The Everlasting Rose (The Belles, #2)(49)

Three women enter wearing dark gowns edged in white, their faces covered with smiling iron masks. Etched spiders dot across their cheeks. Crowns of strange pink flowers twist around their heads.

“Don’t touch us,” Edel hollers.

One of the women laughs. “We don’t plan on it.” She pulls out two small thuribles. The metal burners explode with thick acrid smoke.

Edel coughs and clutches her stomach. The night-lanterns snuff out.

I wave my hands in front of my face as a dull ringing reverberates in my ears, but it’s no use. My lungs fill with smoke, and the light disappears as I feel myself falling.





I fall in and out of a dream. Maman replaces Sophia. We’re in the library at Maison Rouge. The space is dark and somber, furniture upholstered in deep maroons, crimson velvets, and rich golds, with heavy shaded lanterns sitting on each table. Tall bookshelves line the walls, the varnish giving them a bloody glow. Spines reveal legal titles—beauty and toilette laws, city decorum statutes, and royal family protocol—stretching back to the very beginning of Orléans. A large portrait series of Belle generations hangs from a mosaic ceiling by glittering strings. I’m small, skipping behind her from aisle to aisle, chasing her trailing nightgown.

“What are you looking for, Maman?” I ask.

She smiles back at me, her eyes alive with wonder and excitement. “A fairy tale that I want to tell you.”

“I thought you knew all the stories.” I catch her and slide my hand into hers; it’s warm and strong. “You said you did.”

“I do, but I need to get the details of this one just right. It’s about the Beauty Trials and the everlasting rose. Did Madam Du Barry tell you about that?”

“No.”

She smiles. “You’ll see.”

We sneak through more aisles until she pauses before a shelf of red-spined books. She runs her fingers across them, and I mimic her.

“Aren’t they lovely?” she says, pulling out a thin volume.

“Yes,” I say.

She cracks it open, sniffs the parchment, then puts it under my nose. “And they smell like...”

“Ink,” I reply.

“Magic.” She kisses my forehead. “Come, petite abeille.” She leads me to one of the cushioned window nooks in the library. We look out over the Rose Bayou to the left—white trees holding their crimson petals and imperial boats navigating the waters to our canopied dock, and the forest behind our house to the right—

all-consuming darkness as far as the eye can see.

She opens the book, traces her long white fingers over the calligraphy, and scans the page. “Before the Goddess of Beauty decided to return to her husband, she had to trust someone to take care of us.”

“How did she do it?” I ask.

“If you listen, I will tell you.” She pushes a finger against my nose. “So many questions before letting the story unfold. She established the Beauty Trials to draw out the right woman who could be trusted to take care of us.”

“What’s a trial?”

“A test.” She points to pictures in the book of the Goddess seated on a throne made of Belle-roses. “She wanted to make sure the woman would have the right qualities.”

“Like what?”

She taps the picture of a line of women.

“Some of the same qualities that you have, little fox. Determination, strength, kindness, loyalty, fortitude, and most of all, selflessness.”

My eyes soak in the pictures of various women standing before the Goddess. “What did they have to do?”

“See this chest here”—she traces her finger over the drawing—“it contains objects that start a divine series of challenges.”

“Who won?”

“You don’t remember the first queen of Orléans from your history lessons?”

I shake my head. She purses her lips.

“Don’t tell Du Barry,” I plead. “I don’t want to have to write any lines.”

“Madam Du Barry,” she corrects.

I sigh.

“Never. Our secrets are ours.” She winks at me. “Queen Marjorie. She was the first monarch of the House of Orléans. The Goddess also gave her an everlasting rose.” She flips a page in the book and taps a picture of a black-and-red rose growing from blood-soaked soil.

“What’s that, Maman?” I ask, circling my finger over the ink-drawn petals.

“A symbol that represents us,” she replies.

My eyes widen. “Do you think she misses us? Do you think she’d ever visit?”

“I think if we needed her, she would come.” She taps my nose. “But otherwise I think she’s done with this world. She sent us. We are her everlasting roses. Our blood, her blood, is what has rescued this world and allows it to thrive.”

“Can we call her on one of the circuit-phones? What if we really need help one day?”

She takes my hand in hers, knitting our fingers together like threads of white and brown yarn. “I don’t think she’d send us here without being able to protect us if something went wrong.”

The light from a single night-lantern is a shock, pulling me out of my dreams and back into this new and strange reality. My surroundings sharpen around me.