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The kitchen at Fallingford was too quiet.
Hazel Wong stood in the center of it, her black mourning dress rustling stiffly against her stockings, and tried to remember how to make tea. It should have been simple. She had made tea thousands of times - at Deepdean, in her own home in Hong Kong, in railway carriages and hotel rooms and train carriages and crime scenes across England. Tea was what you did when there was nothing else to be done, when the world had stopped making sense and your hands needed something to hold. It was something so very dear to her, a common interlink between her Chinese heritage and the English culture she’d grown to adopt.
But her hands were shaking.
The Wellses had gone into the village - Lady Hastings to finalize arrangements with the vicar, Lord Hastings to collect relatives from the station, Bertie to escape the suffocating weight of the house. Her own father and siblings had caught a train to London, partially wanting to explore the country’s dedicated cornerstone, and more likely not wanting to intrude upon the grieving family. They had asked if she wanted to come. Hazel had said no. She needed to be alone, she'd told them. What she hadn't said was that she needed to be alone here, in Daisy's house, surrounded by Daisy's things, breathing air that Daisy had breathed.
Even if Daisy would never breathe again.
Hazel's fingers found the handle of the kettle. It was cool and smooth, porcelain painted with delicate blue flowers. She filled it at the sink, watching the water rush from the tap, clear and cold and utterly indifferent to the fact that the world had ended three days ago.
The stove took three matches to light. Her hands were shaking too badly for precision.
While the water heated, Hazel opened the cupboard where the Wellses kept their tea things. Rows of cups hung from hooks, their handles forming a neat line like soldiers at attention. She reached for one - white with a gold rim, the kind Daisy always insisted on using because anything less was "frightfully common" - and her fingers slipped.
The cup fell.
It seemed to fall forever, tumbling through the air in slow motion, the gold rim catching the light from the window. Hazel watched it fall and couldn't move, couldn't reach out to catch it, could only stand frozen as it struck the floor and shattered into a dozen pieces, the sharp sound in the silent kitchen reminiscent of a bullet at the start of a battleground.
The gymnasium at Deepdean School for Girls smelled of floor polish and some kind of sharp, unpleasant rat pesticide fluid - arsenic, most likely. Hazel detested the stench.
Hazel stood in the doorway, her heart hammering against her ribs, and stared at the thing that had been Miss Bell. The science teacher lay crumpled beneath the vaulting horse, her limbs arranged at angles that bodies weren't naturally intended to bend like. Blood had pooled beneath her head, dark and viscous, soaking into the wooden floor.
"Don't just stand there gawping, Hazel," Daisy said from beside her, her voice sharp with excitement rather than horror. "We need to examine the body before anyone else arrives."
Hazel's stomach lurched. "Daisy, we can't -"
"Of course we can. We're detectives, aren't we? This is what detectives do." Daisy was already moving forward, her shoes clicking against the floor, her blonde hair swinging. She crouched beside Miss Bell's body with the blasé grace of someone examining a particularly interesting insect. "Look at the blood spatter pattern. And the angle of the head wound. This wasn't an accident, Hazel. This was a murder."
Hazel forced herself to move closer, though every instinct screamed at her to run. The blood was so red, so very dark. She had never seen so much blood before. It seemed impossible that one person could contain so much, that a body could exude it all out onto the floor like spilled paint.
"Hazel." Daisy's voice was gentler now. She looked up, her blue eyes finding Hazel's brown ones. "You can do this. I know you can. You're the bravest person I know."
And somehow, with Daisy looking at her like that, Hazel found she could move forward. Could crouch beside the body. Could look at the terrible wound and the spreading blood and begin to think like a detective instead of a frightened thirteen year old girl.
Because Daisy believed she could.
Hazel blinked and looked back down at the kitchen floor, staring down at the shattered cup. Fragments of porcelain lay scattered across the floor like broken bones, and for a moment she couldn't breathe or think or extract any memory other than the sharp visions of blood spreading across gymnasium floor, across railway carriage carpet, across so many floors in so many places where death had found them.
