I wandered about for quite a while, in such turmoil I didn’t even remember I needed to find the bathroom until I passed by a fountain in the garden outside and the tinkling reminded me. Now too far from any commode for it to do me any good, given the urgency, I hurriedly ducked behind a bush and under the draping curtain of a willow’s branches—only to discover two of Francesca’s identified bachelors frantically taking each other’s clothes off.


    As soon as we spotted each other, we all froze. I stared at them in shock. They stared at me in horror.


    I recovered first. “Well done, gentlemen. Carry on.” I ducked back out again and set off to find a less occupied zone of shrubbery.


    Relieved, but still despondent, I went looking for Francesca. She was nowhere to be found. I hoped she was deep in logistical plotting with one of the other bachelors, but suspected she was off adding to her tally in a quiet corner of her own. Even Barti had somehow disappeared.


    So I drank.


    It isn’t easy to become drunk on wine alone, but I managed. By the time Barti returned—he had discovered that one of the upstairs studies housed a sixteen-gallon terrarium filled with ferns, and at least one frog, and had been studying it for the past hour—I was a little unsteady. He looked at me in alarm.


    “This seems a bit excessive,” he said, watching as I missed my glass with my next pour from the bottle. He took it away from me. “What are you doing?”


    “Getting drunk.”


    “Why?”


    “Because Teresa’s using me”


    He furrowed his brow. “What? Using you how?”


    “To mortify her father.” The despondency was dull now, banked, but it was being replaced by something else. Something hotter.


    Barti’s brow-furrows deepened. “That doesn’t seem like her.”


    “Oh? Doesn’t it?” I threw back the last dregs of wine in my glass. “We’ve known her for, what, six months? Even Paffuto had some commentary on the matter after the midwinter masque.”


    “Don’t tell me you’re relying on information from Paffuto.”


    “Fine,” I growled. “I’ll ask her myself.”


    “What? Wait!”


    But I had already stormed off.


    It took me several false turns before I found the library again, but find it I did, even in my state. Incredibly, Teresa was still there. She was reading a book in front of the fire, and was so engrossed she didn’t notice my entrance until I slammed the door shut behind me. Only then did she look up.


    She could instantly tell something was amiss. “Leo? What’s wrong?”


    I did not answer. I simply strode towards her, yanking at my neckerchief, casting it aside. I was already working at the buttons on my waistcoat as it fluttered to the carpet.


    She stood up, eyes wide. The firelight cast her face half in shadow. “What are you doing?”


    “Giving you exactly what you want,” I snarled, throwing my waistcoat to the ground. And then, in one swift motion, I pulled off my shirt and turned my back to her.


    She gasped.


    “There!” I cried savagely, shirt balled up in my fists. I could not see her face; I was looking only at the dark shadows of the library. “Now you can tell him!”


    “What?” Her voice was shaking.


    “You can tell your father,” I said, enunciating with the deliberate clumsiness of too much drink, “and all your friends, if you wish, that you carried on with a lowbreed.”


    There was a sudden rustle, and a smack on my back. I turned. Teresa had thrown her book at me.


    And she was crying.


    It was not a dainty little mewl, to be tended to with a lace handkerchief. Her face was bright red, her eyes both puffy and screwed up. “How dare you!” she cried. “What do you take me for?!”


    “What do you take me for?!” I shouted back. “A fool?”


    “What are you talking about?!”


    “I heard all about it!” I shook my balled-up shirt at her. “Using men as your playthings, to get at your father! You ought to be ashamed!”


    “Oh—oh you heard all about it, did you?” she bawled. “Who, pray tell, did you hear it from? Ella? Berenice? Paffuto?”Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.


    For the first time, a small thread of doubt wormed its way into my mind. I did not answer.


    “Only the most upstanding and reliable of sources, I’m sure. Did they tell you about Lord Lorenzo, too? Or Mr. Antoni? Or the stevedore?”


    I was not yet ready to admit to anything: eavesdropping, mistakes, defeat. I rallied. “Do you plan to marry me?”


    “What?!”


    “Do you plan to marry me?”


    Teresa had gone from red to white. Her mouth worked soundlessly.


    “If you don’t have any interest in marrying me,” I said bitterly, “why else would you lure me up here, if not to see what I am?”


    “Because I liked you, you ass!” she screamed. “Were you planning to marry me?”


    I had no answer.


