Bring Me Their Hearts(33)
“Don’t they look lovely?” a noble’s voice leaks into my window.
“Quite pretty indeed, but nowhere as beautiful as last year’s batch. If the prince didn’t take to last year’s, these stand no chance.”
“These.” “Last year’s batch.” If I didn’t know better, I’d say these idiots thought of us as sacks of marriageable meat rather than actual people. It’s brutal to hear, but I’m just a passerby, a fake. I can’t imagine how much worse it is for the real children of these nobles who treat them like commodities. Like race dogs to be gossiped over, betted upon, bred to the proper dame and sire.
Fisher slows the carriage to a crawl, stopping it just before the massive pool and the front steps of the palace. Nobles flood the stairs, standing on either side in ritual tandem. The palace guards—differentiated from city lawguards by the four jade-green feathers in their helmets—stand sternly before the crowd, not so much holding them back as marking the appropriate area for them to be. Fisher opens the carriage door, letting in light and the sounds of commotion: cheers, whistles, shouting. Among the well-dressed nobles are polymaths in their plain brown robes and tool belts. Everyone in court is here to see the spectacle. Fisher doesn’t offer me his hand—that’s only for suitors—but he does hover in case I need help descending.
My copper-toed boots hit the ground. Everyone’s watching; even the cold, blank eyes of the statues stare down at me and add an extra layer of pressure to my chest.
“You’ll be all right, won’t you, miss?” Fisher asks, but I can barely hear him over the crowd’s din. Miss. He’s one of the few who calls me that, instead of milady. Milady is sharp, full of expectations, but miss is much softer. I somehow feel comforted, knowing at least one person in the world doesn’t expect much from me.
“No,” I admit. “But as Y’shennria would say, that hardly matters, does it?”
A red carnation catches in my hair, swinging on loose strands and batting my face. I pick it out, bewildered. I should be happy to be here, happy to be picked as a potential bride for the prince, but with every cheer of the nobles I feel more and more like a cow lined up for slaughter. All I can think of is how quickly they’d turn on me if they knew what I really was. I force my lips into a grin. The other girls getting out of their carriages smile so easily, like they were born to it, and flit through the crowd and up the stairs. Shakily, I follow.
“Head high,” I mutter Y’shennria’s words. “Square chest. Always look up and forward, and never down or back. And don’t forget: if you’re found out, you’re dead.”
I catch up to a girl in a gold dress on the stairs, and she shoots me a look from under her long eyelashes. Her face is made up as much as mine—lip tint, dark symmetrical lines drawn in wax from her eyes, though hers are laced with curlicues.
“Your necklace is very nice,” she says. I look down at my glittering locket. My first urge is to say thank you, but Y’shennria taught me better than that. Accepting compliments in court is seen as a weakness to flattery.
“As is yours,” I say.
“Oh, this old thing?” The girl laughs and picks at her garnet necklace. “It’s nothing much. Papa sent me in hand-me-downs, really. My sister’s old jewels, her old dress, her old carriage—ugly things.”
Her carriage was the golden one, velvet-lined and diced with tassels, the fanciest one for miles around. She’s definitely part of a Firstblood family. She shoots me a pitying smile.
“Is your dress hand-me-down, too? What a shame—you should’ve asked me for one! I’d be more than happy to buy you something that doesn’t make you look as if you’re a Snowsum Eve’s duck!”
Snowsum Eve ducks are always packed to bursting with fruits before roasting. She’s calling me fat, and she isn’t being subtle about it. She may as well have slapped me in the face with how overt she’s being, yet she can easily pawn the insult off as politeness. So that’s how they play it here in the royal court, hm? Fine by me.
“You flatter me, milady.” I smile. “I can see the prince being very happy with your kindness and consideration for others.”
It’s a two-faced insult, and we both know it. The girl goes five shades of angry red and loses her concentration, tripping on a stair. The crowd watches her with a bevy of hushed whispers.
“Is she all right? Poor thing had so many fevers as a child, it’s a wonder she’s strong enough to be at the Spring Welcoming—”
“The Steelrun are sickly children, after all, runs on the father’s side—”
“—can’t have a royal generation of bedridden princes, now can we?”
Steelrun—a Firstblood family. I was right. But Whisper is more right—these nobles really are gossip-stuffed morons. Their willingness to tear someone down in front of them chills me to the marrow. I extend my hand to her. She glares at it, hoisting herself to her feet and brushing past me with a disgruntled mutter.
“As if I’d let you look good at my expense.”
I watch her go for a moment, sighing. “Right, how could I forget? Basic decency is illegal here.”
Finally, I make it to the top step—out of the sun and into the cool shade of the entrance. Two celeon guards in silver armor engraved with snakes bow and open the massive gilded doors for me. The main hall is a feast for the senses—marble banisters polished so well they shine like full moonlight. The intoxicating, lush perfume of plant life wafts from every basket and ceramic vase, the hall overflowing with bouquets of orchids and lime flowers. White ivy drips from the railings of the second and third and fourth floors like natural streamers, heavy and ripe with pale star-shaped flowers. The sound of water beneath my feet makes me look down; the floor of the main hall isn’t a floor at all—it’s an iron grate woven in a delicate pattern and overlaid with glass, a shallow lake of turquoise water below. It scatters sunlight into diamond shards around the vaulted hall, making it look as if the room glows from within.