. If she told them, they would think she was simply a picky eater. They would think she was ungrateful, on her very first day.
A memory surfaced, sharp and unwelcome — a red-haired man waving a hand at her, dismissing her allergies as a nuisance, an inconvenience, one more defect in a thing that had been acquired to be useful.
"You should eat everything on your plate," Isabelle told her, chiding. "Not like Lucas, who lives on sweets."
Rosette forced a strange, stiff smile. She lifted the fork. She hid her fear as best she could and prepared to eat it anyway.
The next dish was being served when the itching started. Her arm, under the sleeve, began to burn.
"Rosette?"
She looked up with tears standing in her eyes.
"Do you not like the dessert either?" the Duke asked.
"I like it," she said, and pulled her arm out of sight.
He had already seen. His eyes narrowed on the marks above her wrist. "Wait."
She looked up at him in surprise, and he leaned closer, worried, and then stood, looming over her.
"I'm fine," Rosette insisted, shrinking back. "Really. I was just about to eat my dessert—"
"Rosette!" the Duke and Lucas said at once.
He took her arm and turned it over, and there they were: angry red welts blooming all the way up to her elbow.
Oh no.
She looked up at his grim face and understood that she was in serious trouble.
Her heart was pounding. There was nothing left to do but admit her fault and apologize, so she opened her mouth to do it.
"I'm sorry. I deceived you, I—"
The room tilted. She pitched sideways out of the chair and into the Duke's arms as he shouted her name.
"Rosette!"
"Father, what's wrong with her?" Lucas cried.
"It's an allergic reaction. Call for a physician — now."
What do I do, Rosette thought helplessly, as everything went away from her. What do I do?