    “Oh, you mean to tell me that when you dragged me to the fountain that first night, and pawed at my bodice, and left those love-bites on my neck, you weren’t planning on marrying me?” Her voice dripped with sarcasm. “For shame.”


    I felt myself grow red in turn. I had no memory of love-bites.


    She yelled at me for a bit longer, making several other reasonable points at high volume for which I had no defense, before abruptly dropping her voice. “And I already know you’re a quarter Winged, Leo. It’s not that hard to find out.”


    “No,” I agreed bitterly, “it isn’t.” I closed my eyes and swayed.


    “Put your shirt back on.”


    I obeyed numbly, then sat down heavily in an armchair and stared at the fire. “I’m sorry,” I said at last.


    Teresa settled in the chair next to me with a small sigh. “You’re drunk,” she said bluntly, “and the Perfezionamento gossips are incorrigible. And honestly…” she fiddled with a ring on her little finger. “... honestly, I was wondering what your back looked like. I figured that was why you never took your shirt off. I was right, wasn’t I?”


    I nodded mutely.


    She stared at the fire with me for a while. Then she asked, voice low, “Do you miss it?”


    I stirred. “Miss what?”


    “Wings.”


    “I never had them.”


    “I know, but…” She twisted her ring again. “We can miss things we’ve never had.”


    I thought about it. “Sometimes.” On a hunch, I turned to face her fully. Sure enough, she was crying; silently this time, tears leaving glistening tracks down her face. “What is it that you miss?”


    “Respect.”


    I nodded and looked back at the fire. I was afraid to look at her for what I said next. “Please don’t tell anyone.”


    “What? That you’re a gullible ass?”


    “No, that I’m a quarter Winged.”


    She was silent for a moment. “A lot of people already know, Leo. Or at least suspect.”


    “Please,” I begged. “I don’t want to be expelled.”


    There was a sharp intake of breath. “I see. Yes. But… you’re not the only one, you know.”


    I turned back to look at her and straightened slowly. “What?”


    “You’re not the only… ah…”


    “Lowbreed?”


    “Not the only person of Alii descent,” Teresa said firmly, “enrolled at Queen’s University.”


    My heart quickened. “Who? Who else?”


    More ring-twisting. “The only one I know of for sure was a fellow who graduated last year. He was one-eighth Satyr. Nobody knew until he graduated; he had no signs, and he wasn’t noble, so there was nothing to show it in the peerage.”


    “So how did people know?”


    “He announced it. Publicly.”


    “What, he went into the quadrangle with his diploma and shouted it out?”


    “He may as well have.” Teresa pressed her lips together into a wry line. “He published an op-ed in The Queensman.”


    I gave a low whistle. “He must have had that queued up for quite a while. Did he have a friend on the editorial board?”


    “He himself was the paper’s editor.”


    “Ah.”


    “He was an excellent student.”


    “He’d have to be, to be the editor.”


    “Yes.”


    “And that prompted the board’s statement the following fall, I take it.”


    “I hear they argued all summer. When they took it to a vote, the No votes only won by two.”


    I scrubbed my face. “As of right now, though… am I the only one?”


    “I don’t think so, but… Leo, I really don’t know. And I am not going to participate in gossip.” Her voice became rigid; the last word snapped out of her like a whip.


    I hung my head. “I still don’t want anybody knowing about me for sure, other than you. And Barti. Please don’t tell anyone.”


    “I won’t. I promise.”


    I believed her. “Thank you.”


    Unexpectedly, she gave a chuckle. “You… you actually want to court to marry, don’t you?”


    “Um.” I thought of the tightrope walker.


    “For a given value of ‘courting,’ I suppose,” she amended. She stood and brushed away her tears, then gave me a watery smile. “I think that’s very sweet. You’re sweet. But we should probably end our courtship.”


    “What?” Despite wishing for this very thing, I found myself inexplicably nettled. “Why?”


    “Because I don’t want to marry you,” she replied, not unkindly. “My family wouldn’t allow it even if I did. And you don’t want to marry me either, do you?”


    I just stared, too tangled in confusion and indignation and relief to find words.


    “I thought not.” She leaned over and gave me a swift peck on the cheek. “The marks on your back are very pretty, though. It’s a shame you have to keep them hidden.” She stepped over to the book she had thrown at me, picked it up, un-creased a page, and set it back on the shelf. “Don’t forget your waistcoat and neckerchief, they’re still on the floor over here.”


    And then she left.


    I sat there like the great stupid lummox I was and stared at the fire.