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jademoon2u · 5 months ago

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A Young WIthc's Guide to Cats, Curses, and Courtship

It's the ball chapter~ thank you @yellowbullet100 for beta reading, @mlbigbang2024 for hosting, and @jademoon2u for some absolutely stunning art for this chapter!!!!!!! It's such a treat; you're going to love it when you get to it.

Chapter Three: On the Subject of Courtship A young witch, by virtue of being new to their craft, may find themselves entranced by crafting love potions and charms. However, any practice in this particular craft will quickly teach its futility. Intention is the root of any witch’s work, and an intention to compel a particular person’s will—particularly that of another witch—quickly delves into the dangerous and highly inhospitable realm of curses.

Courtship itself is not unique to the society of witches, however the author would advise a young witch to consider the following three rules when in pursuit of a companion: 1. Choose a partner of equal station, who can understand your craft even if they may not practice it. 2. Treat the courtship like you would any ritual, investing both time and appropriate components into your engagement so that it may thrive alongside your practice. 3. Never, under any circumstances, use magic to aid your pursuit and thus risk involving yourself in the fraught relationship between love and curses.

Marinette triple-checked the label before adding orange zest to the sugar mixture. She had brought a small collection of magical potions with her to Lady Tsurugi’s party tonight, and was being extra careful to avoid mixing potions and pastries. She wasn’t entirely sure what she was going to do with her elixirs, but if there was something magical in Adrien Agreste’s—or whoever he was—ring, then she was going to find out what it was, particularly if it was some sort of curse that kept him bound against his will.

First, however, she needed to finish these pastries by the time dessert went upstairs. She used the spoon to wind the amber syrup around the wooden dowel until it cooled into a tight coil. Then, without breaking the cooled sugar, she slid the spiral off of her dowel and onto a tart. It wasn’t a particularly demanding task, but it was tedious, and Marinette was not the best at focusing on a single task, something her grandmother had frequently chided her for, for how could a witch with split intentions cast any coherent spell? And indeed, if any of Marinette’s spells failed, she usually found the issue somewhere in her initial intentions.

At this moment in particular, Marinette’s intentions were split between perfecting the spirals in front of her, eavesdropping on the organized chaos of the kitchen finishing up dinner behind her, and undoing the curse she had glimpsed around her young man’s throat.

Marinette slid a spiral of sugar off of her dowel and onto one of the orange tarts while debating with herself how risky it would be to wait all night by his carriage to see him before he left. She was so fully immersed in figuring out how she might meet him while also avoiding his parents that she was fully caught off guard when she turned back to her hot saucepan and found a completely different young man leaning against the cookstove. She was so startled that she nearly threw the spoon at him, but she caught herself just in time.

“L-Luka! What are you—I mean—Hello.” She searched the kitchen for a place to run, but there wasn’t exactly an excuse to leave her sugar and saucepan unattended on the stove. It wasn’t even that she particularly disliked Luka; there was just so much discomfort between them. Her words got mixed up well enough on their own; stringing them together when her anxiety spiked was a near impossible task. “I—I wasn’t expecting to see you.”

His mouth tugged up into a small smile, mildly amused by her panic. “I won’t stay long,” he promised. “I’m meant to set up upstairs in a moment.” He tugged on the cuffs of his jacket, an unconscious habit whenever he wore his finer clothes, a habit that had always made Marinette’s heart stutter. She enjoyed seeing him feel out of place, unsteady. She liked glimpsing the limits of his unflappable nature.

“Music?” she asked, and realized as the words left her lips it was hardly a question on its own. “I mean—you’re playing?”

“Just a bit of violin during dinner. Something to keep conversation comfortable. Lady Tsurugi absolutely put her foot down about dancing tonight, so I’ll be out of here after dessert is served. But I’m playing at the dance in town tonight. You are coming, aren’t you?”

Marinette found it easier to talk if she focused on wrapping the sugar around the dowel and did not look at Luka. “I can’t—all of this… You know. I’m busy.”

“You’ll be finished before I am. Just wait for a little bit and I’ll walk you there.” When she didn’t look at him, he added with an exasperated sigh, “As your friend, Marinette, I promise. I won’t even ask you for a dance if you don’t want to.”

She stuck her tongue between her teeth as she carefully slid the cooled sugar off of the dowel, intent on keeping it from cracking. “I have some projects I need to finish up—”

“Marinette, you are going to work yourself to death.”

“I can die working hard or I can die starving—”

“Not everything’s a crisis.”

“—and I don’t need you to tell me how to live my life—”

“I don’t think it’s wrong of me to care about your health.”

“I’m fine!”

The sugar beneath Marinette’s hands cracked, and she threw the broken spiral back into the saucepan in frustration. This was the worst part of her fights with Luka. Her temper rose and her face grew hot and his—he was still standing there, leaning against the stove like a man concerned with nothing more than a slight change in the wind.

She’d seen him angry only once, after the third time she had gotten caught up in a project and accidentally broken a promise to meet him. It wasn’t a hot anger, like hers. It was cold and certain, and it was not the sort that made room for forgiveness.

