The vase toppled.
For a second, all three of us watched it fall, gazes all locked on the white curve, the flash of blue, the spill of water arcing out.
It hit the stone hearth and shattered into a million pieces, scattered among the white roses. Water splashed across the freshly beaten rug. Flowers rolled like casualties across the floor. The maid made a strangled noise, hands flying to her mouth.
“Oh no,” she whispered. “Oh no, oh no, oh no…”
“It’s fine,” I said automatically, even as my brain replayed the sound of Number Fourteen’s hand cracking across a maid’s face in some other room down the hall just a few minutes ago. “Hey. Hey, it’s okay. It was an accident.”
“You don’t understand,” she whispered, eyes glistening. “That was one of Mr. Stonewood’s—” She cut herself off, swallowing hard like the name itself might be dangerous. “He likes that one. Henry said — if — if anything happened?—”
Her voice broke. Something cold and dreadful slid down my spine.
I glanced at the wreckage. The vase wasn’t salvageable.
I lowered myself into a crouch in front of the cowering maid, ignoring the way my thighs screamed and my bruises twinged.
“Hey,” I said, deliberately putting myself between her and the door. “Look at me.”
Her wide green eyes met mine.
“It’s a thing,” I said. “A very pretty thing, sure, but it’s still just a thing. No matter how much it cost, it’s not worth more than your job. Or your face. Or your teeth. Okay?”
Her mouth trembled, but she gave me a reluctant nod.
“Let me help you clean it up,” I said. “If anybody’s going to be mad it broke, they can be mad at me. I asked for more stuff up here. I’m the one who wanted the room changed. It happened on my watch.”
“You don’t have to do that,” she whispered, shaking her head.
“Yes, I do,” I said. “I’m the idiot contestant, remember? I signed a contract saying I’d play this game. You didn’t.”
“She’s right,” Jacob said quietly. He’d moved closer without me noticing, shadows under his eyes gone darker. “You were doing your job. The rest is on us.”
Mei’s gaze flicked between the three of us, something sharp and assessing behind her worry.
“Henry is going to ask who was in the room,” she said.
“Great,” I said. “You can tell him it was my fault.”
“Chrissy—” Jacob began.
“No,” I said, heat rising in my chest. “I’m serious. I know how people like Fourteen think. They think staff exists to absorb damage for them. I am not going to be that girl.”
Jacob opened his mouth like he was going to argue with me again, and I glowered at him until he shut it.
I looked back at the maid.
“If Mr. Stonewood has a problem with what happened in this room, he can take it up with me and no one else.”
Her eyes searched my face like she was trying to figure out if I was crazy.
Maybe I was, because the moment the words left my mouth, my body remembered the last time I’d been alone with him. The way his voice had wrapped around the word punishment, low and amused. The sting of his palm. The humiliating, devastating heat of my own response to it.
“Are you sure?” Mei asked softly.
I thought of Granny, small and fragile in her bed at the hospice, eyes going cloudy, nurses wiping her brow with such care. Of my parents scoffing about the cost every time I sent in another payment, even though they weren’t paying it. Of the way they’d said, ‘She’s old, Christina. People die’, like that made it okay to leave her scared and alone.
“Yeah,” I said. My throat felt tight, but my voice stayed steady. “I’m sure.”
