“Fine.”
“Or off training somewhere.”
“I could be doing that.”
“Maybe getting married,” I say, and as soon as it pops out, I want to press it back in. I don’t know why I thought of it. Or I do know but push it down inside, tucking it away like the poison bottle heavy in my pocket. Always with me, but never taken out into the light. A heavy warmth blooms in my cheeks.
He scoffs. “I’ve never had much luck with courting. My sisters say I’m not charming enough.”
“I wonder why,” I tease, thinking for the smallest moment what he might be like in a relationship. Would he always be so protective? Has he ever loved someone romantically? Or been kissed? “Tell me about the Iron Ladies,” I say to brush away those feelings.
“I don’t know much.” He shrugs. “When I was training on the Isle of Quin, there were rumors about one of the generals who’d been passed over by Queen Celeste to be the Minister of War. She disappeared—like a spider, hence the title of the paper—and wasn’t seen again. She’s thought to be the leader of the Iron Ladies.”
Could they help us? Would they want to help us?
“Most of it always sounded like fairy tales. A whole civilization of people living away from the cities, learning to survive with the grayness, plotting and planning to change things.”
“What if it is true?”
“Then, maybe they’ll help. But I trust nothing that I read in the papers.” He motions in the direction of the stack. “It’s too easy to make things up, use parchment and ink and words to distort opinions.”
“Do you trust anyone? Do you trust me?” I ask.
The question crackles between us like the fire in the hearth. Each letter of that small and complicated word an ember.
“Why do you want to know?”
“Well, you did stab me.” I touch my side where his dagger pierced me only a week ago.
“For good reason. It was part of the plan.”
“You could’ve told me about it.”
“And have you ruin it?” Rémy says. “No. You didn’t have confidence in me at that point. Barely even liked me. You hadn’t had a chance to test me with that mirror of yours.”
I press a hand to my chest. “How do you know about that?”
“I’m supposed to know about everything when it comes to you.”
“I... don’t even know what to say to that.”
Rémy leans closer. “I’m not him. You don’t have to hide things from me. I’m not watching you or trying to find things out only to hurt you with them.”
The word him lands hard.
Auguste.
I bristle at the mere thought of his face.
“My mother left the mirror for me, but it was Arabella’s,” I whisper.
“Does it always show you the truth?”
“Yes.” I fish it out from under my nightgown and show it to him.
He runs the pad of his thumb across the grooves, his hand so close to my chest that maybe he can feel my heartbeat. The perfume of his skin is different than Auguste’s—almost like warm-season rain and fresh Belle-rose leaves. “It’s beautiful. Will you show me how it works?”
“Soon.” I take it from his grasp and tuck it back under my nightgown, the metal now warm from his touch.
He stares at me, but I don’t meet his eyes. His long arm reaches over my head to rescue a plump white teapot from a hook.
“Are you skilled in the art of making tea?” I ask.
“Add leaves to boiling water.” He lifts an eyebrow.
I sigh at him and roll my eyes.
His brow furrows, crinkling like the brown ridges in a molasses cookie.
“Step aside.” I swat at his shoulder.
He smirks. I wash out the pot, fill it, and set it on the stovetop. He hands me a fire-stick from the hearth, and I light a flame beneath the pot’s round body, then open a cabinet of tea tins. Worn labels advertise their contents—mint, chamomile, almond, lemongrass, and Belle-rose. I run my finger over the last label, remembering how many pots I’d made at the Chrysanthemum Teahouse and the palace until Bree took the process over.
I close my eyes, seeing Bree’s delicate hands at work: her small frame hunched above the tiny hearth on the treatment carts, her scooping out dried leaves and making tiny mounds in tea nets before dropping them into the porcelain pots, or rolling up Belle-rose petals plucked from the solarium garden to steep in piping-hot water. The memory of her tugs at the walls I’ve built inside, and bring tears to my eyes.
“What’s wrong?” Rémy asks.
