The Everlasting Rose (The Belles, #2)(72)

Auguste.

A woman marches out of the back of the store. She has a large hourglass shape, her curves fitting beautifully into a robin’s egg–blue dress cinched at the waist with a golden sash, and her hair is pulled so tightly into a bun at first I don’t notice its curly texture and streaks of gray. “You’re right on time.”

“I am Corrine—”

“I know who you are. You can get rid of your veil. We have much work to do. You are to meet our future queen in less than an hourglass’s worth of time.”

“And you’re Justine, I’m guessing?”

“Never guess. And no, Justine is not here. She’s off chasing materials for her latest hat. But you don’t have to hide any longer. Or attempt to run.”

A shiver prickles up my back. The familiarity of her voice seeps beneath my skin.

“You are Camellia Beauregard. You were seven stones when you were born,” she says.

Her words startle me. “My name is Corinne Sauveterre from the House of—”

“It’s me, Madam Du Barry,” she says, reaching out her arms.

I stumble backward. “No.”

“Camille, I could never get you to follow rules, you always wanted to do the opposite of what I asked—always in the name of curiosity.” She pulls down the sweetheart collar of her dress and reveals her imperial identification mark, the cursive letters of her name—Ana Maria Lange Du Barry—spelled out in permanent ink.

My mouth drops open.

“It’s really you,” I say, reaching out to touch her, and she grabs my hand, squeezes it, and pulls me into a hug.

I crumple in her arms. Even though I spent most of my life fearing this woman and the past few months uncovering all the lies she told us, her scent wraps around me like a cozy blanket. The comfort of her quiets the anger. I’m a little girl again.

The teacup dragons inch their way out of my waist-sash and start to whiz around, spraying their tiny coughs of fire at the bigger one in the hearth.

“What happened to you? Where did you go?” My eyes search her body and face, her outside so different and foreign from the shape of her I’ve always known. But her eyes—they always keep the same eyes. I can see her in there.

She leads me to chairs in front of the fireplace. “We don’t have much time. But while your bath is being prepared, I will tell you what I can. When the queen’s death was imminent and Sophia’s behavior ever more unpredictable, I’d caught wind that she was planning to replace me and topple our traditions. There was a rumor that they planned to hold me in the dungeons, so I tried to take Elisabeth and leave the palace right after you did, but they’d already taken her. So I had to go on my own. It is something I’ve regretted ever since that day.”

“She was in the prisons with us for a while. How is she faring at the palace?” I ask, remembering the sound of her voice on the other end of the circuit-phone at the Silk Teahouse. My anger toward Du Barry cools slightly, seeming so silly now after all that’s happened.

“She’s been sending me information when she can. Sophia won’t let her go. She threatens to put my daughter in one of her new starvation boxes—allow the whole kingdom to see her nude body and watch it turn gray.” Her voice quavers, but she quickly coughs, pours tea, and hands it to me.

“Thank you.” The heat warms my hands.

“Elisabeth sends me letters every week if she can,” she says, pulling a wad of parchment out of her pocket, and handing it to me. “She helps me track information and inform the Iron Ladies.”

I purse my lips. “How did you meet them? And why? You are a guardian. We were a business to you. And it was profitable.”

“It was our way of life.”

“But you lied to us. You kept so many secrets from us,” I say.

“And I’m sorry for that. I truly am. But I know that apology might be too little and too late.” Her eyes gleam with tears in the firelight.

“I spent most of my life being angry with you.”

“And I’m sorry.”

That word again. It means nothing.

“You weren’t children for very long, but I should’ve done things differently than my maman. I mimicked what was in the Belle-manuals, what my maman and grand-mère had done.” She puts a hand on her face. “Camille, you have to understand... this was the way it was always done. Since the beginning of time. It wouldn’t even have occurred to me to do anything differently than what my maman had trained me to do. But then, I saw the way Sophia treated Amber, and then you... It was clear something had to change. Perhaps the Iron Ladies’ way is the better way. I met them while evading Sophia’s network of guards.

“I know you’ve seen Sophia’s pods. I never appropriately explained the other Belles that you discovered at the Chrysanthemum Teahouse. I should’ve told all of you about how you were born. I regret not being forthright. Adhering to the guide, I foolishly didn’t realize that you having knowledge would keep you safe if things were to ever go wrong.” She knits her hands in her lap. “I should have shown you how it worked.”

The memory of Sophia’s glass contraption slides into my head. “Were we all born from those pods?”

“The favored generation isn’t.” Her voice cracks.