Beldon never did answer Marie-Fey regarding The Black Rabbit's statement. She was wary of bringing it up around the rest of her family because the chances were, if she didn't know, they didn't know. Secrets weren't exactly the family forte – well, depending on the secret.

She was still considering it the following night as she watched Beldon and Zaydan on the terrace below, half in moonlight, half in golden candlelight from the ballroom's open doors.

It was another assembly, though this one without Sophia, who had left on her honeymoon at some ungodly hour that morning, so she didn't have her around to help negotiate the event. That being said, it was another event to negotiate where negotiations had become significantly easier since she'd gained herself a visible husband. Despite the ease of having a 'husband' now, it irked her to no end at the same time.

Said husband had been out on the terraced garden for a good fifteen minutes, talking to Beldon and it was almost amusing how expressive the pair of them were in just their body language alone. She could easily tell when they were amusing each other or annoying each other.

Why they had spent so much of the evening in each other's company, she couldn't say, but she was reminded again of how alike the pair could be – which made them insufferable when together – even from a distance.

She stood in one of the balconies above, arms folded, leaning against the pillar as she watched them, momentarily distracted from the activity around her as she watched Beldon wave a dismissive hand through the air then reach back with a gesture to indicate his own back, hand subtly curling like a curl and she could deduce that he was discussing the scars on his back.

Were they really talking battle wounds?

She rolled her eyes.

If they were trying to out do each other on who was the more scarred up...

Beldon's hand suddenly rose to Zaydan's throat, fingers sliding under the collar to ease the velvet of the cravat and the buttons aside. It was a strangely intimate gesture and Zaydan didn't counter him, just let him look at whatever he was looking at around his neck and collarbone.

Whatever Beldon saw made his eyebrows rise and only then did Zaydan pull away, stepping back out of reach and neatly closing up his collar again.

What was that about?

She straightened up, considering going down there to ask, pursing her lips as Luka stepped out to join them, Beldon gesturing between them then grinning at Luka's obvious sigh of despair, then something behind Marie-Fey made her turn.

The alcove behind her was mostly in shadow and, for just a second, she thought she was seeing on of the ghostly women yet again, but when the woman stepped out into the moonlight, it was just Zaafira and Marie-Fey's shoulders relaxed and she frowned at her.

"What?" she asked as Zaafira stepped forwards, but her annoyance dimmed – slightly – when she noticed how pale Zaafira's skin was. She actually did look almost ghostly in the moonlight.

"Where's Zaydan?" she asked.

Marie-Fey raised an eyebrow at her, then nodded towards the balcony. Zaafira moved over to look down and Marie-Fey only then noticed the letter clutched in her fist.

She debated for a moment, then tilted her head slightly. "Is everything alright?"

"Not exactly," Zaafira said and then, to Marie-Fey's surprise, she held the letter out to her.

Taking it, she paused, glancing at Zaafira, before smoothing it out. She scanned the short neat script and her mild expression slowly turned thunderous.

Her glare lifted to look at Zaafira, opened her mouth and Zaafira cut her off with, "You do understand that language, don't you?"

The question, more like a statement, caught Marie-Fey off guard and Zaafira let out a scoff.

"I knew you could understand us. Those idiots who thought they could say what they wanted just because you couldn't understand them, you kept it hidden. How fluent are you?"

Marie-Fey debated on how to reply for a long moment, then shrugged. "I'm fluent enough," she said honestly, "I've been learning this language since before I got married and moved, and Maanah and Gharam are excellent teachers. I caught on relatively fast."

"How many people know?"

Marie-Fey shrugged again. "I didn't exactly keep it secret. I just don't tell anyone or make it obvious. Maanah and Gharam know, of course, as does Zaydan. Azeeza probably figured it out if she thought about it – though she was quite distressed at the time. Anyone else? Well it was their job to notice."

Zaafira pursed her lips at that, looking away. "Always have the have the upper hand," she muttered.

"Of course, one should strive to stay ahead of the game when every other player on the board is out to fell you." Zaafira glanced at her and Marie-Fey held up the letter. "Now that that secret is out of the way, what the hell is this? Why is my husband calling for you to attend him at the capital and not me?"

