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Huge thank you to @yellowbullet100 for beta-reading this chapter not once, not twice, but about three times in various stages of drafting to make sure it was perfect. Thank you to the @mlbigbang2024 team for organizing and collaborating. Truly a pleasure to be a part of something so fun.

Chapter Four: On the Subject of Components Even a young witch is familiar with the three rules of magic that govern all spellwork: intention, ritual, and flourish. However, this author would impress upon the importance of a true first step that many experienced witches complete by instinct rather than by conscious learning and thus forget to impart its necessity to the next generation. The true first step in any spell is to choose the components most appropriate to the task.

Historically, witches have turned to nature to capture the secrets of her transformative cycles, which are conducted with little grace or glamor. For this reason, water from turbulent rivers and violent oceans, plants grown in hidden valleys and on wild mountaintops, and valuable metals and gems from the muddiest banks to the darkest depths of the earth feature in many spells. For most magic, however, a witch need not look further than their own garden, for the flowers that have been domesticated for their beauty will amplify a witch’s intentions more powerfully than any expensive component or lately fashionable sigil.

Marinette leaned against the flour-dusted counter and absentmindedly swirled her finger through the pale motes. Her streaks through the flour started simply, with circles representing thick rings with lines drawing away that looped into the garrottes she had seen around the throats of both Adrien and his cousin. The circles would mean nothing to anyone else, but they were all that was on Marinette’s mind that morning.

Her doodles slowly increased in complexity as her mind turned over what she knew of Adrien’s struggles. She doodled an S-curve, mirroring the figure of his mother and a sharp pair of lines in the shape of a T, like the stiff, straight-backed figures of both his father and cousin. She doodled a cat, though she could not say how the cat figured into the problem. She doodled the long, thin loops of a peacock’s tail.

Though it was arrogant of her, Marinette imagined that if she could only get her hands on that brooch, perhaps she could fix what the jeweler could not. She had the advantage of knowing who had cast the curse, and she had an idea of what it was. Nothing detailed, but she knew that it allowed Madame Agreste a measure of control over her son and nephew. She knew what its physical manifestation was. Would that alone be enough?

Of course she would be foolish to attempt it. She might even make it worse in a way that hurt Adrien further. The jeweler himself had said that he could not fix it without knowing the truth of how it had been broken. If Madame Agreste refused to explain the curse, then there was nothing that Marinette could do, certainly.

Unless she could convince Adrien to tell her everything that he knew, perhaps she could figure out the magic from there…

Marinette was so lost in her daydreaming that she did not hear the bell on the shop door. She was not even aware she had a customer until there was a sudden cough that startled her so much that she jumped into the air and stumbled backwards into a stack of bread baskets that came tumbling down over her head. Thankfully, they were empty, but just because she had made a less disastrous mess did not lessen the injury.

Ruefully, Marinette rubbed her head, still tender from her fall the night before, and asked, “How can I help you?” But as she looked up at her customer, a new shock slammed into her chest as certainly as if she had been struck and she flung her arms out to either side in search of support, only to knock over a small stalk of bowls that had been set aside for washing.

Lady Kagami Tsurugi stood before her, dressed in a sleek black fur wrap around her shoulders, and wholly unfazed by the clattering of dishes. Beneath Kagami’s fur wrap was a dress of cranberry red velvet, far too formal for shopping in the market. Marinette wondered if someone like Kagami had any clothes appropriate for shopping in the market, or if that was a task wholly delegated to household staff.

Marinette struggled for both breath and words. “Lady Tsurugi—I mean Miss Tsurugi—I mean—Kagami—What can I—I mean, I am sorry about last night, I—”

Kagami held up a hand and Marinette clamped her mouth shut as certainly as if Kagami’s hand were a spell cast to silence her.

“You are not the one who needs to apologize,” Kagami said. “And Adrien made many profuse apologies last evening. I am, however, not quite prepared to accept them until I have some answers of my own. And for that—well—” Kagami’s cold and stern exterior faltered for a moment as she bit down on her lower lip. “Marinette, I am sorry to ask, but I should like your help.”

Marinette blinked. “My help? But—why me? I mean—I would think I’m the last person you want after… after…” But Marinette could not put words to the kiss she and Adrien had shared. Mistletoe had not even entered her absentminded doodles, for to put such a moment back into reality—a kiss with a boy who was meant to propose to another woman—seemed too scandalous to address. Even now, Marinette’s cheeks burned hot with the memory. It was easier to think of his mother’s terrible curse, whatever it may be, than it was to consider her kiss with Adrien.

Kagami glanced down at her hands, clasped neatly at her waist. “I have been turning over what Adrien has said about being unable to call on me for tea or an afternoon visit. He refused to explain clearly what he meant by this, so I have decided to call on him. Whatever he is hiding, or whatever excuses will be offered, will perhaps give me some clarity on his own motivations for marrying me.”

“I—I am afraid I don’t know much more than you already know,” Marinette said, even as she wiped away her drawing of a peacock tail with a sweep of her hand. “I believe he wants to follow through with his mother’s request that he marry you.”

“And yet he flaunts his parents’ wishes in a myriad of other ways. I refuse to marry a man of such inconsistency. Either he will explain himself, or I will refuse his suit on the grounds of his behavior last evening.”

The blood drained from Marinette’s face. While her behavior last night had certainly not been wholly appropriate, for she had been well aware of Adrien’s intentions to propose to Kagami, neither had it been entirely untoward. It had been a public event; mistletoe had been involved. However, if it became known that she was the reason such a high society marriage falled to come to pass…

“Please don’t say anything,” Marinette begged. “I don’t know how I can help you, but I’ll do whatever I can.”

“I should like you to accompany me while I call on him.”

Marinette blinked. “Me? But why?”

“He has demonstrated a measure of honesty with you, has he not? Perhaps you will elicit something from him that I otherwise could not. And, besides, it would be untoward of me to visit him alone and I—well, there is no one else I know to ask to accompany me.”

Kagami’s pale cheeks bloomed with blush as she confessed this, and all fear Marinette felt about the scandals that might erupt in the wake of last night’s dancing and single kiss melted when presented with this plain truth: Lady Kagami Tsurugi had no friends. The best companion she could think of was a girl who was a threat to her intended marriage.

