Fortunately for the hosts, the Chapelle estate wouldn’t be swarmed by the whole Love Blooming crew all night. While Antoinette and I were happy to support Louis (especially where all the good food and music was), Remi had to head back for an end-of-season game, and Sylvain had spent so long around us that he’d started itching. Etienne waffled about leaving too as we walked the guys back to the carriage. Of course, it was Antoinette who confronted him.

“Do you actually want to leave, or do you just not want to be recognised?”

Etienne hesitated. “I feel like I’d only be a distraction from Camille.”

Louis muttered, “And I bet Cecile won’t leave you alone.”

“That’s not an answer,” I said at the same time as Antoinette.

“I’ll return to the academy.” He started up the carriage step, but to my surprise, it was Sylvain (already sitting in the carriage and ready to go) who stopped him.

“There’s enough in the gardens here to make a small disguise potion. You could change your hair and eye colours, at least… Maybe something else superficial if any of you are skilled enough.” His gaze pointedly skipped over Louis and me; he tucked a strand of long black hair behind his ear. “Do you remember how to brew a potion like that?”

Antoinette said through a smirk, “That’s an elementary spell, Sylvain. Of course I know.”

“Alright. Then stay for a while longer, Etienne.”

“Wow, thanks!” I said–right before he closed the carriage door on me.

~*~

Sylvain–duh–was right. I kinda felt like we were high school kids trying to make our best impression of cocktails as the four of us made the potion in Lou’s suite bathroom in a chipped tureen he used for still life drawings. Antoinette trusted me to grow one bright, magenta thistle into two, and to my surprise more than anyone’s, I managed it.

Outside of school, I didn’t get to play with magic much. So I was totally delighted when the potion instantaneously took effect on Etienne’s appearance.

I was looking at an IRL character customization toggle. His pale blonde hair was traded out for a deep brown and Antoinette helped him sweep it off his forehead, out of his characteristic style. His eyes were no longer blue–they were a brown so dark they were almost black.

I laughed. “Holy crap. I hardly recognise you!” Seriously! Even if we hadn’t messed with any of his actual features! I definitely wouldn’t say it out loud, but it made me realize what a generic white-boy-handsome Etienne was. Give him different outfits and different hairstyles, and he could easily play every single archetype in a boy band.

Or, well, in an otome game.

Louis squinted. “That’s so weird. If we got rid of that scar,” he pointed at a nick I’d never even noticed on the underside of Etienne’s chin, “you could be anyone.”

“See,” Antoinette said, “you do have an artist’s eye for those sorts of things.”

“I’m not sure about this…” Etienne squinted at himself in the mirror. He’d worn a pretty generic coat and tails to the estate, thinking he’d only have to make a good impression on the Chapelles, sit for a painting, and then leave. Next to Antoinette, he looked like a random student she’d decided to pull along.

Antoinette patted his shoulder. “Don’t talk to anyone for too long and you’ll be fine, Your Highness. Let’s go. The recital is about to start.”

We all trotted out to the pavilion behind the mansion, Antoinette taking Lou’s arm, me taking Etienne’s. With renewed confidence, I strode into yet another game scene: the tinny, .MIDI babble of the crowd was now snatches of real conversations, and wordy narration about scents gave way to the heady, cozy sweetness of steaming fruit pies and bread rolls drizzled with honey. The bright sun (the last we’ll likely see this autumn, the people around me guessed) warmed my skin and the sleeve of Etienne’s jacket against my arm. Cecile and Colette were playing a flute and harp respectively, surrounded by a polite, pastel crowd.

Over the pavilion wall was a field of bumblebees and their hives. The hives were painted with gorgeous pastel flowers and rolling fields, the imagery almost seeming picture-accurate from this distance. The bees lazily flew around our heads and crawled on the fruit plates, but no one seemed to mind. I was just baffled at the thought of a little girl handling bees.

Louis said as Antoinette and I selected some raspberry tarts, “Camille kept telling everyone that this party’s actually to celebrate her last honey harvest of the year. She even made bee-themed invitations before my mom caught her.”

Camille herself had changed into a flouncy blue dress, her hair tumbling in shiny waves like a porcelain doll’s. She was confidently speaking to a middle-aged couple, holding herself like she was their peer as she showed them a sheet of honeycomb and explained how the bees made it.

