Edit with Me: Building a Scene in Layers
Follow along as I gut and redo a chapter, thinking as an editor and an author
Introduction
First of all, this is going to be a very long article. You probably already know that. Maybe you looked at the total minutes and balked. I can’t blame you, and thanks for giving it a chance anyway.
It’s a lot to take in, and maybe it’s best to not read it in one sitting. But it needs to be in one place, because this is where I finally get to show you how I edit — and how I apply the suggestions I receive from Editor Me.
Most of my editing for my enchantress book this round has been line edits. Fixing language, updating inconsistencies — you can see the list of what this draft is for in the article about my first step of a revision. However, a few scenes weren’t up to that par. The following was one of them.
I read it and realized very little of it could stay. It didn’t hit the depth of emotions I’d want it to, the change in emotion was minimal, and Celeste had very little to do as far as an active goal goes. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
This article is organized as follows: first, I present the original chapter in its entirety, with my comments excised. Then, in the section heading “Problem Children,” we discuss the issues I had with it. These were the notes I took during my re-read when I prepared for revision, styled as I would in an edit letter for a manuscript evaluation. In “Plan Forward,” we’ll discuss what I did with these notes, and how sitting down to edit without making myself a map wasn’t working. After that is a section that shows how I re-wrote the scene on paper — and in layers. It’s just a bunch of pictures, and messy ones, but I think you’ll see how iterative the process is. Finally, we have the updated scene and a conclusion.
My hope is that you’ll see what to expect from an editor, as well as how to do a deep revision of a text from that edit letter, line by line.
Some context for this scene, and then we will begin: Adam, Celeste’s half-brother, recently hosted a ball. Celeste was supposed to be the entertainment, but her magic didn’t work and, in a fit of emotion, she ends up removing all memory from the ball from everyone but Adam and a scientist named Renee Travers. Her mother, Catherine, doesn’t remember the ball but knows enough about magic to know it was taken from her. Bernadette Comtois had made her debut, but no longer remembers why she is at the chateau. The Duke of Burgundy, Antoine Prevot, is Celeste’s fiancé, although it is not a love match for either of them.
The Original Scene
Celeste’s mother had taken an initial liking to Bernadette Comtois that only grew with further acquaintance. Each day, the young woman would be in her room first thing after breakfast, and each day Catherine would assign Celeste something to do with her young charge.
It wasn’t so much that Celeste disliked Mademoiselle Comtois, but her very presence gave Celeste a headache. This young woman was all colors and brightness; even her futures glistened — all but one, whose gray, cool appearance did not seem like it could belong to her. Spending time with Mademoiselle Comtois was an ordeal, but not an entirely unpleasant one.
On the third day of being in her charge, Catherine said, “It’s lovely today, practically late summer already. Has Bernadette been shown your brother’s rose garden? It is one of the most famous walks of this chateau for a reason.”
Celeste obediently extended her elbow for Bernadette. Her mother had voiced a question, but she was not asking. She knew this extended company was her punishment for the magic she had done. A part of Celeste even considered it was fair. She still hadn’t figured out a way to learn the extent of her magic. Who all had she affected? The servants who prepared their masters, the butchers who slaughtered the meat, the tailors who fitted suits and silks for the guests, the parents who had sent their daughter attended only by a maidservant to her debut?
She had no one but Marie-Louise to ask, and though her location spell proved she was once again nearby, she hadn’t been left alone long enough to visit. So until her mother had deemed her punishment enough, she would walk about with this young woman like there was nothing better to do, like she was herself an idle, silly girl with no care in the world.
They strolled down the stone path together toward the garden where Celeste had first plucked a rose for her brother. Celeste wondered if that was part of her punishment. Before the rose she had enchanted in desperation, Celeste had never used her magic intentionally. Now her mother sent her back to recollect exactly the futures that had spiraled beyond what she could predict.
However, they were not alone as they entered the garden. Beside a rose bush that towered over both of them, Prince Adam and the Duke of Burgundy leaned toward each other, their faces flushed with the heat of their discussion. Bernadette looked at Celeste, inquisitive and innocent. Celeste had to remind herself that, as far as Bernadette remembered, she hadn’t met those men. Hadn’t danced with them both three nights beforehand.