None of the kitchen staff paused their work as Marinette’s anger burst; they continued to move around Marinette and Luka as they prepared their dishes for the evening and delivered food and plates upstairs, but Marinette knew all eyes and ears were turned in their direction.

She swallowed down her frustration and repeated in a low voice, “I’m fine, really.”

“Then don’t wait for me if you don’t want to, but you should go, Marinette. Won’t Alya and Nino be there?” He straightened and tugged on the sleeves of his dark green dinner jacket once more. The cuffs were just an inch too short. He must have gotten taller since the last season, she thought, and wondered if she should offer to let the sleeves out for him. He’d probably just scold her for taking on another project.

But it did remind her of another dark green coat that she’d seen in the Midnight Market.

“Wait—Luka—” But as her words so often did when she looked at him, they got caught in her throat.

He raised his eyebrows and she wished he would look away so she could gather her thoughts.

“I only—you know a lot of the nobility, don’t you?”

“Not personally,” he said with an amused smile.

“I mean, but—you know who they are.”

“More or less.”

She dug the handkerchief out of her dress pocket and handed it to him, then quickly turned back to her syrup, not only so it would not burn, but so that she could carry on this conversation without stumbling over her words. “Do you know who that belongs to?”

Luka ran his thumb over the family crest as he inspected the pair of birds. “It’s no wonder you don’t recognize it. It’s not a real coat-of-arms; just the Fathoms’ design they’ve been trying to pass off as a crest for the last couple decades. But I couldn’t say who this belongs to, exactly. They aren’t particularly social.”

“Are they here tonight?”

“Possibly, if the Agrestes are.”

Marinette froze, spoon mid-syrup drizzle. Her neat, thin coil turned into a thick ring of syrup around her dowel and dripped heavy drops back into the saucepan. “They’re close with the Agrestes?”

“Madame Agreste and Madame Fathom are sisters. Identical twins, actually.”

The word “twins” slammed into Marinette like a carriage running at full speed. The possibility that her young man and his mercurial attitude could in fact be two young men struck her with such certainty that she knew it had to be true. While it didn’t account for everything—like the distinct handkerchiefs, for twins would surely be from the same family—it did account for other things, like the scratch that came and went, or the misunderstandings in their conversations. But perhaps the most pressing concern remained unaddressed: what was the strange black thread around her young man’s throat? And was that shared between them as well?

“Where did you get this handkerchief, anyway? You’re not courting a gentleman, are you?”

“No!”

Once again, all eyes and ears of the staff attuned to hers and Luka’s conversation, and Marinette struggled to regain a hold of herself.

“No, he just—he dropped it in the market—I only thought—I meant to return it if he was here, but I didn’t know—I don’t know his name.”

“I’m sure he has a dozen just like it.” Luka handed the handkerchief back to her.

She shoved it into her pocket and tried her best to salvage what she could of her sloppy spiral. It didn’t look particularly promising. “I’m sure you’re right.”

“I usually am.”

Marinette blew a big fat raspberry at him, and he laughed. She had to admit, as much as she enjoyed Luka’s discomfort and wished he would get properly angry, she enjoyed his laughter the most. It was so hard to consider the truth that Luka was still made of all of the things she had liked about him, as much as they were both made of all the things that had driven them apart.

“I’ll see you later tonight,” he said, as if it was already decided that she would attend the dance that evening.

She pursed her lips. “I will think about it.”

“Maybe think less. You get lost in your own head too much, Marinette.”

But as Luka squeezed her shoulder and made his way upstairs, Marinette was already turning her thoughts back to her plan to return the handkerchief. It was possible the Fathoms were not even here, and if they were as reclusive as Luka suggested, perhaps she would merely have to hope she got lucky in the marketplace again. She knew that Madame Agreste would have to return to the jeweler for that brooch. Would one of the identical young men join her? And how was she to tell which was which?

She decided to, at the very least, just determine if the Fathoms were present at this dinner. She couldn’t ask the staff, at least not directly, so she would have to figure it out another way. While she finished the tarts by placing a delicate jasmine blossom inside each coil of orange sugar, she formulated a plan.

Once her role in the tart preparation was finished, she packed up her box of supplies and said her goodbyes to the household staff. But as she stepped out onto the grounds, she did not make her way home, not yet.

Marinette, though she had a penchant for clumsiness and got lost easily, had a surprisingly high spatial awareness. She was good at understanding how things fit together, which was an essential skill in her work tinkering and repairing, so it did not take her long to figure out which of the windows on the second floor led to the dining room of the house. With one hand, she hiked up her skirt and apron, and with the other, dug her nails into the mortar between bricks. She hauled herself up rather slowly, careful to catch her boots in the gaps between the stones rather than on the hem of her dress. The rough bricks pierced her palms like upturned pincushions, but she didn’t let it stop her.

As she reached the window, she managed to find a steady grip on the ledge of the window and an outcropping of brickwork to place her feet against. She could hear Luka’s violin, muffled through the glass, and the low murmur of conversation. Cautiously, she peered into the room.

