by Lucy Tempest
I was undoubtedly going to be cut on the first Elimination Day.
That meant I had three days max left in this palace. Time was running out for me. And if it did, it meant life would run out for Bonnie and her father.
I couldn’t let myself dwell on that too much or I’d be a mess and useless to them. Impossible as it felt, I had to keep my wits about me. I’d fought my way out of dire situations before—none that involved tests or magic, but I always came up with something. I would this time, too.
I had to.
As I felt the timer in my head ticking down to the inevitable explosion of Elimination Day, the palace rumor mill picked up speed like a fan in a windstorm.
While there’d been no sign of the ghoul again, gossip about it in a hall full of girls had traveled faster than a lit fuse. News of Cherine’s nightmare had been met with either ridicule or superstitious fear. Our quarantine had also been a source of malicious amusement or increasing aversion. Both incidents spawned more packs mocking Cherine for being a giant baby and Cora for being an unfashionable mess who had no sense of taste or smell.
The gossip didn’t stay focused on us though. Defensive strategies kicked in and soon each quintet closed in on themselves and started gossiping about every other girl in the rival groups. Apart from a passing mention of my association with Cherine and Cora, no one talked about me, which was good. The less of an impression I made, the less memorable I was.
Not that being unnoticeable had helped. The one good thing to come of it so far was that it made them leave me alone.
I now picked up bits and pieces of conversations as we headed to the practice rooms. According to the Sapphire group ahead of us, a girl from the Ruby one behind us was from the land of Orcage and had a witch for a mother. Another from the same group was supposedly half-demon because her eyes were a hazel that was almost yellow. From there, the gossip only got progressively more outrageous.
We were passing by a room full of mirrors when Fairuza loudly broadcasted her own contribution to the slandering speculations. “You might have heard that the Queen of Tritonia consorted with an animal? She did, most likely a centaur. And that’s not the worst of it. It’s said she gave birth to a beast—”
The line stopped dead and we all knocked into each other.
Ariane —the Princess of Tritonia—stepped out from the White Opal group at the front of the line. Her fair, round face was almost as red as her hair as she seethed, “What was that?”
Instantly, everyone stepped back in a circle, giving a wide berth to the princesses, leaving the space between them empty so Ariane could glare holes directly into Fairuza’s head.
Though her smile dimmed, Fairuza didn’t buckle. “I believe you heard me.”
Ariane stalked closer, the dead silence of anticipation in the massive corridor making the footfalls of her heeled shoes echo menacingly.
“Careful, Fay-Fay, I’m not the only one here with rumors of beastly brothers,” Ariane taunted coldly, head tilted slightly, pale green eyes sharp like daggers. “What happened to Leander again? Didn’t your parents trap him in a tower once he started to get a little toothy? I hear he’s gotten quite hairy, too.”
Fairuza’s mouth dropped open, accentuating her glazed deer-in-the-lamplights look. That reaction made me wish I could sketch, so I could immortalize the one moment someone managed to not just upstage her, but to shock her silent.
“What? You didn’t think we’d hear about you as much as you’ve heard about us?” Ariane sneered. “People talk, honey, even if you pay them not to.” With a toss of her hip-long, dark red hair, Ariane linked arms with Belinda—the always-silent, fifth girl from our Blue Opal group—and they both marched off, noses in the air.
“What was that about?” I asked once the line resumed its sluggish pace, my mind racing.
In contrast to the excitement buzzing around us in the aftermath of this dramatic confrontation, Cora seemed to find twisting a lock of her hair the only entertainment to be had around here. “Mostly how Fairuza’s brother, the former Crown Prince of Arbore, pretty much vanished two years ago.”
I leaned in closer, ears perked for the intriguing insider information she always provided. “Former?”
“They made his baby brother heir instead,” she said disinterestedly. “No one’s seen or heard of him since, but we know he’s not dead, or they would have said so. So, there are tons of stories about what happened to him.” Distaste wrinkled her nose. “He used to oversee the shipments of grain and potatoes from our fields and farms, would actually come himself.”