“Just something in my eye.” I turn my back to him and wipe away a tear before it falls. “It’s nothing.”
“All your thoughts show up on your face, Camille. You can’t hide anything.” He approaches the stove, his shadow looming over me.
“Everything is fine.”
“Something is bothering you. I can tell.” His eyes study me, pricking my skin, sharper than needles. “You keep biting your bottom lip and your left eyebrow is all twitchy. And you’re scowling.”
A wave of embarrassment hits me like he’s seen me without my clothes on. The presence of his body feels like Auguste’s did once—inviting and a little dangerous. A lump of thick, hot betrayal simmers in the pit of my stomach.
I fuss with the teapot. He puts a hand on mine to still it.
Rémy fishes for my gaze, his eyes big and brown with the tiniest bit of red pushing through. His words sink into my skin like warm water, the heat going right through muscles and tissue down to my bones.
“I must’ve done something. What is it? I didn’t even yell at you for disappearing this morning while I was on my perimeter check. I didn’t even ask you what you were doing out at that hour.”
“Lucky me.” I pull my hand out of his grip. It drifts into my nightgown pocket where the tiny poison bottle sits. I can’t tell him about this yet. Though I desperately want to.
“I had every right to. Had a whole speech planned out.”
“I need to refresh your irises,” I say. “And remove that stripe from your hair. It makes you too recognizable.”
His hand finds his soft, tight curls and the silver streak down the middle marking him as a soldier in the House of War. “You’ve been telling me this, but—”
“You’re stubborn.”
“I’m just not ready to let it go yet. The hair powders you gave me have been covering it for now.”
“We will run out soon. I should change your skin color, too.”
“Only when you tell me what’s wrong.”
“You’d risk becoming a Gris again?”
The teapot screeches. I remove it from the flame.
Rémy places two chipped teacups on the table. “I’m not afraid of the grayness.”
“What’s it like?” I ask, and remember one of Du Barry’s lessons about the Gris: The madness overtakes every part of you, itching to be free.
“I haven’t experienced it since I was a child. People say it’s painful. Like a long-lasting sickness. The sweats, a headache, vomiting, and rabid, racing thoughts...”
“We would see little Gris babies, shriveled, angry, and hot from escaping their mothers’ wombs. But they only stayed that way for an hourglass’s worth before we’d mix Belle-rose tea into their milk and they’d endure their first transformations.” I stir a spoonful of honey into each of our cups. “I’ve seen more Gris people in the Spice Isles than ever before.”
“The House of Orléans continually expels them from the imperial island. Rounding them up to disperse, to the irritation of other powerful houses. You must be on high alert.”
I think about the Gris woman who attacked me while I was on the way to see Claiborne.
“They aren’t any worse than Sophia,” I say. “Nothing can be.”
“You will get rid of her,” he says. “It’ll show the world how to resist tyranny.”
The image of the Spider’s Web newspaper drifts into my head. “Du Barry only
taught us how to obey.”
“And it seems you’ve learned that lesson well,” he chides, pulling a reluctant smile out of me.
“There are so many things I don’t know.”
“You’ll learn them.”
“We spent our entire lives being lied to.”
“And now, you’re waking up. You’re lucky. Some people never do.”
I turn away from him to avoid his gaze. I stare at the night edition of the Orléansian Times. A familiar face winks at me. The Fashion Minister. He’s beneath a headline: GUSTAVE DU POLIGNAC, BELOVED FASHION MINISTER, IN THE SILK ISLES PREPARING TO PRESENT DRESSES FAVORED BY QUEEN FOR HER CORONATION AND ASCENSION.
I tear out the article, fold it, and slip it into my pocket with the poison bottle.
“What is it?” he asks.
“Nothing.”
He spins me around by the waist and takes my hands. “I know when you’re lying.”
Our fingers are wrapped together like sweetcanes of chocolate and caramel. He doesn’t look up at me, his gaze fixed on them. The firelight dances across his beautiful dark skin like the glow from the red bayou flies at home.