The dining room was lit by chandeliers above and candelabras on the table. Winter greenery filled the hall, and about two dozen guests were gathered around the table as Marinette’s dessert tarts were placed in front of them. Marinette squinted at the high-backed chairs in her line of sight, searching for that familiar golden-blonde hair. It occurred to her that even if she did see the boy she was looking for, she would have no way of knowing if he was an Agreste or a Fathom. There would be no way to discern a scratch on his hand from this distance, and even then, it had likely healed by now.

She did not see him through the window, so she carefully edged her way around the column of bricks to the window on the other side. Perhaps he was at the other end of the table and she might be afforded a clearer view if she—

Her foot slipped. She reached out desperately and managed to grab the window ledge, which arrested her fall, but her grip was tenuous at best. She kicked her feet against the wall, searching for purchase, and let out a sigh of relief when her boots found a crevice to wedge themselves into. She carefully hauled herself up and realized that her near-fall had loosened the glass pane a fraction of an inch. Luka’s song came through more vibrantly, and the conversation more clearly.

She strained her ears, but it was hard to discern her young man’s voice in the conversation. He had always spoken so softly, in each of his moods, that she wasn’t sure how to listen for his gentle tones amid a group of voices. She searched again for that crown of gold and—yes, there it was, at the end of the table next to a young woman with dark hair like hers, dressed in a fine red gown. Marinette didn’t need to see the candlelight glint off the large silver ring, embossed with that same bold strokes that marked the household’s cabinets to know that this girl must be the daughter of Lady Tsurugi.

Her heart stuttered and her stomach twisted as her young man smiled politely at the lady by his side. Then he turned his head, his eyes found hers, and her stomach and heart alike dropped from her body.

And then all of her dropped.

She grasped for the window again, but the shutter slid open and out of her grasp. She fell into the grass below, which was at least some cushion to her fall, though not one she would have chosen if given other options. Her head throbbed and her lungs spasmed fruitlessly for a moment. She blinked at the stars above her, trying to clear the flares of white that burst through her vision. Distantly she heard her young man’s voice through the now open window, “The air’s a little stale in here; I think I’d like to take a short walk on the grounds before we continue the evening.”

Marinette pushed herself up, ignoring the way the world spun around her. She needed to go, now.

“May I join you?” a feminine voice replied.

Marinette did not wait to hear the response. She hurriedly gathered her box back in her arms and limped to the gravel road that led up to the entrance of the house. She had to leave, and quickly. She considered dropping the handkerchief for him to find, but decided it was better to disappear altogether and let him think he had imagined her.

But she could not move very quickly. Her chest was still trying to get its rhythm back, and with her thin breaths she was hardly capable of taking off in a sprint. Her head, too, throbbed with each step. She winced and rubbed her neck, afraid to brush her fingers against her scalp itself. She would surely have a lump in the morning.

Marinette was only about halfway to the gates of the grounds when she heard a voice hiss, “Mademoiselle, wait!”

She did not wait. If anything, she tried to move faster. The voice had not called particularly loudly, and it made it easy to ignore.

But, despite her rapid steps and breaths brought on by fresh panic, the voice grew closer.

“Mademoiselle, please!” His footsteps were hurried, almost like he was running. It was only another moment before a hand brushed her elbow and she could no longer pretend ignorance.

It was indeed her young man, still in his fine dinner clothes and no coat, and coming up behind him was the young lady he had been sitting beside. While he paused to catch his breath, Marinette considered taking the chance to get away from him.

But before she could quite commit to running off, he said, “I’m glad I saw you,” and her heart decided her legs were more useful as jelly than as means of escape.

As Marinette struggled to maintain control over both her mind and her body, she searched the young man before her for any sign to tell her which young man she was speaking to. But the dim evening light hid any chance of catching sight of a healing scratch on his hand.

“Adrien, who is this?” the young woman asked, but Marinette did not take this question as evidence of the young man’s identity. The last time she had seen him, he had practically told her that he was not Adrien at all, even though Monsieur and Madame Agreste had called him so.

The young man—perhaps he was Adrien Agreste or perhaps he was a Fathom—lifted a hand to her like he might introduce her, then he paused, tipped his head, and gave her a wry smile. “This is—well, I’m embarrassed to say that I don’t know your name, Mademoiselle.”

But she was not eager to give out her name when she could not say what his was. She dug the handkerchief embroidered with birds from her pocket and handed it to him. “Is this yours?” she asked.

The soft smile on the corner of his mouth scrunched up into something of a frown. “Where did you come across this?”

“Well, I don’t suppose you gave it to me.”

“No, I didn’t. But I do know who it belongs to. I could return it, if you like.”

“If you please,” she said, now more or less convinced that this young man was truly Adrien Agreste, which meant that this was the young man who was meant to propose to Lady Kagami. No matter how fast her heart raced nor how jellified her legs became, this was no place for her to linger. She adjusted her grip on her box of supplies. “Well, with that done, I had better take my leave.”

“Wait,” he said again. But when she did wait, he did not quite seem to know what to say. “Are you—I mean—will you attend the public dance this evening?”

