Considering how long it took us to get to Altolia, Antoinette and I knew it’d be suspicious if we asked to go home right away. So, despite how strange I felt, we went along with Remi’s idea to get snacks and do some shopping and sight-seeing.

First stop was a chic cafe where we treated each other to surprise orders of dessert crepes: Remi gave me a banana fudge, Antoinette gave Remi one laden with mandarin oranges, and I gave Antoinette one with almond slivers and strawberry slices piled onto a cloud of strawberry mousse.

“Because of my hair?” she asked me sarcastically.

“Because you’re why the table runs out of strawberry jam at breakfast,” I teased.

Altolia was pleasantly and deceptively modern, especially once it wasn’t trapped in a single street graphic on a DS screen. Every third store was the sort of place where you could find designer shoes and piles of tangled jewelry amid boxes of old postcards and letters and busted china tableware. Remi noted that these things must have been brought in from all over the kingdom by passing travelers, and his factoids about hats and jade-carved knick knacks tipped me off to how big this world was beyond the data limits of the game.

As we traveled, I diverted myself by keeping a close eye on Remi and Antoinette. It had occurred to me on the ride to Altolia that they’d planned this trip without me.

As in privately.

As in alone.

This wasn’t the first indication that Remi and Antoinette were spending time together outside of my machinations. During the Samhain Formal, they’d been betting on what kinds of shenanigans would happen. He’d started bringing her little things from the buffet tables when she sat with us during meals, like guessing what dessert course she’d want or extra sugar for her tea. On the ride, he spoke to her about his NPC friends by using their first names. He was comfortable standing close to her and touching her idly—well, maybe I should phrase it like she was comfortable with him doing that.

We caught a concert in the park by a trio of young flute-playing buskers. I had a great time diverting our trio so I could pet every fancy little dog I saw. The birds sang, the sun shone, the air had that misty edge to it that indicated that winter was coming…

…And across town, a mysterious estate had been burned to the ground.

~*~

Late that afternoon, Remi summoned our footman from a nearby coffee shop (I hoped he vanished from existence when he wasn’t ‘on-screen,’ because I couldn’t imagine a more boring day than waiting for a trio of college kids as they ran around an unfamiliar city).

I spared one last look at the city as the horses were gathered from the nearby stables. I thought of Remi’s facts about the dishware and the auction dresses in Etienne’s storage room, their styles clearly inspired by faraway Earth locations. Could I travel that far beyond the borders of the game? Did I want to?

I was apparently real inconveniently lost in thought, because I had to be hustled by the footman into the cab. In the hurry, my hair ribbon caught on the doorframe, yanked free, and fell onto the gravel.

Tumbling into my seat, I said, “Oh, sorry, could you please—“

The footman slammed the door on me. Pretty dang hard, too. Okay? Apparently he had been waiting for us all day.

The safety locks were all thrown shut, then the carriage rocked the tiniest bit from the footman swinging into the driver’s seat. We started at a brisk pace down the road.

Remi closed the smoking vent that would carry our voices to the driver. For a second I worried he was gonna interrogate us on what the heck we were doing when we split up, but he just said, “So, Antoinette I get, but did Etienne promise you some new jewelry or something? You didn’t buy anything for the Gala.”

“What?”

“The Holly Gala’s coming up. Antoinette hasn’t warned you?”

“Another dance?!”

Remi and Antoinette traded an amused look. She said, “They’re all socializing schemes for business and internships. Chloe doesn’t care about that. Am I right?”

Of course I’d remembered the existence of that totally-not-a-Christmas-holiday dance, but the thought of it coming up so fast made me exhausted. “Isn’t everyone at school already well-connected? Why do they need to stress about another party?”

Remi said, “For a lot of students, the school makes them feel trapped during the year. They don’t get invited to tea with daddy’s business partners or get to play croquet with Etienne’s fifth cousin. All the connections in the world don’t mean anything if the elites you’re connected to don’t know your face or only hear about you secondhand. So La Belle Lavande gives the students a shot—a few nights a year to peacock around and try not to totally slip through the socialite cracks. Personally, I think it makes it feel even more like a competition.”

