“But what does this have to do with Philip?” Anne asked as she shook away the chill.
“My dream started to change,” Violet explained. “I wasn’t reliving the past anymore. But I don’t think I was seeing thefuture either. It was like a lucid dream, where I had a choice in what was going to unfold.”
“And what choice did you make?” Beatrix asked.
“I was going to tell Emil that I couldn’t perform,” Violet replied. “But when I opened my mouth to say the words, the scent of rosemary became so potent that I woke up.”
Her sisters sat in silence for a moment, seemingly trying to decipher the meaning of what Violet had just said.
“Do you think it’s a vision?” Violet finally found the courage to ask, turning to Anne with a pensive expression. “Am I starting to be able to see my own future?”
Anne considered her for a moment, pausing long enough to make Violet’s heart begin to race, but then she leaned forward and grasped her hand.
“I think it’s something much more significant,” Anne answered.
“What’s that?” Violet asked.
“What youwantfrom the future,” Anne said. “Fantasy can be even more powerful than fortune. Possibility begins in our imagination, after all. And when we start to envision what could unfold, we give it a magic all its own. Philip must have tried to stop you from giving power to a choice that he thought you might regret. After watching May linger for so long in the mistakes of the past, it’s likely he couldn’t let you meet the same fate.”
“But I don’t know what I want,” Violet said, her voice breaking. “Not when my instincts have already led me toward disaster.”
“If you don’t give yourself the chance to fantasize about the best of what’s to come, how can you expect to recover what’s been buried beneath your pain?” Anne murmured.
“I’m not certain that what I’ve lost is worth keeping,” Violet sighed.
“Oh, Vi,” Beatrix said as she laced her fingers through Anne’s free hand so that the three of them formed an unending link. “Of course it is.”
They sat for a moment there, threaded into a single braid as they had been before, savoring the sensation all the more because they knew it was only that . . . a moment. Eventually, they’d have to let one another go again so that they could continue their journeys down the paths that had parted for them.
But for now, they were simply the Quigley sisters once more.
“Let yourself dream of the best to come, Violet,” Anne whispered, her tone taking on the same hue as when she was gazing over tea leaves or tarot cards. “And by the morning, you’ll find what has been lost.”
And in less time than it took for the next ember to crackle in the hearth, Violet decided to do just that.
Let herself fall into fantasies that could become the fabric of her reality.
Later that night, as Violet slipped between the warm sheets and drew in a breath laced with lavender, she wondered if what Anne had said was true—that by sunrise, she’d recover what had been lost.
Releasing a shaky sigh, Violet closed her eyes, expecting to toss and turn for so long that her shoulders would grow stiff and there’d be no hope of rest.
But, to her surprise, the moment she grew still on the pillow, she found herself drifting into that place between the here and now and dusty dreams beyond the firm grasp of time.
With each softening breath, Violet felt as if she was drawing on an unfamiliar power that sank into the tips of her toeslike liquid gold and pushed aside the stony emptiness that she worried might never crack.
It wasn’t long until she felt strangely full and weightless all at once, losing touch with the worn sheets beneath her body and shifting into another place entirely, one that was tinged with candlelight and the soft murmur of a crowd.
In what could have been an eternity or a blink of an eye, Violet was standing on the wooden platform, the hem of the same blue satin dress from her last dream kissing the tops of her bare feet.
She could see the gold halo of the performers below, the light of their sparklers and ribbons set aflame, tempting her forward. Instead of feeling repulsed by the effect, though, Violet found herself taking the barest step toward the edge, a moth drawn to the sheer beauty of the glow.
And then the fragrance of midnight smoke slipped into her awareness, and she knew what she would hear next.
“Are you ready, Wildfire?” Emil’s voice rumbled against her back as his hands traced the gentle curves of her shoulders.
Violet thought of what her sisters had said about the power that came from fantasizing about what you wanted your own future to look like. About learning from your mistakes instead of being ensnared by them. And in that moment, Violet let go of the guilt and fear that had bound her and grasped on to what she knew was worth keeping: a thirst for life and unexpected turns of Fate.
“Yes,” she said, the tail end of her answer dancing in the wind as she leapt toward the edge, picturing exactly how she wanted the scene to unfurl.
