Downstairs, Thad found me almost immediately. He moved through crowds easily, older than most of the first-years and aware of the effect that had. He kissed Sophia’s cheek, laughed when Anya accused him of dressing like a trust fund in human form, and greeted Katherine politely enough that no one could call it dismissive. Then his hand found mine.
“Dance with me,” he said.
I glanced at Katherine. She was looking at the bar.
“I’ll be right back,” I said.
Katherine lifted one shoulder. “Go.”
So I went.
The dance floor was crowded and warm, bodies moving beneath blue and violet light. Thad pulled me against him with easy confidence, one hand at my waist, the other sliding over my back as the music thickened around us. He smelled like cologne, champagne, and rain-damp wool. When he leaned down to kiss me, people around us looked and then looked away, smiling because Céline Martin and Thad Rodriguez made sense as a picture.
With Thad, I became more believable. Not loved more deeply, perhaps, but placed more securely. He anchored the performance in a future that other people understood. His hand on my waist said she belongs in this world. His family name beside mine made the lie feel less like theft and more like destiny.
I danced with him because I wanted that. I danced with him because Katherine was watching and because part of me, uglier than I wanted to face, needed her to see that I had been chosen by someone she wanted first.
I did not hear what she said to Sophia and Anya. Not then. I learned it much later. They told me in pieces, never all at once. Sophia was first, careful and pale over coffee in our dorm kitchen. Then Anya, angrier, less polished, because secrets made her itch.
That night, while Thad’s hands were on my waist and I was laughing into his mouth beneath the lights, Katherine stood near the bar with Sophia and Anya and watched me like I had done something unforgivable by being happy without asking for her permission first.
“She’s not really my cousin,” Katherine said.
Sophia turned toward her slowly. “What?”
Anya, who had been stirring a drink with the tiny plastic straw like she wanted to murder it, looked up.
Katherine did not look at either of them. She kept her eyes on the dance floor.
“Céline,” she said. “That’s not even her name.”
Sophia went still. Anya stopped stirring.
According to Sophia, Katherine said it calmly at first, almost academically, as if she were correcting a misconception in class. My real name was Selena Martin. My mother worked for the Montgomerys. We lived in the staff cottage on the estate. The cousin story had been invented years ago so I could attend Bellamont Academy without everyone knowing I was the housekeeper’s daughter.
“She’s not who she says she is,” Katherine said.
The sentence should have ended me. It didn’t. Because Sophia Kwon had looked at Katherine Montgomery with all the cold, polished judgment generations of wealth had trained into her bones and asked, “And why are you telling us this now?”
Katherine finally looked away from me then. “I thought you should know.”
“No, you didn’t.” Anya laughed once, not kindly.
Katherine’s face tightened. Sophia’s voice stayed calm.
“Did Céline hurt someone?”
Katherine’s mouth parted. “No.”
“Did she steal from us?”
Katherine flinched slightly, though none of them understood why at the time.
“No.”
“Did she lie because she wanted to be cruel to us?”
Katherine’s eyes shone with something too complicated to call simple anger.
