A man with dark wavy hair and a green suit looked up from the orphanage steps in surprise, and then in recognition.
"Duke Adrien."
"Your Grace, why have you come back? Has something happened to Rosette? Is she—"
"That is what I came to ask you," the Duke said.
The director's face creased in confusion. "Ask me what? An allergy? What do you mean, an allergy?"
"A shrimp salad was served at my table," the Duke said. "She ate it. She collapsed at dinner." His face was stern above the memory of the girl at his table with her arm hidden under the cloth. "And she already knew. She knew perfectly well what it would do to her, and she picked up her fork anyway."
He leaned in, and his glare had weight behind it. "Did someone here pressure that child into eating something she cannot eat?"
Sweat stood out on the director's forehead. "Never. Your Grace, that has never happened here, I swear it. I teach the children not to be fussy about their food, yes — but I have never once forced a child to eat something they cannot." He pressed a hand flat over his heart. "I have never done anything to harm the children in my care."
He was telling the truth. The Duke could see it.
He could also see, in the man's face, the small girl reaching up for an adult's hand.
"She was left with us the year she was born," the director said quietly. "And she was here such a short time before you came. Barely any time at all." He hesitated. "If I may guess — I think perhaps she ate it because she wanted you to think well of her. I'm sorry. I wish I could be more help."
"No. I apologize," the Duke said. "The suspicion was baseless. I was worried about her, that's all."
The director shook his head slowly. "Such kind, quiet children. And to be caught up in a terrible thing like that."
Then he bowed. "Thank you again, Your Grace. For everything you did."
The Duke smiled faintly. "Thank Rosette. She was the one who solved the entire incident."
In a life that had not happened yet and now never would, Rosette had sat alone on the stone floor of a prison cell, sentenced to death for harming the Duke and his son.
Before she died, wrapped in a blazing red aura, she had unleashed everything she had left and cast an ancient time reversal spell.
And when she opened her eyes she was small.
She had known the room at once — the low ceiling, the smell of soap and dust. The orphanage where she had lived before the Dallas Marquisate came for her.
Tears had come up so fast she couldn't see. It had worked. The spell had actually worked. She had clenched one tiny fist in triumph and laughed out loud.
Standing at the window, she had gone through it methodically. She had come back far enough. The curse had not yet been laid on her heart — she was free of it, for the first time since she was six years old. But she was also completely powerless. This body could barely carry a bucket.
She had clasped her hands together and worried. In this state she could not do a single thing to help the Adrien family.
And then the doubt: perhaps it was better to simply stay out of it this time. Stay small. Stay away. Let them live their lives without her anywhere near them.
She had looked down into the yard and seen a child crossing it, a girl she knew, whose name she could not immediately place.
Then the name arrived, and she dropped to her knees on the floorboards.
Jane?
Jane. The older sister she had admired most in this place. Rosette gazed out the window and remembered her — Jane sitting cross-legged with a book, reading aloud patiently, over and over, for as long as a smaller child wanted to listen. A person who had looked after her without ever being asked to.
And then the memory turned, and horror went through her.
Jane had died at exactly this age.
A body lying in a dark alley in the rain. Rosette had heard about it afterward, secondhand, and had never let herself picture it — but she knew the season. It was this season. It was now.
She ran. Down the long dim corridor, past the doors, taking the stairs two at a time, determined to stop a death she knew to be unjust.
She remembered what she had been told, in the way children tell each other things. Jane had been putting money aside in secret, coin by coin, to buy her first dress — and there had been a man watching her do it, a man with a bad face.
Rosette ran out through the gate and into town, and the voices of the villagers came at her from every side, gossiping cruelly about thieving orphans and where a girl like that would get money.
Jane had been mistaken for a thief. And the villagers had beaten her to death for it.
"Stop it!"
Rosette threw herself between the raised fist and the body on the ground and spread her arms, and the man stumbled back, shocked.
"Where did this one come from?" somebody demanded.
Rosette was not listening. She had dropped to her knees beside Jane's battered body, and she was apologizing over and over. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I was too late."
She had left this place the moment a carriage came for her, in her other life, and never once looked back at the people she had left in it. She looked at her fallen friend and was filled with regret for all of it.
Then she gathered Jane up in her arms, and healing magic came out of her in a great white surge.
The villagers went silent. They watched the split skin close and the swelling go down and the blood stop.
"Is that child a mage?"
"Orphanage brats," one man scoffed. "Now they're witches as well—"
A gloved hand closed on his shoulder from behind.
"Adults are supposed to protect children," a voice said above them, level and cold. "Not take their tempers out on them."
Cradling a breathing, mending Jane against her chest, Rosette looked up. A noble? Something in the shape of him confused her, and her face flickered with it as she tried to place him.
She looked up the whole height of the man standing over her and could only wonder why he was here.
It was Duke Adrien.
Rosette stared, stunned senseless.
"Are you all right?" he asked her.
This never happened, she thought. In my past life this never happened. He was never here.
He knelt down in the mud so that his eyes were level with hers, and offered his hand.
"I'll help you," he said.
And under it she heard the other voice, the one from the end of everything, saying the same words. Let me help you escape this terrible place.
Rosette did not move and did not speak.
"Child," the Duke said gently.
He watched her with concern as a single choked word forced its way out of her.
"Sorry—"
Then it broke open. She bent over Jane and sobbed into her shoulder, repeating it and repeating it. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry—"
Somebody's voice cried out in disbelief behind them, and the sun went down over the rooftops.
Duke Adrien carried the unconscious girl back himself, with a small, somber Rosette trailing at his side.
The director came running out to meet them and thanked him again and again, half-bowing the whole way.
"It's all right," the Duke said, and looked down. He put a hand behind him. "Come out, Rose."
Rosette peered around his leg and did not come out.
"I'll take the children, Your Grace, of course—"
"No," the Duke said thoughtfully. "I'll see to them myself."
The director led Rosette away toward the dormitory, and the Duke stood in the yard watching them go with a stern, determined expression on his face.
Days later, Rosette flung both arms around a Jane who could walk, and stand, and laugh.
"Sister Jane!"
Jane hugged her back, then leaned in close, her eyes bright with mischief and something else. "Rose, is it true what everyone's saying? Was it you? Did you save me?"
"I didn't do much," Rosette said, muffled against her. "I'm just glad. I'm glad I could save you this time."
Jane held her out at arm's length and frowned. "You look terrible. Did you stay up all night worrying about me?"
"I was afraid the spell went wrong," Rosette admitted. "That's all."
And that, she thought, was how the whole thing had started — an accident, an alley, an encounter that should never have happened, and now here she was in a predicament she had spent her entire regression planning to avoid.
"So it's true, then!" Jane said, seizing her hands. "Duke Adrien wants to adopt you!"
"That's the problem!" Rosette burst out.
"How is that a problem?"
"He said—" Rosette floundered. "He said he felt drawn to me. That's all. He decided it on the spot, standing right there in the yard. And then the headmistress told him I can use magic, and the director nearly fell over, and now everyone acts like it's settled."
"Because it is settled. Rose, that's the Adrien household—"
"I'm not going."
Jane stared at her, baffled. "You can't be serious. Do you know what kind of opportunity that is? Children here would give an arm—"
Purple light stirred around Rosette's fists, and she squeezed her eyes shut against it. How am I supposed to live with them, she thought, after what I did to them? How am I supposed to sit at their table?