“I’d be happy to accompany you,” Marinette assured her. She patted her pocket to make sure her seeing stone was still where she had left it. Perhaps she could find answers that Kagami might not be able to otherwise. “I’ll help however I can. But—well—” she eyed Kagami’s velvet dress and fur wrap once more. “—I am not entirely sure that I have anything appropriate to wear.”

❖❖❖

Though it was not much later that Marinette, dressed in one of Kagami’s fine gowns and matching bonnet, slipped into a carriage beside Kagami, the sun was already at its zenith. The short winter days slipped by so suddenly that Marinette wondered if they would even arrive in time for an afternoon tea, and certainly doubted they would be welcomed when they showed up unannounced.

These things did not seem to concern Kagami, however, who kept her eyes on the carriage window, watching the shops turn into rolling hills and copses of whitebeams. Marinette’s eyes were on the carriage itself. She had never ridden in one before, and couldn’t imagine she would have much opportunity to do so again.

“Er—” Marinette fidgeted with the hem of her sleeve. “Lady Ts—I mean, Kagami—I know you think that even if they say that Adrien is not receiving visitors, you’ll be able to learn something about why he isn’t available to call on you, but I—well, you’ll still have to introduce me, won’t you?”

“You shall be my cousin, of course,” Kagami said. “We look similar enough that no one would think twice.”

The sleeve Marinette kept fussing with really was only a half-inch too long. She was not all that much smaller than Kagami, and they shared a similar hair color, though Marinette felt Kagami’s features were far sharper than her own flat and soft face.

“And, well—your mother, does she know you’re doing this? You said she would lock you in your rooms after your outing last night.”

“She did. And then she went to town on business. There are other ways out of the house, other ways of convincing the staff to get what I want.”

“I see.” Marinette tried to swallow down the nerves crawling up her throat, but they refused to subside.

Kagami did not strike her as the sort of person who took no for an answer. She would push back against whatever excuses Adrien offered to avoid seeing her, and Marinette was inevitably going to suffer through a very uncomfortable tea with the Agrestes and Kagami. Marinette also had a habit of talking herself into trouble. She wondered how long she could sit at the same table as Madame Agreste without mentioning the brooch or implying she knew about Adrien’s curse.

As the carriage rounded the edge of a small wood, the Agreste family home came into view. Its grounds stretched out across flat green mounds, cut through with gravel paths whose edges were decorated by a variety of flowers, blooming despite the cold weather. Butterflies, white and plain, flitted from bloom to bloom in the pale sunshine. Marinette’s first assumption was illusion magic, but a quick peek through Alya’s seeing stone showed her that these flowers were as real as the carriage bumping along beneath her. Madame Agreste must be managing some powerful spellwork to keep her garden in such a state year-round.

Once they had pulled into the walk, Kagami’s footman helped Marinette and Kagami out of the carriage. The girls climbed up the small steps that led to the large, stark black front doors. Kagami lifted the knocker, but a doorman did not immediately answer.

“Perhaps they’re not receiving today?” Marinette asked.

“They should still have a doorman to take messages.” Kagami’s brow furrowed ever so slightly. She lifted her hand towards the knocker again, but before she grabbed it, there was a sudden creak and they were greeted by none other than Madame Agreste.

Marinette was surprised at first that the lady of the home would answer her own door. But as Marinette took a closer look at the woman, it occurred to her that this was not Madame Agreste at all.

Her pale blonde hair was pulled up into a stately knot, and her dress was appropriately fashionable, though perhaps understated in its darker color. But most striking was the soft and airy posture this woman carried. Whereas Madame Agreste had appeared confident and poised in a way that diminished her husband, this woman appeared soft and perhaps even inviting, if she had not been framed by such an imposing threshold.

“Madame Fathom,” Marinette said, and curtsied.

Amélie Fathom looked pleased to be correctly addressed. She smiled, and her green eyes, identical to her sister’s, softened.

“Madame Fathom,” Kagami hastily offered her own curtsy, “may I introduce you to my cousin, Marinette Dupain-Cheng?”

“A pleasure,” Madame Fathom inclined her head. “Please, come in.”

She stepped aside to allow the girls entry into the grand hall. It was all Marinette could do to stop herself from bending over backwards to get a better look at the high ceilings, the intricate chandelier, and the gold leaf on the ceiling tiles. She’d certainly been in homes this nice, serving her parents’ baked goods at parties, but she’d never entered from the front before.

“I was hoping I might be able to visit with Adrien Agreste,” Kagami said, as Madame Fathom led them down the hall.

“I’m afraid Adrien is unavailable this afternoon,” Madame Fathom said. “I’m so sorry that you came all this way for nothing. But I’ll be happy to let you know that he called.”

She opened the door to the drawing room and led them inside. A gentleman who had been seated in an armchair stood, but just as Marinette curtsied to greet him, her eyes were drawn to a large portrait hanging over the fireplace mantle.

She was caught not by the beauty of the portrait—though its expertise was clear—but rather by how strikingly familiar it was. The coy purse of Madame Agreste’s lips as she gazed down at the viewer was identical to the condescending smile she had exhibited in the marketplace. Her husband’s hand on Adrien’s shoulder seemed to bear the same weight it had in the jeweler's shop. Adrien, however, looked remarkably different, with a soft smile and gentle green eyes that seemed unbothered by the looming figures of his parents behind him.

Of course Adrien looked different in the portrait than he had in the marketplace; the boy in the marketplace had been Adrien’s cousin.

Kagami coughed meaningfully and Marinette turned her attention back to the gentleman that Madame Fathom was introducing them to.

He was as tall as Monsieur Agreste, but nearly three times as wide. His dark suit jacket was unbuttoned, revealing an off-white waistcoat beneath. His thick mustache framed a pair of thin lips; despite its fullness, the hair on his head was thin and wispy.

“... and Mademoiselle Tsurugi, you’ve met my husband, Colt Fathom,” Madame Fathom said.

Marinette immediately recalled Adrien’s comment about his uncle “Folt Fathom,” and hastily covered a laugh with a cough and hasty curtsy. And as all eyes were now on her, she scrambled for something to say.

“Madame—” Marinette cleared her throat. “Madame et Monsieur Fathom, it is a pleasure to meet you.”

“Monsieur Fathom,” Kagami said, “this is my cousin, Mademoiselle Dupain-Cheng.”

Monsieur Fathom smiled a bit too widely and he replied a bit too loudly, “Any family of the Tsurugis is family of ours.” His tongue turned over the shape of each word thickly and his American accent cut through the conversation with the delicacy of a pickaxe.

