The Everlasting Rose (The Belles, #2)(31)
I comb through Arabella’s Belle-book to pass the anxious time.
Date: Day 3,428 at court
Sophia’s Belle-growing apparatus was unveiled today. The clear vats will hold future Belles like wombs. Sophia called them cradles. She thought it made what she’d created sound better. Sweeter and softer.
I sneaked into the birthing chamber. The walls are filled with them now, stacked like eggs in a carton. I traced my fingers along gilded tubes that connected to massive arcana meters and tanks to be filled with my blood. Nurses used rolling ladders to tend to them.
The sight of the room was maddening. Du Barry hid the truth. She said we’d fallen from the sky like seeds to be planted. She said she rescued us from the dark forest and put us into the hands of our mothers. She said the Goddess of Beauty made each one of us in her image. The beautiful lie burned a pit in my heart.
I flip forward.
Date: Day 3,432 at court
The ministers have been holed up in the Royal Law Room of the Imperial Library for two days straight. Beds were brought in, and they were forced to work through the night on the new set of beauty laws to be passed after Sophia’s Coronation and Ascension to the throne. I sneaked onto the balcony to listen to them argue. I caught some of the rules on the docket: Citizens will be required to register their beauty work with the cabinet, including but not limited to installation of imperial cameos in every household for monitoring.
Beauty capital (an individual’s ability to present themself) shall be measured with a rating rubric (scores given monthly from the Beauty Minister). High marks will be rewarded by the monarchy, for Orléans will be full of only beautiful things.
No woman shall be more beautiful than the sitting queen.
The debates over a new beauty price list was next on their agenda. The new Minister of Belles, Georgiana Fabry, insisted the prices go up. Beauty lobbyists backed her desires, but other ministers disagreed, claiming it will create disenfranchisement.
The price list was now segmented by arcana.
MANNER:
ALL PERSONALITY ADJUSTMENTS 1,750
TALENT:
TIER ONE PHYSICAL PROWESS 3,750
TIER TWO ARTISTIC 4,270
TIER THREE SKILL 5,980
AURA:
SURFACE MODIFICATIONS:
HAIR COLOR 105
HAIR TEXTURE 126
EYE COLOR RESTORATION 50
EYE SHAPE ADJUSTMENT 60
SKIN COLOR RESTORATION 90
DEEP MODIFICATIONS:
FACE:
CHEEKBONE SCULPTING 4,000
MOUTH PLACEMENT AND SHAPE 3,000
EAR PLACEMENT AND SHAPE 3,000
BODY:
LEG AND ARM SCULPTING 4,500
STOMACH, BREASTS, TORSO SCULPTING 6,100
HIPS AND REAR SHAPING 7,000
NECK AND SHOULDER SMOOTHING 3,000
HAND AND FEET ADJUSTMENT 2,000
AGE:
SKIN TIGHTENING 125
WRINKLE REMOVAL 200
I turn back to the beginning of the book.
Date: Day 2,198 at court
I feel terrible about what I did today. The nurses started taking more of my blood now, too much for it to just be to check my arcana levels. They wouldn’t tell me why. Claimed it was to keep me healthy. When one of the nurses, Zaire, came into my bedroom with her cart of needles and vials, I restrained her and made her tell me what they were using my blood for.
She called me the aether, one of the everlasting roses. I thought back to when I was a little girl curled up in my maman’s lap with one of the storybooks from the library at Maison Rouge. I can still see the cover—a rose with petals of every color and a gilded stem. Its pages told the tale of the Goddess of Beauty’s gardens, and the rare everlasting roses, grown from aether seeds in order to birth the other roses.
I don’t know what this means.
The late-morning headlines pour through the window and interrupt my reading.
“The National, second paper off the presses. Countess Madeleine Rembrant of House Glaston jailed by the queen for stealing Belle-products from Trianon’s premier shop, Sugar Rose.”
“Beauty pamphlets Dulce and Sucré both report that plum buns will most certainly sweep the Glass Isles—maybe the entire kingdom—after famed opera singer Geneviève Gareau sported a full derriere at her last concert. If only the teahouses were open.”
“We should go line up,” I say, wanting to get away from the headlines and this room. I tuck the teacup dragons in my pouch and add Arabella’s Belle-book to my satchel. “We have an hour left.”
Edel shrugs but pulls herself off the bed.
More headlines drift inside, like incessant waves threatening to swallow us.
“Just in from the Orléansian Times, Belles officially labeled property of the kingdom of Orléans, entrusted to its monarch. Hiding them is now considered treason against the crown with the penalty death by starvation box.”
I flinch.
“Property?” Edel says, gritting her teeth.
“We’ve always been that,” I reply, the truth hardening me from the inside out.
“The Silk Post learns that the queen is labeling any and all rumors of her sister’s recovery as false press. She is still planning the funeral and memorial for her beloved sister. Her body is to be presented on the first day of the new year as planned.”
Rémy pulls on his cloak.