“The Duke of Burgundy on the left, and Prince Adam, master of this castle and my half-brother, on the right.”
“How much I have heard of them! Do you think we may move closer? You are certainly well-acquainted enough with them both to make an introduction, right? Your mother tells me the duke is your fiancé.”
“My mother speaks the truth. We are to marry sometime in the distant future.” Although what business Catherine had telling this to a fourteen-year-old they had just met Celeste did not know.
“Please let us make an introduction. I have never had the honor of making the acquaintance of someone so important.”
Celeste nodded without comment and the pair moved closer, until the postures came accompanied with muffled voices that eventually turned into words. She paused a row from the young men as their message became clear.
“It’s obvious you have no experience at this. Let me mentor you. Teach you the ways of nobility you’ve missed when this long from Paris.”
“If my father would simply invite me — ”
“The truth of the matter is that he has not. He’s sent me, though. A shrewd leader would use the resources he’s been given,” the duke said.
“Politics?” Bernadette whispered.
“More or less.”
“Boring. We should let them have more fun — ” Bernadette said, her eye keenly on Prince Adam.
“Hush,” Celeste said, and returned her attention to her brother’s conversation.
“I know what I’m doing and I don’t like your implication that I do not.”
The duke sighed, heavy and almost performative. “You don’t know what you don’t know. For instance, I’ve been here a month. A proper host would have provided at least some sort of party, if he could not afford a ball.”
Celeste stepped around the path. She did not want her brother outing her mistakes. Not then.
“Spying on us, dear sister?”
“Of course not. Our mother recommended this garden for Bernadette’s walk and insisted I play the good hostess and accompany her.”
“Mademoiselle Dupuis! You speak of me as if the prince could possibly know who I am.”
“My apologies. Of course. Prince Adam, please make the acquaintance of Mademoiselle Bernadette Comtois, fourteen-year-old daughter of Lady Henrietta Comtois and Lord Robert Comtois. She hoped to make her debut at a ball this year, and is staying here under the care of our mother.”
“A pleasure, Mademoiselle Comtois. You are lovely.”
“Mademoiselle Comtois, I am Antoine Prevot, Duke of Burgundy, and your beautiful companion will someday soon be my bride.”
“She has told me much about you,” Bernadette said, looking up through her eyelashes. This wasn’t, strictly speaking, true, but Celeste did not correct her. “Perhaps, Mademoiselle Dupuis,” Bernadette continued, “You and your fiancé would prefer to walk together?”
Celeste suppressed a smile. If her attention toward the prince hadn’t been obvious before they were introduced, her intentions were now clear. “Happily. I have seen little of the duke since our engagement. I’m sure we have much to talk about.”
If nothing else, the bland futures that comprised most of what Celeste saw when she looked at the duke were easier on her eyes than the brightness emanating from Bernadette. Even more, though, her mother had continued to talk about unintended, far-reaching consequences of magic in the scale that Celeste had performed. Some time with another person whose memory she had altered, someone she knew better beforehand, might answer some of her questions.
The four of them regrouped and strode in opposite directions. As long as they were nearby, Celeste heard Adam describing his gardens, the thought behind them, the care that went into them, far better than she could have done, and in a tone that suggested he did not mind Bernadette’s flirtation.
“You’re quiet, Mademoiselle,” the duke said.
“I’m listening. My brother and that young lady seem to be getting along quite well, and my mother has entrusted her to my care.”
“Playing the dutiful guardian, then. Good. A role that suits a wife,” he said with something akin to mischief in his tone.
Celeste did not respond, pretending to be lost somewhere between her thoughts and the much more jubilant conversation that echoed from the far side of the rose garden. “May we sit here? I don’t want to let them get too far away.”
“You act as if they are the lovers and not us,” he said with a chuckle.
“They are younger, and both of them more reckless. I do not want Bernadette to get hurt.”
The duke did not respond except to sit on a stone bench directly across from the rose bush she had plucked a rose from for her brother’s birthday. The bush had noticeably grown since then, roses now all in bloom and stretching eagerly toward the sun.
“We’ve been engaged [some several weeks] now without much time together,” the duke said when he seemed to realize the burden was on him to provide conversation.
