The Belles (The Belles #1)(15)

Edel peeks at my meter. “That’s low. Du Barry said it would only dip to four and a half after the carnaval.”

“What was your lev—”

“Shh.” My nurse taps my arm. “You aren’t supposed to comment on each other’s levels.”

“Don’t tell us what to do.” Edel rises up.

“Calm down,” Padma says.

“The reading will be over in another minute,” Hana says.

I reach for Edel.

She pushes my hand away. “Aren’t you tired of it? Always being ordered around.”

The word yes booms inside of me.

“You are not a nurse,” the woman tells her. They argue back and forth until she calls for the servants to take Edel from the room.

“Just listen,” I tell her.

“I’m done listening.” She swats at the encroaching servants, but she’s restrained and dragged out, kicking and screaming. When we were younger, Edel would explode like a firework if she didn’t want to read the pamphlets and books Du Barry assigned, or go to bed before the first night star appeared, or eat the blood-strengthening foods made by our chef.

My nurse doesn’t react. Her face bears no trace of what just happened. She presses the final button on the arcana meter. The word AGE glows and the number five appears. Amber marches back into the room holding an arcana meter. I wonder if her levels were similar. I wonder if she’s calmer now.

Servants wheel in carts of porcelain jars with perforated lids. They lift them and reach silver tongs inside to retrieve black leeches out of freshwater. The sangsues. They wiggle and writhe, their suckers opening and closing, exposing tiny sharp teeth, as they’re placed on trays and presented to each of our nurses. Empty diamond-shaped vessels dot their backs. My insides twist with disgust. I should be used to them by now. We tended to the sangsues as children, mating them, learning how helpful their species is to Belles, discovering how they help keep our blood clean.

“These look different. Bigger. Why the diamonds?”

The nurse lifts one above my wrist. “They’re the same. Just bred to be larger and take more blood.” She pushes the leech near me. “The vessels help the sangsues filter and share more of their purifying secretions with you.” She dangles the leech over me.

“No, I’ll do it,” I say. She hands me the silver instrument. “Only two.”

She shakes her head and shows me four fingers. “Madam Du Barry’s orders. You broke protocol and your arcana level is low.”

I squirm, just like the leech stuck in the grip of the tongs. I bite my bottom lip. The quicker I do it, the sooner I get to go to bed. Then it will be morning, and one step closer to when the favorite will be named.

“Do I need to get the arm straps?” she asks.

“No.” I hold my breath and place the creature on my left wrist. It stretches out, hooking around my wrist like a bracelet made of black pearls. Its bite feels like a pinprick. The tiny suckers pull at my skin and the vein beneath. A bloom of red glows under its thin black body. The diamonds fill with my blood. I set a second one on my neck, and it leaves behind a slimy trail like a streak of paint as it finds the thick vein right under my jawbone.

“No more,” I tell her, and drop the tongs on the nearest side table. Padma whines about the biting. Hana starts to pant as three leeches affix themselves to the crook of her arm. Valerie sleeps through it all as they climb the flesh of her thigh.

The nurse shakes her head at me, removing another pair of leeches from the porcelain jar. She puts one on my right wrist and the other on my forehead. I close my eyes, take deep breaths through my nose, and try to relax as the tiny creatures fill themselves with my blood and inject me with proteins to help increase my blood flow, reset my arcana level, and drain away the excitement of the day.





8


All night I drift in and out of dreams where I’m a child again and Maman is telling me stories about the Goddess of Beauty. I hear Maman’s voice and am swept into our old room. The red sill-lanterns flutter in the windows and bathe the walls with ruby light. Younger versions of Maman and I are curled up like sweet-rope bread in the bed.

“Tell me about her?” asks a tiny me.

Maman’s long hair falls in waves across the pillow. She pulls me closer, almost burying me in it. We don’t look like mother and daughter. The mothers and daughters in fairy tales match like a pair of socks, but we are opposites. Her skin alabaster, and mine golden brown. Her hair cherry red and straight; mine chocolate brown and curly. Her thin lips, my full ones. Whenever I ask why we look so different, she says, “We fit like puzzle pieces,” and reminds me that our eyes are the same amber hue. The only part that matters.

“Why did Beauty create the Belles?”

“At the beginning of the world, the God of the Sky fell in love with the Goddess of Beauty, which was easy to do. To call her beautiful would be too small a word.”

“What did she look like?”

“She would change herself. One day she might look like you, and another day, me. This entranced Sky. He liked all her incarnations. It made him feel like he was with a new woman every night. He wanted her all to himself, so he gave her compliments and promises and kisses, all that her heart desired.”

“What did she want?”

Maman rubs my cheek. “Beautiful things,” she says. “Clouds, a sun, a moon. And he told the God of the Ground to make delicious fruit in her honor.”