Where death had found her.
She knelt carefully, her dress pooling around her, and began to pick up the pieces. Her fingers found a large shard, curved and sharp, and she gripped it too tightly. Pain lanced through her palm. She looked down and saw blood welling up from a thin cut, bright red against her pale skin.
The blood looked exactly the same as it had on the gymnasium floor.
Exactly the same as it had looked everywhere.
Hazel set the shard down carefully and pressed her other hand against the cut, applying pressure the way Daisy had taught her. Always apply pressure to a wound, Daisy had said, demonstrating on a cut Hazel had gotten while they were investigating the Bonfire Night murder. And don't faint, Hazel. Fainting is frightfully unhelpful. It wastes eons of time waiting for you to come to your senses again.
Daisy had wrapped Hazel's hand in her own handkerchief, her fingers gentle and sure, and Hazel had thought that Daisy's hands were the most capable hands in the world. That there was nothing Daisy couldn't fix, no mystery she couldn't unravel.
But Daisy couldn't fix this.
Daisy couldn't solve her own death.
Hazel stood, leaving the broken cup on the floor, and went to find a rag, or a piece of gauze. The first aid kit was in the scullery, tucked into a cupboard beside the cleaning supplies. She wrapped her hand mechanically, her fingers moving through the familiar motions while her mind drifted somewhere else entirely.
The kettle was whistling when she returned to the kitchen. She turned off the stove and stood staring at it, trying to remember what came next. Tea leaves. She needed tea leaves. And a pot. And a strainer.
The tea caddy sat on the counter, silver and engraved with the Wells family crest. Hazel opened it and the smell of earl grey wafted out, bergamot and black tea, and she was crying before she realized it. Tears ran down her cheeks and dripped onto the counter, and she couldn't stop them, couldn't even lift her hand to wipe them away.
Daisy had adored the smell of earl grey.
Daisy had loved so many things.
Hazel measured tea leaves into the pot with shaking hands. One spoonful. Two. Three. She couldn't remember how many Daisy used. Couldn't remember if Daisy had ever told her. There were so many things she should have asked, should have memorized, should have written down in her casebook so she would never forget.
But she had thought there would be time.
She poured the boiling water over the tea leaves and watched them swirl and darken, releasing their color into the water like ink spreading through paper. The steam rose in delicate curls, carrying the scent of bergamot, and Hazel closed her eyes.
The train compartment was small and overheated, the air thick with the smell of coal smoke and expensive perfume. Hazel sat pressed against the window, her notebook open on her lap, while Daisy paced the narrow space like a caged rat.
"It has to be the Russian," Daisy was saying, her voice low and urgent. "The timing is perfect, and she had access to the victim's compartment. Plus, did you see her shoes? Absolutely covered in mud, and it hasn't rained in days. She must have gotten off the train at some point."
"But why would she kill Mrs. Daunt?" Hazel asked, her pencil hovering over the page. "What's her motive?"
"That's what we need to find out." Daisy stopped pacing and turned to face Hazel, her eyes bright with excitement. "We need to search her luggage. Tonight, after everyone's asleep."
"Daisy, we can't just—"
"Of course we can. We're detectives." Daisy sat down beside Hazel, so close their shoulders touched. She leaned over to look at Hazel's notes, her blonde hair brushing against Hazel's cheek. "Your handwriting is getting better, you know. I can almost read it now."
Hazel felt her cheeks warm. "It's not that bad."
"It's appalling. But I love it anyway." Daisy's voice was casual, throwaway, but something in it made Hazel's heart skip. "I love how you write everything down, every tiny detail. You notice things I miss, Hazel. You always have."
The train swayed around a curve and Daisy's hand found Hazel's, steadying herself. Or perhaps steadying Hazel. Their fingers intertwined naturally, easily, as though they had done this a thousand times before.
As though they belonged together.
"We make a good team," Hazel said quietly.
"The best team," Daisy agreed. "Wells and Wong. Wong and Wells. The greatest detective partnership in England."