Because I have made you forget things that I wish I could, Celeste thought. “If what I overheard is true, you hope this changes soon. What is it about parties and fancy dresses that appeals to you so?”
The duke looked at her, his eyebrows furrowed and jaw tight. “I’m sorry, I don’t follow. I don’t remember saying anything to this effect — to you or to the prince beforehand.”
“Just a guess,” she said. “Call it intuition.”
She tightened her own jaw and paid attention once again to the younger pair roaming the gardens with more freedom. Adam and Bernadette walked arm and arm, laughing and speaking with an ease she could not now replicate. It made Celeste nervous. While she knew nothing of falling in love, she was certain her brother was not the man to fall for.
“I’m impressed by how intently you obey your mother’s demands,” the duke said after a while.
“I’m sorry?”
“You said that young lady was in your charge? You haven’t taken your eyes off her.”
“Right, yes. I was to supervise her, and leaving her alone with my brother seems far from wise.”
The duke relaxed his posture slightly. Celeste, however, tensed. His body language was following the same pattern it had in their first two conversations. But to him, perhaps, it was only the second time they’d spoken. “You know, from the moment you introduced me, it felt like I’d met her before. It is not unlike how I feel looking at you, Mademoiselle la Princese. I cannot explain this feeling, and it seems every time I come close to the answer, I feel dragged away as if by a spooked horse.”
“An odd feeling,” Celeste said. “Perhaps it’s intuition.” She wanted desperately to change the topic. Celeste considered the duke again, his tall frame, handsome face, and easygoing conversation. Her mother was right; the man was a marionette waiting for someone to take the strings. But he was harmless enough. At any rate, more harmless than her selfish, indulgent brother.
“Intuition?”
“Something you understand before it makes conscious sense.”
“I know the term, Celeste. What do you mean, though, that my intuition keeps me from getting too close to the feeling?”
“Just that there is nothing more to it than that, an instinct.” She should never have interrupted the conversation the duke and Adam had been having when they arrived. As much as her curiosity propelled her then, it revolted her now. This magic was easy. This magic was not without consequence. “I need to have a word with my brother. Go make the acquaintance of Mademoiselle Comtois. She is quite the character.”
Celeste had made the suggestion simply to get the two of them away from her brother so she could talk to him in private. She had no thought for the decorum of it until the duke looked at her absolutely aghast. “Are you sure I should go speak to a young lady? What is the protocol for an engaged couple?”
“I have been engaged exactly as long as you have, monsieur, and I admit it was not a topic of my studies. But we will still all be in the garden together. I do not see the harm.”
In truth, through all she knew of the duke, she couldn’t imagine him doing anything unseemly, especially not with a girl as young as Bernadette.
The duke considered, nodded, then offered Celeste a hand as he stood from the bench. They strode across the garden, whose perfume of dozens of varieties of roses baptized them as they walked. Celeste did not pause often enough to take in the beauty of her cage, the elaborate turrets, the cherubs adorning every corner like blind guardian angels, the intricately planned gardens. Nature was capable of work Celeste could only dream of duplicating .
“Mademoiselle Comtois, Prince Adam.”
The pair looked as if Celeste and the duke were interrupting something important, but both accepted them with all the grace that etiquette demanded. “I apologize for the interruption, both of you, but as the duke and I were speaking I remembered something urgent I must discuss with the prince.”
Bernadette turned toward Adam, her wide brown eyes overflowing with infatuation. Adam gave her a wide but fleeting smile, then glanced pointedly at Celeste. She betrayed no understanding of his cross face.
Adam said, “If you’ll excuse me, Mademoiselle Comtois — ”
“Please call me Bernadette. I feel as if I’ve known you a lifetime.”
“If you’ll briefly excuse me, my sister would never interrupt if it weren’t for something dire.”
Celeste placed her hand gently on Bernadette’s shoulder. “Please feel free to make your acquaintance with the duke while we speak. I won’t be but five minutes.”
Adam hardly waited for Bernadette’s acknowledgment before taking Celeste’s elbow with some force and leading her aside. “I don’t know what exactly I saw on that bench where you two spoke, but it did not look like a woman who loves her brother carrying out her promise to him.”
“You’ve no idea the way the mind of a woman works,” she said. “These things take time.”