"It's not a good thing," Zaafira muttered, looking away again.

"But it is certainly a thing."

"He's called on girls before."

"What? When?"

"Do you remember Alida? You noticed she was missing at the time – it surprised us that you even knew who she was. She vanished during your trip home when you'd been with us for six months. Would you even remember her now?"

"And after twelve months, when I came back from another trip home, Ubah was gone," Marie-Fey muttered, her mind casting back to the girls who had left without warning during her leave of the palace. "I was told they were given as gifts to other men."

Zaafira shook her head. "They don't come back, but it's not because they were given as gifts. Our master does not share such things."

"So... Wait, but why? What happens? Where do they go?"

Zaafira's dark eyes flashed to her then away again. "I don't know," she muttered.

"Helpful," Marie-Fey replied and Zaafira shot her a glare.

"I don't see why I should help you, what help would you give me in return?" she spat and Marie-Fey held up her hands.

"I needn't be any help," Marie-Fey replied, sweeping past, "You're the one who appeared out of the shadows acting so scared without any viable reason. I can't help without more information but I'm also perfectly happy to not help at all." She turned back, tapping the letter against her lips, gaze tilted upwards like she was pondering. "Hmm, I wonder when this letter was sent. It takes long enough to get here. My, I wonder how late you are in answering your master's command? How angry will he be? Ah well, you don't need me to help you, lie or cover for you in some way." She glanced at Zaafira in time to see her turn a shade paler, looking truly ill, before turning away. "Oh, listen to that, another waltz shall be starting soon, will you be requiring my husband, or may I go collect him for this dance?"

"We don't know," Zaafira ground out through her teeth and Marie-Fey turned to look back at her. Zaafira still stood out on the balcony, her fists clenched at her side, trembling. "We don't know exactly what happens... it's not supposed to be us..."

"What does that mean?"

"It's supposed to be—" Zaafira's words cut off as she turned to her fully and looked at Marie-Fey, but the second her black eyes met Marie-Fey's blue, she stopped, the fight seeming to drain out of her. She looked down. "It doesn't matter," she muttered.

"Well it clearly does," Marie-Fey said, folding her arms, absently furling and unfurling her fan. Zaafira watched it, eyes moving with the motion like she was slowly forgetting Marie-Fey was there.

"We can't say..." she finally said, "We don't know... not really... we don't know, never have. I'm not even sure Zaydan really knows but.... but it was never supposed to be me. I'm not a replacement! I didn't work my way up to the highest rank in the palace to be a damn substitute!"

"For what?"

"For whatever he does to those girls who don't come back!" Zaafira snarled and a sound behind them made them back look back as Zaydan appeared. He blinked, pulling up short when he saw their expressions, glancing between them.

"Is... everything alright?"

Marie-Fey didn't answer. She just turned back to Zaafira and tilted her head slightly, holding the letter out to her. "Yes, Zaafira, is everything alright? Do you need help?" she asked coolly.

Zaafira stared at the letter for moment, like Marie-Fey was handing her a snake, then took it and neatly folded it, the vague wildness in her eyes vanishing under her usual calm. "Everything's fine," she said, tucking the letter away, "Marie-Fey was about to come find you for the next dance."