Madame Fathom’s voice was so much softer that Marinette felt she had to strain to hear it again in the wake of her husband’s words. “Not family yet,” she murmured.

Then, with a shrewd glint in otherwise gentle eyes, Madam Fathom said, “It is a shame, Mademoiselle Dupain-Cheng, that we were not able to make your acquaintance at any of Madame Tsurugi’s dinners this past month.”

As Marinette scrambled for some sort of lie and excuse for her absence, Kagami filled one in for her.

“She’s only lately arrived. I thought perhaps I could introduce her to Adrien. I know you said he was unavailable, but when he and I parted last night, he asked me to call on him this afternoon.”

This lie rolled off of Kagami’s tongue as smoothly and unadorned as the first one had, but it was not so readily accepted by Colt Fathom, nor by his wife. The two exchanged an uneasy glance, though it was brief and smoothed over quickly.

“You must have misunderstood,” Monsieur Fathom said, but offered no further explanation. Whatever knowledge Kagami had hoped to uncover in their excuses fell short.

“Perhaps I may speak with Monsieur et Madame Agreste,” Kagami pressed. “Mother should like to arrange another dinner between our families.”

“I’m sure Madame Agreste would agree,” Madame Fathom said. “But unfortunately my sister and her husband are in town at the moment and will not return until later this evening.”

“Then I am afraid we have wasted a trip,” Kagami said. “I apologize for disturbing your afternoon. I only—” She hesitated, as if unsure about the appropriate nature of her request. But though Marinette had not known Kagami for very long, she did not know Kagami to hesitate. Something about this hesitation rang as false as anything else Kagami had said so far. “I only wish to know that Adrien is well. We were out so late last night. I am worried that perhaps the cold did him harm.”

If Marinette were to guess why this lie failed when the others had been so well-received, she would place the blame on Kagami’s attempts to appear worried. It did not suit her face any better than the smile had last night. Expressions worked through her like ripples across a pond. They were temporary, and disturbed what was otherwise a beautiful glass surface. There was little in them that appeared truly earnest, regardless of however earnestly they may have been felt.

Despite Madame Fathom’s raised eyebrows, clearly arched with both surprise and disbelief, she smiled.

“If you are so insistent,” Madame Fathom murmured, “I shall go and check if he will see you. Please,” and she gestured to a sofa where Marinette and Kagami could take a seat.

The girls acquiesced, and Monsieur Fathom dropped into his seat again as his wife left the room.

Marinette waited patiently for Monsieur Fathom to offer some sort of innocuous conversation, like inquiring after Lady Tsurugi’s health, or offering to host a dinner in return, but he merely tapped his fingers against his knee and stared at the door his wife had disappeared through.

Since their host was not offering conversation, Marinette tried to make some of her own. “You have a lovely home.”

“My wife’s family’s,” Monsieur Fathom replied. It was only barely an answer, and offered no conversation. Perhaps Marinette should not have been surprised; his son had been no better conversationalist when he had come sweeping into her bakery.

“Your staff,” Kagami began, “are they—I mean, they’re quite good at remaining unnoticed.”

Marinette was rather impressed that Kagami had found a polite way to inquire as to why the house was so poorly staffed. Though, perhaps Madame Agreste or Madame Fathom might have heard the rude core of the question, Monsieur Fathom did not seem so bothered.

“We keep enough on hand.” he said, “For the last five years or so, the Agrestes have kept a limited staff. Keeps costs down, you know.”

“Spoken like a true American businessman,” Kagami said, politely glossing over what would have otherwise been a rude acknowledgement of hard financial times. “Monsieur Fathom has business in America,” she explained to Marinette, “though he would have to remind me of the nature of it.”

“Oil and horses,” he replied with a grunt.

When he did not elaborate further, Marinette tried again. “And your family… bears a crest with a pair of songbirds, is that right?”

“Mockingbirds,” Monsieur Fathom replied. “Natives of my home country. I had some imported for my wife.”

“Madame Fathom likes birds, then?” Marinette asked.

“Women enjoy music, don’t they? Mockingbirds make excellent music.”

Marinette could not imagine a husband more disinterested in his wife. Not malicious, she thought, just fully indifferent. But his eyes were steady on the door she had disappeared through. If it wasn’t affectionate longing that held his gaze, then she wondered what he was so worried about.

“Is your son at home today?” Marinette asked.

Monsieur Fathom’s brow furrowed as he looked Marinette over. She did her best to keep her face as blank as possible, though she did not think Monsieur Fathom particularly difficult to deceive.

“Félix should be around somewhere,” he answered, but he was unable to elaborate as the doors to the parlor opened once more.

Kagami and Marinette stood as Madame Fathom returned with Adrien in tow.

At least, Marinette thought it was Adrien. She found it impossible to tell for sure. Kagami curtsied politely and Marinette only inclined her head when Kagami nudged her. She was too focused on trying to determine if this was Adrien or his cousin to remember her manners.

His hands were folded behind his back, but even if she could see them, she doubted the cat scratch would still be there.

“Monsieur Agreste,” Kagami said softly, “it is a pleasure to see you looking well after last night.”

“Likewise,” he replied, voice flat.

“This is my cousin, Mademoiselle Dupain-Cheng.”

If the Fathoms heard the unusual emphasis on cousin, they did not acknowledge it, and if Adrien was surprised by the introduction, he did not show it.

“A pleasure,” he said, without a smile.

“I was just telling your uncle how lovely your home is,” Marinette said.

“My sister and I grew up on these grounds,” Madame Fathom answered. “She and I have continued to manage the estate since our parents passed.”

“Oh, are the charms in the garden yours or hers? The flowers are lovely, despite the weather.”

This, of all things, earned a smile from Madame Fathom. “We both maintain the gardens. Are you familiar with magic?”

“I’ve some experience with charms and potions, but—”

“Adrien, why don’t you show our guests to the greenhouse? Surely it would interest Mademoiselle Dupain-Cheng. I’d take you myself, but I feel a bit of a headache coming on.”

Adrien examined Marinette like he was seeing her for the first time. There was a criticality to his gaze she had not seen last night. “It would be my pleasure,” he finally said, though pleasure was not the word Marinette would use to describe his tone of voice.

Monsieur Fathom stood. “A walk in the greenhouse sounds appropriate. Allow me to chaperone.”

“I’m sure Mademoiselle Tsurugi’s cousin is chaperone enough,” Madame Fathom murmured as she sat down in a chair.