“Like the time you took to erase the memories of my ball from hundreds of people,” Adam hissed, with one look back toward where Bernadette and the Duke now wandered.
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. That magic, unintentional as it was, was not without consequence. The duke speaks of the way his mind grapples with having previously met Mademoiselle Comtois. With not remembering much of me at all, when he feels he should. How it forces him away from the thoughts. If he knew that magic were possible, he would have known it was magic I performed.
“This is dangerous, Adam, and the duke seems harmless enough. Why should we risk something going wrong?”
“Because it is my livelihood he’s about to take. Look, Celeste, if your memory charm had been performed in better circumstances — if I’d known about it, commissioned it — it’s honestly brilliant. Do that. If the Duke is harmless, don’t harm him. Simply erase his memory of more than the ball. Erase it altogether.”
“If there are repercussions to removing a single memory, how much worse would it be for him if I extracted it all?”
“And how much better for us?”
“Adam,” Celeste said, her hand on her brother’s shoulder. “I can’t do that. People are memories. That’s it. He’d have nothing left.”
He turned again to the others so Celeste could see only a quarter of his profile. The muscles in his jaw tensed as he watched the duke with Bernadette. “You have a fortnight. I expect a plan by then, or we will be following mine.”
Problem Children
When I went through this for myself, I made myself a list of bullets of things to change, then a list of bullets with ideas for how to change it. But as my goal is to show how this looks as an editor, and I don’t know my authors’ minds as well as I know my own, let’s look at how I’d write an edit letter for the above chapter.
Introduction
I enjoyed this chapter. The play between Bernadette and Celeste is fun to read, and I love discovering along with Celeste some of the implications of her magic that she hadn’t realized. I’m a fan of the setting, since the rose garden is so important to the story as a whole, and the conversation with Adam at the end is probably the strongest point, so I want to build toward that.
However, I think we can do more to make this a standout scene instead of one that’s simply required to get us from A to B. A lot of it felt forced, and like it rambled before getting to the point. I think a lot of this is because Celeste lacked agency in this chapter. That is, the rose garden is her mother’s idea, and talking to Adam and the duke is Bernadette’s idea. She has plans, but she never has to enact them, because she doesn’t have a goal she takes during this scene.
Because of that lack of agency, I think, the dialogue feels forced in most places before the end, too. Like you knew what needed to be said, but not how to get there naturally, so you just let it be a bit awkward and on the nose. Of course, the goal isn’t to force the characters to say the things you need them to, but to establish their goals in such a way that they have no choice but to say things.
Another thing that felt lacking to me was emotional honesty and depth. The interactions felt shallow, even as Celeste learns some devastating truths about how her magic works. I have some ideas for addressing this, though, that we’ll look at next.
The rest of this letter will take these main problems and go through a few potential solutions for updating them. Remember that all of writing is connected, so handling one of these well will have rippling effects — not unlike Celeste’s magic — on the other issues as well.
Agency
My biggest concern is Celeste’s lack of agency in this scene. I truly think that if we can address this, a lot of the peskier small issues will fall into line behind it. What can we do to turn Celeste from a passive actor in this scene to the one pulling the strings? We are far enough into her arc that I think it’s important she is in charge here.
Changing Emotion
One of the things that makes the scene fall flat for me, beyond agency, is that Celeste feels more or less the same throughout the scene. She starts it upset that her mother is controlling her life, then Bernadette controls the conversation, then she flails in her conversation with the duke, and then Adam controls her conversation and her future. We don’t really hit a lot of emotional points in the scene.
According to KM Weiland, the best scenes have an emotional shift, so even if they’re perfectly structured, if the emotion doesn’t change, the reader doesn’t connect to the plot of the book at that point. In this chapter, our ending emotion with Adam is necessary. We need her feeling out of control and frustrated when she gets to that point. What if we then combined this idea with the idea of agency, and she starts the chapter calm and in charge, trying to control things on her own? Then, by the time we get to the end and she sees she can’t, actually, control them, the reader should feel more connected to her and disappointed in the final conversation.
