The Belles (The Belles #1)(14)

“He was handsome,” I say. “Very much so.” Padma, Edel, and Hana burst into laughter.

Edel’s eyes stretch wide. “He wanted to kiss you.”

Amber scoffs.

“No, he didn’t,” I say.

“I’ve heard about it. Some people think it’s lucky to kiss a Belle. That it’ll bring good fortune to their houses. A daughter of the Goddess of Beauty is the luckiest person in the kingdom of Orléans. That’s probably what he was after,” Hana says.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Amber says.

“A kiss wouldn’t be terrible, would it?” Hana jumps up, pretending to kiss someone and dance with them across the room. Edel joins her. They morph into a tangle of pale arms and legs. Everyone laughs except Amber.

“It would be catastrophic.” Amber throws her hands in the air, and her eyes fill with angry tears. “We’re Belles, not courtesans. They already have plenty of those girls at court—ready to be kissed—tripping over themselves and their high pianelles to get to titled courtiers from high houses.”

I reach over to touch Amber’s arm to get her to relax, but she brushes me away.

“Maybe he’s fallen in love with you.” Edel presses back into her chair, staring dreamily at the ceiling. “I’d give anything to feel something else, to see something else.”

The curiosity of love and being kissed fills me with a blush so deep, sweat beads form along my brow. It’s intriguing, but I don’t know if I want to experience it.

“Don’t be fools. You can’t have both. Who wants love when one can be powerful?” Amber says.

“I just spoke to him. That’s all,” I say. “It was a great night. Let’s talk about that instead.”

“Remember what happened to Rose Marie? The Belle from the past generation who tried to marry?” Amber speaks as if she’s a Belle historian, when we all know the same information. Du Barry had warned us that Rose Marie caught a sickness that plagues the Gris. When Rose Marie returned home from court, we’d just had our fourteenth birthday. She rarely left her room. We used to dare each other to get a look at her, and see what was under her veil. First one to get closest would earn glory, and be entitled to each girl’s dessert at dinner. No one ever won.

“It was the son of Madam Bontemps, House Reims, one of the queen’s ladies-of-honor. They were caught together—”

“We know, Amber,” Edel says.

“They put him in one of those starvation boxes,” she adds.

Padma jams her fingers in her ears. “I don’t want to hear about this. You know I can’t handle it.”

“Amber, I didn’t say I wanted to fall in love—”

Amber yells out an exasperated scream and leaves the room.

“What’s happening with her?” Hana asks.

“She cares too much,” Edel says.

“It’s all the stress of the night. Has to be.” I gaze behind me, looking for her outline in the corridor. I stand to go after her, but nurses flood through the door before I can leave.

“Sit, please,” one says to me. Dread sinks through my gut. No matter how many times I’ve been pricked, I never get used to it. I wish Madeleine was here to do it, because at least she’d tell me all the house gossip—how the courtier guests argued over color choices or traded insults after beauty appointments—and by the time she’d finish, the whole level check would be done.

Each nurse bears the same unenthusiastic expression. The women divide themselves between us with trays. My nurse takes my left arm, bunching the wide sleeves of my night robe, and ties a red string around my bicep. I invent a story about her life and pretend I’m telling Madeleine. Her name is Jacalyn, and she has two little girls in the Silk Isles, and they drink rose lemonade and lie in hammocks on their private beach overlooking the Bay of Silk. Jacalyn’s husband is a scoundrel who left them to run off to the Fire Isles.

The nurse pops two fingers in the crook of my arm and inspects the veins there. The green channels rise beneath the brown. She removes a needle from the silver tray and shows it to me before piercing my arm. I still hate how it breaks through my skin so easily, like the spot is no tougher than a tract of silk.

I grimace and clench my fingers. She taps my hand to tell me to release them. Blood snakes through a long tube. She takes three vials. One for each arcana. She unties the red string. The needle retracts. The piece of cotton she presses on the prick feels like a tiny cloud. When she lifts it, the wound heals as if she never stuck me.

“The arcana meter,” she says.

I take the small machine from her tray and hold it as she fits each vial into one of three separate compartments. My blood swirls inside the meter’s different chambers, churning, separating the proteins related to each arcana, determining which ones need rebalancing. I run my fingers over the brass body of the machine, feeling the vibrating hum of the gears working, and the indentations of the numbers that will soon fill with light to reveal my levels.

Above the first compartment, the word MANNER is illuminated, as if a flickering candle is nestled inside. Perfectly balanced, as it should be for an unused gift. She repeats it for the second vial. The word AURA shines. I touch the letters. It’s my favorite gift. The number three shows.

The nurse’s eyes bulge a little with surprise. I look up at her. She presses it again. The same number fills with light. She makes a strange, shocked sound, and notes it in a ledger book. In our lessons, Du Barry said our bodies all adjusted differently to using the arcana. She warned that if the levels dipped close to zero, a Belle could faint, sicken, or even die. We must be careful not to abuse our gifts. What the Goddess of Beauty gives, the Goddess of Beauty can take away.