Marinette was afraid to answer one way or another. “I’m thinking about it,” she said.

“Might I go with you?”

“Adrien!” the young woman beside him hissed.

“Sorry—might we go with you?”

She put a hand on his shoulder, as if she might pull him back to the house. “Adrien! We’re expected—”

“We’re expected to what?” He took her hand from his shoulder, but made no move to follow her inside. “We’ll sit together all evening and listen to my father complain about the economy or your mother complain about the decorum of youth? Perhaps my mother will entertain us with a song twenty years out of date? What if we went to a dance instead?”

The young lady’s pale pink lips remained in a firm line, unmoved by Adrien’s plea. “We’ll get into trouble.”

“What is the worst your mother will do?”

She opened her mouth, like she expected a witty reply to be waiting for her, but no sound came out. After a moment, she admitted, “I don’t know. I’ve never been in trouble before.”

“Then pretend. Imagine for a minute. What is the absolute worst thing your mother would do?”

She gave it the thought that Adrien had asked of her, then suggested, “Lock me in my rooms, I suppose.”

“And would that be so terrible?”

A smile flitted across the young lady’s face, and though Marinette did not know her, she found it odd. It mirrored Adrien’s mischievous smile, but it did not look at home, like the creases of such a motion were fresh and unfamiliar, as if her cheeks were unaccustomed to such movement of the muscles.

“Let’s attend a public dance,” the young lady agreed, and gestured for Marinette to lead the way.

Marinette stared at the two of them. “But won’t you—I mean… you’re expected—”

Her young man nudged his shoulder against hers and walked on down the path. “If we all did as we were expected to, there would never be any room to have fun.”

“You don’t even have a coat,” she protested, but hurried after him, afraid any trouble he could get into would be far worse if he were left alone.

“I quite like winter nights.”

“Why?” Marinette struggled to keep up with his fresh, rather excited pace. “It’s so cold and dry and—”

“The nights are long,” he shrugged, and reached for the box in her hands. “Allow me.”

She did not even have a moment to protest before he relieved her of her burden. Marinette wondered how she had ever mistaken her two young men for one person. The other, so sullen and reticent was nothing like this one, who smiled easily and walked with a spring in his step, even while carrying her crate of cooking and crafting supplies. Perhaps they had been crafted in the same mold, but the difference in the way they made use of that mold was practically a chasm.

“I’ve never been to a dance before,” the young woman said as she matched Marinette’s pace. “I suppose there will be a lot of people there?”

Marinette wondered what she had done to meet the two most sheltered gentry in the country. Perhaps she should not be so surprised they were willing to abandon their dinner party with their parents and follow a strange young girl into town instead. Any experience must be a novelty to them.

“I suppose so,” Marinette said. “Winter dances might have less turn out than summer, but there’s usually enough to keep things lively.”

“Good,” the young man said. “I’m hoping for something a bit more interesting than my uncle drinking enough to think he can carry a tune.”

“And which uncle would that be?” Marinette asked.

“My Uncle Colt Fathom.”

“And that would make you…?”

He turned his head to smile at her. “Adrien Agreste. And you, Mademoiselle?”

“Marinette.”

“Just Marinette?”

“Marinette Dupain-Cheng.”

He raised his eyebrows, but did not comment on the uniqueness of her last name the way she expected gentry to. Instead, he followed with the appropriate manners and introduced his companion. “And this is Lady Kagami Tsurugi.”

“I am not a lady yet,” Kagami Tsurugi protested.

“And,” Marinette prodded, “exactly how many times have we met, Monsieur Agreste?”

He pursed his lips and looked up at the stars in thought. “Three, I suppose. Four if you count tonight.”

Marinette raised an eyebrow. She had hardly had more than four encounters with her young man. How could they have nearly all been him?

“How did the two of you meet so many times and fail to exchange names?” Kagami asked.

“Coincidence,” Marinette said, and Adrien said, “I went looking for her, but never had the courage to ask for her name.”

“You went looking for me?” she spluttered.

“Did you think I found you at the Midnight Market by accident?”

Marinette’s cheeks burned, but if he mentioned the Midnight Market, then she knew for certain that this boy was not just Adrien Agreste, but he was rather specifically the boy without the cat scratch. The handkerchief might have been evidence enough, but Marinette was glad to have additional confirmation.

She did not forget, however, that if he truly was Adrien, then Monsieur and Madame Agreste still expected him to propose to Lady Kagami, a fact he had tried to obscure from her when she had brought it up at the Midnight Market. Whatever kindness or grace he displayed, she needed to keep him at a distance. It would not do to involve herself in a scandal of this magnitude.

“By my count, Monsieur,” she said, “we’ve only met twice before this evening.”

He hummed up at the stars again. “If you say so.”

He kept up a steady conversation between their group of three as he walked. Though he was already a good deal more conversational than his counterpart, he was far more conversational than the instances in Lady Tsurugi’s parlor and the Midnight Market. It was as if being out in the open air made him into a different person.

