Lottie watched, amused by the shocked faces of her Rosewood friends who’d never seen this talent of Rio’s. The twins’ mouths hung open, eyes sparkling. Even Saskia and Anastacia couldn’t hide their fascination; every person in the audience was enraptured by the lethal display of feminine beauty.
And in the center of her vision were Jamie and Ellie. They were sitting together comfortably, the awkwardness that had curled around them starting to rot away like a dying weed. But there was something more, something between them, a shared emotion while they stared up at the space on the stage where Lottie had once been.
This was a feeling that Lottie had never known before, their own invisible rope that she was not connected to. But now, for the first time, she understood it. That Lottie could never have seen it before felt unreal. The weight of obligations, fears, and pressures had made Aoi Tōyō so vulnerable to the vampire cat. How easy it was to give in to it, to let it take you over. Kou and Liliana must have felt it too, and that is why the tale was so important to them.
Black as tar, oozing and thick, it spread like oil, creeping toward its victims. The creature in the story isn’t just a monster; it is what consumes you. The dark dread that blooms in your chest, heavy and sinking, until it eats you up. Everyone reacts to it in a different way: anger, seclusion, distrust.
Lottie had seen it in Ellie; she’d seen it in Jamie. The creature was obligations, fears, and pressures, the loneliest combination, and it wasn’t only her princess and her Partizan who had been bitten by it.
30
APPLAUSE LIKE A THUNDERSTORM ROARED through the audience as the curtains came down, snapping Lottie out of the Aoi Tōyō spell.
In the story the vampire cat had been killed and the villagers had won, but the real one was still lurking, and she finally knew how to defeat it. Still hidden under the stage, Lottie watched the audience; right at the back of the theater one person stood as still as a statue, not clapping at all. Sayuri Chiba.
Sayuri’s ink-black eyes locked directly on hers through the little crack, her gaze so sharp it made Lottie take a step back, tripping over a box of masks, her tiara slipping sideways.
Lottie tried to right herself. They needed to act now. The only way to solve this mystery was to work together, but to get Sayuri on her side there was one very big thing she needed to do.
It was the first rule of her mantra, the simplest of all. Be kind.
It wasn’t Sayuri whose mind needed changing. She wasn’t some game that Lottie needed to beat. Sayuri was just a girl, as scared and isolated by her responsibilities and worries as any of them were, and the only thing Lottie needed to do was apologize, and she knew exactly how to do it.
Wrapping her robe tight around her, Lottie ran up the steps to backstage to find her bag. Rummaging quickly, she found Lili’s diary and tucked it carefully into the fabric of her Aoi Tōyō robe.
Smiling politely, she made her way to the backstage door. Lottie was so determined, so engrossed in her mission, that she almost went right into Sayuri.
She managed to step neatly out of the way as Lottie came crashing out of the back of the theater into the balmy night to where she was waiting on the dirt steps.
“Sayuri! I’m sorry.” Lottie bowed so low her hair lapped at the ground, the billowing Aoi Tōyō costume draping around her. It was loud outside, a symphony of singing insects and rustling bamboo swaying overhead. “I’m sorry that Ellie and I took our Partizan for granted,” she began steadily. “I’m sorry that we may have brought Leviathan to you, and I’m sorry for all the pressure this has put on you. You have a million things to worry about, and I don’t want to be one of them. So, if you’d like it, I have this for you. It’s Liliana’s diary.” She paused to grab the diary from her robe, holding out the pages, but feeling more like she was holding out her own beating heart. “I think it has the clues to solving Takeshin’s mystery. If you don’t want to team up, I respect that, but I want you to have this.”
She kept her head down, watching the dirt creep up the ends of her tangled curls, tinting the moon-stained gold with a muddy brown. Slowly, like letting a feather float from your palm on the wind, she felt Sayuri remove the diary from her hand.
“Stand up.” Her voice was low, at odds with her dry expression. Lottie did as she was told, acutely aware of the sweat building over her theater makeup. “It was quite a rude awakening to discover you were a Portman. It is never fun to be confronted with the fact you might not know as much as you think.”
Lottie swallowed hard. “I can’t apologize for not revealing my role as Portman,” she said firmly. “But I hope that this diary can make up for any trouble Leviathan have caused you. It was my ancestor’s, and I think, maybe with your knowledge, it’s the key to solving it.”
It hurt, more than she could believe, to give away the diary—but they had to stop Leviathan, and if this is what it
