The Princess Trials (The Princess Trials #1)(81)
“What terrible news,” he says. “When we envisaged a pageant where young ladies compete for the attention of the prince, we didn’t take into account the pressures it would put on those in our society who are more mentally delicate.”
I take a forkful of toast, barely tasting the avocado and chopped tomatoes, and hope he’s not implying that I’m mentally deficient for escaping an attempted murder.
Prunella nods. “Rafaela von Eyck was a beautiful soul, and the stress of sharing Prince Kevon with all those girls broke her spirit.”
Montana shakes his head. “It’s always a terrible tragedy when a young lady takes her own life.”
“What?” I clench my knife and fork like clubs. Why did I ever think that speaking out yesterday against Prunella would make a difference?
“But you told me it was murder.” Forelle turns to me, her green eyes wide.
“This is a coverup,” I snarl.
The pair talk about Rafaela’s acting career, and clips of her in different roles play on a screen behind them. She is even more breathtaking in her movies than in real life, and an ache spreads through my heart at the memories of her last moments.
As the subject turns to her associations with various actors, images of her with an array of handsome young men appear onscreen. I shake my head. “They’re trying to portray her as having lots of men. She got through to the audition stage and wasn’t even like that.”
Forelle’s brows draw together in an expression of skepticism. What she doesn’t understand is that clips can be sliced and rearranged out of order to depict any kind of story, whether true or false. If I told her about the naked clip that had led to the girls attacking me en masse, her head would probably explode.
Prunella dabs a fake tear with a lace handkerchief. “With one girl taking her life due to the pressures of the Princess Trials, and another absconded and forfeiting her place, we’ve decided to bring forward the ball to tonight.”
“What?” I roar at the screen.
Forelle’s eyes bulge. “What’s absconded?”
I explain that the word means that I ran away but that it has negative connotations.
One of the benefits of having a parent who was born in the Barrens is the stringent standards the Nobles set for Foundlings and their offspring. To join the Phangloria Echelons, they not only have to demonstrate genetic perfection but pass a dizzying amount of aptitude tests that most Harvesters would fail.
Mom taught me to read before school and supplemented my basic education with lessons on history and literature. With her intelligence and knowledge, she’s wasted as a Harvester and should be a teacher, but those jobs are reserved for the Guardian Echelon. She’s well-read, articulate, and quick-witted, but she’s never known anything else but the Barrens and feels that her life as a Harvester is the equivalent of living like royalty.
I turn to Forelle. “Is there any way I can find out what they said about me earlier?”
“Sure.” She points a remote at the screen and switches to another channel with images from the Princess Trials. When I turn to her for an explanation, she says, “There’s a live channel and another one where you can skip to camera feeds of your favorite candidates.”
“Oh,” I say, not completely understanding how it works. “Can I see anything related to me?”
Forelle clicks several buttons, and a matrix flashes on the screen with all thirty girls’ pictures. “If you only want to view the highlights of one Echelon, that’s possible, and you can see footage on each candidate.”
“It’s very precise,” I say with a frown. Maybe that’s why there are so many camerawomen following us everywhere.
She selects my photo and a timer, which brings up footage of me running down the stairs.
“Wait,” I say. “Go back an hour.”
With a few clicks of a button, I’m at the gymnasium, lying on one of the tables. The camera shows me exercising next to Berta, and then we change machines. There’s a close up of me struggling with one of the controls, and then the camera cuts to me storming out in a fury and running down the hallway and into a stairwell.
“That’s not what happened,” I tell her about the fake footage Prunella showed the girls.
She leans forward and selects another button. “Let’s see what they showed last night, then.”
It’s footage of me sitting on Gemini’s bed with my arms wrapped around the smaller girl, then Berta enters and announces that there’s no dinner. The camera cuts again to me, running through the hallway and down the stairs.
I sputter at the screen. “They’re making me look like an entitled brat. Who on earth drops out from a pageant because they didn’t get an evening meal?”
“Why would they go so far?” Forelle puts down her fork and leans forward, watching me stumble through the night with my arms splayed out.
“They’ve already decided who will win the Trials. This show probably makes all the Echelons feel like they have a chance that one of their own might become the queen.”
Forelle picks up the remote and switches to another channel. Prince Kevon wears black and holds the hand of an older woman who has the same delicate features as Rafaela. Beside him stands a black-haired man with Rafaela’s eyes. Garrett stands at the prince’s other side, looking grim.