He leans down so our foreheads kiss. “Tell me.”
“I’m formulating a plan.”
“All right,” he whispers.
“We will find Charlotte. We will take down Sophia,” I whisper to him.
“Sophia won’t go away easily, and the damage she’s done will linger—”
“I will kill Sophia if I have to.”
“Taking lives is hard.”
“She’s ruined so many.”
“That may be true, but the act of it...”
“What do you think we should do?” I pull back.
“What do you want to do?” he asks.
“I want to find Charlotte. I want my sisters to be all right. I want Sophia to not be able to hurt anyone again.”
He squeezes my hand.
“You don’t have to kill anyone to accomplish this,” he says. “It’s not as easy as you think.”
“I don’t think any of this is easy. And if you believe what I want to do isn’t right, then what should we do? You usually have so many opinions. So many directions for me.”
“Not this time. You’ve got to figure it out,” he says.
“I will do what I must,” I say. “Whatever it takes.”
A knock pounds the door in the morning. It startles Edel and me awake. Rémy signals for us to go into the closet.
We squeeze in. A quiver starts in my feet, traveling up my legs to my stomach and chest. I can’t still myself. A landquake is erupting inside me. My heart might never find the right beat again.
Edel leans against the wall, her jaw clenched, and fists balled. “They’ve found us again,” she mutters. “I can feel it.”
“You don’t know that,” I reply.
But her words suffocate the small space. If there are guards at the door, how will we get away from them now? What if Rémy were taken—or hurt? How would we be able to help him from in here?
I press my ear to the door and catch three words: morning paper delivery.
“You can come back out,” Rémy says. “It’s all right.”
My whole body deflates, my knees buckling, the worries sputtering out like wind. We ease out of the closet. The teacup dragons squawk and push their faces against the bars of their cage. Rémy holds the tail ribbons of a pearl-white post-balloon dragged by a plum-colored teacup dragon.
“I thought it was the papers,” I say.
“So did I,” he replies.
“Who’s it from?” Edel asks. “No one knows we’re here.”
I take a piece of dried pork from our food pack and whistle. The teacup dragon dives toward me and lands on my shoulder. Rémy grabs the ribbons, breaks open the post-balloon’s back, and retrieves an empty perfume bottle and a miniature porcelain jar with several sangsues in it.
A cold stone drops into my stomach. “There’s no note.”
“The lid is engraved.” Edel crouches over my shoulder.
I squint at the tiny script, and read the word Listen.
I uncap the perfume atomizer. The sound of a woman’s voice echoes through the room. “You only get a single chance to hear this. Pay attention.”
“What’s that?” Edel asks.
“Shh.” I lift the bottle to my ear.
Edel and Rémy huddle closer. My heart trembles. The identity of the speaker crystallizes in my head.
Arabella.
“Camellia and Edelweiss, meet Ryra, my teacup dragon. Please take care of her well. Listen closely. Track the headlines, though we all know they don’t tell even a fraction of the story. With Sophia as queen, we cannot trust them to publish the truth unvarnished, but they furnish clues to the storm she’s trying to create. There are newsies doing her bidding, spreading the things she wants everyone to believe.
“Sophia has taken all the generations of Belles—Ivy and her sisters, plus yours, Valerie, Padma, Hana, Amber, and the new little ones. They’re in the most complete wing of her new prison, the Everlasting Rose. She’s growing new Belles here at the palace. I must feed my blood to two hundred fifty pods, with more to come. Sophia intends to start selling Belles to the highest bidder as soon as these new ones are big enough to do beauty work.
“You must stay as far away as possible until I can figure out the rest of what she’s up to. Here’s what I need you to do: feed a teacup dragon—Ryra, if she’s rested, or any of yours—one of the sangsues I’ve sent, which hold my blood. Doing this will tether the dragon to me, so it can find me wherever I am, and we can send messages back and forth. Send word that you’re safe. Be careful.”
