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Livira presented an elusive target by refusing to engage and instead answering each enquiry with obscure quotations she’d been forced to translate in Master Logaris’s classroom. She felt the story ripple uneasily around these interactions, but at least she wasn’t attempting to behead the host with a ceremonial sword, and she kept her place.

Evar Eventari arrived so fashionably late that he was the last through the doors and would have missed the entrées but for the fact that for so eligible a bachelor Heflin Hosten delayed proceedings with another round of aperitifs. Evar’s main qualification for being the city’s most eligible bachelor was his eye-wateringly large fortune. The fact that he was roguishly handsome added even more weight to this claim among the aristocrats’ daughters. His apparent lack of interest in marriage made little impact on the river of invitations that flowed to the doors of his mansion.

The late arrival barely had time to stamp the rain from his boots before servants began to usher the guests into dinner with a series of gentle coughs and discreet nods, like the world’s most polite beaters urging grouse into the sky for the hunters. Livira watched him go, not allowing herself to get too close for fear of forgetting his fictional status and seeking the reunion so long denied to her. She noted as he went that within the bounds of this particular story, the fact that he was a full-grown canith, dressed to the nines and in one of the richest drawing rooms in King Oanold’s city, didn’t raise a single eyebrow.

Livira’s resolve lasted until the table, at which point she elbowed Meelan into the chair indicated for her, and took his place beside Evar. For now, proximity was enough. Livira focused on the flatware arrayed before her and forced herself to remember that she was here to claim not just this story but the whole book. She could discern the threads of the tale wrapping themselves around her and felt that if she allowed the process to continue long enough, embedding her throughout the story from first line to last, then possibly when she left, she and the book would have so tight a hold upon each other that she would be able to take it with her.

But as she took a firmer and firmer grip upon the story, the issue of who led who became less clear. It seemed that the story would no longer guide her to its proper destination, and that to claim ownership of it she would have to navigate to the same conclusion she’d reached when writing it from within the strangeness of the assistant. An unknown and possibly unguessable conclusion.

Conversation flowed across the gleaming table; courses came, were devoured, and removed. Livira kept her head down, picking at the meal, considering her options.

“Don’t you like crab?” These were the first words Evar had addressed to her. He’d been far from silent before that, however, playing his part in the expected verbal fencing. Perhaps her silence had provoked him, since his conversations with the other young daughters around the table had all been initiated by the other party.

“I like this crab,” Livira said. “And I’m sorry that he found his way to my plate after so many years scuttling beneath the waves.” She lifted one of the crab’s large claws with her fork. The wrong fork for crabs. “Did you know that they come from the Grey Sea? Three hundred miles overland. They can live to be fifty.”

“You don’t approve of eating animals?” The idea seemed to interest Evar. He picked at the last of the meat from one of the claws he’d cracked earlier with a silver device that might have been modelled on something from the torturer’s bench.

“I’m not sure anyone cares about my approval. Certainly not the crab.” She smiled. “I have the luxury of being sentimental about animals and sometimes I choose to exercise it. If I were starving, the crabs would have to watch out just the same as any passing piglet, rat, or crow would have to.”

Evar showed his teeth and huffed his amusement in the way that so amused her. She eyed her right hand and threatened silently to stab it with a crab fork if it wandered towards the canith’s.

“Need,” Evar said, “makes many strange bedfellows. But it can also narrow one’s view until bad choices are all there is to be seen.”

“You don’t like your choices?” Livira swept her gaze across the young women adorning the table, each chafing against a chaperone.

“I wasn’t talking about me.” Evar pushed his plate back.

They continued to talk as the courses marched on into dessert. The Evar that she’d written was more worldly than her own, and came with a sharper edge, but he preserved the original’s other qualities that had so drawn her to him, and it pleased her to know that the attraction he held for her didn’t rest on just the circumstances of his upbringing. She still wanted him as a rich lordling.

At last, the final silver platters were removed and Heflin Hosten stood up to announce that they should retire to the ballroom, where a musical entertainment awaited. Later, once the meal had time to settle, there would be dancing.

Livira accepted the unnecessary offer of Evar’s hand to help her rise from her chair. Several of the unmarried girls around the table stared daggers at her, but these were mild when compared to the looks thrown her way by Dantal Creyan, whose fleshy face had gone so red she wondered if he might be about to sweat blood. Lord Algar’s singular stare was a cold thing and more chilling.

Slowly, amid rustling taffeta, the hiss of silk, and the soft silence of velvet, the guests flowed towards the ballroom. Evar’s hand burned in Livira’s. She knew he wasn’t real, just memories brought to life and embroidered with fiction, but even so, the urge to wrap her arms around him and bury her face in his mane was overwhelming. Though to do so would require a chair to stand on.

Livira’s grip on the story had been growing the whole time, spreading, though to take the book with her, as she hoped, would require the deepest bond. She needed to be woven into the tale, to know it as she had known it when the ink still glistened on the page. The path of the tale seemed obvious. She would, over the course of an evening’s dance, win Evar’s heart anew. He would divine her sadness, cut her suitors with harsh words, or perhaps the back of his hand whilst offering the chance to satisfy their honour on the duelling square like gentlemen. They would marry and in doing so he would save her from the trap of her birth and her father’s wishes. It would be perfect.

Around them the story shivered.

Almost perfect. Livira brought Leetar to a halt before the ballroom doors. Evar walked another pace, their arms stretching between them, hands still holding.

“Serra Leetar?” Evar smiled enquiringly. “Is something amiss?”

“Not perfect at all, really...” Livira frowned, and an echoing frown crossed Evar’s brow.

“Can I help?” Evar stepped back towards her.

“I shouldn’t need you to save me,” Livira said. “She shouldn’t either.”

The story shivered again, colour leaking from the vibrant gowns, the light of many candles growing thinner, somehow brittle.

“Your pardon?” Evar cocked his head. “I don’t follow you, serra, but no, I don’t think you need me to save you, much as I would be honoured by the opportunity.”

Tears prickled at the corners of Livira’s eyes. She squeezed Evar’s large, warm hand with Leetar’s narrow, white one. “Thank you.”

And, so saying, she let his fingers slide from hers, and turned to walk away against the flow of guests. As she let go of Evar’s hand, Livira’s grip on the story re-established itself.

A single servant pursued her: Twila, a young maid Leetar had known and liked since childhood. Twila caught up with her in the entrance hall.