Balance of Dialogue and Narrative
Once we get into the heart of this scene, with the conversations in the rose garden, it can fall prey to the idea of “talking heads” a little bit. The characters speak, but we don’t see anything. We don’t even get much internalization from Celeste about what people are saying. One of the best ways to create microtension in a scene is to build up layers of contradiction between the narrative and the dialogue. Let the subtext tell a different story than the words.
Adding some contradictory narrative here — as well as narrative that helps us get into Celeste’s headspace and “see” the scene better — is going to help with balancing the talking heads, while simultaneously making the scene more interesting because of the contradictions we see and the goals each character brings to their conversations.
Depth of Dialogue and Characterization
While in the previous section, I mostly focused on how adding certain types of narrative will create complexity, don’t forget about the dialogue itself. Each character should have a goal when speaking, and it’s best if those goals are never outright stated. In this way, the conflict between each character’s goal and what they want from one another drives the scene.
Another thing to be careful of in the dialogue itself is characterization. While Bernadette feels well done and always herself, the duke and Celeste in particular don’t, especially when talking to one another. I know earlier drafts ended up revealing the duke as a worse person than he is in this version of the story, and I feel some remnants of that in this conversation. His dialogue will need to be tweaked to be a better representation of his character — and showing him as harmless, someone Celeste mostly likes, should add tension as well.
As far as how Celeste talks to the duke, I think clarifying her goals and her understanding of her fiancé will go a long way in helping her read naturally and more like herself.
Conclusion
I know this is a lot, but I think once you work through the kinks of these — as a system, and not as individual problems — you’re going to come out with a much stronger chapter on the other side of it. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or need some help brainstorming ideas.
Plan Forward
Even without an edit letter like this laid out for me, I knew it was a lot and I couldn’t fix it alone. I turned to two trusted critique partners. One looks at structure the same way I do, so I discussed the bigger issues with the lack of agency and unchanging emotions with her. The other handles stories from an entirely different perspective. I sent them the scene, and paid attention to their notes especially on pacing narrative with dialogue, and the expressions and movement of the characters.
Between them, I decided these were the changes I needed to make (and to be fair, I wrote the edit letter after I made these decisions):
- Celeste needs to be the one who decides to go walk in the rose garden, with the goal of finding out more about how her magic works (or did not work)
- Since the end of the scene works for me, and there she’s surprised by Adam’s ultimatum, she needs to start the scene confident that she’ll get the information she needs to
- The dialogue needs to be less conversational and far more revealing about the characters and their situations
With that in mind, I set out to basically rewrite the whole thing from scratch, on paper.
Pictures of Words Are Worth Tens of Thousands of Words
When I finished two rounds of revision (first in purple, new changes after that in green), this is what my chapter looked like. I got to keep some of it, but rearranged a lot and cut even more.
Explaining the Changes
I won’t take you line by line through every decision I made, but I want to focus on a few of them. First, the opening part of the chapter. In the original, Catherine had decided that the pair would go on a walk in the rose garden. In the new version, Celeste sees her brother and the duke headed that direction and decides if she must be stuck with Bernadette, she could at least learn something useful. This puts her in control of the scene at first, giving her agency, and setting her up to be disappointed when Adam later wrests that control from her.
With Celeste in control, the entry into the rose garden and the meeting of the two pairs had to be different. I loved that I could expand Bernadette’s character more here, with Celeste moving from taking advantage of a situation to creating a situation in which she could take advantage. It’s far more fitting of her character.
Another major change I made was in Celeste’s conversation with her fiancé. It never felt right to me — there seemed some remnants of the duke’s personality from earlier drafts that needed excised, and the way Celeste weaseled into and out of that conversation was on the nose at best and awkward and unrealistic at worst. I wanted to emphasize how the duke was likeable, but Celeste still didn’t understand the reason behind their engagement. I also wanted to focus on her wheedling out information about her memory spell, although she ended up stumbling with that in ways that make sense to me.
Here is how it came together.
The Final Scene
Celeste’s mother had taken an initial liking to Bernadette Comtois that only grew with further acquaintance. Each day, the young woman would be in their room first thing after breakfast, and each day Catherine would ensure Celeste got not a moment to herself. Bernadette was all colors and brightness; even her futures glistened — all but one, whose gray, cool appearance did not seem like it could belong to her. Spending time with Mademoiselle Comtois was an ordeal, but not an entirely unpleasant one.
