The Belles (The Belles #1)(16)

“The pomegranates,” I say.

“Yes.” She wraps one of my frizzy curls around her finger. “With his love, Beauty birthed all the children of Orléans and spent her days making them look perfect and unique from one another. But she started spending more time with them, leaving her beloved in the sky alone for long spells of time. He called her home, but she was busy tending to their children. She’d always tell him, ‘Soon, I’ll come.’ She lost track of time. So finally, he sent storms and rain and lightning down in anger. The land flooded. Many died.”

“She should’ve just stayed up in the sky with him.”

“Love isn’t a cage, petit,” she says. “It’s more like a post-balloon—sent off in a specific direction, but allowed to make its own path.”

“A red post-balloon,” I say.

“Of course, little fox.” She kisses my nose. “Shall I continue?”

“Yes, please.”

“Beauty returned to her husband full of grief, and noticed he wasn’t sad. She discovered he’d troubled the skies over Orléans to lure her back, so she left him.” Maman pauses, lengthening her words like sweet dough, as my eyes grow wide with wonder. “She told him her only and true love was beauty. In furious anger, he cursed all of their children. He gave them skin the color of a sunless day, eyes the shade of blood, hair the texture of rotten straw, and a deep sadness that turned to madness. She would have had to work hard to restore them.”

“Did she try?”

Maman shushes me. “Do you want me to finish the story?”

“Yes,” I whisper into her shoulder. “Please tell me.”

“The hours she spent trying to fix her beloveds stretched into eternity after eternity, until . . .”

The fire hisses in the hearth. I jump up.

“She’s listening,” I whisper.

“She is,” Maman replies, “always listening to us.”

“What happened?”

“She made us.” Maman circles her fingernail along my wrist, tracing the path of the vein there. “Her blood is inside you. Her arcana are inside us. She is inside us. We are blessed. We are destined to do the work she could not. We are her vessels.” She kisses my forehead.


“Camille.”

I wipe the sleep from my eyes, and it erases my dreams and the memories of Maman. Amber’s pale face looks back at me. She squeezes my hand under the blanket.

“You awake?”

“Yes, what’s wrong?” I whisper.

“I wanted to apologize for earlier.” She smells like the orange-blossom treatment they always put in her hair to bring out the rich coppery color. “I just . . . I don’t understand what happened, and I get so . . .”

“Worked up?”

She thumps my shoulder playfully, then traces soft fingers over my forehead. “Yes.”

“I don’t know what happened either,” I say.

“You’re my best friend.” She scoots closer and reaches her arm over me. Right now she’s not the girl that fusses with me about the rules, the arcana, and court. She’s not the girl who is always competing with me. She is my sister.

“And you’re mine.”

“I just get worried.” She plucks the feeling right out of me, as if she’s listening to my heart. “I don’t want this to change us.”

“Our whole lives will be different tomorrow.”

“We have to still be me and you.” Our legs tangle together beneath the covers. “Promise me we’ll be all right.” Her lips tremble and her body shakes. The sobs come hard and fast.

“We’re sisters. You’re my best friend. Nothing will ever change that.” I squeeze her hand tight. “Just breathe.”

I take a handkerchief from the nightstand and try to clean her up. We take deep breaths together. The red flush leaves her cheeks.

“How do you know we’ll ever see each other again?” she asks.

“I can’t go the rest of my life without talking to you. I need you.”

She smiles. “I need you, too. But—but—I just feel like this is—”

“We will all be fine.”

“But we all want to be the favorite—well, except Edel.”

We both chuckle.

“Your maman was the favorite of our mamans’ generation—”she says.

“And if I don’t get picked as the favorite, I hope you do,” I blurt out.

“Really?”

“Of course. Our mothers were best friends. That’s why we’re best friends. We must always be. That’s what they wanted.” I push away the tears that come with thoughts of Maman. She wouldn’t want me to waste them. She would want me to be happy that my exhibition went well. She would want me to focus on the things to come.

She sighs. “I just don’t know if I can handle it.”

“What?”

“Losing.”

“But what if it’s to me?”

She clenches the covers. “I have to be the favorite.”

“I want to be the favorite, too.”

Silence coils between us.

The redness returns to Amber’s cheeks. “You don’t understand.” She tries to roll out of the bed, but I catch her arm.