Glitter (Glitter Duology #1)(84)
Layers of people peel away as I stride forward, and I don’t feel guilty in the least as I finally near the door. What good is power if one cannot use it? There are yet more people inside the tiny atrium of Molli’s apartment, but at least the official guards in security livery are holding most of them at bay. One of them steps forward with his hands in front of him like he would stop me from going farther, but I shake my head, wave his hand away, and continue walking toward Molli’s bedroom.
He doesn’t try to stop me again.
The cramped interior manages to feel crowded even in the absence of a true crowd; I’d almost forgotten that her room is so small. Sometimes I wondered if the administration was trying to get her family to move out without actually evicting them. If there’s such a thing as being poor within the Palace of Versailles, the Percy family qualifies.
There’s water slopped all over the bathroom floor, and a white sheet has been draped over the form that lies there, sticking almost transparently in patches of wetness.
But the naturally golden hair spreading across the tiles in limp, damp waves is unmistakable. When I hear a guttural cry echo off the tiled walls, it takes several seconds for me to realize it’s mine. I’m on my knees beside the body in moments, and I know neither how I got there nor how many people I shoved out of the way. I yank the sheet toward me, and in the moment when my fingers have grasped the wet cotton but haven’t yet revealed her face, I indulge in the hope that I’m wrong.
Hands pull at my arms, my shoulders, but I push them away and reach for Molli’s body; I cradle her wet hair against my shoulder and feel water trickle down my skin, seeping through my bodice. It might as well be blood.
“What happened?” I ask, once my throat stops convulsing enough for me to speak.
“She drowned,” a medical aide says simply. She’s not the one who came to clean up after my mother. I’m glad.
“In a bathtub?” I demand, my words dripping with scorn.
The woman visibly tightens her jaw, then shakes her head. “Your…Grace? Her father says she’s been known to drink heavily. That can result…well…”
The aide seems to want to say more, but my eyes are fixed on Molli’s face. At the top of one cheekbone, I spot a shimmery residue that tells me all I need to know. With her strict parents and the dearth of luxury in her life, Molli’s always been one to overindulge when the opportunity presents itself. I should have remembered that. How much did she use? How much has the water already washed away?
“There was only one bot for the entire apartment,” the aide goes on, oblivious to the tears that have started rolling down my face anew. “So no one to assist her with her bathing. If she passed out and slipped under—she wouldn’t have felt any pain.” As though that makes any difference.
Whether she overdosed or simply took enough to fly her so high she couldn’t save herself, Molli is dead because of me. I clutch her body until the bathroom is tidied and the gurney has arrived to take her. Reluctantly, I let them lift her up and away from me. The woman offers to allow me to accompany the body to the morgue, but I shake my head.
“Where are her parents?” I ask.
“They were both pretty distraught. Due to their age, we thought it best to sedate them for a few hours. A nurse is sitting in the room with them.”
I nod numbly and follow the gurney out of the room. But when it reaches the lift, I hold back and simply watch as they take Molli down to the morgue, all alone.
Molli died because I gave her Glitter. And because she was too poor to afford extra bots. And because, in the end, I didn’t do enough for her. Two deaths, and both on my head. Their blood on my hands. When did I lose control?
I FEEL NOTHING as I walk slowly back toward my chambers. The hem of my dress is soaked, as is the front of my bodice, and it drags and weighs me down like a millstone. I’m certain I look awful, and that the people I see in the halls turn and whisper into their hands the moment I pass, but I don’t care.
My feet take me through the Salle du Sacre, the Guard Room, the Antechamber, the Salon des Nobels: four enormous rooms that lead to the Queen’s Bedchamber, but that are all technically “the Queen’s Rooms.” My rooms. Molli’s entire family apartment could have fit into any one of them.
As I approach the room that was once, and most famously, occupied by Marie-Antoinette, the double doors open automatically. At a word, they close behind me, and I stand alone in one of the finest rooms in the palace—no, one of the finest bedchambers in the entire world—and I hate myself.
When I start to shiver from the clammy damp of my clothes, I stumble toward the wardrobe, twisting my ankle when I misstep on my heels. My jeweled heels, each worth a fortune by itself. With a savage grunt I kick them off, and one hits the far wall, leaving a dark scuff. In sodden stockings I walk to my vanity, where the empty perfume diffuser sits. I take it in one cold hand, raise it close to my face, and study the angles of the cut glass that catch the light and sparkle, throwing off rainbows.
With a scream, I dash it against the wall.
The sound and sight of shattering glass make me feel better.
No, not better. I’m beginning to imagine that I might never feel better again. But different, momentarily. A canister of face cream follows the diffuser, globs of white smearing the walls and dripping down in thick stripes. Farther into the room, past the golden gate, a statue from the bureau. Then a decorative ceramic thimble that might actually be an antique. I don’t hesitate. Expensive smashes as loudly as cheap.