“Does it suddenly seem real to you?” I ask.

She presses her mouth into a hard line. “Yes.”

“I’ve wished that this day would never come,” I say.

“So have I,” she says quietly. “But here we are, and we must make the best of it.”

My mother returns to the shop, but I linger for a moment before joining her as the seamstress and her helpers finish packing my dress. I look up at the starry sky. Things will be different now and forever. There will be no going back once the ball has taken place. I feel a sadness, almost grief-like in its depth, threatening to consume me. I pull my shawl tighter and hurry inside.

4

Mr. Langley, a friend of my father’s, has a son who’s agreed to drive our carriage for us while my father is working. He meets us at the road and helps us load up the dress. He locks eyes with me and smiles as I climb into the carriage. I look away from him. I’m not in the mood to pretend to be flattered.

My mother climbs in behind me, and the carriage moves jerkily down the road. Heavy curtains cover the windows, but the chilly night air still makes its way inside. I tighten my cloak around my shoulders and pull the hood down, covering most of my face, but this isn’t a clear enough signal to my mother that I don’t want to talk.

“He’s quite a handsome young man, isn’t he?” she asks.

I watch my mother as she eyes me carefully. “Who?”

“Mr. Langley’s son. Of course, if he were to find you agreeable, he would have to make an official petition for you at the ball. I’m sure he won’t be the only one interested.”

I shake my head. “Is there ever a time when you’re not thinking up ways to marry me off to the first half-decent man you can find?”

“Half-decent might be the best we can hope for.” She looks down into her lap, pressing her lips together.

I pull open the curtain and look out the window, more to keep my eyes from rolling back into my skull than to take in the view. I’m not angry at her specifically. Her way is the way of most people in Lille. Always looking for an opportunity to make the dark seem brighter. She’s good at it, but I’m not. I can’t help but see the ball for what it really is.

A trap.

We ride through Lille’s twisting streets. In the distance, the palace’s massive turrets stick up over the sloping landscape. It is extravagant, gaudy, a reminder to the rest of us that no matter how hard we try, we will never be completely worthy of that kind of wealth, that privilege.

Just outside the palace grounds is the gated section of Eastern Lille, where the highest-ranking members of the aristocracy live. Close enough to the king to make themselves feel special but far enough away so they didn’t get the impression they were equal to him. The people there hoarded their wealth, improving their own lives while the rest of the city fell into decay.

As our carriage pulls into the western part of the city, the identical houses along the cobbled alleys lean on one another as if they might collapse in on themselves without the added support. The evening hours bring with them a particularly confusing mixture of smells. Scents of freshly baked bread and boiled meat waft through, but they are tinged with the distinct smell of excrement, human and animal alike.

No lamps light my street other than the ones people keep in their windows. We roll to a stop, and my mother climbs out. I stand on the carriage step for a moment, hoping to put some distance between us. She isn’t going to let me go to bed without having a talk. She reaches the front step and looks back at me, a sorrowful expression drawn across her face. Mr. Langley’s son places the dress box on the doorstep, then clears his throat. I glance over at him, and he flashes another wide smile. I’m about to tell him that he looks ridiculous and is clearly making a fool of himself when my mother calls to me.

“Sophia, come inside.”

She knows me too well.

She pushes the door open as the bells toll, signaling curfew for Lille’s women and children. Her foot keeps time with the thunderous gongs. At the final stroke of eight, we are meant to be inside, behind our locked doors. Sometimes I stand on the front stoop as the last bell tolls, just to see what might happen. On those occasions, my mother darts around the house in a fit, wishing I would sit down and stop trying to get myself arrested like some damned fool. When I was little my mother told me that if I wasn’t inside at the toll of the final bell that the ghosts of Cinderella’s evil stepsisters would swoop in and take me away. Now that I’m older, I understand that it’s not vengeful spirits I need to be afraid of. The king and his men pose the biggest threat.

I step out and make my way to the door, avoiding my mother’s stare and squeezing past her as she closes and locks it behind me. I head for the stairs.

“Sit,” she says as she pulls a chair out from our dining room table. She walks to the other side and sits down.

I want to go upstairs and fall into bed, but we’ll have to have this little talk first. I join her at the table and stare across at her.

Most people think my mother and I are sisters, so alike are our features. Our dark, curly hair is identical except that her strands are lightly flecked with gray. We share the same deep-brown complexion, but she has lines set in at the corners of her mouth. People call them laugh lines, but I’m certain hers are from frowning.

“I was chosen by your father my first year at the ball, and it was a good match,” she begins. “He was the son of a land baron, and he is a decent man, a good man.”

“I know.” She’s told me this before, but an urgency tints her voice now, like she’s trying to convince me that there’s some glimmer of hope.

“But some are not so lucky,” she says, her tone deadly serious. “Do you understand what that must be like? To not be chosen? What the repercussions of that would be?”

“Of course I understand.” That possibility scares her almost more than anything else. Girls who aren’t chosen by their third ball are considered forfeit, ending up in workhouses or in servitude. But in recent years, several girls have disappeared into the castle and were never heard from again.

My mother runs her hands over the pleats in her dress and sighs. “Tell me something, Sophia. Do Erin and Liv know how difficult you can be? How stubborn?”

“Yes,” I say. It is a half-truth. Erin and Liv are my closest friends, and I can be myself around them for the most part. But even in their presence, I feel like I have to hold back because Lille has left its mark on them, too. They hear me speak of leaving, of resisting what is expected of us, and they tell me to lower my voice. Those things are simply not done. No one leaves. No one resists who isn’t courting death.

“I do hope Liv finds a match this year,” my mother says, staring off. “Her parents are very worried, and if she’s not chosen this time, she’ll only get one more chance.”

That a girl is considered a spinster if not married by eighteen is wrong, and that the boys don’t even have to attend the ball until they want to is a sickening double standard. “It’s not her fault she wasn’t chosen.”

Liv hadn’t been selected at last year’s ball. Erin and I had discussed it, and neither of us could understand why. Liv almost never brought it up, but I’d gleaned that someone had made a claim on her and at the very last minute had chosen another girl.