The older Chapelle sisters finished their set. The gardens didn’t erupt in applause so much as they…tinkled with it, little pitter-patters of gloved hands lightly tapping together. (Me and my modern sensibilities made my loud clapping draw a few stares, which made Etienne act even less surreptitious than before.) Despite that subdued response, I could see joy in all the faces around me. Nothing like precocious young musicians with all the time and money in the world to train to cheer up the elite.

Next, teeny-tiny Mademoiselle Camille Chapelle took her place with her white violin that was practically bigger than her. She was all puffed up with pride, and who could blame her? Especially when she started to play.

While I preferred a little more guitar, vocals, and excitement to my live music, I still let myself be carried away by the beautiful tones of Camille’s solo violin.

But barely a couple minutes in, Antoinette touched my arm and leaned close to me. She murmured, “Come with me for a moment.”

“Right now?”

“Unless you’re so enraptured by the music?”

The apocalypse or the chance to meet my favourite K-Pop band members or even both at once could not dissuade me from going somewhere with Antoinette. Privately, apparently, because she waved off the guys when they tried to follow us out of the crowd.

“What’s up?”

“I need your advice on something.”

Okay? I followed her through the gardens and back into the estate via its open french doors. She navigated the estate halls and stairs confidently.

She scoffed gently. “Is this a house or an art gallery?”

I’d always known that the Chapelle manor was full of paintings thanks to the Love Blooming background art, but it only struck me now how intimidating it was. Every surface boasted a new piece of art. Portraits, landscapes, flowers, animals, cityscapes, forests, anything you could think of. Even the hallway to Lou’s studio was lined with gleaming picture after picture.

Antoinette entered the studio without hesitation, telling me to wait at the door. After a few minutes, she emerged with a palette piled high with rainbow paints, plus a few huge brushes.

Antoinette stood in front of me, wielding her palette and brushes like a shield and sword. She took a deep breath.

“Tell me,” she said. “Is this something I should do?”

“Uh, depends on what you’re planning.”

She tilted her head at the wall. We were standing next to one of those frou-frou paintings of a quaint little forest and high society picnic.

I lifted my eyebrows. “You wanna–”

“Not ruin it,” she said, guessing my thoughts. “Not really, anyways. It’s covered by glass.”

“It’ll still freak out anyone that sees it!”

“Exactly. So, should I? I want to. Does that make any sense?”

I laughed, short and disbelieving. Was this how she intended to make sense of the feelings she couldn’t control?

I asked, setting a hand on my hip and pretending to be quite serious, “Well, that depends on why you wanna do it.”

She flicked a piece of her bangs off her face with her clean brush. “I’m frustrated at…oh, so many things. I’m still mad about the king and queen seeing you as something to discard, as if they can’t see their son past all their power and money and things. You were just another thing to them, do you know that? And now, I’m mad about Louis’ parents putting their children under the pressure of all…this.” She gestured at the hall of paintings. “All this tradition and nonsense. If there wasn’t glass and I was sure the painting wasn’t made by one of the Chapelle siblings, well, I’d ruin the whole canvas.”

Huh. That answer sure wasn’t, I’m jealous and feeling petty.

My thoughts spun towards my old life again. I’d played Love Blooming over and over, saw the characters’ arcs play out, felt feelings towards them that got closer to true empathy with every save file. I’d felt enough about them to read fix-it fanfic and write my own. I’d wanted to learn more about their inner worlds, and especially learn more about how us fans wanted to heal and help them. And here I was, not in a fanfic at all…

I took one of the brushes from her hand–noting that she always must have intended to include me. “You know what, I think you’re making perfect sense, Antoinette.”

Her action wasn’t anything like when she dumped the red paint on all the students’ paintings. This time, Antoinette was perfectly purposeful and exacting as she took her brush and swept new strokes on the painting. Across the landscape, she created a thorny mass of strange, jagged-edged roses, like they were made of smashed pieces of pottery. They were a lot like the flowers Louis painted out of her hair earlier.

I swept up a generous blob of blue on my brush. I made crashing, ugly waves on the quaint little high society picnic–Antoinette and I together drew wiggly jellyfish, blobby eels, and dabs of seashells, all with quick, inexpert dashes of paint. Having her next to me, radiating energy, was a rush.

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Then we heard a strangled little gasp. I spun, expecting a maid to have caught us–instead, it was Etienne who greeted us at the landing. Louis came up behind him a second later.