But as much as she noted how he differed from the other young man, whom she now supposed was his cousin, Marinette also marked the unusual alertness her two young men shared. Adrien’s ears still turned in the direction of approaching carriages, and his shoulders still tensed each time the silhouette of another traveler appeared on the path ahead of them, but his eyes did not hunt for escape routes the way they had before, and he did not pause to check each word before he shared it, as if each word he offered her was at risk of being turned back against him.

As the unusual trio reached the town, he turned down the street that led towards her bakery without any guidance from her. She wondered how he knew where it was, if he was not the boy who had suffered a cat scratch, but she did not ask. He refused to let her take the box from him and instead followed her instructions to set it by the door. In truth, it needed to go upstairs, but she was not about to let this young man she had only just learned the name of into her private quarters anymore than she was about to let a young genteel lady she did not know see the state of her blended workroom and bedroom.

“You’ll have to lead the way from here,” he said, and so Marinette led Adrien and Kagami to the public hall.

Music and light spilled from the open windows of the building that served as everything from town meeting hall to center of holiday festivities.

As they approached the doors, Kagami Tsurugi hesitated. She reached for Adrien’s wrist, and the pair stopped in the street. Marinette, too, waited.

“Perhaps this is a bad idea,” Kagami said. “Surely our absence has been noticed by now.”

“Then let’s make it worth it,” Adrien grinned, and pulled Kagami into the hall without even waiting for Marinette.

Marinette hurried after them, anxious that, despite their stations and certain knowledge of social graces, their inexperience might lead them right into a blunder. She caught up to them just as they made their way through the ajar doors. A dance was in full swing, led by a small band of musicians. Decor was simple, only a few winter blooms and the occasional sprig of mistletoe or holly hanging in the windows. There were a few corner benches, occupied mostly by the elderly. A pair of children wove their way through the dance floor, chasing each other around ladies’ skirts and beneath gentlemen’s arms.

A few folks turned to look at the new arrivals, and there was more than one raised eyebrow as they took in the fine clothes of the newcomers. One elderly woman turned her head to whisper something in her husband’s ear, though her eyes remained steadfastly on Adrien, Kagami, and Marinette.

“Marinette, ought you introduce us to the hosts?” Kagami asked.

Adrien wrinkled his nose at the suggestion of such formality. “I’d like to dance,” he said.

Marinette quickly pulled her new friends, if she could call them that, into a corner instead. As she scanned the room for Alya or Nino, she said, “Just wait until the next dance begins. And yes, Mademoiselle Tsurugi, I can introduce you to the aldermen, but I imagine they already know who you are.”

She found Alya easily, pouring drinks for an older couple who seemed to have had their fill of dancing over the many years as they hobbled to a nearby bench with their full glasses. Nino was a little harder to find, tucked away on his own in a corner. As Marinette led her new charges in his direction, his eyes met hers, but instead of the warm, pleasant friendship Marinette was used to seeing, a strange anxiety took over his expression at the sight of her.

“You’re here,” he said.

“Yes,” she said, rather puzzled by his surprise, and introduced him to her new companions.

Nino hardly seemed aware of their titles as he nodded politely to Kagami and shook Adrien’s hand. Immediately after releasing Adrien’s polite grasp, his hand went to his coat pocket and Marinette understood his anxiety.

“Are you planning on proposing tonight?” she asked.

His dark complexion turned ashen. “I wasn’t really sure, but—I suppose there’s no point in waiting if you’re already here.” He swallowed, but his jaw remained tight.

“It’ll be perfect,” Marinette assured him. “She’ll love it.” And, taking a leaf out of Adrien’s book of encouragement, she offered, “What’s the worst that could happen?”

Nino looked Marinette straight in the eyes and said, “She could laugh in my face, kick me to the ground, and spit on me.”

It was hard not to laugh at Nino’s dramatic imagination. Marinette barely tamped down a smile. Even Adrien, who did not know Nino, could not restrain a snort, and Kagami turned her head and hid her smile behind her hand.

“None of that will happen,” Marinette assured him. As the music slowed and was replaced by a polite applause, Marinette again assured him that everything would be perfect, then led Kagami and Adrien to the small cluster of councilmen who had put together the early winter event.

The eldest raised his thick white eyebrows as Marinette introduced them. He shook Adrien’s hand with a surprising vigor for his thin frame.

“Quite a surprise to see you both,” he said, and inclined his head to Kagami. His eyes scanned behind them for any sign of their parents, and he frowned when he saw none.

As if reading his expression, his neighbor, no less thin but a great deal younger, elbowed him playfully. “There are worse places for a young couple to sneak away to,” he said. And as the band began to play a new tune, he held his hand out to Kagami. “Would you indulge me in one dance before you spend the rest of the evening with your partner?”

“Oh—” she hesitated, and glanced at Adrien and Marinette alike for their opinion.

“My wife doesn’t dance on account of an illness when she was young,” the councilman added, and gestured to where a young woman sat with an older woman who bore the same square jaw as the councilman, “but if Lady Tsurugi’s daughter would indulge me in one dance this evening, I think that might satisfy me for the rest of the winter.”

