“...so, does that make any sense at all?” I asked the table of love interests, after running them through my theory on what the hell happened last night at the Samhain Formal. We had booked a private study room in the library. Even though we all brought stuff to work on our invention project, I think we all knew what the actual topic of discussion would be.

Étienne was first to speak up. “The glass could easily have been tampered with when no one was looking. Did you ever set it down alone, Chloé?”

“I don’t know? Probably. There was so much going on.”

Rémi added, folding his arms on the table, “I asked around; no one else got sick last night–besides the usual, you know, drinking–so it wasn’t like some idiot sprinkled poison over all the canapes to see who they could hit. It was targeted.”

“But why would…” Lou tucked his ginger hair behind his ear, giving me a shy smile like he was gonna tell me I had spaghetti sauce on my chin. “Why would someone target you, Chloé?”

I guess at this school, full of students who were worth millions in a hostage situation, that would be an awkward question.

“Yes, Chloé,” Sylvain finally said without looking up from his notes that he’d been flicking through. “Why suspect they were targeting you rather than the heiress, if you have no idea who you are?”

“That’s exactly why!” I said, maybe a bit more harshly than I should have. Sylvain was so annoying even if he did save Antoinette’s butt last night. “Maybe they wanted to be extra sure that I never remember whoever did this to me.”

It sounded more and more believable as I said it. Whoever targeted Marie’s family had murdered her parents and burned down their estate. Drugging a drink would be child’s play.

In the game, the culprits were no one important. They were obviously tossed into the story for drama with such discordant abruptness it was like the game writers didn’t feel like editing in clues or a bigger mystery or a more consistent tone. They weren’t the point–they were the set dressing to Marie’s amnesia and the marriage that had to happen to get her to secure her fortune from their grubby, evil paws.

Didn’t I once wish that the game made the perps chase down Marie and cause her more trouble? What the hell, Hanna!

Étienne hummed sympathetically. “I understand your suspicions, Chloé. However, I think it’s far more likely they were aiming for Antoinette. She’s a much bigger target.”

“And the Delphine corporation’s caused trouble before,” Lou added, biting a hangnail. “I mean, they’re a huge company. There are all sorts of rumours about how the company started and what it’s doing. They’ve dodged the king’s rules a couple times, we all know it. No one gets to do that without hurting–”

We were snapped out of it by the study door swinging open and a huge book landing on the table. Bang!

Antoinette scowled down at all of us.

“That’s for last night.” The book’s cover was stamped with a giant red CONFIDENTIAL. “I trust you all can keep your mouths shut about that, non?”

Rémi took the book and flicked it open. I could see a ton of upside down figures and charts from where I was sitting. He whispered, “The Delphine pricing and sourcing Bible. Holy crap.”

“You’re welcome.”

I'd last seen Antoinette this morning, after coordinating this meeting with all the guys and before nervously choking down my mandarin orange crepes. She'd cracked open her bathroom door, letting out a Chinook of steam and catching me off-guard by her wearing nothing but a towel (I swear, this girl’s sense of modesty was from another planet). She’d wanted me to fake a migraine and get some herbs from the infirmary for her. When I came back with her request, she was sleeping again, her face a patchwork of steam-flushed and sick-pale.

Now, she was tattered around the edges, hair up in a bun and lips shimmery with chapstick that wasn't doing much to combat their dryness. Despite the warm autumn day, she wore long sleeves pulled over the backs of her hands. I had the odd sense that I might be one of the few people who'd even notice she was off today.

Maybe I had a teeny-tiny thorn in my side with Sylvain’s name on it, but I trusted his expertise with potions. Not to mention his guard-dog passion for protecting Antoinette from me. She would be okay.

“What happened does not leave this circle, yes?” she said through her teeth.

Sylvain looked up, gaze sharp enough to cut. “Antoinette. This wasn't some class prank. This poison was meant to land you in the infirmary. You could have been seriously hurt.”

“And yet I wasn't.”

“Only because Sylvain's the brains of the group,” Rémi countered. “And Chloé was close enough to you to notice. Your other friends wouldn't have been able to do anything. I bet whoever spiked your drink was counting on that.”

Okay, so no one was convinced I was the target? Fair enough.

Sylvain added, “Even if, let's pretend, it was childish revenge for an old slight, your father should–”

“Enough!” Antoinette pressed her hands to her forehead. “You boys know the stories, don't you? Who do you guess did this to me? Was it Lillie, as revenge for me stealing her internship freshman year? Or Martin, for how I stomped on his heart after revealing all the disgusting love letters he'd been sending me? Perhaps it was one of your sisters, Louis, for how I pushed them into the lake at their debut.” She rolled her eyes, like those events were as inconsequential and flat as they were in the game…just a list tossed out to give you reasons to hate her.

Louis mumbled, “I dunno. You being the Aconitum heiress is a pretty good reason alone…”

“My point is, you will not figure it out. Running around in circles about it will help no one. I need you to swear to me that you won't tell a soul.”

Easy enough for me. I didn’t have anyone else to tell! I held up my hand to her, pinkie out. “I promise. Pinkie swear.”

“A what? Goodness, you're so weird.” Antoinette snatched Louis's notebook and ripped out a fresh sheet of paper. She tore it into four and put the scraps in the middle of the table.

“I don't think a signature works without a contract to bind it,” Rémi said.

“I don't want a signature.” She planted her hands on the table, scowling at us all. “I want a secret.”

We all stared at each other, puzzled.

Louis took a breath to ask the obvious–Antoinette steamrolled over him. “I won't reveal it unless you open your mouth first. C’est bien?”

It was a true testament to Antoinette’s terrifying, unquestionable authority that none of us argued. All the guys took a scrap of paper. Louis handled his like it was dripping with slime.

I asked, “There's no paper for me?”

Antoinette shrugged. “There's only one worthy secret that you could be hiding.”

That I wasn't actually an amnesiac?

(And that I was a college student from another world who sure used to write a lot of fics where I described the taste of her kiss?)

The guys wrote down their secrets and folded up their papers before handing them back. What was on each? Love Blooming made them each hold the weight of an insecurity or a fear, not really a secret. And it wouldn't do Antoinette's blackmail campaign any good if Louis wrote he was jealous of how his sisters got all the support in the Chapelle house and Étienne wrote how he felt controlled and suffocated. I suddenly felt nosy. It wasn’t often that these guys felt anything that I hadn’t read on their fanwiki page or learned from the game.

Oh well. None of us would tattle, especially not to Georges Delphine, right? So Antoinette would have no reason to read–

She opened all the papers and literally read them right in front of us.

Louis was red as a fire engine and Sylvain went pale. Rémi was lounging in his chair, acting cool, but I clocked the stiffness in his mouth. Étienne gave a little breathless chuckle, like he couldn’t believe her.

Antoinette shook her head and handed Sylvain his paper back. “Pathetic. Give me another.”

“You can't be serious.”

“I am.”

“You've already got the first secret. That's uneven.”

“What, do you want me to confess something too, to cancel it out? I have no secrets.”

After a little more bickering, Étienne said gently, “Write something, Sylvain.”

Antoinette announced, “Don't mistake me. I don't care about your secrets. I don't care about your lives.” She snatched Sylvain's paper once he'd finished writing and stuffed all the scraps into her shoulder bag. “You've sacrificed nothing here, unless you plan on sacrificing me. I need that book back once Autumn break is over, by the way.”

At that, she turned away, vanishing out the study room door.

‘Sacrificing me?’