"In the world," Hazel corrected.
Daisy laughed, bright and delighted. "In the world," she agreed. "Forever and ever, Hazel. You and me against everyone else."
Forever had lasted five years.
Hazel opened her eyes and stared at the teapot. The tea had steeped too long now, would be bitter and overly concentrated. It’d be too strong. Daisy would have scolded her for it. Really, Hazel, how difficult is it to time tea properly? You're supposed to be the organized one.
But Daisy wasn't here to scold her.
Daisy would never scold her again.
Hazel found another cup - plain white this time, nothing special - she really was just common without Daisy, anyways - and poured the tea. It was as dark as coffee, and equally bitter and intense. She added milk and sugar, more than she usually took, and stirred mechanically. The spoon clinked against the porcelain, a small sound in the vast silence of the house.
She should clean up the broken cup. Should sweep up the fragments before someone stepped on them. Should do something useful, something productive, something other than standing in this kitchen making tea she didn't want to drink.
But she couldn't seem to move.
The house creaked around her, settling into itself. Fallingford was old, built in the sixteenth century, and it made sounds like a living thing - groaning floorboards and sighing walls and windows that rattled in their frames. Daisy had loved this house. Hazel had heard the stories of how she’d run through its corridors as a child, had hidden in its secret passages, had known every creaking board and loose stone.
Hazel had visited Fallingford dozens of times over the years. For holidays and birthdays and long summer weeks when Deepdean was closed. She knew this house almost as well as Daisy had. She knew which stairs squeaked and which doors stuck and where the best hiding places were.
But it had never felt this empty before.
She picked up her teacup and walked out of the kitchen, through the servants' corridor and into the main hall. Her footsteps echoed on the marble floor. The portraits of dead Wellses stared down at her from the walls, their painted eyes following her progress. Daisy's ancestors, stretching back centuries. Daisy had always joked about them, had made up scandalous stories about their lives, had insisted that her great aunt had definitely murdered her husband.
"Look at her eyes, Hazel," Daisy had said once, pointing up at a particularly stern-looking portrait. "Those are the eyes of a poisoner. I'd stake my reputation on it."
Hazel looked up at the portrait now. She couldn’t remember the woman’s name now - Mathilde, or Marion, or the like. It didn’t matter now. The painted eyes were cold and judgmental, and Hazel wondered what she would think of Daisy's death. Would she approve? Would she think Daisy had died nobly, heroically, in service of something greater than herself?
Or would she think, as Hazel did, that it was a waste?
The stairs to the second floor seemed steeper than usual. Hazel climbed them slowly, her free hand trailing along the banister, her teacup held carefully in the other. She passed the drawing room where they had played cards last Christmas. Passed the library where they had spent countless hours reading and researching and planning their investigations. Passed the music room where Daisy had once tried to teach Hazel to play the piano and they had both dissolved into helpless laughter at Hazel's complete lack of musical talent.
Every room was full of ghosts.
Hazel stopped at the top of the stairs, uncertain. She should go to the guest room where she was staying. Should drink her tea and lie down and try to rest before the funeral tomorrow. Should do what was expected of her, what was proper, what was right.
But her feet carried her down the corridor to Daisy's room instead.
The door was closed. Hazel stood in front of it for a long moment, her hand hovering over the doorknob. She shouldn't go in. It felt like trespassing, like violating something sacred. This was Daisy's private space, Daisy's sanctuary, and Daisy wasn't here to invite her in.
But Daisy would never be here to invite her in again.
Hazel turned the doorknob and pushed the door open.
Daisy's room was exactly as she had left it prior to Egypt, untouched even by her family. The bed was made with explicit precision, the coverlet smooth and unwrinkled. Books were stacked on the nightstand in a disheveled tower. The wardrobe door was slightly ajar, revealing a glimpse of silk and wool and cotton. The vanity was cluttered with cosmetics and jewelry and hair ribbons, arranged in the careful chaos that was uniquely Daisy's.
