“I don’t care what you know yet,” Camille snaps. “Someone served something bad at my wedding event.” Her voice carries down the corridor. One of the servers visibly flinches.
I step in before Nadine has to take the blow for all of us. “No one is hiding,” I say.
Camille turns to me. “You don’t know that.”
“No,” I say. “Neither do you.”
For a second the only sound is the distant murmur of guests still gathered near the front of the house.
I keep my voice level. “Let it be investigated before you start deciding which member of the staff you’d like to destroy over it.”
Ethan is watching me now, saying nothing. That somehow makes it worse.
Camille gives a short, disbelieving laugh. “Amazing. You really do think you get to speak to me that way in my own wedding house.”
“This isn’t about your wedding house,” I say. “It’s about the fact that someone is in critical condition.”
Her face hardens. “And I’m supposed to just stand here while your people pretend this has nothing to do with them?”
“My people?” I ask quietly.
The words slip out before I can stop them, and I see Ethan react to them first. A small tightening around the mouth. A warning not to push further.
Too late now.
Camille takes a step closer. “Don’t start.”
I should back off. I know I should. But one of the girls behind me is still trembling, and Camille is standing here acting as if the greatest tragedy of the morning is that the bridal breakfast was interrupted.
So I say, “No one here is pretending anything. I’m telling you not to decide the answer before there’s been an investigation.”
Her eyes flash. “You don’t tell me what to do.”
“No,” I say. “But I am telling you that if you start blaming the staff before anyone knows what happened, you’re doing it because you need someone smaller to punish.”
Silence.
Ethan’s gaze snaps to mine.
Camille goes very still. I see the exact second she decides that I’ve crossed whatever line she needed left uncrossed.
“Oh, fuck you,” she says, and shoves me.
It happens so quickly I barely have time to understand it. One second she’s standing in front of me, flushed and furious, and the next both her hands are on my shoulders, pushing hard enough to send me backward.
I lose my footing at once. But the hallway is carpeted, thick and soft underfoot, and before I can really fall, someone catches me.
One of the house staff, a young man from service, lunges forward and grabs me under the arms. Another hand catches my elbow. My body still drops, but only partway, enough for my knees to buckle and my weight to pull against them before they steady me again.
The whole thing lasts maybe two seconds.
It feels much longer.
A frightened sound leaves me before I can stop it, and my first instinct is immediate and blind. My hand goes low over my stomach, protective, urgent, checking, as if I can somehow reassure myself with touch alone.
I stay there for a second, half-crouched, breath knocked out of me, one of the staff still holding my arm while the other steadies my shoulder. The carpet presses into my knees. My heart is pounding so hard it makes everything feel thin and far away.
Then I look up.