Ping!

image [https://64.media.tumblr.com/0f873ccc0c7a3f042cf4bdfb98f12b3c/cece85685ce027c2-1e/s2048x3072/ca3a4239bb90c18a729787340b270e5de7cef155.jpg]

Though we’d gotten here in a roundabout way, this was definitely a conversation Marie had with Remi. Not in a carriage and certainly not in Altolia, but the vague framing was correct: the conversation was triggered after helping Remi make amends with someone from his past for the first time.

I reached up for the options, carriage completely still around me. The instant I pressed 2, the carriage jostled me into Antoinette’s shoulder.

“Who are you looking to impress?”

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

My question came out softer than I’d normally speak, courtesy of sugar!Marie. Antoinette gave me a sidelong, questioning look.

Remi leaned back, folding his hands behind his head as we rattled along. “I’m not too worried about that stuff anymore.”

“Right, I guess you’re sure to inherit the fashion business.”

“Sure am. Only kid in the Fontaine family. My parents are doing great, though, so it’ll be a long time before I have to do more than be a pretty face and throw around a couple half-assed ideas in board meetings.”

Antoinette grabbed the seat to stop herself from jostling around so much. “Do you want to inherit the business?”

“You know as well as I do that I don’t have much of a choice in that. What about you?”

“It wouldn’t be much trouble. I’m good with the numbers.”

“Yeah, but you’d have your father’s position at the very top. More than numbers to deal with up there. Aconitum’s as big to some people as the monarchy.”

The carriage’s pace was picking up. I glanced out the window. We were out of town, trees clipping past us. Blurring past us, actually. A few gravel stones spat out the front wheels and pinged against the tiny window.

I said, “Is it just me, or are we—?”

“We’re going too fast. Hey!” Antoinette smacked the roof of the carriage.

We didn’t slow. Remi smacked the roof even harder, yelling, “Ease up!”

We were definitely, definitely going faster.

I held onto my seat to keep my balance. The carriage leapt over rocks and divots, my stomach jumping into my chest every time. The wheels rattled and the two horses’ hooves pounded the road, so loudly that the noise seemed to fill the cabin, rattling the window, the seats, the walls. I was about to be sick.

Antoinette, thrown around by the unbalanced carriage, was forced halfway onto Remi’s lap when she reached for the smoking vent. She flicked it open. After practically pressing her face to it, she turned back to us, a little pale. “There’s no driver.”

What the hell?

Remi hissed a baffled curse and I lunged for the cabin’s door. Even after I flipped the safety latch on our side, it was stuck. “It’s blocked!”

Remi gave the door a hard kick. It didn’t give.

“The horses will stop, right? They’ve got to stop.”

“Not with how fast we’re going. They’re trying to outrun the carriage.” Antoinette pressed herself closer to the vent and said, voice pitching, “We’re heading for the river.”

Remi kept trying to kick open the door. Antoinette cursed over and over under her breath, looking all over the cab, like the answer would reveal itself. I couldn’t move.

The entire cab was rattling so badly, I felt like my brain would fall out of my ears. I couldn’t even think. We were trapped in a box hurtling towards the water. We needed everything to—

To stop.

I tried to speak, but my words came out as a squeak. I tried again after taking a huge breath.

“Remi! Ask me what my plans are for the Holly Gala!”

“I’m kinda busy!”

“Ask me! Please, I can’t explain, just ask me!”

TWANG—the top of the door buckled open as Remi kicked out a hinge, but whatever was blocking the door held on tight. I’d barely be able to fit an arm through that gap.

The wheels wobbled wildly beneath us. The nose of the carriage tipped violently downwards—through the gap, I spotted the flash of roan horses as they whipped around the sides of the carriage, finally free…

…and we kept rolling, as fast as ever.

“Ask me!” I yelled.

And then we were airborne.

All of us lifted from our seats. My hair floated up into my face. We were all blinded by the amount of skirt going rogue. Antoinette screamed at the top of her lungs, “What are your plans for the Gala?!”

Everything froze.

In the silence and stillness, I swallowed air back into my lungs. With the shaking all stopped, I could finally feel the hammering of my heart in my ribs.

