Zhao came to dinner again, and I struggled to present myself as indifferent, passive, and downright insipid while also seeming polite and proper in the eyes of my father. Zhao, of course, was too absorbed with himself to notice any of this, somehow managing to sing his own praises while complimenting me. He strove to be as eloquent and romantic as possible with his words, as if he cared more for proving linguistic ability than for establishing a personal connection. Father seemed to have mastered, overnight, an ability to prevent my reveals of open disdain with a minimum of actually looking at me. It amazed me how he'd managed to go from total neglector to total authoritarian, even if it was only at dinner.

Several of my cousins were there, including Zhen and Maylin, but I was seated far from my friends, trapped next to the firebender. Though I never saw him bend before, I knew his style from the way he held himself, looked around, and gripped his glass. Zhao was a bender fueled by emotion, by rage, by power hunger. He moved with raw strength and brute force, powerful and skilled, but ultimately reckless and out of control. Ferocity and ambition began his bending, and only self-destruction could end it.

Or Ozai, I suppose. But we know that's not going to happen—

His finger was on my neck, toying with my collar.

His finger.

I jerked away and let my cheeks turn red with an anger he would mistake for an embarrassed blush of girlish modesty. I could feel him smirk just as I felt his hungry eyes consume me once more. I could feel him lean towards me, his mouth an inch from my ear, his mind somewhere I didn't want to think about.

"Do you always wear such… high collars?" he whispered in a low, husky voice that prickled the hairs on my back with the worst kind of chills.

"Always is a strong word," I replied, surprised by the smallness of my voice. "Why?"

He tucked a lock of hair behind my ear, and it took all I had not to scream while he cooed. The slickness in his voice was even worse than Ozai when he spouted false flattery everyone outside of his family believed. How could so much oil scratch so coarsely? How could that coolness inflame my brain to the point of explosion?

"I want to see more of that lovely neck."

So I incinerated every low-collared garment I owned.

The next day, news of their engagement seemed to have reached everyone by sunrise. Fire noble gossip spread like… you know, especially something as shocking as this. No woman in the history of "the season" had been proposed to so quickly. There wasn't even enough time for the women to spread—much less fabricate—scandal. My early "notice" of her at the ball was viewed as a credit to, or even cause of, her social advancement and prospects. The concept that I could have been genuinely interested in her was dismissed before it was even thought of, which wasn't that surprising given my past of ignoring the women hurled at me. Still, I thought it odd how quickly they dismissed the duel incident and the connection that revealed. Instead, everyone praised Ursa for having a beauty irresistible enough to enchant young firebenders into snatching her up as quickly as possible, admiring her for a "demure charm" and "sense of propriety" that I couldn't help but laugh at it.

It didn't take long, however, for the fickle crowd's whispers to change, indubitably due to the influence of an envious Jí Mei. Her family's lineage surfaced again and again until it seemed as though she was the one to snap Zhao up, as though she was terribly lucky to have enough beauty to make someone overlook her family's dishonor. The general consensus was that, had she a better family, she would have married up even higher. But no. The perfection of the Fire Nation should count her blessings for being able to catch…

The whole thing sickened me, but not half as much as it did her.

I'd spent the rest of that dinner planning out the destruction of my closet. Before I knew what had happened, the meal was over, and Zhao took my hand. I stared at the ground because I couldn't recoil, forced to hear his verbose proposal while everyone watched.

Father stood not a foot behind us, trying to intimidate me into silence and acceptance. He needn't have tried. My throat had closed up. My mouth was dry. I couldn't even seem to focus my eyes. The room was spinning, and all I could do was stand there as he accepted on my behalf and joked about my speechlessness.

"Lady Ursa?" Zhao, the wrong voice, asked. The wrong brow furrowed. The wrong hand held mine.

So I fled.

I fled to my bedroom, and my cousins comforted me. They wept the tears I couldn't muster. They drowned me in questions I couldn't answer. Brought me water I couldn't drink. They held me and stroked me, brushing my hair and fetching a silk robe to sleep in. all I could do was stare straight ahead.

At my wardrobe.

"This whole mess is just so… ancient," Maylin sighed in exasperation. "We're the most advanced and successful civilization on the planet! I mean, we've learned about how possessive and backwards the water tribes are, how they practically brand their women with dog collar necklaces to mark ownership. It seems impossible that any semblance of that oppression could exist here too—"

At last, after they'd both made valiant attempts to squeeze out laughter, I spoke.

My eyes remained glued on it.

"Zhen, Maylin, would you help me with something…?"

I missed her chastisements.

I missed her smile, of course, and the way she laughed, but I always missed those. I missed the way her hips swayed in her robes, the way her body moved as she glided across the floor whether dancing, walking, or sprinting.

I missed her glare. The way she'd send pointed daggers at me time and time again, whenever I rolled my eyes, whenever she knew I had a sarcastic or bitter thought, so common yet somehow absurdly charming. She was too lovely, in my eyes, to ever be threatening. I missed her voice raised in anger, so rare it could never be irksome, so strangely beautiful like a song.

I missed her.