“But there’s no need to risk any mischief, is there?” Monsieur Fathom replied with a single raised eyebrow at Adrien.

Adrien’s smile looked no more at home on his face than Kagami’s worry had on hers.

“None at all,” he replied.

Kagami and Marinette followed Adrien out onto the grounds. He stared anxiously at the cold yellow sun, midway through its descent, before taking them down the path to the greenhouse. Monsieur Fathom followed behind, a dutiful if annoying chaperone. But Marinette could not truly complain; her own father would have behaved no better.

Adrien cast an irritated glance over his shoulder as they reached the greenhouse. Though he hid the frown from his uncle, Marinette caught a glimpse of his annoyance—and promptly forgot it as he pulled open the greenhouse doors.

It was warmer in here than it had been in the house. Green climbed the walls and transformed the sunlight from a pale, distant thing into something warm and living. Marinette took in a deep breath and was rewarded with a symphony of scents, a variety of sweet and floral. She’d never seen a garden so varied and colorful before. She saw everything from blooms of bright yellow hazel to twisting magnolia trees. The sound of running water and birdsong suggested this greenhouse held even more secrets further in. She could not help but imagine what it must be like to be a witch and have access to such a store of materials. She would be able to create anything she could dream of in a place like this.

“I’m grateful you were able to see us,” Kagami said as they walked. “I was worried after—after what you said last night.”

Adrien did not reply immediately, but instead led them through the greenery until they arrived at a standing table and shelves stocked with jars of seeds, petals, leaves, and all sorts of potions and gardening supplies alike.

He glanced over his shoulder at Colt Fathom, hovering near a cluster of yellow roses, and with a disgruntled huff, reached for a small pair of shears. He motioned for Kagami and Marinette to follow him.

A little further down the path, Adrien stopped at a cluster of pale lavender blooms, petals long and thin, with deep purple crawling out from its center like a spreading bruise. It was not the flower, beautiful as it was, that helped Marinette identify it, but rather the lettuce-like leaves and the strong scent of citrus.

Adrien clipped a stem of lemon geranium blooms from the plant and, with a particular precision, pruned the stem so it bore a single blossom.

“I apologize for what I said last night. You have to understand, I’m not exactly myself in the evenings.”

He handed the stem with a single flower to Kagami. It was a polite apology, if not particularly earnest, but Kagami accepted it and the flower.

Marinette, however, frowned. Had he not said last night that he preferred long winter evenings? She didn’t understand why he would change his mind now. But before Marinette could find a way to phrase her question without alerting Monsieur Fathom that this was not her first meeting with Adrien as Kagami had implied in the parlor, he pressed a bloom of lemon geranium into her hands as well—except this one had three lavender flowers clustered together instead of the single bloom Kagami had just received.

She thanked him, though she thought the gift a bit rude. If he was apologizing to his intended fiancée for kissing another girl, it seemed foolish to give the other girl a larger bloom of flowers.

But Kagami did not seem so bothered. She smiled, tucked the flower into her dress, and wandered to a corner of the greenhouse with a large sycamore tree, whose canopy created a cool shade over a collection of flowers crowded around its roots. Kagami, however, ignored these flowers, and reached up for one of the low branches of the tree. Though it was late in the year, the warmth kept the sycamore seedpods clinging to the branches. Kagami reached for a small bunch of the winged pods and pulled them down. She handed them to Félix.

“If you are so different in the evenings, it is a pleasure to get the chance to see you during the day.”

Adrien accepted the bunch of sycamore with a wry smile.

As he led them back the way they had come, a small gray songbird flitted across their path and right into a bush of yellow roses.

“Are those the mockingbirds your uncle imported?” Marinette asked.

“They like to make their home in these roses. He brought both the birds and the flowers over straight from his ranch in America.” He used his sheers to pluck a single yellow rose, which he handed to Kagami. He then clipped a bunch of purple catchfly flowers from their bush and proceeded to arrange a small bouquet.

“It’s a shame we’ve never taken tea together before,” Kagami said, “if daytime is your preferred hour.”

Adrien plucked a cluster of pale pink heath blooms and baby blue harebells. “My mother is particularly careful with my schedule.”

As Adrien worked, Marinette tried to make sense of the strange composition. He was clearly being intentional with his choices, scanning the garden for particular flowers. But she could see no order to the yellows, pinks, and blues he pulled into his hand.

But as he reached for the heart-shaped flowers of a winter cherry—an unusual choice for any bouquet, particularly when he had access to such a variety of unseasonal spring blooms—realization struck Marinette. This was not a bouquet, and the flowers he had given to her and Kagami were not an apology at all. He was sending a message.

Marinette’s grandmother had drilled the language of flowers into her, for any witch worth her salt had to know the meanings of a plant before she could work with them. Not only did different plants have different properties for potions in the same way medicines could be crafted, intention mattered. A flower with a name and a purpose given to it by many was far more effective than any herb or spice might be on its own, regardless of the caster’s intentions.

She had a reference pamphlet at home, but even if it was on hand, Marinette did not know how she would have browsed it without Monsieur Fathom seeing her.

She fidgeted with the lemon geranium in her hand and tried to remember what it meant. There was something to do with the scent, unusual, for the plant itself brought forth no lemons. Something to do with surprise—an unexpected meeting.

Marinette counted the blooms on her stalk once more. Three unexpected meetings. Kagami had received only one.

This was an introduction. This boy was not Adrien at all.

So the Fathoms and the Agrestes agreed on the deceit. Adrien’s cousin pretended to be Adrien when either of them needed it, it seemed. She wondered where Adrien really was. She wondered if Adrien’s cousin ever got to be himself, or if he always had to be Adrien.

Marinette considered the three blooms in her hand. One for the rude boy in the bakery, one for the boy who was not Adrien in the jeweler’s shop, and one for today. Three meetings with the Fathom cousin—Félix, his father had called him. She wished she could turn his name over in her mouth, but she did not dare with Monsieur Fathom still in earshot.

She understood now why he had accepted the bunch of sycamore pods from Kagami. Sycamores symbolized curiosity. Kagami had understood immediately what the lemon geraniums meant and had asked him to explain himself.

Marinette took a closer look at the bouquet he now presented to Kagami.