She knew this extended company was her punishment for doing magic. A part of Celeste even considered it fair. She still hadn’t figured out a way to learn the extent of what she had done. Who all had she affected? The servants who prepared their masters, the butchers who slaughtered the meat, the tailors who fitted suits and silks for the guests, the parents who had sent their daughter attended only by a maidservant to her debut? She had no one but Marie-Louise to ask, and though her location spell proved she was once again nearby, she hadn’t been left alone long enough to visit.
On the third day after the ball, Celeste sat by her barred window, looking outside as she awaited Bernadette’s arrival. Though obscured, from this perch she could see the grand steps of the main entry and watch unnoticed the comings and goings of the chateau.
As the door to her room opened behind her, two men started down the stairs outside, the shorter always a step or two behind the taller. Celeste chuckled. Of course her brother would ensure he could always look down on the duke. They turned to the left at the bottom of the stairs and Celeste smiled, an idea forming.
“Good morning, Bernadette,” she said, looking away from the window. “It looks lovely today, practically late summer in the air. Perhaps we should tour my brother’s rose garden, if you’ve not yet had the luxury to view it.”
Bernadette smiled and clasped Celeste’s hands in hers. “You would take me? How I do love roses. Along the Seine, there’s a walk where…”
Celeste let her charge chatter on as they strolled down the stone path together toward the garden where Celeste had first tried on magic as a tool. Though she had never been to Paris, Celeste would bet this garden was nothing like any in the city. Adam’s gardeners prided themselves on their cultivation, yes, but something far more interesting was being cultivated — or pruned — this morning.
Beside a rose bush that towered over both of them, Prince Adam and the Duke of Burgundy leaned toward each other, their faces flushed with the heat of their discussion.
Bernadette looked at Celeste, inquisitive and innocent. “This sounds important. Maybe we should — ”
“We are as free to be here as they are, Bernadette. No women’s walk is of interest to men who have more on their minds.” Which was their folly and would be their downfall, but true. “My brother and fiancé will pay us no mind.”
“Your brother? Your fiancé? These are the prince and the duke? How much I have heard of them!”
Celeste had to remind herself that, as far as Bernadette remembered, she hadn’t met those men. Hadn’t danced with them both three nights beforehand. “They are. Perhaps you would like an introduction? How wrong that you have not yet become acquainted with your host!” Celeste walked slowly, catching her fingers on the shriveling petals of the roses. Her brother’s still bloomed in all its glory, and Celeste had not yet blossomed into hers.
“If what they speak of is important, will they not begrudge the interruption? I know my father does not want to hear my stories or see my embroidery when holed up in his office.” Her face held trepidation, but also hope. She wanted Celeste to contradict her. She wanted to meet the prince.
Celeste smiled, releasing a petal that fell to the ground beside her and placing her hand on the forearm entwined with hers. “A garden is not so private as an office. I am certain if our walk intersected theirs, they would welcome the break.”
Bernadette immediately quickened her pace. “Then please, let’s.”
The pair moved closer, until the postures came accompanied with muffled voices. She paused a row from the young men, where she could make out the words.
“It’s obvious you have no experience at this. Let me mentor you. Teach you the ways of nobility you’ve missed when this long from Paris.” The duke spoke quickly, his tone flustered. Celeste could not blame his impatience with Adam.
“If my father would simply invite me — ”
“The truth of the matter is that he has not. He’s sent me, though. A shrewd leader would use the resources he’s been given,” the duke said. Celeste smiled. She had not been wrong to choose this walk this day.
“Politics?” Bernadette whispered.
“More or less.”
“You are right that they would welcome the interruption, then. Shall we — ” Bernadette took two hasty, loud steps toward the end of the row. Celeste reached out a hand to stop her, the other on her own lips. “Hush,” Celeste said. “Let’s at least wait for a pause.”
“I know what I’m doing and I don’t like your implication that I do not,” Adam said.
The duke sighed, heavy and almost performative. “You don’t know what you don’t know. For instance, I’ve been here a month. A proper host would have provided at least some sort of formal party, if he could not afford a ball.”
This had to be her opening. She did not want her brother outing her mistakes. Not then. “Let’s go,” she said to Bernadette, and they stepped together onto her brother’s path.
