The Everlasting Rose (The Belles, #2)(9)

“Eye-films in and mask on, Amber,” Edel directs.

I fumble to put mine back on, my fingers shaky with nerves.

Rémy touches my shoulder and nods, his quiet confidence a temporary balm.

Amber jams in her eye-films. “I can’t see anything.”

“Blink and they’ll settle,” Edel replies.

Amber struggles to tie on her mask, her eyes watery, her fingers fumbling. The ribbons rip as she pulls them too tight, but there’s no time for me to help her before we’re slipping into the hall behind Rémy.

“All boarders are summoned to the common room,” a voice commands.

“We’ll leave through the kitchens,” Rémy whispers. “Pull your hoods tight.”

The boarders swarm the space with confusion and chaos, allowing us cover to sneak down a back set of stairs. My heart thumps with each step I take. Soldiers rummage through rooms, flipping up beds and snatching open closet doors.

“Any of you found to be harboring fugitives will face the maximum punishment allowed by the Courts of Justice,” a soldier barks. “That’s fifteen days in a starvation box. The Minister of Justice will not be lenient.”

We ease into the kitchen.

A soldier steps out of the pantry. “And just where do you think you’re going?”

Rémy shoves straight through, knocking him to the ground. Another soldier appears in the doorway behind us. I grab the nearest cast-iron skillet and hit him on the head. He crashes into the table.

“Run!” Rémy yells.

Edel pushes through the back door first.

I stumble out with Rémy at my side. We duck behind a carriage just as a scream cuts through the air.

Amber.

Instinctively, I turn back toward her, toward my sister, toward my best friend. She thrashes about in the arms of two soldiers, writhing in their grip.

“We’ve got one of them!” a soldier hollers. “The others must be nearby!”

The world slows around me.

Amber’s wails pierce the air; each one hits me like the stab of a knife.

I start to go to her. Rémy grabs me by the waist. “We have to leave. We’ve already been seen. The longer we linger, the more of them there will be.”

“No.” I wrestle with his tight grip. “We can’t.”

“Camille, he’s right. We’ll all be captured. And they want you the most.” Edel squeezes my chin, forcing me to look at her. “We can’t help her right now. If we’re taken, too, it’s over. We can’t find Charlotte. We can’t fix all of this. We can’t do anything.”

Tears storm down my cheeks.

“We’ll find a way to get her back.”

Edel tugs me forward, toward the dark shadows of the alley, as the guards drag Amber away and she disappears, like a post-balloon snatched by its ribbons.





We weave through Metairie’s network of markets, moving as far away from the boardinghouse as possible. My heart swells with heaviness. What will Sophia do to Amber? Will she torture her? How bad will it be?

“We need to go back for her,” I whisper to Edel. “We should follow them and see where they take her.”

“She lingered behind us,” she replies. “I don’t understand why she’d do that.”

“What do you mean?” I ask. “She was struggling to get her mask on.”

Rémy shushes us. “Not out in the open. Too risky. Whatever happened, we’ll discuss it later.”

I turn to him. “Where are we going?”

“To a place where people rarely ask questions.” He pulls his hood tighter, reassembles his mask around his face, and leads the way forward through the crowd. We venture deep inside, headed for its edges, where the city lanterns darken from blues to plums. The cobblestones trail off. Stalls and shops are pitched at strange and rather worrying angles, each having sunk a little too far into the muddied ground. Signs advertise beauty-scopes featuring nude men and women, products claiming to steal another’s beauty, and tonics with the promise of love, money, and fame.

“Prisms for good fortune when the rainy season returns. Trap a rainbow, get good luck from the God of Luck,” a vendor says.

“Wish dolls sold here. Best in the marketplace!” another shouts through a voice-trumpet. “Best in all of the Spice Isles. Exact your revenge. Or make your dreams come true. My pins will unlock it all. I’ve collected the metal myself from the Goddess of Death’s caves!”

“Care to know your future?” A masked woman cuts off my stride.

I almost slam into her. Glass beads dot the veil she wears, and her mask is etched with a curious pink flower. She lifts it and whispers, “A new year and a new moon is coming. The threads of danger slowly thickening. You should draw from my cards.” She fans them out, exposing their hand-drawn faces.

I flinch. Spiderwebs stretch across them. Why does it seem like spiders are following me everywhere this morning?

“No, thank you,” I say, sidestepping her to keep up with Rémy and Edel.

“There is anger around you. I can lift it,” she calls out behind us. “Come back.”

No one can get rid of this fiery cloud.

Rémy heads for a salon that can’t make up its mind if it’s a teahouse, a shop, or a limestone mansion. A tiny door holds a porthole-shaped window and red sill-lanterns sit behind two pairs of windows like glowing eyes. The lip-shaped sign RED VELVET SALON flaps from a gust of wind.