He had placed the yellow rose in the middle. Roses themselves were a language all their own, but Marinette did not think she needed to draw on the nuance of roses to understand this message. He had chosen it not because it was a rose, but because, as he had explained to the girls without prompting, it was from Colt Fathom’s original home. It identified him as the son of Colt Fathom rather than the Agrestes.

And, just in case Marinette was unsure if she had inferred that right, he had paired the rose with the two winter cherries, still wrapped in their brilliant red heart-shaped buds. Deception, the bouquet said.

Surrounding the rose and cherries were the bunches of purple catchfly, as well as two individual stalks of heath with pink blooms along the stems. Each was matched with a blue harebell. Marinette interpreted these readily, for the names and appearance largely matched their meaning, and the numbers he had so carefully provided helped.

The catchfly surrounding the rose indicated a snare. He was trapped. The two stalks of heath and harebell for him and his cousin each—alone and submissive. He added a cluster of meadowsweet at the base of the bouquet and tied it with a rough string. Marinette had to rack her brain to recall the meaning of meadowsweet before remembering that its meaning mattered little to her work—uselessness.

She had her answer, then. Félix did not get to be himself in this performance very often, if at all.

Kagami accepted the bouquet with verbal gratitude, but the thank you on her lips was not mirrored in her eyes. Instead she stared intently at the bell-shaped blooms of heath and ran her fingers along the leafy stems. Marinette recalled the half-finished painting she had seen in the Tsurugis’ parlor on the night she had first met Adrien: a vase of irises, on a bed of heath—a message, detailing how painfully alone the artist felt.

“If your mother is so strict with your schedule,” Kagami said slowly, and lifted her eyes to the rest of the garden, searching hard for a particular flower to respond with, “would she make an exception for us today? Perhaps my companion and I might even stay for dinner.”

Kagami found what she was looking for. She plucked a single bloom of white chrysanthemum and added it to a large glass vase.

Truth.

Félix smiled.

“If she allows you to stay,” he said, and reached for a stalk of pimpernel, which he added to the vase, “I will have to change.”

Marinette did not need his verbal cue to remember what pimpernel meant. As a symbol of change, it was vital to any transformative work she performed, and it was a clever insight into the questions Marinette had been asking herself all morning. This game of impersonation was one played because of a change. If Marinette had to guess, this curse the cousins suffered under had something to do with a change in form. Perhaps Alya’s concerns about monstrousness had not been too far-fetched.

As Adrien’s cousin reached for a bloom of cinquefoil, Marinette asked, “If your aunt and uncle are visiting, would your cousin join us for dinner? I should like to meet him.”

“I am afraid Félix is unavailable this evening,” he replied, choosing the exact same words Madame Fathom had used to try to put Kagami off from seeing Adrien. Marinette wondered how many times their families had used that excuse, which was no excuse at all. “And after the… events last evening, I think my mother would be reluctant to risk repeating it.”

“Surely she wants us to spend more time together,” Kagami offered as Félix added a yellow lily and a peacock flower to this bouquet.

He handed the completed bouquet to Marinette.

The pimpernel was wrapped in the vibrant red peacock flower. The single yellow lily, representing falsehood, was intertwined with a cluster of cinquefoil, which symbolized maternal affection. The small bouquet had been tied off with a thin black ribbon.

Marinette understood at once. He was trying to tell her about the peacock brooch and who had cast this transformative curse. He had seen her magic at the bakery, and he had been there when she had learned about the peacock brooch. This bouquet was a plea for help.

She remembered Adrien’s stilted request at the Midnight Market. He had told her last night that he had sought her out. Had it also been to ask for her help against this curse?

Félix turned back to Kagami and said, “I do believe my mother is rather… eager for our engagement.”

And now that Marinette knew the truth of who he was and had the confirmation of what she had suspected bundled together in her hands, she heard the way “mother” fell from his lips with a measure of distaste. She was neither his mother nor even particularly motherly.

Marinette sat down on a nearby bench with her bouquet. She reached for the spidery yellow flower growing on a bush to her right and handed it to Félix.

Hazel, for reconciliation. How do I fix it?

He was quick with his reply. An American linden for matrimony, a white clover for a promise, and a white geranium for deceit.

It was just as Adrien had said and as Marinette had believed. Madame Agreste had promised to break the curse when Adrien married, but Félix believed as Marinette did: this promise was a lie.

Félix placed this plain and pale third bouquet in a small vase. He frowned at it like it was the thing that had cast the curse in the first place.

As Kagami pulled the geranium out from the vase and replaced it with the sycamore bunch she had earlier gifted to Félix, a small black cat leapt up onto Marinette’s lap.

“I was wondering where you might be hiding,” she murmured, and was surprised by how readily the cat nuzzled its head into her palm. The last time she had seen this cat, it had been knocking potions and charms off of her stand. Affectionate was not a word that she associated with it.

Kagami had paired her earlier curiosity with this new message of a promise to marry and, as if she was concerned her question might be misunderstood, asked, “And are you as eager as your mother is for you to marry?”

“Why shouldn’t I be?” But he added a cluster of bright red snapdragons to the otherwise dull bouquet. A certain refusal.

He was not engaged, not set to marry like his cousin. But then he removed the sycamore, the question, from the bouquet and pulled down from one of the shelves a bottle of ambrosia’s pollen. He smeared the pale yellow dust over a pod of the sycamore plant and slid it towards her.

Perhaps he had avoided picking the flower of ambrosia itself because it was notorious for its pollen, much like ragweed. Or perhaps he was merely too shy to ask so forwardly if Kagami was truly in love with Adrien.

Kagami, likewise, scanned the shelves above the table until she found a jar of mustard seed. She placed the bottle into his hands, to indicate that she was entirely indifferent towards the affair.

“Your behavior last night,” she murmured, “would indicate that you are not so interested.”

Félix raised an eyebrow. He picked up the shears once again and began another bouquet. First, he reached for the purple and pink paper-like flowers of clarkia. Marinette, as she stroked the cat lying across her lap, repressed a small smile. Clarkia was a lovely plant with a very specific meaning: The variety of your conversation delights me. He was complimenting Kagami’s intelligence.

“You’ll have to excuse what I did last night,” he murmured. “As I said, I’m not myself in the evenings.”

But he wasn’t finished with his bouquet just yet. He reached for purple lilac as well—burgeoning affections—and finished the small bouquet off with a single bloom of jonquil, white with a center marked by yellow trumpets. Loud not in sound but in demand: I desire a return of affection.

