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“Mademoiselle Vyatka?” Francesca’s eyebrows climbed all the way to her hairline. Gabriel’s hand shook with suppressed laughter on Juliette’s knee. Thierry made himself scarce.

“I was just wondering since when is it customary in your culture to accuse the victim? Surely, it must be your lengthy presence in France that is influencing your otherwise impeccable Argentinian lineage? Aren't the French supposedto be rude and the South American soulful and kind and caring? I’ve forgotten, truth be told, with representatives of both countries falling over themselves to prove to me all their negative traits.”

Juliette bit her lip in the effort to hold back a smile and then had to suck it entirely in her mouth as it screamed in agony and blood dripped again from the new split.

Damn. And yet…

Francesca was in the wrong, and Juliette was about to tell her so, but that warmth in her chest, right under her fourth rib on her left side… Surely that must be gratitude, and comfort, due to being protected.

Her mind screeched to a halt at the wordprotected, because what the hell was she thinking? Wasn’t she just a few minutes ago blaming this very woman for her fall in the first place?

Gabriel’s words about Katarina being with him the entire time must’ve gotten to her after all. Alternatively—and that was another thing Juliette would have to consider when she had time to untangle her thoughts—she wanted Katarina to not be the one out to injure her.

Granted, that meant someone else must have been, or perhaps it was just a silly accident. Francesca was right. How many people walked around Palais Garnier icing some limb or another? Pretty much every other one. Dancers tended to baby their bodies all the time.

Francesca finally stopped sputtering, and Gabriel, probably guessing that she was about to launch into one of her tantrums, was off the floor and guiding her out the door in a matter of seconds.

“Coffee, coffee is in order, Cesca. Let’s give your precious Étoile a few minutes to rest before Thierry sends her either to the hospital or home, and then we will return to the rehearsal, right?” His cajoling and not-so-gentle pushing andpulling worked, and soon enough their raised voices could be heard in the corridor becoming less shrill and then disappearing altogether.

In the room’s quiet, Juliette could hear her own heart beating, harder and louder than the occasion warranted. Surely this wasn’t even an occasion at all. So what if Katarina was sitting down, unlike Gabriel, on the edge of the treatment cot, clearly much more concerned with her own comfort and glutes than he was?

Oh my God, please, please stop thinking about her glutes!

It was too late, and if memory served—and it did serve quite well—Katarina had herself a pair of spectacular ones?—

“I’m sorry.”

The words were so unexpected they stopped Juliette’s line of absolutely inappropriate thought dead.

“Now I’m even more confused.”

Katarina lifted an eyebrow, and jealousy at such prowess fleetingly crossed Juliette’s mind again.

“I’m sorry you fell.”

Fell? Into… what? Oh God… Oh, of course.

Juliette almost slapped herself over the forehead. She really must be concussed, because her thoughts kept diverting to decidedly silly directions.

When Juliette finally got a firmer grip on her wayward mind, she shrugged. Did she actually believe for a second Katarina had come to confess? That earlier pang of wishful thinking that it be anyone but her returned. Along with it the dreaded feeling of wretched betrayal.

“Yes, this is why I am sorry. Because, once the rush dissipates, you’ll feel it.”

Juliette stopped worrying at her lip and finally looked into the shielded eyes. They were impassive as always, but after a fewweeks of being around this woman, Juliette thought she could see something flicker in them.

“How do you know what I’m feeling?” She had to ask. She had to know for sure.

“Because I felt the same way. My second year as prima, I sprained my ankle as the result of a similar attempt at sabotage. Bolshoi is a meritocracy, to a certain extent, and ‘you are who you know’ to a much larger one. I did not fit in with the latter crowd. And my parents were dead traitors, orenemies of the state, as the government had them designated, so I had my share of ice on stairs, liquefied soap in my water bottle, glass in pointe shoes. And every time it happened, I felt wretched. Betrayal has an acrid taste, Juliette.”

Katarina spoke slowly, her usual cadence on full display, yet Juliette’s mind was absolutely unable to catch up, so many questions and thoughts getting jumbled up like a bowl of yarn. She must’ve pulled on the wrong strand, because she went from wanting to ask about Katarina’s parents to suddenly being completely tangled up in the sound of her own name falling from that perfect mouth.

Perfect mouth? If this wasn’t proof that she was indeed concussed.

Either Katarina read the sheer level of foolishness on Juliette’s face—and if anyone would, it would absolutely be this woman, as she seemed to read Juliette like a child’s ABCs—or she remembered that she hated Juliette and stood up abruptly.

“I hope Thierry is thorough in his assessment.”

With that, she was gone, the damn orange blossom the only proof that Katarina had even been in the room. Well, orange blossom and the few pieces of information Juliette now had tucked away like drying flowers in her book. She’d open it and examine them properly when the time was right, and she was not as breathless from Katarina Vyatka perfectly pronouncingevery single letter in her name, as if she had been saying it for years.