The memory of Sophia’s threat about building a golden auction block in Trianon or the Royal Square coils around me like the silver chains and jeweled collars she’d use. The ones Madam Claire looped around the throats and wrists of the other Belles at the Chrysanthemum Teahouse.
“Who was that?” Edel asks.
“Arabella,” I tell her. “She’s an elder Belle. She lives at the palace and helped Rémy, Amber, and me escape.”
“What does she mean growing? She said something about pods.” Edel must have a million questions about how this was possible. “What is she talking about?”
The image of the clear vats in Sophia’s palace nursery, the Belle babies floating in gilded cradles, being fed Arabella’s blood, takes horrifying shape in my mind. “Belles are different from Gris,” I tell her. “We’re grown...in vessels.”
“I don’t understand.” Edel shakes with rage. “Babies develop in their mothers’ wombs.”
“Not us. Belle babies are more like flowers in bulbs.” The words coming out of my mouth feel thick and laden with lies. Unbelievable, even though they are the truth. This is not what Du Barry told us about our births. She said that the Goddess of Beauty sent us here in a rain of stars to be her vessels. But I’ve seen it with my own eyes.
I shake the bottle, waiting and wishing there was more.
“We have to go to the palace,” Edel says.
“Arabella told us not to.”
“So? Who put her in charge?” Edel presses. “We need to break our sisters out of prison and end this.”
It’s not lost on me that she had no interest in this line of thought when it was only Amber who’d been captured.
“Let’s send her a message saying we’re safe, as she asks, and tell her of our plan to find Charlotte. Based on my maps, I believe her to be—”
“We can’t only chase Charlotte. She could be a spirit for all we know. Sophia’s setting up a grand reveal of her body. What if she’s actually dead? What if this plan of yours is doomed?”
“What if she isn’t? Arabella would know if this was one of Sophia’s lies. We can ask her.”
“And how long will that take? Waiting around for another three days for a reply?” Edel says. “Sending messages and charting winds isn’t getting us anywhere.” She throws her hands in
the air. “It’s taking more time that we don’t have. The closer we get to the Coronation and Ascension, the less opportunity to challenge Sophia. She’s rushing a ceremony that should take months of planning. Tradition and rules will allow her to—”
“We can’t just storm into the palace, Edel. We have to have a precise plan. Every move of it certain and calculated. I want to take Sophia down as much as you do. Maybe even more so. I want to get our sisters. But we can’t afford to make any mistakes.” I pull out the night-edition newspaper clipping to show Edel the headline about the Fashion Minister. I feel the heat of Rémy’s gaze, but don’t look at him. “I have an idea. I want to go—”
“No!” Edel strides angrily between us. Her dress, now tattered at the bottom, catches the splinters in the wooden planks. Her anger is loose like the snap of a newsreel spinning out of control. “While you two are playing with compasses and writing letters, I’m going to do something about it.”
Rémy clears his throat. “Edel, if you would simply—”
“Don’t tell me what to do. Go back to staring at Camille and watching for guards!” she barks.
He flinches.
“That’s unfair and rude,” I say, reaching for her.
She snatches away and stalks to the door.
“Wait! Edel!” I shout. “What are you going to do?”
“Not sit around and wait for a pretty post-balloon.”
She stomps out and doesn’t look back.
Rémy and I walk through the crowded stalls near the salon in search of a vendor who sells invisible post-balloons. Two of the teacup dragons—Fantôme and Poivre—squirm in my waist-sash, attempting to peek their heads out and sniff the air; the scent of roasting meat and mulled cider mingle in this section of the Market Quartier.
“Are they still restless?” Rémy asks.
I lift my mask a little to answer him. “Yes. It’s probably because I fed Fantôme the leech Arabella sent. She and Poivre seem close. Connected. They affect each other.”
“Like you and Amber?”
I shrug, thinking of what might be happening to her right now. If she’s all right. If she’s surviving Sophia’s torture. If she will ever forgive me for not coming to her rescue.
The Everlasting Rose (Belles, The) Page 5