The Everlasting Rose (The Belles, #2)(89)
“Valerie is dead because of her. Arabella. Amber. She’s hurt so many,” I say. “She will keep doing it. She will never stop.”
“And she hurt me,” Charlotte says. “But I want her alive.”
“Why? She poisoned you. Kept you asleep for six years.”
“She’s my sister.” She looks down at Sophia with tears in her eyes. “Just like you forgive your sisters for their mistakes, I will forgive mine. Let me deal with her.” She steps closer to me. Her hands reach out to touch my shoulder. “You don’t want her death on your heart, and the rest of these people are innocent—complacent, maybe, but not evil. I need you to help me fix the problems she’s created.”
Padma cautiously approaches me and puts a hand in mine. “Just let go, Camille. Just breathe.”
The rage inside me fights to get out. I close my eyes. I don’t know if I can stop it. The portraits of the guards and Sophia are a swirling tornado. The blood is a river gushing from my nose still.
“You can,” she whispers.
I release everyone in the room. All around me people gasp for air. I collapse forward. Sweat streams down my face and arms and legs. More blood pours from my nose and over my lips. All the light in the room disappears.
I’m swept into tumultuous dreams of our very last beauty session before the Beauté Carnaval. Back when we were still little girls. Back when we didn’t know anything outside of the walls of the space we were born into. Back when we thought we were divine instruments to be treasured instead of used. Du Barry had us listen to visiting courtier women and their complaints about their bodies. We noted how they asked us to reset their insides, shifting the bone and marrow into new shapes more beautiful than their natural template.
My sisters and I hovered around a long treatment table like a ceremonial fan, gawking down at one woman’s limbs. She’d traveled over six golden imperial bridges and on one canopied rivercoach through the Rose Bayou to get to us from the Silk Isles. Tiny clusters of beauty-lanterns drifted over her like midnight stars. Perfect balls of light revealed how the gray of her skin made her look like a piece of fish that sat out all night.
We’d been so eager to use our beauty caisses for the first time and the items on the carts that the servants had wheeled in: tiered trays bursting with skin-color pastilles and rouge pots, brushes and combs and barrel irons, tonics and crèmes, bei-powder bundles, waxes and perfumes.
The woman’s soft moans stretched out like an anxious bubble between us. Tensions were high during our final session before we traveled to the imperial island, before we displayed our talents for the queen, before we found out who would be named the favorite, before we were told which one of us was most important.
There was a woman waiting on the table. There would be people at court waiting to be changed, and anticipating perfect results. There would be expectations.
My sisters and I exchanged nervous glances. Edel had turned as pale as the white lesson dresses we all used to wear. Padi’s black Belle-bun always caught the beauty-lantern light as she nosed around with careful and cautious curiosity. Hana had gotten in trouble for giggling when we’d catch a glimpse of certain body parts, and her long black braid hung down her back like a rope, swishing left and right as she trembled with laughter. Amber’s cheeks had been permanently red from intense focus. Valerie always rubbed her hands together with a smile, antsy to make sure she did whatever she could to make someone’s dreams come true.
We’d been all together. We’d worked together. We’d go through this experience together.
I’d felt like I had swallowed bayou butterflies that day.
The sound of humming pulls me awake, slow at first and then all at once. My eyes startle open, sore and watery as the light hits them through gauzy bed-curtains. The memories of where I am and what happened slide into my mind and a wave of nausea hits me. Sophia. Charlotte. The Iron Ladies. The Coronation and Ascension Ball.
I try to move, but my arms are threaded with needles and tubes, and my limbs hold the deepest soreness I’ve ever experienced.
I attempt to speak, but words come out in croaks.
“You sound terrible,” a voice says. “You should just not speak.”
I turn my head to the right and see Edel’s grinning face. Tears spill out the sides of my eyes.
“Ugh, don’t cry.” She inches closer, then clutches onto my arm like it’s the edge of a cliff and she needs to keep us both from tumbling off it. “I’m all right, and you’re all right.”
The bed-curtains open. “Did you wake her? You weren’t supposed to,” Padma says, carrying a morning-lantern. The beams illuminate the rich brownness of her skin like honey drizzled on a square of chocolate.
She climbs in on my left.
“Where’s Hana?” I ask.
“I’m here. I’m here.” She peeks her head through the bed-curtains. She looks different, so skinny she might be whisked away if a snowy wind became too strong. A soft day gown drapes her now wiry frame in the color of ginger and squash, and her black Belle-bun holds glass ornaments.
“Are you all right?” I reach for her.
She finds a space on the bed. “I will be. I arrived last night from the Fire Isles.”
When we were little girls living at Maison Rouge with our mamans, we’d pile into bed together just so we’d be able to wake up near one another. We all had our positions: Edel would have to be on the edge so she could get out if she needed to, Hana loved being in the center, Padma along the foot, Amber in the middle where she could control everyone’s movements, and Valerie closest to Edel, her favorite sleep partner out of all of us. I was happy wherever, as long as I was with my sisters.