It was difficult to say if it was the councilman’s assurance that there was nothing untoward in the offer, Marinette’s nod of encouragement, or Adrien’s absolute apathy that prompted Kagami to take the man’s hand.

“And how about I get another round of practice in?” Adrien asked with a rather cheeky smile as he took Marinette’s hand and pulled her to the dance floor, too.

Marinette’s heart raced as his fingers wrapped around hers. Her eyes slid past him, however, until they found Kagami. She was at once worried that Kagami might be unfamiliar with the dance steps and worried about what might happen if she allowed her eyes to linger on Adrien’s smile.

However, Kagami seemed quite at ease with her partner, and her smile, despite its initially reluctant appearance, seemed to be settling in for the evening. Marinette wished she could feel that same ease in her dance partner, but she found it hard to be sure of anything about her young man—whom, she reminded herself, was not hers at all. He was Kagami’s.

The dance began, and Adrien readily led the charge of the minuet.

“You and I met at Lady Tsurugi’s party a few weeks ago,” she said in an attempt to clarify what she could of who this boy really was.

“You taught me to dance,” he said. The words were no sooner out of his mouth than Marinette was stumbling over her own feet. He caught her neatly, and her face burned so terribly that she kept her eyes down, watching where his hands clasped hers.

The heavy silver ring around his finger seemed to glare back at her. She wondered if it would show the same black thread tied around his throat that she had seen in the jewelry shop.

“And,” she took in a deep breath to try to cool her embarrassment, “it was your handkerchief that you gave me at the Midnight Market.”

“You promised to return it, and instead you gave me one marked with someone else’s crest.”

“Your uncle’s crest.” Marinette dared to look at his face in hopes that she might glean some clue from it.

But his mischievous smile was as strong and unreadable as ever. “Indeed.”

“But it’s not your uncle’s initials on that handkerchief.”

“Don’t be silly; I’m quite fond of my Uncle Folt Fathom,” he quipped and it made her laugh so hard that she snorted and stumbled backwards.

Adrien lurched forward, but his hand grabbed hers too late. Gravity already had its hold on her and the two of them went tumbling into one of the tables. A plate of fruit fell against her chest, marking her shift in dark red stains, and a platter of hard cheeses struck his shoulders, leaving the two of them collapsed in a mess of hors d’oeuvres.

There were gasps from a few dancers nearby, but Adrien readily helped her to her feet and the concern quickly turned to laughter. He pulled her aside to a window near the table set up with drink refreshments and used the very handkerchief she had given to him that night, the one that notably did not belong to him, to dab the spots from her dress.

“If it isn’t yours,” she said quietly, “who does it belong to?”

He hesitated, as if he might find a worthy joke or perhaps a lie, but his wit seemed to have escaped him. He was forced to give a plain answer: “My cousin.”

“Do the two of you swap places often?”

And this question, of all things, dulled the smile in his eyes. “We did when we were younger, until our parents got sick of it and made us stop.”

“But—your mother called him ‘Adrien’ when I met him.”

“Of course she did. It would be quite a scandal if everyone found out the truth.”

Marinette’s brow furrowed. “The truth?”

But another collective gasp from the crowd prevented Marinette from getting an answer—if Adrien had even been about to give her one. They both turned and found, in the center of the dance floor, Nino on one knee before Alya. The crowd clapped politely as she took the ring from him and slid it onto her own finger, too impatient for him to fumble it onto her hand.

Alya planted a kiss on Nino’s cheek and, as the band began to resume their song, pulled Nino over towards Marinette. She waved the ring, a thin brass band studded with a small diamond, like it was the very seal of the Emperor himself.

“You helped, didn’t you?” Alya asked with a broad smile.

“Nino did most of the choosing,” Marinette said with a smile. “I just helped him be confident in his choice.”

Alya kissed Marinette’s cheek and Nino thanked Marinette again, but the moment another dance began, Alya yanked Nino back onto the dance floor.

Marinette turned to Adrien and tried for a friendly smile. “I suppose you ought to follow suit. Aren’t you meant to propose tonight as well?”

But his mischievous smile was long gone, and the strained expression that had overtaken it turned away from her. “I’m afraid my mother has the rings, so it will have to wait.”

Marinette swallowed, afraid to ask the question that sprang into her head, but it tumbled out regardless, tripping over her tongue as it went, but unstoppable all the same. “Did you—did you really want to come to a dance, or are you stalling your engagement?”

“It’s not my engagement, it’s her engagement.”

Marinette searched the crowd for Kagami. She had found another partner for the new dance, a young boy perhaps half her age, but her initially uncertain smile now looked relaxed and genuine. She seemed to be having a good time, and though Marinette had not known the young lady for long, she did not think she deserved the bitterness in Adrien’s voice.

But when she turned back to Adrien to tell him so, she found that Adrien was not looking at Kagami. He was looking down at the thick silver ring around his finger.

“When you say ‘her engagement,’” Marinette whispered slowly, “you mean your mother?”

“It would just be nice,” he said, mirroring her low tone, “to decide one thing for myself. Just one thing.”