It smelled like her. Like French perfume and expensive soap and something else, something indefinable that was just Daisy.
Hazel's knees went weak. She stumbled to the window seat and sat down heavily, tea sloshing in her cup. The window looked out over the gardens, bare and brown in the February cold. The maze where they had played as children. The folly where they had hidden during a particularly tedious garden party. The woods beyond where they had tracked a suspect once, getting thoroughly lost and having to be rescued by a bemused gamekeeper.
So many memories.
Too many memories.
Hazel sipped her tea. It was bitter and lukewarm now, unpleasant, but she drank it anyway. It gave her something to do with her hands, something to focus on besides the overwhelming presence of Daisy's absence.
Her eyes drifted to the bed.
It was a large bed, a four-poster with heavy curtains that could be drawn for privacy. Hazel had never slept in it - she always stayed in the nursery with Daisy when she visited - but she had sat on it countless times. Had sprawled across it with Daisy, discussing cases and reading letters and planning their futures.
Their futures that would never happen now.
Hazel stood and walked to the bed. She set her teacup on the nightstand and sat down on the edge of the mattress. It was soft and expensive, the same type of silky cotton that cost abhorrent amount that neither she nor Daisy would ever have had to worry about. She ran her hand over the coverlet, feeling the smooth silk beneath her fingers.
And then she saw it.
A hair ribbon, pale blue, tucked half underneath the pillow, concealed by its floral covers.
Not Daisy's color. Daisy wore green or grey or occasionally pink, but never blue. It clashed with her eyes, she’d say. This blue was deeper and richer, the color of a summer sky at twilight.
Hazel picked it up slowly. It was silk, expensive, with a subtle pattern woven into the fabric. She turned it over in her hands, and something cold settled in her stomach.
She knew this ribbon.
She had seen Amina El Maghrabi wear it.
The library at Deepdean was empty except for two figures in the corner, half-hidden behind the stacks. Hazel had come looking for a book on poisons - they were investigating a suspicious bout of illnesses in the local village - and had stopped short when she heard voices.
Daisy's voice. And another voice, lower, warmer, with the faint accent that marked Amina as foreign, just as Hazel herself could never shake the slight tonal differences in words that came from years of Cantonese.
Hazel should have announced herself. Should have walked around the stacks and greeted them normally. But something in Daisy's tone made her freeze, made her stay hidden, made her listen.
"You can't tell anyone," Daisy was saying. Her voice was different than Hazel had ever heard it - uncertain, almost vulnerable. "Not even Hazel. Especially not Hazel."
"Why especially not Hazel?" Amina asked. There was amusement in her voice, and something distinctly knowing. “You’d have thought she’d be the first person you’d want to know.”
"Because she wouldn't understand. She's so... innocent. So good. She'd be horrified."
"I think you underestimate her. She knows about Martita, doesn’t she?"
"I think I know her better than you do." Daisy's voice had an edge now, defensive. "She's my best friend. My partner. I know exactly how she'd react."
There was a pause. Then Amina said, very quietly, "Is that all she is? Your best friend?"
Another pause, longer this time. Hazel's heart was pounding so hard she was sure they must be able to hear it.
"Yes," Daisy said finally. "That's all she is."
"Liar."
The word hung in the air between them. Hazel pressed herself against the bookshelf, hardly daring to breathe.
"I'm not -" Daisy started.
"You are. You're lying to me, or you're lying to yourself, or both." Amina's voice was gentle now, almost pitying. "It's all right, you know. You don't have to pretend with me."
"I'm not pretending anything."
"Aren't you?"
Silence. Then the sound of movement, fabric rustling, footsteps on carpet. Hazel risked a glance around the bookshelf and immediately wished she hadn't.
Daisy and Amina stood very close together, so close they were almost touching. Amina's hand was on Daisy's cheek, her thumb brushing along Daisy's cheekbone. Daisy's eyes were pointed downwards, her face tilted up, and she looked nothing like the confident, commanding Daisy that Hazel knew.