“What are you–?!”

Antoinette gave a little curtsey. “I felt inspired by Monsieur Chapelle, here.”

Louis stared at the mess we’d made of the landscape. At first his ginger eyebrows were screwed up in confusion, but then I saw his expression morph into something wholly different and alight and…even a little manic.

Antoinette handed her brush to Louis. “Show me how it’s done.”

He took us further down the hall, and picked the first in a series of bland paintings of flowers. They were all the same uninspired fare, a style that was beginning to make my eyes glaze over. In confident strokes, Lou transformed the bland, papery-thin oleander into a flower-covered dragon-like creature. His shoulders dropped a bit, like one of the steel marionette strings holding him together was cut.

I danced to the next painting with Louis, this one a blushing sweet pea, looking like a harsh breeze would rip it to pieces. I snagged a stripe of pink paint and held my breath as I touched it to the canvas.

One by one, Antoinette, Louis, and I turned bland, emotionless flowers into birds in panicked flight, tangles of thorns, human figures with petals for heads and Tim Burton-skinny bodies. Lou didn’t even waste time to look over the work we’d done–right as we finished, he took us down the stairs to the next series of paintings.

We worked through the empty rooms, quick and chaotic, leaving dream-like, neon paintings in our wake. The glass gave Louis the confidence to paint over portraits of his family and blandly-sentimental landscapes of the Chapelle’s ancestral home. Sometimes we piled chairs to get to the tops of the portraits. Louis only stopped us when the paintings belonged to his sisters. If any of the ones we defaced belonged to him, he didn’t say anything about it.

Weirdly, it was in covering them up and transforming them into something new that I really appreciated the fine detail and care for colour in the paintings.

Etienne had been emanating guilt in waves, so pretty early on, Antoinette demanded that he act as look-out. When we were in a dessert parlour, he warned us about a group of ladies coming out of the garden party, so we all had to scramble and crush ourselves under the dessert table.

I grabbed a fistful of Antoinette’s skirt and yanked it under the edge of the overhanging tablecloth just as a series of high heels clattered into the room. Louis pressed a hand to his mouth to stop his laughter–he had mixed success with that, but total success with smearing green paint on his cheeks. Antoinette was holding back my hair from falling into her face, her warm, paint-covered fingers set on my neck, her sweet breath soft on my skin.

“Mon dieu!”

“Les peintures! Someone’s graffitied them!”

I felt suppressed laughter shiver through me from everyone under the table.

In a clatter of heels, the women cried, “We must alert the Madame!”

As soon as they were gone, Louis was first to burst out laughing in a way I’d never heard from him. We all crawled out from under the table.

When Etienne emerged, his newly-brown hair was tousled and his cheeks were pink. Maybe he’d been unable to suppress some laughter, too. I shook out my hair. I felt dry paint on my neck, plus my hands were coloured in smeary rainbows. Lou’s cheek was splashed with green. Antoinette had completely lost her brush at some point, so she was streaked in paint all the way up to her elbows.

I smirked. “Is it just me, or is the prince looking awfully tidy?”

“Very much so.” Antoinette nodded thoughtfully, tilting her paint palette towards me. “So much so that if we got caught and he wanted to say he had nothing to do with all this, he could very well get away with it.”

“Ladies,” he said through a laugh. He lifted his hands, but he was no match for the two of us attacking him with paint at once. I, too, was helpless to Antoinette grabbing my face and smearing a big streak of blue across my cheek. She was grinning, her smile as bright as her many earrings. Though she’d started this out of frustration, it was clear now that it was joy that kept her going. I didn’t think I’d ever really seen her this careless.

“Well.” Antoinette tossed aside the palette onto the dessert table. “I think we’re ready to rejoin the party.”

The night devolved from there. We rushed back into the garden, covered in paint, but all acted totally normal (strategically avoiding the Chapelles). Antoinette cheerfully chatted with all sorts of people, her arm looped in mine, correcting them when they greeted her as Miss Delphine–no, you’re mistaken, I’m Sylvie, and this is my cousin from a faraway land, you must teach her how to use forks. (I thought she was gonna kill some of these pompous men by pretending she had no idea who they were and what their jobs were.) Etienne gathered endless glasses of water and champagne from every passing waiter and stacked them in teetering towers around the food, even stealing them off of plates while the folks were lost in conversation.