Zaydan looked at Marie-Fey and she promptly held her arm out to him. After a moment, he took it, casting a glance back at Zaafira but she simply waved them off, her expression uninterested as she walked past, seeking her own dance partner for the waltz and leaving both Zaydan and Marie-Fey watching her.

~~~~

Marie-Fey didn't particularly care that Zaafira was being called home with that letter, but she did care when a letter arrived the following day for her and the content left her speechless.

"What... is this?" she said, sat at the breakfast table.

Antoinette glanced up from her meal, Rosalia looking up from her book.

"Are you alright?" Rosalia asked.

It was just the three of them that morning, the men of the family either attending business or meeting with company, while Zaafira, Maanah and Gharam were taking a late morning after the night before.

"No," Marie-Fey said, just staring at the letter.

"May we see?" Antoinette asked, reaching for the letter, but Marie-Fey shook her head, turning it to reveal the language.

"You wouldn't understand it," she replied.

"Well can you read it to us?" Rosalia suggested.

Considering the content of the letter, absolutely not, but she couldn't explain that away easily. So she shot to her feet. "I need to find Zaydan," she said.

"But he's at the Royal Society today," Rosalia said, Antoinette glancing at her. "I thought he wasn't back until dinner."

"Damn it," Marie-Fey muttered, crumpling the letter up. She'd have to send a man to retrieve Zaydan then. Ugh, damn society rules sometimes.

"Well, come along then," Antionette said, neatly dabbing her lips with her napkin and standing up, sending the maid out to collect their outdoor clothing and call the carriage.

"Come along where?" Marie-Fey said, frowning at her.

"To the Royal Society," Antoinette said, gliding out of the room.

Her sisters stared after her for a moment, glanced at each other, then hurried out to where she was setting her hat in place at the exact, precise, tilt.

"We're going all the way over there? I don't want to stand around outside waiting for someone to go get him," Marie-Fey said, "I don't care to be reminded that I can't go inside."

"Can't go in?" Antoinette copied, pulling on her gloves, "There's no magical barrier across those doors. Just small minds and prejudice. They can be passed."

Her sisters gaped at her.

"Wait," Rosalia said, her jaw almost on the floor.

"Wait, wait, wait," Marie-Fey finished, shaking her head and staring at her older sister again, just to make sure this was the eldest Leigh daughter and not some changeling.

But she couldn't be reading between the lines correctly.

Antoinette?

Her Antoinette? The conventional one. The one who did not stray from the path, from rules, regulations, expectancies and stereotype? The one who played the games within society so well because she never did anything that could tarnish her reputation, the model of female perfection as society deemed it...

She was suggesting they simply waltz into the male-dominated halls of the Royal Society where women were forbidden because it was so frowned upon by said society?

... Who the hell was this?!

"Are your jaws going to rehinge or is the snake-at-feeding a new look?" Antoinette asked, planting a fist on her hip and the other two snapped their mouths shut. "Hurry up, none of us have all day to stand around, gawking."

"But... but... I don't understand," Marie-Fey said, scrambling to get herself ready as Antoinette swept away to the doors, Rosalia hurrying to follow them, though more carefully, one hand to her stomach. "Why in the world would you do something so... so... dramatic?!"

"Well, I was informed just the other night that I would be helping someone through the halls of the Royal Society."

"So?! That was about your son!"

"No one said it had to be him, though if that is the path he wishes to take in the future, I shall help him again."

"But people will talk!" Marie-Fey cried as they climbed into the waiting carriage, the footmen carefully helping Rosalia into her seat beside Marie-Fey before folding up the stairs and closing the door. "Your reputation. This is so unlike you, so improper, what will they say?!"

"I don't particularly care what they say," Antoinette said and her sisters' jaws returned to the floor before they looked at each other.

"I don't think that's our big sister," Marie-Fey muttered to Rosalia.

"It can't be our big sister," Rosalia agreed and Antoinette rolled her eyes.

"I don't care what people say," she stressed, "This is not a big enough scandal to knock me down from the pedestal I have built up for myself. Don't you understand why I play the game of society so strictly, adhere so strongly to the rules, build such resilient walls around myself? It's so that when I need to step outside my perfect bubble and do something that would be frowned upon, something that will bring the hammers down on a reputation, my walls are so solid, a crack on the surface shan't bring them crashing down. They shall stay standing, and I can patch the cracks in my own time."

She shrugged, folding her arms, leaning back in her seat.

