then-Alexandrie is lifted, let to settle into the lap of her lady's maid, where she immediately grips handfuls of the older woman's skirts and turns her face into them, her shoulders shaking.

"There, now. You did so well." There's something soft and sad on Emile's face. "You needn't worry any longer. They have seen you have claws, now that you have used them." The young woman in her lap sobs even harder, breathless with it.

Alexandrie, now, remains still. What is she to say to him? Yes? Bid him leave as she had not? Let her keep what she had stored away in her heart when she had plundered his?

"Oh, my dove," says Emile, gently stroking her lady's cheek with the back of her fingers, "A rose must have her thorns, else she will be crushed. You know this, as well as you know the world you were given along with your name. As well as you know its inhabitants to be wicked and merciless."

"He was not!" A passionate interruption from the crumpled heap of Alexandrie, her tear-stained face raised to glare at her teacher. "He was kind to me, and gentle, and look how I have paid him! He—"

"—was a danger to you, Alexandrie." It comes harder now, as analytical as it had been soothing. "You knew as much." Softer, then. "I knew as much, when you began to come home humming. But this is your home, and your life, and your lot. Would you have the stretch of it bounded on one side by a heartless cur who drags you through the mud because he knows he can, and on the other by a man who retains no title or fortune and has resorted to catering to the like of de Ezoire? Who has made of you a further target?" Emile shifts slightly, to rub a slow circle between then-Alexandrie's shoulders with a sad smile. "You remember why we chose him."

And now-Alexandrie tears, because she does.