“What was he like?”
Cora cringed as if she had just tasted something sour.
“Worse than his sister?”
Cora grimaced again. “So far, his sister hasn’t cornered me in a shed and demanded a ‘roll in the hay’ because according to him, ‘who else is going to give me any attention?”
I goggled at her, appalled. “Are you serious?”
“Very. The only way I could get him away from me without spearing him with a hayfork was to head-butt him so hard he hit the ground.”
I let out an amazed laugh. “You are awesome. Really. Don’t let anyone tell you different.”
“I don’t.” She sighed. “They tell me anyway.”
I reached up and mussed her hair affectionately. “Well, next time slam that hard head of yours into their faces.”
She grinned, leafy eyes a bit brighter. “Will do.”
Cherine popped up, this time on Cora’s side, reasserting her presence. “And what happened with Leander after that?”
“I don’t know. He disappeared right after that incident.”
“Is this why you don’t want to be here?” I asked.
Cora smirked bitterly. “Because I don’t want to deal with an impossibly rich and entitled monster of a boy? Yes.”
“My prince is not like that,” Cherine protested.
“His name literally sounds like a demon out of a summoning book,” Cora argued. “Who names their child Cyaxares?”
“Sigh-ak-sa-reez.” With each syllable, Cherine pointedly jabbed Cora’s arm. “And it was the name of five great kings before him.”
Cora, still unimpressed, stressed her point. “Think I once read a play with an evil witch called Cyaxares.”
“Sycorax,” I corrected automatically, flashing back to a cold night spent by the Fairborn’s fireplace, when Bonnie had read a play aloud while I’d helped her father fix a broken clock. A rainy night in like any other, but one I would give my right arm to experience again. Then I realized what I’d said, and quickly amended, “Uh, I mean, it could have been Cyaxares. Probably not the same play.”
Cora raised a blonde eyebrow at me, an unreadable expression in her green eyes. Then she only said, “Probably.”
Sometimes, somehow, I felt she was onto me.
Day eight, we were kept mostly inside our wings to practice and review anything we felt could come up in tomorrow’s test. I had no idea what tomorrow’s test even was. It was only important to me because failing it meant I’d be kicked out of the palace empty-handed. Unlike the first night, when a simple ruse had had Loujaïne leading me into the vault, nothing worked now. I couldn’t take two steps without being seen and questioned by palace guards and personnel.
Needless to say, I was going stir crazy with anxiety.
I was going to fail the dreaded test tomorrow, and then it would be all over.
“It’s a character evaluation and etiquette survey,” Cherine repeated for the fifth time, practicing her walk in five-inch pumps with a heavy, hardcover book on her head.
Feeling like pulling my enchanted hair out, I shut Noblewomen of the Modern Age, the book I had slipped out from under Belinda’s mattress. Belinda would only miss the book at night, as its sole use to her was raising the end of the mattress, apparently to keep her ankles slim and feet dainty.
I tucked my own big feet under me on the armchair by our largest window to stop the nervous bou
ncing of my legs. “Yes, I know the scroll of instructions said so. But what does that even mean?”
Cherine stopped her prowl, hands on her waist. “Darling, your family may be disgraced but I can’t imagine they didn’t bother teaching you to have grace, either.”
For a moment, I had forgotten my cover story and was about to retort that, unlike her, I had no family, let alone anyone to teach me the refined graces of womanhood. But I bit my tongue in good time and just stared at her in frustrated silence.
With a heavy sigh, she stepped out of her shoes. “Character evaluations are tests they give you to see if you have the right personality to be queen.”
I continued biting my tongue to block the first retort that came to mind. I knew what job interviews were; I’d done many of them in my travels. Most of my answers were lies—white lies that would get me hired, and secure me the leftover food at the end of the day. But I’d gotten it down to an art only because I knew what people in my land and social sphere expected to hear.
