The Everlasting Rose (The Belles, #2)(47)
Madam Renault fusses with Ada, trying to pull her by the chain. Edel kicks and thrashes at the guards. The Fashion Minister throws anything he can reach in their direction. The teacup dragons’ fire spreads through the room, igniting the bed canopy. It collapses, dropping fiery pieces on Valerie’s blanket. The flames crawl along her body and catch her thick brown hair.
Madam Renault orders the guards to put out the fire.
My eyes blur from the smoke. The guards cough and choke. I can’t see Valerie anymore. I can’t see anything.
The Fashion Minister hollers out, “Run!”
I grab Edel and Ada by their hands and do as he says, stumbling from the room. The teacup dragons follow, still spreading their fire.
Soft beams of moonlight sweep along the ocean as the left eye of the God of the Sky rises. The Silk Isles’ teahouse burns in the distance like a dying star. The edges of the imperial island glare as we sail along its coast—lantern-houses and piers and sill-lanterns in mansions that overlook the waves. The color is so different from the water that surrounds our home. I think of the terrifying stories we were told about the octopus living in the Rose Bayou. But we were never taught what lurked out here, what creatures inhabited the God of the Seas’ vast domain.
“We won’t get there any faster with you watching,” Edel says. “And you’re letting in a draft. The dragons are getting fussy.”
“All the lighthouses are sending beams of light out. Don’t you think that’s strange?”
“No,” she replies. “But it’s freezing.”
I close the drapes and turn back to the small but decadent cabin. The Fashion Minister’s lavish watercoach feels like a palace apartment set afloat. Plush chaises and couches circle a long table holding all the supplies we’ve amassed—Rémy’s maps, a few stolen Belle-products we haven’t had to sell, ink and parchment and a quill, food for the teacup dragons, my beauty caisse full of labeled sangsue bottles, the plump coin purses the Fashion Minister gave us. Fire-lanterns hover throughout, lending their heat to the chilly space. Cabinets boast all manner of treats—roasted nuts, cheese blocks, baskets of macarons, casks of wine and ale. But I have no appetite for any of it. We lost Valerie. We’ll never see her again. I can barely hold that truth in my head.
My throat burns, the taste of the fire still on my tongue. “What if all our sisters are in pain like Valerie?”
“We can’t lose another sister. We need to find a way to get to them,” she says.
“We lost Amber.” It stings saying her name.
Edel’s face is like stone. “I told you, she’s changed.”
My frustration, fueled by grief, bubbles over. “You weren’t at that dinner party with Claudine. You weren’t at the palace. You didn’t see what Sophia did to us. She turned everything into a game. She forced me to give a courtier a pig nose, she broke my hand, she poisoned my food. I didn’t get to talk to Amber about all the things she’d made her do. Sophia is a monster. She bends you into ugly shapes, and I regret every minute of her being able to do that to me.”
“I saw interviews with Amber bragging about being better than us. Better than her sisters. More deserving of the title of favorite.” Edel’s back stiffens, and her hands ball into fists as she readies herself for a fight. “You can’t convince me that she always loved us.”
“We all wanted to be the favorite. That means we had to be better than one another,” I remind her. “She just wasn’t nice about it.”
“I never wanted any of that. I never wanted this life.”
“Well, good for you for being above it all. But we’re not all the same. We’re sisters, but we’re not the same.”
“I don’t want to talk about Amber anymore.” Edel turns her back to me and reads a newspaper.
We sit in silence for a while, the worries stretching like dough between us. I take Arabella’s Belle-book from my travel sack. I trace my fingers across the etched arabella flowers on the cover.
Date: Day 3,657 at court
I found the official Belle registry today. Every Belle who ever lived is accounted for. The favored ones and the non-favored ones. There were ledgers here going back thousands of years. Each generation laid out in family clusters. Names scrawled in parchment alongside their best arcana.
I wonder how many Belles there are now, how many Du Barry grew in my generation, and where they might be. The thought of trying to find them all and make sure they’re safe becomes an overwhelming storm. I close Arabella’s book to erase the thoughts.
The teacup dragons stir in their sleep just seconds before there’s a tap on the window.
Startled, I pull back the drapes. Little golden Or perches on the tiny sill. I push the latch to let her in. She doesn’t carry a post-balloon. Instead ribbons loop around her ankle, and she clutches a parchment scroll in her tiny talons.
“You found us, girl.” My heart squeezes.
It’s from Rémy.
Or lands on my lap. I untie the ribbons quickly and free her to reunite with her brothers and sisters.
Edel darts over to me, almost falling due to the rocky motion of the boat.
My fingers fumble with the note as I try to unroll it. His handwriting is neat, each sentence perfectly placed on the page. I’ve never seen it before and the sight of it makes me smile. Edel tries to read over my shoulder, but I pull the letter close so only I can read it.