She looked young. Uncertain. Completely unlike the noble Daisy Wells.
"I can't," Daisy whispered. "I can't be this. I can't want this."
"Why not?"
"Because it's wrong. Because it's not what people like me do. Because -"
Amina kissed her.
It was gentle at first, tentative, a question rather than a statement. But then Daisy made a small sound in the back of her throat and kissed back, and suddenly it wasn't gentle at all. Daisy's hands fisted in Amina's cardigan, pulling her closer, and Amina's fingers tangled in Daisy's blonde hair, and they kissed like it was natural to breathe one another in like air.
Hazel couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't even look away, even as every bone in her body begged her to run.
She watched as Amina backed Daisy against the bookshelf, as Daisy's head tilted back and Amina's fingers moved to her throat. Watched as Daisy's eyes fluttered closed and her lips parted and her whole body seemed to melt into Amina's touch.
Watched as Amina's hand slid down Daisy's side, over her hip, and Daisy gasped and -
Hazel turned and fled.
She ran through the library, not caring about the noise, not caring if they heard her. She ran down the corridor and up the stairs and into her dormitory, and she locked the door and pressed her back against it and tried to understand what she had just seen.
Daisy had kissed Amina.
Daisy had kissed a girl.
Daisy had kissed a girl and it had looked like the most natural thing in the world.
Hazel sat on Daisy's bed, holding Amina's ribbon, and felt something crack open inside her chest.
She had never told Daisy that she had seen. She had never mentioned it or acknowledged it in any way. She hadn’t known if she’d even wanted to bring it up to Daisy. She had pretended it hadn't happened, had pushed it down deep inside herself where she didn't have to look at it or think about it or understand what it meant.
But Daisy had known. Somehow, Daisy had known that Hazel knew.
Because three weeks later, Daisy had kissed her too.
The ribbon slipped from Hazel's fingers and fell to the floor. She stared at it, at the blue silk pooled on the carpet, and felt tears burning behind her eyes again.
Daisy had kissed Amina in the library.
And then Daisy had kissed Hazel in the garden.
And Hazel had never known which one meant more.
She stood abruptly, unable to sit still any longer. The room felt too small suddenly, too close to her body, the walls pressing in on her. She walked to the window and pressed her forehead against the cold glass, staring out at the grey , bleak Decemberafternoon.
The garden looked dead. Everything looked dead.
Behind her, Daisy's room waited. Daisy's bed with its silk coverlet. Daisy's vanity with its scattered cosmetics. Daisy's wardrobe with its expensive clothes. Daisy's books and Daisy's jewelry and Daisy's perfume and Daisy's everything.
Everything except Daisy herself.
Hazel closed her eyes.
It was late spring, the kind of perfect English evening that made Hazel believe the warmth and sunshine would last forever. The garden party at Fallingford had wound down, the guests departing in a flurry of goodbyes and promises to write. Hazel and Daisy had escaped to the rose garden, ostensibly to get some air, actually to avoid Daisy's aunt who had been asking pointed questions about their plans after Deepdean.
They walked in silence between the rose bushes, their arms linked, their steps synchronized. The roses were just beginning to bloom, tight buds of red and white and pink. The air smelled like green things growing, like earth and flowers and possibility.
"I've been thinking," Daisy said suddenly. "About after we leave school."
"Oh?" Hazel's heart sank. They had been carefully not talking about after school, about the future that loomed ahead of them like a cliff edge.
"I think we should open a detective agency. A proper one, in London. We could rent offices and advertise in the papers and take on real cases, not just school mysteries." Daisy's voice was bright with enthusiasm, but there was something vaguely uncertain underneath it.
"Your parents would never allow it," Hazel said quietly.
"I don't care what my parents allow. I'm going to be eighteen. I'll have my own money from Grandmother's trust. I can do what I like." Daisy stopped walking and turned to face Hazel. "We could do it, Hazel. We could really do it. Wells and Wong, Private Detectives. It would be marvelous."
