The day came when Sebastian was not there to stay Ciel's hand, and the slap reverberated throughout the manor's halls.

Elizabeth ran from their bedchamber— her bedchamber, as Ciel had coolly reminded her just then— stumbling down dark hallways, tripping on the grand, blood-red carpet of the main stairs. To the new bride, the mansion seemed grotesquely large, swathed with shadows she had somehow never noticed as a child.

As a child, she would have responded to Ciel's darkness with ribbons, with toys and music and her own, soaring giggles. But she had learned over the past few years that no amount of shimmering clothes would lighten Ciel's mood. And no matter how many glittering, fairy-tale balls she arranged, he would not play her prince, would not even try.

She was Elizabeth Midford Phantomhive, a woman of the two strongest families in Britain, so she didn't cry. Instead, she did what she had seen so many adults who didn't cry do. She made her way to the dining room, with its well-stocked liquor cabinet.

"My lady."

Startled, she let the glass slip, yet that butler, inexplicably appearing next to her as if out of thin air, caught it inches from the ground. He glanced up at her, her slight frame now shaking with fright as well as rage. She stared back for a moment and then began to speak, to beg that he wouldn't tell Ciel and give him more reasons to dismiss her a foolish wisp of a girl . . .

He cut her off. "Would you care for some tea?"

She studied him over the cup of steaming tea— a gentle, calming oolong he had received just that day. She praised its delicate flavors, and he smiled in return, sitting down across from her without taking any tea himself.

It was unusual, of course, for a lady of her status to ask a butler to sit at the table with her. Elizabeth, however, had never mistaken Sebastian for a normal servant. Though she noticed a slight crease in his youthful brow and traces of weariness in his rich, red-brown eyes, she felt— as she had the first day she saw him, standing by her miraculously alive cousin— that he was somehow supernatural.

Sebastian watched her as well. These months of marriage, filled with empty days as Ciel roamed abroad for his missions and punctuated by tempestuous arguments whenever he did return, had been unkind to the young lady. Left alone with only the other servants and too many snakes for company, she wore dark frocks everyday, the sober hues accompanied by shadows under her eyes and hollows in her cheeks. Sebastian wondered whether her prior gayness hadn't been more aesthetically pleasing.

"Tell me, Sebastian," Elizabeth broke their thoughtful silence, "Was he always like this?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"How can you not? You have been far closer to Ciel than anyone, these past few years. If anyone knows whence his cruelty comes, it's you."

Sebastian gazed at her green eyes— more perceptive, perhaps, than he had suspected. "I do know what you mean, then. And yet I can't answer."

Elizabeth took a sip of her tea, considering. "He told me once, without thinking much of it, that you couldn't lie even if lives depended on it."

"That was a rather foolish admission on his part."

"It's true, then? You can't lie to me?"

"Indeed."

"Though you can still play with my words," Elizabeth mused. Setting her jaw, she fixed her eyes on Sebastian and asked outright, "What's the most evil thing he's done as the Watchdog?"

"'Evil' is hard to define, but perhaps burning down a building full of kidnapped children would qualify."

She gasped and clenched her eyes shut, but she reopened them a moment later, shaking her head. "Is he tortured, then, by guilt over that act or some other?"

"I do not think he feels guilt for any act."

"Because he is fighting for good?"

"Because he fights for the queen," Sebastian replied. Elizabeth detected a note of sarcasm.

"He may yet be guilty in thought, though," she murmured. Then, her eyes grew wide at a new thought. "Sebastian, is he . . . Is he like a character out of that Oscar Wilde novel?"

Sebastian raised an eyebrow at her stammering. "I once again don't know what you mean. That is a frightfully ambiguous question."

She grimaced. "It's difficult to put this delicately."

"You need not worry about protecting my innocence, Lady Elizabeth."

Now Elizabeth raised an eyebrow. "To the best of your knowledge, has he ever asked a man to be his lover?"

Sebastian stared at the woman before him, crimson irises flickering. "No," he finally said, his voice soft and low. "He has never asked, to my knowledge."

"I hoped he might have someone he cared for," Elizabeth looked down, speaking to her empty cup.

"You would have him be happy, even in someone else's arms?"

"If it would save him from his own bitterness, yes," she replied curtly. "I mourned him once, Sebastian. I didn't intend to ever do so again."

"And what of your own bitterness?" Sebastian questioned, standing to refill her tea.

"A proper lady is never bitter."

"Your grief, then. What can save you from being consumed yourself?"

Elizabeth pondered for a moment, as the only sound came from the tea trickling into her cup. Finally, she shrugged. "You can."

"I can?"

"Of course," she tossed her golden curls, wearing her first true smile in days. "Fence with me."