It takes seventeen stitches to close the cut in my cheek. The doctor insists on giving me a tincture of morphia before the surgeon is allowed to perform the operation. He suspects I have fractured my cheekbone as well. Mariusz struggles to explain how it happened. He has to explain many times, because there is no way down from the rooftop except back through the servant's door into the ballroom where people are still dancing and having fun. As soon as they see the blood on my face and the blood dripping down my white gown, they cluster around us and barrage Mariusz with questions. He keeps one arm around me so I do not stumble and begs them to give us room. By the time we get to the spiral staircase, Dowager Duchess Maria is the only one still following us. She and Mariusz argue all the way to my room. I am thankful, for once, that I cannot understand them.

I feel better once the morphia sinks over me. It brings down a veil between me and my drunkenness that feels almost sobering. The veil comes between me and my feelings too. It blunts my anxiety and softens my shame. I am able to look quite calmly at Duchess Maria through my still double vision as she dispatches servants to hot water and fresh clothes. I can even admire her efficiency.

The pain in my cheek feels distant and unimportant as the surgeon makes each slow, careful stitch. Mariusz watches guiltily. His mother looks away. Afterwards, my maidservant takes me into my dressing room to put me into my nightgown.

"Can you clean my dress?" I ask, but she does not understand me because I have spoken Rothalian. I try to think French, but the morphia seems to have put a veil over that too.

I go back out. Duchess Maria takes my hand and leads me to bed, which she has already turned down. She tucks me in like a child, speaking all the while in incomprehensible French. I don't tell her I cannot understand, because I think it would worry her.

She leaves. Mariusz stays behind, leaning against the end of my bed. We are alone now.

"I have to go back down to the party," he says. "They will be telling all kinds of gossip if I do not."

"They don't matter."

"They matter to me. They will matter to you in the morning."

Morning is far beyond the veil of morphia.

"I won't be more than an hour," Mariusz says. "When I come back, you'll probably be asleep. We'll have to talk about this tomorrow."

Morphia is not without clarity. With my anxiety and shame blunted, I can spare my attention to catalogue Mariusz's actions tonight.

"You threw me into the door."

"It was an accident."

I think the moment over. Yes, it was an accident. He wanted me away from the roof edge. That was probably quite correct of him. I remember something else.

"My uncle asked you to keep me safe."

"And I did a good job, didn't I?"

"You threw me into a door."

Mariusz sighs. "Sasha... let's talk about this tomorrow." He comes around the bed and touches the unscarred side of my face. "You're tired. You're hurt. Go to sleep."

As he speaks, a pleasant weariness sinks over me. I shut my eyes. His touch and footsteps recede. I lie in the dark and enjoy the sensation of being so pleasantly weary. Sleep pulses behind my eyelids like waves upon a shore.

Someone is here.

Someone breathes softly over me. They're watching me. I can tell they are watching me, even through the weight of sleep pulling me under.

I open my eyes.

Konrad stands by my bed, looking down upon me.

"What are you doing?"

The stub of a candle on my bedside table lights him from below, casting deep shadows over his eyes. For a long, dark minute he says nothing. Then, softly, sorrowfully, he says, "I thought we were friends."

Panic pricks dully through the veil of morphia. My sticky thoughts attach to a memory from earlier tonight. "Where is your book?"

"My book?"

"You were reading a book. You were reading a book on the stairs by the light of the candle. You still have the candle, so where is the book?"

Konrad pats his breast pocket. "Here."

But it wasn't the book that made me panic. My sticky thoughts untangle another memory: the candle I found in Mariusz's room on Christmas Eve. And Konrad left the table early.

"I want to be your friend," Konrad says.

"I don't think you do."

"But I do. You are a rare emerald, Alexandra. I would like to help you. And I would like you to help me."

"I don't want to help you. I don't need your help."

"Don't you?" Konrad sits down on the edge of my bed and touches my face. "You are bleeding. You are bruised. Mariusz did this to you."

I struggle to sit up on heavy limbs. "It was an accident."

"Mariusz hurt you."

The morphia will not let me lie.

"And he hurts you in other ways too. I remember his little speech the first night you came here. I have noticed how he spends all his time with his friends and not his bride. I have heard the cruel things he says to you. He does not want you here. He resents you. He hurts you." Konrad traces the line of my stitches. Blood blooms on his fingertip. "And the public believe he is in love with you. What would they think if they knew the truth?"

Hurt swells dully alongside my panic. Nothing he is saying is not true.

Konrad's voice is soft as a heartbeat. "What would the public say if it got out that he is the one who scarred your beautiful face?"

"It won't get out. He won't let it."

"I could tell them."

"No."

"No?" Konrad's eyes are still cast in shadow. "You have the chance to hurt him back."

"I don't want to. Don't tell them. Please."

We are silent for such a long time that sleep begins to pulse temptingly at my eyelids again. My arms shake with the effort of keeping me propped up in bed. I want Mariusz to come back. He said he would not be long.

"Only friends keep each other's secrets," Konrad says. "I can only keep this secret if we are friends. Are we friends, Alexandra?"

My mouth is dry. We are not friends, but I cannot say so.

"Are we friends?"

I have to say it. I peel my tongue from the roof of my mouth. "We are friends."

"How can I believe you?" Konrad shakes his head. "I need some proof, some token of friendship. A kiss. A kiss of friendship."

Panic billows against the veil of morphia. "No."

"Then we are not friends after all. And I cannot keep your secret."

"Wait."

He waits.

I lick my dry lips with my parchment tongue. Celina bought Mariusz's freedom with a kiss. The capture was not real, but the kiss was. Now, the capture is real, but the kiss does not have to be.

I push myself closer to him with trembling arms and press my dry lips against his cheek. The scent of his perfume, lavender and honey, clouds over me. I pull back before he can conquer his surprise and put his arms around me the way the actor put his arms around Celina.

But he isn't surprised. He sits on the bed next to me for another minute, looking at the stub of his candle the way Mariusz looked at the wicker box. Then he gets to his feet, takes up the candle, and goes to the door.

My trembling arms collapse and I fall back on the pillows. "You won't tell?"

He blows out his candle. "It is our secret."

__

2025-02-02: I have never in my life been on any painkiller stronger than ibuprofen, so my portrayal of morphine is based almost entirely on the opium scenes in The Quiet American (a very good book, but unsettling).