Louis leveraged his role as master of the house (and probably whatever cash he had in his pocket) and sweet-talked the band into playing a song that sounded suspiciously like swing. The dance floor was quickly split by huffy old folks unimpressed by the change, and the people who were inspired by us dancing to join in. Antoinette caught me up. After our last disastrous dance, I was happy to have another go at it–she still had to teach me the moves, but it was through laughter and breathless excitement, leaving smears of paint all over each other.

Twilight fell. Word had spread about the paintings in the house, so we were having to dodge more and more butlers and Louis’s father was on the prowl and Cecile was playing his right-hand-man.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Lou whispered to us, all of us hiding behind some topiaries.

Etienne–whose hair had gone blonde again and eyes bright blue–said, “We can take my ride back to the school.”

“Oh, must we?” Antoinette pointed a dagger-sharp nail through a gap between the topiaries, right at the dessert table. “But I’d like to eat before we leave.”

We all crowded around the gap to see what she meant: a towering, three-tiered cake with gold flakes and piped flowers and chocolate butterflies adorning every perfectly-sharpened edge.

Etienne laughed, running a hand through his hair. “You’re trying to corrupt my soul or something.”

“No, no. I only want to go on a picnic with the prince.”

“We need a picnic blanket,” I said.

Lou shrugged at the mass of garden tables with their tablecloths. “Lots of choices.”

Antoinette grinned. “Alright. Lou and I will get the cake. Chloe and Etienne, you will get some tablecloths and the wine. Then we’ll run behind the band.” She lifted her chin at that field of beehives and flowers, dipping into a grove.

Etienne asked, “Won’t they follow?”

Louis said, “Not if we’re sneaky enough.”

As soon as Mme Chapelle took the stage for her end-of-the-night speech and everyone stood to listen, Antoinette counted us down. I’d never sprinted like this in my life, and it felt near-impossible, my lungs all caught up with peals of laughter. Etienne and I lunged for the nearest table without dishes–unfortunately a couple was chatting there, but they were shocked into silence by us ripping up the tablecloth and tearing away.

We got past the bandstand when we saw Antoinette and Lou struggling to heave up the cake, hiding behind the crowd. We plunged down the sets of stairs into the little beehive valley and all gathered together to heave up the cake, losing globs of icing flowers and chocolate butterflies with every laughing stumble.

Finally, we were so far from the party that the lights were blobs and Mme Chapelle’s shock was a wavering buzz. It was pitch dark out here besides the gleam of the moonlight, so we bumped into each other as we set up the tablecloth and huddled around the cake. Antoinette and I collapsed beside each other in a huge pouf of dress.

Etienne set something on our shoulders–a fur coat. We both looked at him in question. “You were looking cold,” he said simply, and took his spot on the tablecloth next to Lou, who was trying to catch his breath. I cuddled into the warm stolen jacket up against Antoinette; she didn’t move away.

Etienne popped the wine bottle and was halfway through apologizing about glasses before shrugging, stopping himself, and drinking right from the bottle.

If my lack of breath from all the running didn’t shock me into silence, that sure would have. Jesus, what had happened? I collapsed into a fit of disbelieving giggles as Louis and Etienne sliced up the cake and handed them out.

I felt like a sticky mess, covered in paint and frosting–and I’d never felt warmer, snuggled under the twilight with my friends.

After a while, night blanketed us with its balmy air and quiet, the party dispersing until it was little more than a gentle thrum of classical music from the band and hushed whispers. We watched a few members of the staff look around the grounds for us, but their torchlight couldn’t find us, nestled in the tall flowers and amongst the droning of bees and densely-packed hives.

Etienne and Lou fell asleep under one of the tablecloths, practically tumbled on top of each other. Antoinette and I were wrapped up in the big coat, our knees tucked up together. I felt like one of those Barbie cakes, a scrawny little girl emerging from a huge pastel sea of skirts and tulle.

I nodded at the guys. “You bring out the best in them, I think.”

Antoinette scoffed gently. “Me? There isn’t a chance in hell that I’d be here at all if it weren’t for you.”

I huddled deeper into the coat’s fur. Psshhh, I was right, but it’s not like I could properly explain why I was. Etienne needed to break out of his shell and Lou needed to see his own work’s value, his own strengths. Marie was too gentle and too sweet about the guys and their flaws. Antoinette wouldn’t take insecurity for an answer, no matter how hard she had to fight them.

