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“A private performance,” she says. “After closing.”

My first instinct is no. Not because I doubt her, but because I fear mirrors, stages, music, shadows, any place where men once watched and wanted and took. Because loving Olive has made me want to wrap the entire universe in padding and still accuse it of having sharp edges.

“Is that wise?” I ask before I can stop myself.

Her hand pauses. Immediately, I hate myself. Lazarus looks at me and Alcott does too. Neither with anger. Worse, with understanding. Olive lifts her gaze quietly studying.

“I did not ask if it was wise.”

“No,” I say quickly. “I know. I only meant—.”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” Lazarus asks.

I turn to him. His voice is gentle, but there is steel beneath it, as Alcott folds the newspaper and sets it aside. “She asked to dance, Edward. Not to bleed.”

My jaw tightens. “I know that.”

“Do you?” Alcott asks softly.

The question lands where it should. I look back at Olive, she is thinner than before Austria. Her eyes still carry shadows and sleep has not yet softened. Some days, a slammed door still sends her hand flying to her chest. Some evenings, she wakes with no sound at all, and I feel the terror moving through her body before she speaks, but she has returned to Le Havre. Slowly. At first, only the courtyard. Then the office. Then one afternoon helping Elisa sort receipts while pretending not to cry when one of the younger girls hugged her skirt and refused to let go. She is not who she was. None of us are and she is asking to dance. I swallow hard.

“You are right,” I say.

Olive’s expression shifts, but only slightly.

“If you want the stage,” I tell her, “then the stage is yours.”

Lazarus’s smile softens and Olive looks down at her tea again.

“Good,” she says. But her mouth trembles.

And for once, I do not mistake trembling for weakness.

La Sirene after closing feels like a secret the city has not earned. The patrons are gone, the lamps have been lowered. The chairs sit stacked along the walls, their legs crooked in the shadows. Mirrors line the room in quiet silver, reflecting velvet curtains, dark polished floors, and the faint gold glow of candles placed along the edge of the stage.

Elisa has sent everyone home. She did not ask questions, only kissed Olive’s cheek, held her face for one long moment, and said, “I will lock the front door.”

Then she left us with the theater. Olive stands backstage in black, not the glittering black of The Widow, but a softer black. A dress that moves easily around her body, bare at the shoulders, simple through the waist, with skirts that fall like spilled ink around her ankles. Her hair is loose, cascading down her back.

No jewels, no rouge, just our Olive. My chest aches with the sight of her. Lazarus sits on the floor near the front of the stage, one arm resting on a bent knee, watching her with reverence so open it hurts to see. Alcott sits beside him, unusually quiet, fingers clasped together, his bright gaze fixed on Olive as though she is some beautiful, impossible theorem he has no intention of solving. I sit on the other side of Lazarus, on the floor, like worshippers at the foot of an altar none of us deserve.

Olive looks out at us from the stage. “If any of you stare like mourners, I will leave.”

Lazarus places a hand over his heart. “I was planning to stare like a devotee.”

“That’s worse,” she scolds.

Alcott tilts his head. “I intended to stare academically.”

“Also worse.”

I have no answer. Her eyes settle on me.

“And you?”

My throat tightens. “Honestly?”

“Preferably.”