Marinette covered her mouth to shroud a small gasp. She had found Adrien’s request of a kiss underneath the mistletoe rather forward. This bouquet was similarly quite a choice for a girl that Félix had just met, particularly with hardly a true word spoken between them.

Kagami picked up the white chrysanthemum she had handed to him earlier and tucked it through the buttonhole of his jacket. It was not a yes or no response. It was merely a request for honesty. “So you did,” she murmured.

The cat in Marinette’s lap yawned and stretched his paws over her knees. His claws dug into the fine pink silk and Marinette’s heart began to race. “No, no, no—” she muttered and tried to pry him off of her without damaging the borrowed dress, the most expensive thing she had handled in her entire life. “You cannot—”

As she wrestled with the tiny claws, the seeing stone tucked into her pocket clattered to the floor. The cat leaped after it, but Marinette snatched it back before the cat could bat it away. He meowed up at her longingly.

“It’s not for cats,” she said, half-laughing, and held it up to frame the black cat’s green eyes and soft ears perfectly in the center of the stone.

Her breath caught in her throat as she caught sight of thin black thread fastened around the cat’s neck.

Does it show you my collar?

“I suppose my companion and I should take leave of you shortly,” Kagami said, but Marinette hardly heard her. Her mind was on the stone in her hand and the thread around the cat’s throat.

She quickly glanced over her shoulder to where Monsieur Fathom stood, but he was too busy checking the time on his pocket watch to see her. So as quickly as she could, Marinette passed her stone over Félix and the cat—they both bore the same black thread looped around their throats. The thread, taut and firm but as thin as any fine spider’s web, disappeared somewhere beyond the greenhouse, but Marinette could guess that both threads ended on a single wedding band.

Félix glanced up at the sky which had turned from gray to orange in the time that they had been here. “I would be sad to see you go so soon.”

“And I would be sad to leave you so soon,” Kagami answered.

Marinette jumped to her feet, heart still racing. “P-perhaps—perhaps it’s for the best we take our leave.”

Félix and Kagami turned to look at her, both mildly surprised by the breathlessness in her voice. But she did not know how she could be anything less than breathless when the cat at her feet was winding his way between her ankles.

Last night, Adrien Agreste had kissed her. This afternoon, he had sat in her lap. And now, he meowed up at her and nuzzled her ankle. It took all of Marinette’s restraint not to launch him across the greenhouse.

Félix, however, seemed to have no such restraint. His eyes alighted on the cat, and he dove for the creature. The cat leapt out of his reach and disappeared into the twisting vines of a butterfly pea plant.

“Cheeky thing,” he huffed. His eyes darted back to Colt Fathom—his father—lingering near the doors of the greenhouse. He was perhaps far enough away that truths could be whispered, but it was hard to know how words would echo in this glass room.

With a heavy sigh, he murmured, “My apologies for the cat’s behavior, Mademoiselle. It was a pleasure to have you both,” he said. “And as sorry as I am to say goodbye, I’m afraid it can’t be helped. I hope my aunt’s suggestion to tour the gardens was as enlightening as you would have liked.”

Marinette swallowed and opened her fist to show him the seeing stone in her palm. “Very much so,” she said.

He raised his eyebrows at her. Much like she did not think Kagami smiled regularly, she did not think Félix was impressed very often.

As they returned to the house, their small party still led by Colt Fathom, Marinette watched a black cat’s tail dart between bushes of hyacinths. Colt Fathom’s comment about risking mischief came back to her and she wondered just how many risks Adrien regularly took for the sake of mischief. It seemed like running away in the middle of a dinner party to attend a different party in town was just one more bit of mischief for Adrien Agreste. Today’s adventure of sneaking into the greenhouse and getting quite cozy with a girl he hardly knew must be another.

Perhaps she was foolish for thinking there was any real affection in Adrien. Maybe he just saw her as another way to rebel against his mother, and he’d readily leave her for any other girl who was not Kagami. There was no sense in assuming that this meant something to him, in assuming that she meant something to him.

And that was fine, she told herself. It wasn’t as if he meant anything to her. They’d merely shared a kiss under mistletoe, a very common tradition. There did not need to be anything romantic in it.

But the heat in her cheeks and her stomach suggested it was not as unromantic as she would have liked to pretend.

Once they reached the house, Marinette was startled to see a second carriage pulled up to the front door. A footman held the door open as Monsieur Agreste helped his wife down from the carriage steps.

Marinette’s heart caught in her throat. After her exchange with Félix, she felt as if she were looking at Madame Agreste through seeing stone. No longer was Madame Agreste merely an imposing lady, with an air of condescension and genteel breeding. She was an exceptionally powerful and gifted witch, who not only maintained charms across a large estate but could also perform phenomenal transformative magic and was willing to curse her own son and nephew. Marinette had to imagine that Madame Agreste had her reasons for what she had done, but she did not believe they would be good enough to excuse her choices.

Madame Agreste’s dainty gold and silver embroidered shoes settled into the gravel walk, then disappeared behind the skirts of her floor-length dress. Beneath a white fur coat, the pale green silk of her gown was embroidered with trumpeting lilies, and her matching green eyes surveyed her brother-in-law and the young people behind him with something like mild curiosity.

“Welcome back!” Fathom’s loud voice boomed across the grounds. “Mademoiselle Tsurugi was just visiting with Adrien.”

If Marinette did not already know that it was Félix who walked with them, her suspicion would have been aroused by the strange emphasis on Adrien’s name.

Kagami curtsied once they reached the Agrestes, and Marinette belatedly did likewise. Madame Agreste nodded, but her eyes drifted to the bouquets in the young ladies’ hands just as Marinette’s eyes drifted to the small, black, octagonal jewelry box tucked under Monsieur Agreste’s arm.

“You visited the greenhouse,” Madame Agreste said, voice flat like it was an accusation rather than an inquiry.

“It was Aunt Amélie’s suggestion,” Félix replied, in a mirrored tone. Their smiles, too, were equally cold. Félix and Adrien were the spitting images of their mothers, but it seemed like Félix’s temperament was far more equivalent to his aunt’s than his own mother’s.

“Was it? How thoughtful of her.”

As Madame Agreste turned that cold smile onto the flowers in the girls’ hands, Marinette tried to casually hide her flowers behind her back, but Kagami took no such precautions.

“Madame Agreste,” Kagami said as she stepped forward, “may I introduce my cousin, Marinette Dupain-Cheng?”

