Belle Revolte - Linsey Miller Page 0,132

any rate.

“You look divine.” The mirrored collar of her dress was cold in my hands. She’d dozens of people to do this for her, but still I fixed it. “Today will be fine. Tomorrow too.”

I couldn’t divine anymore, use any of the arts, but hope was a portent all its own.

The door behind us opened. Isabelle’s soft gasp made me grin.

“You look divine,” Isabelle muttered, circling Coline with the eyes of someone who actually knew what she was looking at. “We should probably stop saying that, shouldn’t we?”

“Not in private.” Coline smiled and shrugged as much as she could in such a heavy dress. “I do love hearing it.”

“We know.” I stepped away and let Isabelle get her look in. “Was me saying it not enough?”

“You’d say I was pretty no matter what,” Coline said. “I appreciate the adoration, but it’s not helpful.” Her smile tightened. “Do you think Brigitte will like it?”

If any of us would tell Coline she looked divine no matter what she was or wasn’t wearing, it was Brigitte.

“She didn’t leave your side as you recovered from your injuries.” I leaned forward, kissed Coline’s cheek, and moved to the door. “Remember?”

Coline hadn’t had many injuries after, no one had, but most had slept for days or paced for days or switched between the two as if their body couldn’t quite decide whether it was exhausted or exhilarated. Emilie and I had slept for two weeks.

Coline said it had been the longest two weeks of her life. She’d been struggling to become a queen while her friends hung between life and death.

Most of the surviving nobles were behind her—or too scared to say anything for now—and nearly everyone who had been there spread the same story.

“I’m going to find Yvonne,” I said, curtsying. “I’ll find you tonight, Your Majesty.”

* * *

Yvonne and I were romancing each other.

Coline had cackled when she’d heard, and Isabelle had clapped. Infuriating.

“I’m glad I was only in charge of the drinks.” Yvonne picked at what was left over from the morning’s breakfast. Coline had been determined to feed anyone who came to see her crowned, and the kitchens had only just stopped cooking so that all the chefs and servers could take their places in the plaza before Serre church. There were only a handful of things left. “This you’ll like, though.”

“So long as it’s not mushrooms.”

Yvonne picked up a raspberry tart no bigger than a fingernail and fed it to me.

“Delicious,” I said, voice cracking.

It did that sometimes now. The flesh of my throat had worn away, and I swore, sometimes, I felt moth wings where skin should’ve been. Emilie’s wounds were even odder.

And Lord help anyone who looked at that battlefield in Segance. Nothing but corrupted things grew there now—trees with bark like nails, willows with leaves like hair, and earthworms segmented like long, long fingers. The university was having a great time studying it.

Yvonne chuckled and set it down, brushing the crumbs from the table. “My mother is right. You are too polite.”

Her mother had said it as a joke when I’d been too tongue-tied to answer her if I wanted water or wine during dinner when meeting them for real last week. Yvonne’s whole family—parents, siblings, a few extra cousins, and a stuffy uncle—had all raced to find her once they knew she had been at the fight in Serre. They’d been nice.

They’d called me part of the family.

My name was in all the gossipers’ mouths, and Maman had written about that. Papa had showed up in Serre with Macé and Jean at his heels, but I’d still been asleep—unconscious, Emilie would’ve corrected—and they couldn’t stay long. Isabelle had sent them away with promises to write as soon as I woke up.

I had woken up. I wasn’t ready to write.

“Your mother may say whatever she likes about me.” I nodded toward the door. “Are you ready to take our places?”

We’d been given chairs in the crowd—spots for retainers not quite noble enough to stand next to Coline. Isabelle was to sit on my other side. Coline had offered us spots nearer to her, but I’d enough of people watching me. I wasn’t that Annette Boucher anymore.

I’d made my choice.

I was here.

“I’ve been thinking about alchemistry,” Yvonne said slowly. “Demeine hasn’t advanced with it in quite some time.”

I leaned against the table. “Demeine didn’t have you to advance it till now.”

“Flattery will get you everything.” She hopped up to sit on the table next to me, thigh pressed to my side, and looped our arms together. Her fingers threaded through mine. Softly. Tightly. “I’ll be leaving for work in a week, and I wanted to know if you would like to come with me.”

Oh.

I’d been looking for a home—a place, a building, a collection of walls that made me feel safe—and never found it, and I was a fool.

“Yes.” I kissed her, quickly, carefully so as not to disturb the cosmetics she’d spent all morning on, and pressed my lips to the back of her hand. New magic. New people. New dreams I wanted to chase. “I would love to go with you.”

She sighed and smiled, cheek against my shoulder. We understood each other. “Good.”

* * *

That evening, long after the parties were supposed to be over, Yvonne and I made our way to the room Emilie was using as a study. Inside, Madeline and Charles were crowded around a board, and Emilie turned a thin letter over and over in her hands.

“We got this,” she said.

Charles glanced over his shoulder. “It’s addressed to all of us from Laurence and Estrel.”

I still tried to scry sometimes. I didn’t need my magic back, but I wanted to see Estrel again, even if only by scrying the past. It never worked.

Emilie showed the letter to me. Even Sébastien des Courmers was included and the sight of his name made Emilie wince. Charles’s shoulders tensed.

“That’s Laurence’s handwriting,” Charles said, and he picked up the letter with a trembling hand. There were quite a few futures that did not come to pass, but time is a curious thing and many happenings occur across every future, repeating as if they are immutable events across all of time. We tried to prepare for some of these, and so, if there comes a time when you are in need of help or simply find that you are not enough for whatever it is you are facing, open the enclosed boxes. Though we are uncertain as to who in particular will need them across all possible futures, more likely than not, Emilie and Annette must be the ones to open them. It’s a rather lovely bit of artistry we concocted. We’ll explain it in greater detail the next time we see all of you. Love eternally, Laurence and Estrel.

From the crate, Charles pulled out a large box I didn’t recognize that he clutched to his chest. Emilie pulled it from him with gentle hands. I peeked into the crate.

It was Estrel’s old lockbox, the one she kept beneath her desk and filled with all sorts of small, important things. I picked it up and set it on the table. I had one too. It still lived in the back of my wardrobe.

“Do you think they mean that something bad is going to happen to us?” Coline asked. “Or has it passed?”

“I would very much like to think that the coup was it,” Madeline muttered.

“We should save them,” I said. The box was impossibly heavy. It was only as long as my forearm and narrow as a quiver, but it weighed as much as a small child, and I ended up cradling it to me. “Whatever they meant, it doesn’t matter. We don’t need whatever it is now.”

I glanced at Emilie.

She nodded. “We survived the worst already, and I would rather have the comfort of knowing these are here even if nothing as terrible awaits us.”

“Agreed,” I said. “We are enough.”