Without truly thinking about it, Marinette slipped Alya’s seeing stone from her pocket. She hesitated, though, afraid to pair the misery in his voice with the truth of the thread around his throat. Though Madame and Monsieur Agreste were not here with their tight grips and meaningful stares, she could feel the way their presence constrained Adrien just as well as they had constrained his cousin in the market.

Adrien eyed the red stone warily. “Is that a true seeing stone?”

Marinette swallowed. Though she had used it discreetly the other day, somehow, in this moment, secrecy seemed a violation of the intimacy that had burgeoned beneath Adrien’s quiet confessions. “May I?” she asked.

He nodded once, uncertain but resigned. “I don’t know what you’ll see—if it will look any different—or… well, maybe it will explain it better than I could.”

Marinette did not think that was particularly true, but she knew better than to press Adrien for the details of the curse. Certainly not here, in public, where any prying ears could hear and turn whispers into rumors.

She held the seeing stone between her thumb and forefinger and examined the ring on Adrien’s finger. There, just as taut as she had seen on his cousin, was the black thread knotted around the thick ring. This close to Adrien, she could not view him in whole, as she had his cousin, but she followed the direction of the thread. She reached her fingers out to it, cautious and careful, willing herself to feel what ought to otherwise be invisible. It was like trying to grip gossamer thread, thin and wispy, bending just out of reach.

Still, she followed the trail up to his throat, where it wrapped around once, and disappeared through the crowd and back the way they had come. Marinette rested her fingers on his throat, where the line doubled back on itself, tightening like a noose. Though she could not feel the thread itself, she watched it flex as he swallowed. The pulse of his heart pounded against the tips of her fingers. She glanced up and met his eyes, still as green as the day they had met but now cold and empty, despite the wry smile on his face.

“Does it show you my collar?” he asked.

“It—” Marinette bit down on her lip. “To be honest, it looks a bit more like a garrotte.”

He laughed, hollow and empty, but still a laugh. As if he could undo the expression, he rubbed his hand over his face and turned his gaze up to the ceiling. Suddenly, a genuine laugh burst from his chest, and the mischievous smile returned.

“Well, isn’t that lucky,” he said.

Marinette’s brow furrowed. She had only just accepted that her young man’s mercurial moods were the result of being two different young men, but Adrien seemed determined to prove he could be fickle all on his own.

“‘Lucky’?”

“I’ve spent all evening thinking about how I might ask to kiss you without being ungentlemanly, and now here we are, under a bundle of mistletoe.”

Marinette followed his gaze up to the cluster of pale green leaves and white berries, tied together with a bright red ribbon.

“Oh,” was all she could manage.

His fingers brushed against her chin, coaxing her face towards his in a suggestion of movement rather than a demand.

“You could say no,” he said.

Marinette struggled to find enough breath for her words. They fell from her lips, little more than empty whispers. “That would be unlucky.”

“We can't have that.”

His other hand slid over hers as he drew closer. Marinette was conscious of three things and three things only: the green in his eyes, the wary smile on his lips, and the weight of his ring against her hand.

And then he kissed her and she was conscious of nothing else. Marinette might have melted entirely if not for the chill by the window. It was a painfully chaste kiss, as it had to be for they were at a public dance and her friends were nearby and Adrien was meant to propose—

She pulled away, but not far. The golden strands of his hair brushed against her forehead and his eyes consumed her vision wholly. She slid her hand over his hand. His fingers curled around hers, and she laced hers between his. Her fingers pinched the ring around his finger, but before she could so much as ask, his hand was over her wrist in a panic.

“Don't,” he said with a breathless desperation so alike in manner to the young man she had met in the marketplace that she wondered for a moment how she had ever thought of them as two different people. All the wariness and anxiety she had noted in the bakery and the jewelry shop returned. He even glanced around them, as if in search of some additional threat.

His eyes found Kagami Tsurugi, staring at the two of them with no more signs of the smile she had been wearing since joining the party in earnest. Instead, her pale pink lips were pressed into a thin line and splotches of red bloomed suddenly on her cheeks. She turned and left the public hall.

Marinette and Adrien, without sharing a glance or word, hurried after her, as if they were of one mind in both their concern and their guilt.

They caught up with her not far outside the doors, arms wrapped around her shoulders as her thin dress made for an indoor party did little to stave off the evening’s early winter chills.

Adrien reached for her elbow, just as he had stalled Marinette when she had tried to ignore him at the beginning of the evening. “Kagami, I’m sorry—”

“I don't want to hear it,” she snapped as she knocked his hand away. “I don't want to be patronized or lied to. It's clear why you were so insistent on coming here this evening.”

“No, that’s not it, I just—I don’t get many opportunities like this. I try to take them when they come.”

“I should have known someone who flaunts consequences so readily would pay no mind to his own actions.”

“Don't pretend you want this engagement any more than I do—”

“And how would you know what I want?” she demanded, voice surprisingly sharp for how demurely she had behaved all evening. “You’ve never asked what I want.”