Marinette’s stomach twisted into a knot as both Madame and Monsieur Agreste looked down at her, but she curtsied appropriately.

Madame Agreste eyed Marinette with the same shrewd gaze that her sister had. “You are Mademoiselle Tsurugi’s cousin?”

“Y-yes,” she said, but she wondered how much they really believed her. They had already seen her in the jeweler’s shop, and she had not been dressed half as well at the time. Again, her gaze drifted to the jewelry box, but she was not sure how to ask about its contents—or more specifically if the brooch had been repaired or not—without raising the Agrestes’ suspicion.

Monsieur Agreste tucked the jewelry box beneath his coat, out of sight from Marinette. “We didn’t see you at dinner last night.”

Marinette had no way to warn Kagami that her lie she had delivered to Madame Fathom would not work here, not when she had seen the Agrestes in town days before Lady Tsurugi’s dinner. Kagami opened her mouth—but Félix spoke first.

“She had a headache yesterday evening,” Félix said, “but Mademoiselle Tsurugi thought she would introduce us today instead of waiting for another dinner to be scheduled.”

Madame Agreste glanced at Félix with a very clear and specific tilt of her head, and Félix obediently pressed his lips together. It did not take Monsieur Agreste’s hand on his shoulder to remind him of his place, not when a glance from his aunt who had cursed him would do.

Then Madame Agreste turned her gaze back on Marinette and, almost absentmindedly, reached out and plucked the bloom of lemon geranium from Marinette’s dress. “I should like to hear from you, Mademoiselle, exactly how you have become acquainted with my son.”

Marinette saw no point in lying about their encounter in the jewelry shop, since the Agrestes had been present at the time. “I believe your son dropped his handkerchief in the street and I returned it to him.” She hoped no one else noticed the shakiness in her voice, but she could not help how intimidating she found Madame Agreste. “Or at least—I thought he had. It turned out not to be his.”

“Is that all?” Madame Agreste asked. She eyed the three lavender blooms on the stalk of lemon geranium, and Marinette knew with certainty that Madame Agreste had understood Félix’s coded message.

Marinette swallowed and cast a nervous glance at Félix, unsure if she should confess to their very first meeting in her family’s bakery. She found his impassive, cool exterior colored with tension. He bore the same stiffness in his shoulders and the tightness in his jaw that she’d witnessed in the jewelry shop. And in his eyes she thought she saw panic—or perhaps she was just projecting her own fear.

“That’s all,” Marinette said.

Madame Agreste’s turned to Félix and waited, as if he might spill the truth just by her expression. But when he volunteered nothing, she asked, “Tell me the truth, dear. How do you know this young lady?”

“I saw her for the first time when you did,” Félix lied smoothly, “in the jeweler’s shop.”

The smile poised on Madame Agreste’s lips curled into something akin to a sneer, but nothing so dramatic as to be outwardly impolite. But before she could press, Kagami interrupted.

“Madame Agreste,” Kagami finally ventured, “on behalf of my mother and I, might I extend an invitation to tea tomorrow afternoon?”

Madame Agreste did not look at Kagami. Instead, she pinched the stem of one of the lemon geranium flowers between the nails of her thumb and forefinger, piercing the soft green flesh until the flower fell to the ground between her and Marinette. Then she tucked the damaged flower back into Marinette’s dress with the same delicate care Marinette’s own mother might have taken, but Marinette knew enough to doubt that there was any real affection in the gesture.

“Perhaps” Kagami continued, “with all of us there, new arrangements relating to the engagement celebrations could be made.”

“I’m afraid Adrien is unavail—”

“I’d be happy to accept such an invitation,” Félix interrupted.

Madame Agreste eyed Félix with a measure of mistrust and murmured, “That’s certainly a change.”

“It’s what you want, isn’t it? An obedient son?”

Madame Agreste laughed and Monsieur Agreste cleared his throat loudly as if he could undo Félix’s words.

Colt Fathom clamped a hand down on Félix’s shoulder, and Félix became just as still beneath his own father’s hand as he had beneath his uncle’s.

“That’s enough of that,” Monsieur Fathom murmured.

Marinette tightened her hands around the bouquet behind her back. She did not like the way that the Agrestes made her feel small and unworthy, but she loathed the way they treated their nephew, and the way his own father treated him. Though she had never seen Adrien in the company of his parents before, she could only guess by the way Adrien spoke of them that he gained no better treatment by virtue of being their son.

She opened her mouth, not entirely sure what words were going to come out, but determined to make some show of support for Félix and Adrien, to demand the Agrestes and Fathoms end whatever game they were playing, but before Marinette could get more than an intake of breath to fuel her indignation, the doors of the house opened.

“Emilie, you’re back!” Madame Fathom smiled down at them, but Marinette struggled to tell if Madame Fathom was genuinely pleased to see her sister or not. Marinette wasn’t sure she believed any of the smiles in this house. “I thought I heard the horses, but when no one came inside I began to wonder if I’d imagined it.”

Madame Fathom descended the steps to greet her sister with a kiss on each cheek. “Was your trip successful?”

Madame Agreste’s smile was thin. “Unfortunately, we’ll have to seek out another solution.”

The disappointment on Madame Fathom’s face, at least, appeared genuine. But it dissolved into another smile as she turned to look at the girls and Félix. Félix, under his mother’s gaze, shook his father’s hand from his shoulder.

“Darling, I came to find you because I thought perhaps you had lost track of time. Safest to be inside before dark, you know.”

“I’m aware,” Félix replied in a tight voice, eyes sliding to the horizon, where the sun was already beginning to slip behind the hills in the west. “We’d have been in earlier if Mother had not accosted us.”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” Madame Agreste scoffed. “We were simply getting to know Mademoiselle Tsurugi’s cousin.”

Marinette could not help but wonder if Madame Agreste avoided using her name to emphasize the lie or because she had already forgotten what Marinette’s name was.

“And it has been a pleasure to make your acquaintance,” Marinette replied, careful to keep all semblance of pleasure from her tone. As intimidating as she had found the Agrestes, she’d also found an unusual bit of courage in the knowledge that the brooch remained broken. It meant that, no matter how rude she or Félix or Kagami were to Madame Agreste, there was truly nothing worse that the woman could do to her son and nephew. Her promise to break the curse could not be fulfilled, and so what was the point in playing nice?

For that moment, at least, she understood Adrien’s unwavering pursuit of mischief.