Hovering above my head were the three stupid, cliche little gifts from sour, sweet, and spicy Marie, my three guardian angels.

image [https://64.media.tumblr.com/d6baaa44b18bc312bcb1c2e863e325f7/cece85685ce027c2-c7/s2048x3072/cd60508d8ce0659f05d131a5fad68525ab2945d4.jpg]

I ducked under the UI, being extra careful to not touch it. My feet didn’t touch the ground; it was like I was underwater, gravity pushing at me in all the wrong directions. I nudged Remi’s leg aside to inspect the door.

I plucked a pin out of Antoinette’s hair and finagled out the screws in the hinges. My hands were sweating like crazy, and I kept glancing back at the dialogue choices, afraid I’d see a timer. But the game was patient with me.

Thank you, Love Blooming!!

I popped the hinges and smacked the door, trying to find whatever was locking us in. Turned out it was a huge iron padlock over the handle’s lock, so I just opened the door from the now-hingeless side and it swung open—giving me a clear view of the mid-air we were suspended in.

My heart lurched to my throat. We were flying into a river, the back wheels spitting up a frozen spray of stones and dirt. Now, this ridiculous situation, I could say with certainty, had no place in Love Blooming.

Taking my first step out of the carriage, I grit my teeth while holding tightly to the doorway. I couldn’t look down to double check that my feet were placed perfectly on the steps—I felt about ready to puke just knowing that solid ground was completely out of reach—so I tried to trust my balance as I grabbed Remi’s arm and pulled him to the door. It took some serious work to tug him out of the invisible jelly that was this ‘pause’ mode, but bit by bit, I managed it.

After a few minutes, I’d brought both Antoinette and Remi out of the carriage. They floated here, too, thank Christ.

The dialogue options hung in the middle of the carriage, over where my head once was, just out of reach. The last thing I wanted was to be trapped inside when the carriage hit the water.

Okay, I’ve got some scraps of strength in me somewhere, I know it.

Thinking of swimming, I used all my core to twist around, feet in the carriage. I anchored myself with a fist in the back of Antoinette’s jacket. Her eyes were crushed shut, paralyzed with her final plea to me. She was the one who asked my stupid question. For some reason, she trusted me.

Thankfully, the game understood that when I kicked the UI, I was making my choice.

My ears filled with the rush of wind and the end of Antoinette’s screaming, all so loud and chaotic that I couldn’t hear my own mouth say whatever stupid, inane dialogue choice I’d made. Antoinette’s fall lurched me the whole way out of the carriage, and we all catapulted two storeys towards the water.

The river sucked me under with a force even more demanding than the gravity that’d thrown me into it in the first place. I flailed for the surface; pure instinct took over, making me kick until I couldn’t tell which way was up.

Suddenly the cold air smacked me in the face. All three of us grabbed at each other until we were catching our breaths, locked arm in arm in arm.

I wiped the water off my eyelashes. We looked miserable, all shivering like wet dogs.

“Everyone okay?” Remi asked.

Behind Remi’s shoulder, I watched the carriage wheels vanish under the water. “It was a padlock,” I said. “Whoever it was barred us in with a padlock, but Remi, you—you must’ve kicked through it.”

“Can’t remember a thing. I guess instinct took over,” he confessed. “Can you two swim?”

Antoinette said, “We can’t. Our dresses; they’re too heavy.”

I felt like I had lead weights strapped to my hips. But before we could get into some real romance novel, bodice-ripping shenanigans, a voice called Remi’s name from the shore.

It was his footman, flanked by the agitated horses. My hackles sprang up until I noticed that he was covered in dirt and scuffs. Did someone throw him from the driver’s seat? I remembered the door slamming on me—maybe he’d been replaced mere moments before.

Replaced by who?

He threw us the reins and with his and a few townspeople’s help, we got to shore. That help was definitely needed; I’d been reduced to a lightheaded, shuddery mess.

Altolia citizens threw blankets over our shoulders. Remi and Antoinette recited all they could remember of the incident while I gratefully shrunk into the background and let my wet hair fall into my face so no one could recognise me.

Though it seemed like it was way too late for that.