This accusation clearly daunted him. His frustration vanished for a moment, but it rallied almost immediately as he countered, “We’ve barely spent two dinners together. Of course I don’t know what you want. I’m not the one who you ought to be angry with—”

“You could have called on me! You could have put any effort into this, and perhaps neither of us would still be this miserable. There could have been a trip to the market, or an afternoon tea, or a walk on the grounds—”

“No, Kagami, there couldn’t have been. I can’t—” Adrien hesitated. He glanced at Marinette, as if somehow she might know what he was trying to say, as if she could explain for him.

But she could not fathom what he was trying to say any more than Kagami could.

He again began to twist his ring around his finger and turned his eyes to the ground. “I can’t make calls for afternoon tea or walks on the grounds. I don’t get to take trips into town. Why do you think my mother’s insisting we get engaged in the dead of winter?”

“It’s not that odd,” Kagami said, though there was a touch of doubt in her voice. “That couple inside just got engaged.”

But Marinette knew it was not a common time for engagements. Nino had been saving for years now, and Alya was growing impatient. They could have waited for a more traditional spring proposal and summer wedding, but what was timing to a couple in love?

Love, however, did not seem to be relevant here.

“We aren’t that couple,” Adrien said softly. His jaw tightened with clenched teeth and his grip around the ring on his finger turned white. For a moment, Marinette thought he was going to yank the ring off and hurl it to the ground, but instead, he let out a defeated sigh. “I’m sorry. You're right; I’ve behaved poorly tonight. Perhaps we should head back before our parents send hounds after us. Might as well be done with what we’re supposed to be done with tonight.”

“There’s no point,” she said, and turned away from him. “I’m not going to say yes.”

Adrien stared at her back, and his shoulders turned stiff and rigid. “But—our parents—”

“You seem perfectly at ease breaking your parents’ rules. Why not break this one, too?”

“Because—I—my mother would kill me over this.”

“No, she wouldn’t.”

“She may as well.”

“You asked me to imagine the worst my mother would do if I were to slip away this evening. Truly, what’s the worst your mother would do if you did not propose to me?”

Adrien’s frustration turned into a bitter sneer that Marinette was startled to find left her unsettled. It did not appear to belong to the boy who had so softly asked for a kiss beneath the mistletoe, nor the boy who had grinned about running away from an important dinner party. There was something deeply unpleasant buried beneath his kind, charming, and silly smiles.

“My mother’s already done the worst she can do. And if we don't marry, she’ll never undo it.”

“‘Undo it’?” Kagami repeated, brow furrowing with confusion.

But Marinette felt no confusion. Her hand flew to her mouth in shock. The thread around his throat and the comments about a scandal came together into a picture as unpleasant and unkind as the tableau his cousin had played in the marketplace the other day. The thread around his throat was not just any curse or binding spell. It was a curse his mother had cast.

Curses on the whole were rare and uncouth. No one openly sold curses at the Midnight Market, though Marinette imagined if you asked in the right way, a witch might give you what you were looking for.

To use a curse at all, either one of your own or a purchased curse, would risk social scandal and ostracization. To seek that sort of retribution meant risking all privilege of society, and so the need for such revenge had to be desperate and great.

To curse one’s own family, however, was a far worse offense, tantamount to disowning children. Marinette had thought the thread tied between Madame Agreste and the young man in the market had been a way of saving him from something worse, something that had rebounded terribly. But if what Adrien said was true, that his mother needed to undo what she had already done…

As shocking as that revelation was, it was not the worst thought that entered Marinette’s head.

“Adrien,” she began, voice shaky as she tried to put words to her new dreaded understanding, but he turned away from her and reached for Kagami’s arm once more.

“Forget I said anything,” he said quickly, and plastered on a smile as soft as any of his smiles that evening, all mischief replaced with apology. “Let me walk you back home, Kagami.”

“Wait, Adrien,” Marinette tried again, reaching for urgency, aware that she probably sounded desperate.

“I know the way back well enough,” he said. “Thank you, Mademoiselle Dupain-Cheng for a lovely evening. I’m sorry to cut it short.”

There was a finality to his gratitude, a certainty that there was no more to be said, that whatever that moment in the hall had been between them, whatever laughter and kisses they had exchanged were a moment of mischief, and he was meant to leave it behind.

But Marinette could not let it be over. Her heart raced as she watched Kagami and Adrien disappear into the darkness. It could not be over because she knew something that he did not.

She knew that if his mother had cast the curse, then the ring around her finger meant that Madame Agreste had barely restrained a curse of her own that had rebounded. And if that was true, and what Marinette had seen in the jewelry shop applied to Adrien and his cousin alike, then she knew that there was no hope for Adrien, no matter how many of his mother’s rules he followed.

His mother may have been the one who had cast the curse, whatever it was, but until the original components were restored, the curse could not be undone. Madame Agreste’s insistence that the peacock-shaped gem be repaired before the wedding suddenly made more sense.

Whatever freedom his mother had promised him if he followed through with this marriage, she could not deliver on. No one could free him from this curse, not as long as that gem remained broken.

#this fan fic is so gooood #its so well written and has such a cool take on magic!!!#gaahhh I love it #mlbigbang2024 #miraculous ladybug

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