“Well,” Madame Fathom interrupted, in a tone fully ignorant of the coldness between Marinette and Madame Agreste, “at least it looks as if you had a pleasant trip to the greenhouse. Oh, and is that a rose?” She brushed her hand against the yellow flower in the center of Kagami’s bouquet. “Don’t tell me you’ve proposed already.”

“Idiocy has never suited you, Amélie,” Madame Agreste interrupted, rather brusquely for all her careful control earlier.

“I’ve no idea what you mean,” Madame Fathom replied with a coy smile. But no witch powerful enough and knowledgeable enough to maintain the grounds of this estate so that they bloomed out of season would mistake the meaning of the bouquet in Kagami’s hands.

Madame Fathom squeezed Félix’s hand, and Marinette saw no stiffness nor flinching as Félix met his mother’s eyes. “Best to say your goodbyes, darling,” she said. “I think we ought to retire for the evening.” Her eyes drifted first to her sister and then to the shape of the jewelry box beneath her brother-in-law’s coat. “It seems there’s plenty for us to discuss.”

Félix bowed stiffly to the girls. “I enjoyed our conversation today,” he said. “And I am sorry we can’t continue it.”

“Tomorrow,” Kagami said, “you’ll come to tea.”

“I think,” Madame Agreste said, “that tea tomorrow afternoon sounds like a perfect opportunity to finalize our arrangements.”

Madame Fathom’s pleasant smile vanished, and her brow furrowed; she made no attempt at concealment as she turned away from the guests and to her sister. “Emilie,” she hissed, “you promised. You promised you would not use him—”

“And what was today about then, dear? I heard it was your suggestion that they visit the greenhouse.”

Madame Fathom did not flinch. She merely said again, “You made a promise,” and held her sister’s gaze.

Madame Agreste frowned, but relented in a way that surprised Marinette. “Oh, very well, then.” She kissed her sister’s cheek and said, “Dinner tomorrow instead. We’ll host, as payment in return for your mother’s lovely parties.” She inclined her head to Kagami and Marinette, and disappeared inside, followed close behind by her husband.

Monsieur Fathom, too, ascended the steps to the door, but waited in the doorway for his wife and Félix.

“W-wait—” Marinette stammered, as Madame Fathom took her son’s hand.

The two did wait, but they both cast an anxious glance at the setting sun.

“I—” Marinette was not entirely sure how to phrase her question. She twisted her hands around her bouquet, still hidden behind her back. “The brooch—what will you do now?”

If Madame Fathom was surprised Marinette knew enough to ask about the brooch, she did not show it. In fact, rather the opposite, she looked pleased, as if sending Marinette to the greenhouse with Félix had gone exactly as she had hoped. “Our best, I suppose. There is not much more anyone can do.”

“But—I just—I want to help.”

Madame Fathom’s smile was gentle, genuine, and motherly in all the same ways her sister’s had been cold and calculated. “That’s kind of you. But I don’t see my sister’s pride allowing anyone else to help her fix that brooch.” She tugged on Félix’s hand. “Come inside, quickly, darling.”

Marinette swallowed. “I can try,” she insisted. “I want to try.”

But the imposing doors of the manor shuttered behind Madame Fathom and Félix, and Marinette was left at the bottom of the stairs alone with Kagami.

“I think I learned everything I needed to know,” Kagami murmured, and fiddled with the white and yellow jonquil trumpets. “Though I imagine you’ll be able to answer a few of my lingering questions.”

Marinette was not so sure she could tell Kagami everything that Kagami would want to know, but between her encounters with both Adrien and Félix before last evening, and what she had seen in the seeing stone, there was plenty she could explain to Kagami. And, perhaps in talking it out, she’d be able to make better sense of it herself.

The sun finally disappeared behind the hills at the end of its hasty winter descent. The driver lit the lanterns on the carriage as the twilight descended around them. Marinette followed Kagami into the carriage, but she had no more interest in the painted ceilings above her nor in the well-kept grounds around her. Instead, she fidgeted with the peacock flower in her own bouquet, and considered how she might use what she knew to break Adrien and Félix free of Madame Agreste’s curse. It wasn’t much, but surely she could try.

The carriage jostled slightly as the horses began the trot down the drive. A shout, distant and muffled by the sound of the carriage creaking along the gravel path, just barely reached Marinette’s ears.

She glanced out the window, wondering for a moment if she had imagined it. She saw nothing in the dimming light except the shadow of the manor against a quickly darkening sky.

But then she heard it quite plainly.

“Wait! Mademoiselle—Marinette!”

The driver did not stop, but as Marinette and Kagami stuck their heads out the window to see what was happening, they caught sight of a figure hurrying after them. He was moving quickly, and did not have trouble catching up to the horses’ trot.

“Félix?” Kagami asked, as he came within the light of the carriage’s lanterns.

But Marinette’s heart leapt into her throat. As the figure reached the carriage, he pulled himself onto the step used to climb inside and held onto the window’s frame, even as the carriage continued moving at speed.

Marinette reached out and plucked a bloom of hyacinth from his hair. “Adrien,” she said, staring up at him in shock.

He grinned, but as the carriage wheel went over a particularly large stone in the path, his grin and his grip faltered. Marinette and Kagami each reached out through the window and caught him before he could tumble into the dirt.

Once he had steadied himself, he asked, “Did you mean it?”

Marinette only blinked at him. “What?”

“Did you mean what you said to my aunt—that you want to help?”

“O-of course I did.”

The words were hardly out of Marinette’s mouth before Adrien kissed her.

It was not like the kiss they had exchanged last night beneath the mistletoe. There was no delicacy, no caution. It was as careless and reckless as a kiss exchanged on the outside of a moving carriage ought to be. Despite Marinette’s initial shock, she found herself caught up in it. Distantly, she heard Kagami offer to at least open the door and let him in, but her thoughts were focused more on the way Adrien’s hand slid into hers than she was on any practical response to this moment.

And as Adrien pulled away, she tightened her grip on his hand.

“Wait—”

But he only gave her that same confident, mischievous grin he had sported during their dance last evening. “I trust you.”

He pulled his hand away, leaving his ring behind in her palm, and promptly vanished into the night.

Marinette practically fell out of the window trying to see where he had gone, trying to make sure he was okay, but there was no sign of him on the path.

Only distantly, in the middle of the road behind them, could she make out the vague shape of a cat picking itself up, shaking the dirt off of its fur, and turning back to the manor.

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