"I never did ask, do you play?" I gestured to the violin as I slid a bishop into position on the chessboard.

It was two weeks after the storm and Ariane and I were alone once more. She had fidgeted awkwardly and avoided eye contact until I suggested a game of chess to break the tension. Slowly, as the pieces danced across the board she began to open up.

"Oh… uh…" her eyes darted to the violin and then back to the board. "I don't… not really. I tried to learn when I was younger. I was never very good at it…"

She didn't need to say what she really meant, I knew her father and I was beginning to know her. She had tried to learn the violin to please him. I pictured her as a little girl, desperate for her father's attention.

I watched her as she studied the board with her signature intensity and I felt a twinge of uncomfortable wistfulness. Victor had played like that, eyes fixed on the board as if the pieces would move of their own accord if he looked away.

I waited until she made her move before speaking again.

"I shouldn't have played it without asking. I'm sorry."

"It's fine, don't apologize," she said with a dismissive gesture. "Better to be played than sit on a shelf gathering dust."

Then after a pause, she added, "I've never heard anyone play like that. It was… captivating."

I looked up from the board and her cheeks turned slightly pink as her gaze skittered away from me. I didn't know how to respond to that, so I made my next move without replying. We stayed silent for the next few moves.

"I never thanked you for the books," I told her finally. "I really enjoyed them "

Her face lit up with a smile. It was possibly the first time I had ever seen her truly smile. It was a lopsided, crooked thing that seemed to sit awkwardly from disuse, but I found it somehow endearing.

"I'm glad you liked them," she replied. "You are quite the romantic, did you know that? I admit most of them were not to my taste. I had to discreetly borrow a few from Florina's room."

I laughed at that. There had been precious little for me to laugh about the last three years. The sensation was somewhat surreal.

I moved a pawn on the board. Ariane was certain to win in a few moves, but I had intentionally held back, trying to extend the game to keep this conversation going.

"I do have to ask, why all the secrecy?"

She snorted.

"After how I've treated you for years, would you have read them if I had offered them to you openly and directly?"

"I…"

I didn't know how to respond, so I just gave her an awkward half-shrug.

"The truth is I didn't know how to approach you," she sighed. "This may come as a shock, but I have all the social graces of a toad. I'm not very good at talking to people… or making friends."

She smirked.

"Besides, don't pretend like you didn't enjoy our little game."

"Fair point," I said with another laugh. "You seem to have figured out what I like. So tell me, which one is your favorite?"

Her face shuttered and she hunched her shoulders and I realized too late that I had inadvertently touched on a vulnerable spot.

"It's… not one of the ones I lent you," she said flatly.

 

---

 

So life continued like that. As spring warmed into summer, Elisabetta and Florina took their leave more frequently and Ariane and I spent those stolen moments in each other's company. Most of the days we spent in companionable silence, neither of us fully sure how to interact. She would become engrossed in her studies and I was given free reign of the library that I had been so envious of.

Occasionally we played chess or dominoes. Other times she would listen to me play the violin and we would make awkward conversation afterwards. It was those moments when her guard was lowest that our friendship made its biggest stuttering strides.

Shortly after midsummer, out of nowhere, she asked me, "What would you do if you could do anything?"

"I don't know, I suppose I'd play… perhaps write stories, though I don't know that I'd be any good at that."

"No, that's not…" She sighed. "If you had one wish, one dream that could come true, what would you ask for?"

I considered this. I had never been asked such a question before. I thought about all the fantasies that I didn't dare hope for. Where was this coming from? It was so unlike her to ask personal questions. Usually I was the one trying to pry conversation from her.

"I'd want to go to a ball, wear a gown… maybe even dance. I want to be among people. I want to just be normal and unremarkable, even just for one night."

She watched me with a slightly bemused expression and I suddenly felt very self conscious.

"You probably think that would be absolutely horrid, don't you?" I asked timidly.

She gave me one of her lopsided grins.

"Oh yes, absolutely horrid. But it's your fantasy, not mine. It's like those romance novels you're so fond of: The girl goes to the ball in secret and meets her true love."

I huffed a laugh. She wasn't wrong. Only in my case, no benevolent fairy was coming to grant my wish. I didn't want to dwell on such thoughts.

"Alright then, what would you wish for?" I prodded.

She froze, as if somehow hadn't expected the question to be flipped back at her. It was amazing sometimes how oblivious she could be.

"It doesn't matter… it'll never come true"

I scoffed. "Like mine is ever going to happen? Come on, tell me."

She was quiet for a moment, her eyes going slightly distant.

"I want to leave this place. I want to go to a university and study medicine. I want… I want to be free."

We certainly had that in common. We both lived in the shadow of her mother, allowed to exist here by her grace. It was a cage, and we were both trapped, tormented by the living and haunted by the dead.

She was so much like her father, in ways that sometimes frightened me. She could be obsessive and single minded, occasionally displaying a concerning lack of empathy. She was painfully aware of how she took after him, and I think she hated herself for that.

Outside of those days we had to ourselves, when Florina and Elisabetta prowled the halls, Ariane treated me with the same cold indifference she always had. Logically I knew it was for the best. If Florina even suspected that we were spending time together, she would come up with ways to use that knowledge against us.

It still stung when she stood by and did nothing when Florina tormented me directly. I kept picturing Victor, silent and defeated in the presence of his wife, unable to bring himself to defend me. Were it not for the concerned glances and brief smiles, I might have convinced myself that my friendship with Ariane was entirely imagined.

Despite the progress we made in our friendship, despite the growing familiarity, there was always a part of me that was wary around her. I couldn't forget all the cruelty she had shown me. I couldn't shake the feeling that she would hurt me again.

 

---

 

One day at the end of summer, my fears were realized.

I entered her study to find her waiting for me. There was an excited expression on her face that I had never seen before.

“I have something for you,” she announced.

I paused.

She gestured to a package on her desk, a large unadorned wooden case.

“Happy birthday,” she said.

"My… birthday?" I asked, confused.

"Yes," she replied. "It's August 30th"

The excitement turned sour in my stomach. There had been only two people who had ever known the significance of this date and one of them was dead and buried. I had certainly never told her, and it was unlikely that Victor had.

There was only one way she could have known.

"You found his notes?"

She blanched and it was all the confirmation I needed.

"You read them?"

She swallowed and nodded. I pictured her riffling through them, reading every single note he had jotted down. My entire existence laid bare before her. I thought of her studying her anatomical texts with that quiet intensity that reminded me so much of her father. Despite the tentative friendship that had been growing between us I felt… dirty. I felt violated.

"How long have you had them?" I asked, trying to keep the quaver out of my voice.

"Four months," she admitted.

The ever present sense of foreboding that haunted me all summer crystallized into a single white hot point, and an anger I had never known before bloomed inside of me. All of the hatred I felt towards Victor surged within me, compounded by every single injustice I had suffered in the past three years at the hands of this family.

I had almost fooled myself into believing Ariane was different or that she had changed.

I needed to scream. I needed to be somewhere else. I turned to leave.

"Ella, please. Let me explain"

I whirled to face her and she recoiled at the expression on my face. I must have appeared terrifying in that moment, the vengeful revenant. For once, I didn't care.

"No. There's nothing to explain. You violated my privacy. Is that what this was all about? You just wanted to study me? Did you ever once think about the individual whose existence you were dissecting?"

Thinking about it now, the accusation was perhaps unfair, but in that moment all I could see through my rage and hurt was her bewildered expression of noncomprehension, as if she couldn't comprehend the magnitude of what she had done.

I turned again and fled the room.

"Ella, wait!" She shouted after me, her voice cracking.

I didn't stop.