"We come from a family of rebels. No one seems capable of behaving as they should. When we were little, Mother had those walls. Impossible to break, impossible to crack. She kept her family safe behind them, her reputation dominated anything we could ever do; any fissure that could be formed, she could smooth over. I'm not like her, I'm not effortless, I'm not so unshakeable, my walls aren't as strong, but I have made it so that you lot can stand behind them, as safe as I can make you with your wild ways."

She snorted, rolling her eyes – a sound they weren't sure they'd heard before as Antoinette looked out the window.

"Thank goodness I did. Constantine is uncontrollable. Beldon, don't get me started. Rosalia, you were a nightmare – I mean, who refuses proposal after proposal and then marries a nobody who climbed out a well? And Marie-Fey, you don't have the self-confidence to combat the backlash of a scandal. My god, Val is the only one I can depend on. You lot give me a headache sometimes," she grumbled, pressing her fingers to her forehead.

Marie-Fey and Rosalia blinked at her.

"I didn't know you are the way you are for that," Marie-Fey muttered.

"Well someone had to be."

"Who would you be?" Rosalia asked as the carriage drew to a halt. Antoinette glanced at her as the door was opened as the stairs unfolded. "If you didn't have to be who you are, who would you have wanted to be?"

"I don't know, I never had the chance to be anyone else," Antoinette said, frowning like it was a silly question and Marie-Fey and Rosalia felt each other wince as Antoinette stepped out. Then she looked back at them and smirked. "But I'd probably be the type of person who marches her sisters into the Royal Society because how dare anyone tell the likes of me where I can and cannot go, that sounds an awful lot like a dash of refreshing fun. Now hurry up!"

They scrambled to follow, and Antoinette strode up the steps and was promptly greeted by men who looked even more stunned then her sisters.

"M-Miss Lei—I mean, Mrs—"

Antoinette didn't give the men time to even finish their stammering as she passed them without a glance and the men were too shocked to even address her sisters.

Instead, Antoinette walked straight up the Lord Ringbart, a close friend of her husband, and plastered her most charming smile on her face.

"Charles," she said and Ringbart almost dropped his papers.

"A... Antoinette," he said, staring, "What... what are you doing here?" He then spotted her sisters and all but choked.

"I'm looking for my brother-in-law."

"... Lord Braydon or Lord Zaydan?"

"My, are they both here today? Wonderful, we can stop by to see Braydon after we've found Zaydan. Where is Zaydan?"

"He's... he's upstai— I mean, might I fetch him for you? You could wait outside while I find him. You... Antoinette, you realise you cannot be here," Ringbart said, his voice dropping, and Antoinette's smile just widened.

"We shall find himself ourselves then," she said, walking past and Ringbart caught her arm, his eyes flying back to dart across the members beginning to gather, whispering and muttered, some looking amused or even delighted, most just looking bewildered while others looked downright furious.

"Antoinette, why are you here? Why are you doing this? And bringing your sisters? Their reputations are one thing, but what about yours? You could have had anyone collect Rais. What will your husband think?"

Antoinette just fixed her cool gaze on him, smile unmoving. "I don't think he would have married me if a digression as small as this should bother him," she replied and Ringbart's eyes widened. "You can let go of me now."

Ringbart's hand seemed to loosen without him even realising and she politely bowed her head to him before continuing on, her sisters bowing their heads to him as well as they passed by.

Ringbart stared after them and one of the younger fellows snorted and muttered to a friend, "I told you women would be a great addition to the Society."

"Shut up, what if one of the old bats hear you?" his friend hissed and Ringbart sighed, casting his eyes to the heavens.

Someone cleared his throat to the side, an obvious indication that it was up to him to get the women out of such hallowed halls and he hurried to catch up. Antoinette glanced at him as he fell into step beside her, and he nodded his greeting back to her sisters behind them before holding his arm out to Antoinette.

"I'll show you where he can be found," he said and Antoinette actually grinned at him, hooking her arm through his.

"This is why you remain so close with my husband," she said, and he smiled slightly.

"And this is why you are so well matched for him," he replied, then he laughed. "You two must come around for dinner tonight, I want to tell my wife this story."

"Of course," Antoinette said.

Marie-Fey watched as the pair ahead chatted away, stopping men in their tracks all around them as they walked.

"Do you think you could have done this alone?" Rosalia muttered.

Marie-Fey sighed. "I'd love to say yes, but I'm not sure."

"Neither am I," Rosalia replied.

Marie-Fey raised an eyebrow at her. "But you never seem afraid of anything."