“Don’t love me.”

“No! I mean yes.” When he pulled away, turning his face from hers, she visibly wilted. Her voice dropped so low that Reid and I strained forward in our desperation to hear. “I know you think you’re in love with me, Ansel, and I—I wanted to be in love with you too. I kissed you because I needed to know if I ever could be. I kissed you again because I needed to be sure.”

“You needed to be sure,” he repeated. “So . . . each time you touched me . . . made me blush, made me feel like you—like you might want me too . . . you didn’t know. You gave me hope, but you weren’t sure.”

“Ansel, I—”

“So which is it?” Ansel held himself rigid, his back to us. Though I couldn’t see his face, his voice sounded sharper than I’d ever heard it. Meaner. In its pitch, I could almost see his anguish, a living thing that tormented them both. “Do you love me or not?”

Coco didn’t answer for a long while. Reid and I waited on bated breath, not daring to speak. To even move. Finally, she laid a gentle hand on his back.

“I do love you, Ansel. I just . . . don’t love you the same way you love me.” When he flinched, violent in his reaction, she dropped her hand and backed away. “I’m so sorry.”

Without another word, she turned and fled down the stream.

Ansel’s shoulders drooped in her absence, and I moved to approach him—to fold him in my arms and hold him until his tears subsided—but Reid’s arms tightened on my waist. “Don’t,” he said, voice low. “Let him process.”

I stilled beneath his touch, listening as Deveraux announced it was time for bed. Ansel wiped his tears, hurrying to help him clean up. “Typical Ansel,” I whispered, feeling physically sick. “Why does he have to be so—so—”

At last, Reid released me. “He didn’t deserve what she did to him.”

Conflicting emotions warred within me. “She didn’t do anything. Flirtation is hardly a cardinal sin.”

“She led him on.”

“She—” I struggled to articulate my thoughts. “She can’t change the way she feels. She doesn’t owe him anything.”

“It wasn’t just harmless flirtation, Lou. She knew Ansel’s feelings. She used them to make Beau jealous.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think she meant to. You have to understand . . . Coco has always been beautiful. She grew up with suitors flocking to her, even as a child, which means she grew up quickly. She’s confident and vain and guileful because of it—and I love her—but she isn’t cruel. She didn’t mean to hurt Ansel. She just . . . didn’t understand the depth of his emotion.”

Reid scoffed and shoved to his feet, extending a hand to me. “No. She didn’t.”

While the others prepared for bed, dousing the fire and gathering empty bottles of wine, I snuck down the stream to find Coco. It didn’t take long. Within a few yards, I found her sitting beside a holly tree, face buried in her arms. I sat next to her without a word. The water trickled gently before us, counting the seconds. It would’ve been peaceful if not for the snow soaking through my pants.

“I’m a piece of shit,” she finally mumbled, not lifting her head.

“Nonsense.” In a practiced movement, I parted her hair, dividing each half into three sections near her crown. “You smell much better than shit.”

“Did you hear us?”

“Yes.”

She groaned and lifted her head, teary-eyed. “Did I ruin everything?”

My fingers maintained their deft movements, adding new strands of hair to each section as I braided. “He’ll be fine, Coco. He won’t die of a broken heart. It’s actually a rite of passage for most.” I finished the first braid, leaving the tail loose. “Alec broke mine, and I lived. Babette broke yours. Without them, we wouldn’t have found the next one. I wouldn’t have found Reid.”

She stared out at the water. “You’re saying it’s fine I broke his heart.”

“I’m saying if you hadn’t done it, someone else would have. Very few of us settle down with our first loves.”

She groaned again, tipping her head back in my hands. “Oh, god. I was his first love.”

“Tragic, isn’t it? I suppose there’s no accounting for taste.” When I finished the second braid, I snapped a sprig of holly from the nearest branch, stripping the berries and tucking them into her hair. She sat in silence while I worked. At last, I crawled around to sit in front of her. “Give him time, Coco. He’ll come around.”

“No.” She shook her head, and her braids came undone. The berries sprinkled the snow around us. “He’ll hate me. He might’ve forgiven the flirtation, but I never should have kissed him.”

I said nothing. It would do little good to tell her what she already knew.

“I wanted to love him, you know?” She gripped her elbows against the cold, hunching slightly. “That’s why I did it. That’s why I never shut him down when he looked at me like that—all doe-eyed and smitten. It’s why I kissed him twice. Maybe I should’ve tried a third.”

“Coco.”

“I feel terrible.” Fresh tears brimmed in her eyes, but she stared determinedly at the sky. Not a single one escaped. “I never wanted to hurt him. Maybe—maybe this ache in my chest means I’m wrong.” She looked up abruptly and clutched my hand. “I’ve never hurt over romance like this in my entire life, not even when Babette abandoned me. Maybe that means I do care for him. Maybe—Lou, maybe I’m misinterpreting my feelings!”

“No, I don’t think—”

“He’s certainly handsome enough.” She spoke over me now, her desperation bordering on hysteria. “I need someone like him, Lou—someone who’s kind and caring and good. Why don’t I ever like the good ones? Why?” Her face crumpled, and her hands relaxed around mine. She dropped her chin in defeat. “We need mothers for this kind of shit.”

With a snort, I leaned back on my hands and closed my eyes, savoring the icy bite of snow between my fingers. The moonlight on my cheeks. “Isn’t that the truth.”

We lapsed into silence, each caught in the tempest of our thoughts. Though I’d never admitted it to anyone before this moment, I yearned for my mother. Not the scheming Morgane le Blanc. Not the all-powerful La Dame des Sorcières. Just . . . my mother. The one who’d played with me. Listened to me. Wiped my tears when I’d thought I would die of a broken heart.

When I opened my eyes, I caught her staring at the water once more. “Aunt Josephine says I look like her,” she said, emotion thick in her voice. “That’s why she can’t stand the sight of me.” She tucked her knees to her chest, resting her chin on them. “She hates me.”

I didn’t ask her to clarify between La Voisin or her mother. The pain in her eyes would be there with either.

Sensing silence would comfort her more than words, I didn’t speak. She’d waited a long time for the right moment to tell me this, I realized. Besides—what words could I possibly offer her? The Dames Blanches’ practice of forsaking their children—their sons without magic and their daughters with the wrong kind—was aberrant. No words could ever make it right.