What was I going to do here? Go up to a palace official, who trained girls to be fancy, flouncy ladies from infancy and tell them that I was punctual and didn’t mind lock-up duty? What would that even entail in a palace the width of a mountain?
This was a completely foreign society that I knew nothing about beyond what I’d learned in the past week through observation and Cora’s insights.
“What would you do?” I asked Cherine, hoping to pick her brain for ways to avoid being kicked out on the first test. I needed more time in this palace. I had to find that lamp! “To show you have the right character and etiquette?”
Cherine, always happy to talk about herself, daintily spread out her arms with a delicate upturn of hands as she bowed, then held out the sides of her skirt and tucked one leg behind her as she smoothly curtsied. “There’s this for a start. A good, quiet impression that you know the rules and that you bow to your superiors.”
I rolled my eyes. “Which is everyone.”
She wagged a finger at me. “Not everyone, only nobles and royalty who outrank you as a lady. You don’t bow to palace staff of any kind.”
“And then?”
“You smile, or you don’t smile, depending on your rank compared to theirs. For you, you’d need to smile a lot. If you’re a high lady like me, or a countess or princess, you don’t need to. You’d just need to keep your head high and survey everyone with an air of importance.”
Fairuza had that down to an art. Then again, she was important.
Not that it had saved her from being here, competing against forty-nine other noble ladies for that prince’s hand.
Make that forty-seven. I wasn’t competing and Cora couldn’t care less. She had scarfed down a plate of cakes and grapes and hit the sheets early today. There was nothing I wanted more than to join her and escape in slumber until tomorrow. But I couldn’t.
I’d done nothing the whole week.
Eight days here and nothing to show for it. No new information, no second sighting of the beautiful thief or his demon, and no way to get back into the vault.
“Are you even listening to me?” Cherine pouted, each word punctuated with frustration.
I nodded and she continued her lesson.
But there was no use to any of her advice. She did those things as easily as she breathed. If I did them, they’d come across as fake and grating if not downright pathetic.
There were no two ways about it. I was getting bundled up and chucked out on Elimination Day. My last chance to get back into the vault would be when I would ask for my jewelry back. I then had to do everything I could to find that lamp and carry it out with me.
Only then could Bonnie, her dad and I get back to Ericura.
Dusk seemed to be falling faster every day. It now painted our room in dim orange and purple rays through the thick glass windows, casting the squared shadows of their pane linings, making it feel like the luxurious prison cell it was.
After Cherine finished imparting her copious but useless advice, I gave up and turned in. I took the book with me to flip through until lights-out, then I forced myself to sleep, sinking into a series of anxiety-ridden dreams.
During another harrowing shift in my dreams—a scene involving Bonnie as a rabbit being devoured by a wolf—another blood-curdling scream woke me up.
Chapter Ten
Cherine’s ghoul proved himself to be the ultimate escape artist.
This time he’d disappeared in the instants between her scream and my jump to action. That or it really was just a nightmare this time. I hoped it was, since I couldn’t bear the thought that I’d missed yet another chance to follow it to my fellow thief.
Fairuza used up nearly all the hot water in our joint bathroom by having Meira and Agnë run her a bath. She returned reeking of lavender and sat in our living area on a stool while Meira brushed, dried and styled her hair with a hot metal rod that curled its ends. All through, Agnë quizzed her on an array of facts, statements, beliefs and cultural etiquette.
To keep an ear out for information that might come in handy, I showered last. By then the water in the pipes had reheated and I had gotten a good idea on what our tests were today.
Basically, elitist, judgmental interviews.
My qarin had worked its magic, filling my trunk with folded, beaded and sequined dresses and their matching glittery shoes. All were different shades of blue, gold and bluish-green. If I wasn’t wracked with worry, I would have tried them all on and asked if it could materialize any changes and requests I made.