“Spying on us, dear sister?”
“Of course not. Even ladies are drawn to beautiful gardens on beautiful days. We would be happy to leave you alone, of course, but when I heard my fiancé talking, I knew I must say hello.” Celeste smiled her mother’s smile: practiced, measured, but seeming eager to please.
Adam looked up at his sister, his eyebrows arching slightly. “You two must be very… close. Do you find you are well matched?”
The duke stepped between the siblings, bowing to Celeste. “I find we — we — we haven’t spent nearly the time together I would wish to.” The words felt forced, choked out past a throat that did not want him to speak. Interesting, Celeste thought. Her magic left some traces, then, and not just for her mother who recognized its signature.
“She has told me much about you,” Bernadette said, looking up through her eyelashes. This wasn’t, strictly speaking, true, but Celeste did not correct her. “Perhaps,” Bernadette continued, “You and your fiancé would prefer to walk together?” Her words were for Celeste, but her eyes flitted to Adam, her hands clasped tightly in front of her.
Celeste suppressed a smile. “Happily. I’m sure we have much to talk about. Adam, you can care for my charge?”
Catherine had continued to lecture about unintended, far-reaching consequences of magic in the scale that Celeste had performed. Some time with another person whose memory she had altered, someone she knew better beforehand, might elucidate what happened. Although if the duke’s words so far gave her any clue, this probing might provide more questions than answers.
The four of them regrouped and strode in opposite directions. As long as they were nearby, Celeste heard Adam describing his gardens, the thought behind them, the care that went into them, far better than she could have done, and in a tone that suggested he did not mind Bernadette’s flirtation.
“You’re quiet, Mademoiselle,” the duke said.
In truth, she did not know how to broach a subject the duke did not remember. But she said, “I’m listening. My brother and that young lady seem to be getting along, and my mother has entrusted her to my care.”
“Playing the dutiful guardian, then. Good. A role that suits a wife,” he said with something akin to mischief in his tone, although neither his face nor his posture matched it.
Celeste did not respond, pretending to be lost somewhere between her thoughts and the much more jubilant conversation that echoed from the far side of the rose garden. “May we sit here? I don’t want to let them get too far away.”
“You act as if they are the lovers and not us,” he said with a chuckle.
They were not. His motive for their engagement was far from clear — all she knew was that he had one, and it was not love. “They are younger, and both of them more reckless. I do not want Bernadette to get hurt.”
The duke did not respond except to sit on a stone bench directly across from the very bush she had plucked a rose from for her brother’s birthday. It had noticeably grown since then, the flowers now all in bloom and stretching eagerly toward the sun.
“We’ve been engaged some several weeks now without much time together,” the duke said when he seemed to realize the burden was on him to provide conversation.
Because I have made you forget things that I wish I could, Celeste thought. “If what I overheard is true, you hope this changes soon. What is it about parties and fancy dresses that appeals to you so?”
The duke looked at her, a wistfulness in his eyes that met fear the longer he held her gaze. His lips parted, but he closed them and swallowed, like he could eat words he never said. “Your brother should have been a better host, is all.”
“He should be better at much more than that.” She paid attention once again to the pair roaming the gardens with more freedom. Adam and Bernadette walked arm and arm, laughing and speaking with an ease she could not now replicate. It made Celeste nervous. While she knew nothing of falling in love, she was certain her brother was not the man to fall for.
“I’m impressed by how intently you obey your mother’s demands,” the duke said after a while.
“I’m sorry?”
“You said that young lady was in your charge? You haven’t taken your eyes off her.”
“Right, yes. I was to supervise her, and leaving her alone with my brother seems far from wise.” It was true, and easier than how she still did not know what to say. Removing memories had been easy. Navigating what remained was not.
The duke leaned toward her almost conspiratorially. His hand brushed hers in a bold intimacy that did not feel romantic. “You know, I feel like I’ve met her before. I’m sure I have not, though. Not a Parisian as young as she is. I’m afraid this is why my mind is elsewhere. I cannot explain this feeling, and it seems every time I come close to the answer, I feel dragged away as if by a spooked horse. It is not unlike how I feel looking at you, Mademoiselle la Princese.”