Hazel wanted to believe her. Wanted to believe that they could step off the cliff edge together and fly instead of fall. But she was practical, sensible Hazel, and she knew how the world worked.
"And what happens when you get married?" she asked. "When you have to give it all up to be someone's wife?"
Something flickered across Daisy's face. "I'm not going to get married."
"Daisy -“
"I'm not." Daisy's voice was fierce now, almost angry. "I don't care what my parents want or what society expects. I'm not going to marry some boring man and have boring children and live a boring life. I'm going to be a detective. With you."
"You can't just decide not to get married. Your parents will -“"
"My parents can go hang if my marriage is their priority." Daisy grabbed Hazel's hands, gripping them tightly. "Listen to me, Hazel. I don't want that life. I don't want any of it. I want this. I want us. I want to solve murders and catch criminals and be brilliant together. That's all I want."
Hazel's throat felt tight. "Daisy..."
"Don't you want that too?" Daisy's blue eyes were intense, searching Hazel's face. "Don't you want us to stay together?"
"Of course I do. But wanting something doesn't make it possible."
"It does if you want it badly enough." Daisy stepped closer, so close Hazel could feel the warmth of her body, could smell her perfume. "I want it badly enough, Hazel. Do you?"
Hazel couldn't speak. Couldn't think. Could only stare at Daisy's face, at the determination in her eyes and the set of her jaw and the way her lips were slightly parted.
And then Daisy kissed her.
It wasn't like the kiss in the library. That had been passionate and desperate and filthy - the kind of thing Hazel’s father tried incessantly to keep from her, the utter nonsense she’d hear from girls in the changing rooms and Deepdean about women and men and something somewhat repulsive that Hazel didn’t want to think about.
This was different. This was soft and sweet and careful, like Daisy was afraid Hazel might break. Like Hazel was something precious that needed to be handled gently.
Hazel's eyes fluttered closed. Daisy's lips were warm and soft and tasted like champagne and strawberries. Her hands came up to cup Hazel's face, her thumbs brushing along Hazel's cheekbones, and Hazel felt something inside her chest crack open and spill out.
This was what she wanted.
This was what she had always wanted, even when she hadn't known how to name it.
Daisy pulled back slightly, just enough to whisper against Hazel's lips. "Just stay with me. Promise me you'll stay with me. Wherever I end up going."
"I promise," Hazel whispered back.
And Daisy kissed her again, deeper this time, more certain. Her hands slid from Hazel's face to her shoulders to her waist, pulling her closer. Hazel's arms went around Daisy's neck, her fingers tangling in blonde hair, and they stood there in the rose garden as the sun set and the shadows lengthened and the world narrowed down to just the two of them.
When they finally broke apart, both breathing hard, Daisy rested her forehead against Hazel's.
"I love you," Daisy said quietly. "I know I'm not supposed to. I know it's wrong and impossible and completely mad. But I do. I love you, Hazel Wong."
Hazel's heart was beating so hard she thought it might burst out of her chest. "I love you too."
Daisy smiled, and it was the most beautiful thing Hazel had ever seen.
The roses bloomed around them and the evening air grew cool and somewhere in the house someone was playing the piano. It was perfect. It was impossible. It was everything Hazel had ever wanted and everything she knew she couldn't have.
But for that moment, in the rose garden at Fallingford, with Daisy's arms around her and Daisy's lips on hers, Hazel let herself believe.
Hazel opened her eyes yet again.
She was still standing at the window in Daisy's room, her forehead pressed against the cold glass. The garden below was grey and dead and empty. The rose bushes were bare, their branches skeletal against the winter sky.
Forever had lasted three years after that kiss.
There had been so many alleged forevers. Five years ago, after Ms Bell. Another four after Mrs Daunt.
Hazel could never have guessed that there would be a countdown.
Hazel turned away from the window. The room swam in her vision, blurred by tears. She walked back to the bed and sat down heavily, her legs no longer able to support her weight.