For today, I picked a turquoise dress just to remind myself that this was a competition, and to annoy Fairuza. All of her dresses were either pearly white, glittery grey or vivid turquoise, and she seemed to think she had exclusive rights to those colors.
Cora sidled up to me, comb in hand, wearing a grass-green, floor-length, chiffon and silk dress with her hair braided in three sections from crown to nape. “Want me to do your hair?”
I grabbed at her offer. “Oh, yes, please. I braid like a drunkard would roll a cigarette while holding up his pants.”
Cora stifled a snort. Belinda gave me a searing look of disapproval.
Cherine, scandalized, dropped the hand mirror she was using to apply her makeup. “Who talked like that around you?”
“I—uh, my parents couldn’t afford a well-learned governess,” I supplied the fabrication quickly. “Mine was an aggressive lady, usually drunk, too.”
She and the other girls glared at me before returning to their chores.
Cora started combing my hair and leaned down to whisper, “Careful, Ada, you don’t want Her Highness to feed you a soap bar.”
“Sorry I’m not as educated or pedigreed as some people here,” I grumbled.
“Same here. I’m not even noble at all, though the post my mother holds is heritable, passed from woman to woman in our bloodline. I’m meant to be next once I get sent home.”
“What makes you so sure you’ll be sent home?”
She aimed her comb at Cherine and Fairuza. “Look who we’re rooming with.”
I nodded dejectedly, thinking of my impending elimination. “Don’t know who this prince thinks he’s kidding with this so-called contest. He’ll end up picking the one who makes the most sense.”
Cora started parting my hair. “Meaning, the richest and most well-connected.”
“Might as well hand Princess Fay-Fay the crown she’s panting for now, and be done with it.”
Cora bowed her head to bury her snort in the chunk of hair she held. “True.”
Then as she braided a crown from my temples, bringing both ends together down the rest of my hair, I questioned her about where she came from and she supplied more details. The Granary was a vast, independent region at the southwest of Lower Campania on the Forbidden Ocean, and was the breadbasket of Folkshore. Her mother, Mistress Cerelia, managed the region’s largest farms, all its fields, orchards and some of its vineyards, and controlled most of this world�
��s edible exports.
As the whole picture became clearer in my mind, I thought that making Cora a princess would be a far smarter move on the Prince’s part than marrying Fairuza. If a war broke out between Cahraman and another kingdom—say, Arbore for not picking Fairuza—all they’d have left were prickly pears and dried figs and dates. So, having Cora as queen would ensure an alliance with the desert kingdom’s major food source.
My heart suddenly squeezed as I remembered my mother had loved dried fruit. Especially figs and dates. One thing that had once slipped past her tight lips about the father I didn’t know was a mention that he’d wooed her with barrels of the stuff. Apart from that, she’d never even mentioned his name, just that the fates had torn them apart before I was born.
“I never knew my father,” Cora said casually. I started. That wasn’t the first time she’d said something as if she’d read my mind. “My mother likes to claim that the children of all Greenshoot women are fathered by gods. She says my father was a minor field god.”
“Seriously? That’s amazing.”
She put down her comb and moved in front of me, a case of brushes and powders balanced on her arm. She started painting my face in soft, careful strokes high on my cheekbones, over my eyelids and under them in shades of pink, green and beige respectively. It reminded me of being twelve, the last time my mother had brushed my hair or painted my face for a local celebration. She had rarely let me join other children outside of schooling hours, and had declined most invitations to temples, festivals and dinners. I never understood why she’d been so guarded and now I never would.
And for the first time, I began to wonder if it had been out of fear, that like me now, she’d been trying to remain inconspicuous, in an effort to avoid exposure. But though I couldn’t imagine exposure to what, that was still no explanation for why and how she’d left me. One night, she’d disappeared without saying a word to me, leaving me wracked with worry until a sheriff had knocked on my door to deliver the life-destroying news that she had died, miles and miles away from our town.