The Everlasting Rose (The Belles, #2)(15)

I fuss with the teapot. He puts a hand on mine to still it.

Rémy fishes for my gaze, his eyes big and brown with the tiniest bit of red pushing through. His words sink into my skin like warm water, the heat going right through muscles and tissue down to my bones.

“I must’ve done something. What is it? I didn’t even yell at you for disappearing this morning while I was on my perimeter check. I didn’t even ask you what you were doing out at that hour.”

“Lucky me.” I pull my hand out of his grip. It drifts into my nightgown pocket where the tiny poison bottle sits. I can’t tell him about this yet. Though I desperately want to.

“I had every right to. Had a whole speech planned out.”

“I need to refresh your irises,” I say. “And remove that stripe from your hair. It makes you too recognizable.”

His hand finds his soft, tight curls and the silver streak down the middle marking him as a soldier in the House of War. “You’ve been telling me this, but—”

“You’re stubborn.”

“I’m just not ready to let it go yet. The hair powders you gave me have been covering it for now.”

“We will run out soon. I should change your skin color, too.”

“Only when you tell me what’s wrong.”

“You’d risk becoming a Gris again?”

The teapot screeches. I remove it from the flame.

Rémy places two chipped teacups on the table. “I’m not afraid of the grayness.”

“What’s it like?” I ask, and remember one of Du Barry’s lessons about the Gris: The madness overtakes every part of you, itching to be free.

“I haven’t experienced it since I was a child. People say it’s painful. Like a long-lasting sickness. The sweats, a headache, vomiting, and rabid, racing thoughts...”

“We would see little Gris babies, shriveled, angry, and hot from escaping their mothers’ wombs. But they only stayed that way for an hourglass’s worth before we’d mix Belle-rose tea into their milk and they’d endure their first transformations.” I stir a spoonful of honey into each of our cups. “I’ve seen more Gris people in the Spice Isles than ever before.”

“The House of Orléans continually expels them from the imperial island. Rounding them up to disperse, to the irritation of other powerful houses. You must be on high alert.”

I think about the Gris woman who attacked me while I was on the way to see Claiborne.

“They aren’t any worse than Sophia,” I say. “Nothing can be.”

“You will get rid of her,” he says. “It’ll show the world how to resist tyranny.”

The image of the Spider’s Web newspaper drifts into my head. “Du Barry only taught us how to obey.”

“And it seems you’ve learned that lesson well,” he chides, pulling a reluctant smile out of me.

“There are so many things I don’t know.”

“You’ll learn them.”

“We spent our entire lives being lied to.”

“And now, you’re waking up. You’re lucky. Some people never do.”

I turn away from him to avoid his gaze. I stare at the night edition of the Orléansian Times. A familiar face winks at me. The Fashion Minister. He’s beneath a headline: GUSTAVE DU POLIGNAC, BELOVED FASHION MINISTER, IN THE SILK ISLES PREPARING TO PRESENT DRESSES FAVORED BY QUEEN FOR HER CORONATION AND ASCENSION.

I tear out the article, fold it, and slip it into my pocket with the poison bottle.

“What is it?” he asks.

“Nothing.”

He spins me around by the waist and takes my hands. “I know when you’re lying.”

Our fingers are wrapped together like sweetcanes of chocolate and caramel. He doesn’t look up at me, his gaze fixed on them. The firelight dances across his beautiful dark skin like the glow from the red bayou flies at home.

He leans down so our foreheads kiss. “Tell me.”

“I’m formulating a plan.”

“All right,” he whispers.

“We will find Charlotte. We will take down Sophia,” I whisper to him.

“Sophia won’t go away easily, and the damage she’s done will linger—”

“I will kill Sophia if I have to.”

“Taking lives is hard.”

“She’s ruined so many.”

“That may be true, but the act of it...”

“What do you think we should do?” I pull back.

“What do you want to do?” he asks.

“I want to find Charlotte. I want my sisters to be all right. I want Sophia to not be able to hurt anyone again.”

He squeezes my hand.

“You don’t have to kill anyone to accomplish this,” he says. “It’s not as easy as you think.”

“I don’t think any of this is easy. And if you believe what I want to do isn’t right, then what should we do? You usually have so many opinions. So many directions for me.”

“Not this time. You’ve got to figure it out,” he says.

“I will do what I must,” I say. “Whatever it takes.”





A knock pounds the door in the morning. It startles Edel and me awake. Rémy signals for us to go into the closet.