Amina's ribbon still lay on the floor where she had dropped it. Hazel stared at it, at the blue silk that proved Daisy had loved someone else. Daisy kissed someone else. Daisy had brought someone else to her bed to do unthinkable things.
But Daisy had kissed her too.
Nothing seemed like a sin when it was Daisy who did it. The honourable Daisy Wells, who could do no wrong.
"I love you," Daisy had said in the rose garden. "I love you, Hazel Wong."
Had she meant it? Or had it just been another lie, another role Daisy was playing, another mask she wore, even in front of her alleged best friend?
Hazel didn't know.
She would never know.
Because Daisy was dead, and the dead kept their secrets.
The house creaked around her. Somewhere downstairs, a door opened and closed. Voices drifted up from the hall - the Wellses returning from the village. Hazel should go down. Should greet them into their own home. But she couldn't move.
Had Daisy loved Amina more than she loved Hazel?
Had Daisy loved either of them at all?
Hazel picked up her teacup from the nightstand. The tea was cold now, a thin film forming on its surface. She drank it anyway, forcing down the bitter liquid, punishing herself with its unpleasantness.
The last time Hazel saw Daisy alive, they were on the deck of the ship, and Heppy was running.
Everything happened so fast and yet so slowly, time stretching and compressing in that impossible way it did during moments of crisis. Heppy had been exposed - her careful facade crumbling under the weight of evidence, under Daisy's relentless questioning. And now she was fleeing, racing toward the railing with the desperate energy of a cornered animal.
"Daisy, don't - “ Hazel started, but she already knew it was useless.
Daisy was going after her.
Of course Daisy was going after her. That was who Daisy was - reckless and brilliant and utterly incapable of letting a murderer escape. Even if it meant jumping off a moving ship. Even if it meant dying.
Hazel watched Daisy move toward the railing, and time seemed to stop entirely.
The late afternoon sun caught in Daisy's hair, turning it to spun gold. Not the pale, washed out blonde of winter, but rich and warm and alive, each strand gleaming like precious metal. The wind had pulled some of it loose from its pins, and it whipped around her face in a way that should have looked disheveled but instead looked wild, beautiful, untamed.
Hazel had always thought Daisy was beautiful, but in that moment, she was nothing short of incandescent.
The light loved her. It always had. Everyone and everything loved her. The sunshine caught on the sharp line of her cheekbone, the elegant slope of her nose, the determined set of her jaw. Her skin was luminous, porcelain-pale but warm, alive with color - pink in her cheeks from exertion. Her lips were parted slightly as she ran, red and full and perfect, and Hazel remembered with sudden, visceral clarity exactly how they had felt against her own.
Hazel thought absurdly that Daisy looked like a painting. Like something too beautiful to be real.
But she was real. So terribly, wonderfully real.
Real in the way her hair caught the light. Real in the way her chest rose and fell with each breath.
Hazel had watched Daisy die.
She had stood on that deck and watched Daisy jump and watched her fall and watched her hit the water and watched her float away and she hadn't been able to do anything.
Daisy had looked at her one last time and Hazel could’ve sworn Daisy had said her name, and Hazel had been too far away, too useless to stop it.
The teacup slipped from her fingers.
It fell, just like Daisy had fallen, tumbling through the air. It hit the floor and shattered, porcelain fragments scattering across the carpet like bones. The remainders of the tea and its dregs spread in a dark stain, soaking into the expensive fabric.
Hazel stared at it. At the broken pieces. The second cup she’d shattered today.
The smell of Daisy's perfume hung in the air, faint but unmistakable. French and expensive and utterly, devastatingly Daisy. Hazel breathed it in and felt something inside her chest crack open completely.
Daisy had jumped off that ship and Hazel had watched her die and no amount of remembering would bring her back. No amount of reliving their kisses or their cases or their promises would change the fact that Daisy was gone.
Really, truly, finally gone.
Hazel couldn't solve this one.
Because the victim was Daisy, and Daisy was the detective, and how could you solve a murder when the detective was dead?
How could you solve anything when the only person who had ever made sense of the world was gone?