I said, giving in, “Maybe we’re just a pretty good team.”

“We’ve only now started to get along. Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

“What do you mean!” I nudged her. “Get along… Girl, don’t pretend we share blame for that. You were the one with the problem with me. What was that about, anyways?”

That’s not fair, I thought. She couldn’t help it.

But to my surprise, I’d made her think. She hugged her knees close, high-bridged nose wrinkling a little. Eventually, she said, “I was raised on competition. My great-grandfather was the first to find magic, you know?”

I did–not just because of the game, but because of exams in class. How weird must it be to see your own family name in textbooks?

“They were doing unrelated tests and discovered a strain of plant that had…well, no one knew how to describe it but magic. Everyone fought over it. The Delphines seized it by being the most aggressive and never letting go.” Antoinette set her chin on her knees. “Perhaps the instinct has always been in me. And what do I have to fight over? Boys? So stupid. You worried me from the first moment.”

“Why?”

“You were too much of a mystery. These boys…” She carefully nudged a sleeping Lou’s foot away. “I know everything about them and their families. My family knows their weaknesses and their secrets, and so I inherited every little weapon we had. No matter what happened, I knew that I could destroy any of them by using that information. And you…”

“I came with nothing you could use against me.”

“Absolutely nothing!” She laughed. “I had people on it, you know! I needed to know what you were doing and why. I couldn’t stop thinking about you. Maybe it was because of all those dead ends, or in spite of them, but I couldn’t stop. I had no weapons against you, Chloe.”

“Except a volleyball!”

She groaned and buried her face against her skirts.

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding.”

Huh…it’s kinda like all that energy and all that programming had nowhere to go.

I fiddled with the edge of the coat where it closed over both of us. Half-asleep, Etienne’s nose wrinkled as a petal landed on his cheek and he buried his face under his arm. Lou was short enough to almost totally vanish under the tablecloth, all folded up like that.

I said, “I mean, gotta say, I kinda love knowing you were obsessed with me immediately.”

She blushed as red as her hair, narrowing her eyes at me.

“Kidding again! No, it’s okay. I want you to know that you’ll never need weapons or to defend yourself against me. You can tell me anything. I’m here to help you.”

More than you even know.

She lifted her head. Her gaze found mine. There was no impatience there, no examination, no wondering, like she was just taking me in the way I was. It stopped my heart. “Thank you.”

I could tell no one had ever truly offered her that, to listen to her, to understand her.

I’d read–or written–all the essays and fics and analyses in the world when it came to Antoinette. Looking at her now, I saw the vastness of how much I didn’t understand her, and how much I actually wanted to learn.

The vastness turned into a total chasm as she suddenly leaned forward and kissed me.

I was pretty sure my brain totally exploded. I couldn’t think of anything. Besides warm warm warm soft sweet lovely oh what what what.

She moved back. She blinked. I blinked. We stared at each other, both our eyes wide.

I bit my lip. Soft. I’d written a thousand descriptions of the magical experience of Marie kissing Antoinette for the first time. But now, I couldn’t think of anything to even say. My brain was a pleasant blur.

I smiled. She watched that smile. And relaxed.

“Tonight is very strange,” she said. And then laughed a little. “Would you forgive me for that?”

“What’s to forgive?”

“Something in the air. I don’t know. I feel strange. Why are you looking at me like that!”

“Antoinette, you–”

“You said you liked girls, so that shouldn’t be a big deal! I was curious!” Her face was redder than her hair. “Oh, stop smiling at me like that. I’m exhausted. I think I'm drunk." She waved her hand at me. "Arghh, I take it back!”

With a laugh, I buried my face into her shoulder, into the warmth of her skin and the blankets, pressing my fingers against my lips like I could keep the sensation of her kiss there forever.

~*~

That morning, we all woke up at the asscrack of dawn in a pile of ruined fancy clothes, cake, paint, and tablecloths, bees all curious about the sweetness of our skin. A few guards were scowling down at us, ready to drag us into the manor.

Everyone froze around me. Behind the guards’ heads, speared by the comforting gleam of the sun, was a big familiar decorated box.

image [https://64.media.tumblr.com/7ca461a2149141a0fba1a23aa3f5c23e/6cf3ff83c3160cd3-a5/s540x810/66fe08405a158fedb0f302d53515b7f8ded8ad5b.jpg]