“How odd,” Celeste said. Her magic, then, kept pushing. It had not ended with her spell, but lived like a parasite inside him still, whispering that some recesses of this mind must not be touched. Fascinating. This magic was easy. This magic was not without consequence. “I need to have a word with my brother. Go make the acquaintance of Mademoiselle Comtois. She is quite the character.”
Celeste had made the suggestion simply to get the two of them away from Adam so she could talk to him in private. She had no thought for the decorum of it until the duke looked at her absolutely aghast. “Are you sure I should go speak to a young lady alone? What is the protocol for an engaged couple?”
“I have been engaged exactly as long as you have, monsieur, and I admit it was not a topic of my studies. But we will still all be in the garden together. I do not see the harm.” Through all she knew of the duke, though, she couldn’t imagine him doing anything unseemly, especially not with a girl as young as Bernadette.
The duke considered, nodded, then offered Celeste a hand as he stood from the bench. They strode across the garden, whose perfume of dozens of varieties of roses baptized them as they walked. Celeste did not pause often enough to take in the beauty of her cage, the elaborate turrets, the cherubs adorning every corner like blind guardian angels, the intricately planned gardens, the flowers blooming in a veritable rainbow around them. Nature was capable of work Celeste could only dream of duplicating.
“Mademoiselle Comtois, Prince Adam.”
The pair looked as if Celeste and the duke interrupted something important, but both accepted them with all the grace that etiquette demanded. “I apologize for the interruption, both of you, but as the duke and I were speaking I remembered something urgent I must discuss with the prince.”
Bernadette turned toward Adam, her wide brown eyes overflowing with infatuation. Adam gave her a fleeting smile, then glanced pointedly at Celeste. She betrayed no understanding of his cross face.
Adam said, “If you’ll excuse me, Mademoiselle Comtois — ”
“Please call me Bernadette. I feel as if I’ve known you a lifetime.” She reached a hand to Adam’s forearm, and his gaze met Celeste’s over Bernadette’s shoulder. His lips twisted cruelly.
“If you’ll briefly excuse me, my sister would never interrupt if it weren’t for something dire.”
Celeste ignored Adam, whose pointed stare held hints of both his displeasure at the interruption and his curiosity at her imperfect magic. “Please feel free to make your acquaintance with the duke while we speak,” she said to Bernadette. I won’t be but five minutes.”
Adam hardly waited for Bernadette’s acknowledgment before taking Celeste’s elbow with some force and leading her aside. “I don’t know what exactly I saw on that bench where you two spoke, but it did not look like a woman who loves her brother carrying out her promise to him.”
“You’ve no idea the way the mind of a woman works,” she said. “These things take time.”
“Like the time you took to erase the memories of my ball from hundreds of people,” Adam hissed, with one look back toward where Bernadette and the Duke now wandered.
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. My magic, unintentional as it was, was not without consequence. The duke speaks of the way his mind grapples with having previously met Mademoiselle Comtois. With not remembering much of me at all, when he feels he should. How it forces him away from the thoughts.” She remembered their mother’s reprimand, how quickly she’d seen through her own confusion. “If he knew magic were possible, he would have known it was magic I performed. This is dangerous, Adam, and the duke seems harmless enough. Why should we risk something going wrong?”
Her brother huffed, stamping one foot on the ground before he spoke. “Because it is my livelihood he’s about to take. Look, Celeste, if you had extracted his memory in better circumstances — if I’d known about it, commissioned it — it’s honestly brilliant. Do that. If the duke is harmless, don’t harm him. Simply erase his memory of more than the ball. Erase it altogether.”
Celeste stepped away from him, her skirt catching on thorns as she moved. It was an impossible demand — impossible specifically because she knew she could, and she would not. “If there are repercussions to removing a single memory, how much worse would it be for him if I extracted it all?”
“And how much better for us?”
“Adam,” Celeste said, her hand on her brother’s shoulder. “I won’t do it. People are memories. He’d have nothing left.”
He turned again to the others so Celeste could see only a quarter of his profile. The muscles in his jaw tensed as he watched the duke with Bernadette. A deep growl escaped his throat, conveying more than he must have wished it to. “You have a fortnight. I expect a plan by then, or we will be following mine.”
Conclusion
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