For a fleeting moment, Violette fears she has done something wrong. Hadn’t Belcoeur, before she vanished, brought the golden spinning wheel to Violette and asked that she keep it safe? She should never have agreed in the first place. It had given her a bad feeling all along, even before the princess was born. It had been important to Belcoeur, obviously, or she wouldn’t have asked, and Violette had felt the burden and the sadness of its presence. It had become a symbol of loss.
Decades later, after the child’s christening, she didn’t like the object of a curse being so close to her all the time, staring at her like a big dumb animal, majestic and silent and hungry. She resented being asked to keep so many secrets for others, when she had so many of her own to tend to. That was why she’d finally decided to get rid of it. But it couldn’t be burned or melted or destroyed. So eventually she’d simply stowed the cumbersome thing away in one of those abandoned cottages in the royal forest. At the time, it hadn’t seemed particularly foolish; what had seemed foolish would have been to believe that a faerie curse could still come true. Everyone knew how far the fae had fallen, even then.
Or maybe they hadn’t. And maybe Violette hadn’t—hasn’t—either.
Surely it’s not too grandiose a notion to think she might now save the kingdom. It cannot be hyperbolic to assume she, Violette, is both the source and answer to all this madness. She probably should do something about it. Try another curse reversal, perhaps.
Yes, she really ought to get out and let the world marvel.
She tucks her fluffy covers up to her chin, watching intently as her double mimics her in the mirror directly above. She is pleased to see that this, her most favored reflection, has paid such dutiful attention.
She begins to drift off again. It cannot be paranoia to assume that the night is full of the sightless and the angry—people who’ve had their vision robbed by Violette herself. Can it?
She looks up, staring into her own eyes between each heavy blink, her face almost unfamiliar in the waning, wavering lamplight. What was it she was pondering?
Oh, right. The sleeping sickness, and how to end it.
Then again, she thinks, perhaps it’s not such a good idea to get involved after all. Going out and saving the kingdom would require interacting with other people . . . seeing not just their appearances but through to their hidden fears, their anger, their twisted, thwarted insides. And she’s had about enough of that for one lifetime.
With that decision made, she closes her eyes.
Infinite reflections close their eyes too.
PART
IV
DARKNESS DID WIN
24
Isabelle
“We’re here,” says the old driver, lifting the lid of the coffin.
As she sits up, Isbe can tell that they have pulled off the side of the road into the shadow of some pine trees, hopefully hidden from any passersby. Not that there are any. They seem to be in the middle of nowhere. Isbe shivers. They haven’t heard a passing cart or rider in many hours. But they have safely crossed the border into Deluce, even if they are in the most remote part of the kingdom.
They have been traveling the river road for several days. At one point they drove right through a village where a riot had broken out after pro-LaMorte mercenaries showed up and demanded recruits, on pain of death. Isbe had practically held her breath until they’d cleared the area, and barely exhaled until they reached the land bridge connecting Aubin and Deluce through the small, neutral territory of Corraine.
Even here, there’s been little reprieve from the murmurings of Malfleur’s rise. They say she hears everything. They say her defectors have been found stabbed in their beds.
William helps Isbe out of the hearse, and as her shoes touch the dewy grass, her legs wobble, leaden and numb.
“This is Isolé, where I leave you,” the driver says hurriedly. The waver in his voice betrays his regret in having aided in their secret plan. He is gone almost before the prince has a chance to slide a purse of coins into his hand with a quiet clink.
“What does it look like?” Isbe asks.
William takes her shoulders and turns her. “Up a hill,” he says. “Surrounded by a high stone wall and rows of cypress.”
Isbe has always imagined cypress trees like thick furry soldiers, stiff and orderly.
“The sky is a wash of variegated white fog,” the prince goes on, his voice moving closer to her ear, “like cows’ milk once it has begun to separate. Still, you can see the sun just about to set through the tops of the stone archways in the cloister, and—”
“William,” Isbe says. “I didn’t realize you could be so . . . descriptive.”
“You don’t realize very much about me at all, Isabelle.” There’s no note of sarcasm in his response. He is simply stating fact.
“Perhaps not.” She wants to reach out and read his facial expression with her hands, like she would with Gil or Aurora, but she refrains. She had asked him if she could do so before, and he had refused her, without saying why. Instead, she marches up the incline in the direction he has pointed her, clenching and opening her palms as she walks, left to imagine the high ridge of his cheekbones, his serious mouth.
Isolé. The desolate convent where the council had intended to deposit Isbe. She tries to imagine a life of seclusion: nursing the sick, giving alms to the poor, spending hours in silent prayer. It’s possible she never would have seen Aurora again—she’s sure that’s what the council wanted.
As she makes her way up the hill beside William, she hears women’s voices chanting—evening vespers, the last prayers before sundown. She hears something else too: the ding of metal on earth. Shovels, or pickaxes.
They enter through the cemetery, which smells of solemnity. Sage and skunk.
“Sisters,” the prince says in polite deference.
The dull metal clanging stops. They must be digging a grave, Isbe realizes. There are two or three of them at most.
“’Tis it you need?” one of the nuns asks. “Sick calls commence at seven in the morning.”
“We’re seeking temporary asylum here.”
There’s a silence, during which Isbe figures the nuns are taking in their appearance. She can hardly fathom her own, even in the clean cloak and traveling dress William procured for her. Her hair no longer comes down farther than her chin. She has gotten even skinnier in the past few weeks. She probably looks like a ghost. And William beside her, said to be both tall and handsome with the dark skin common of the Aubinians, must provide a stark contrast.
“Aren’t any free beds in the dorter,” one of them whispers, “and now’s not a good ti—”
“Hsst, Sister Katherine,” a second nun interrupts. Her voice is a thin hiss, and Isbe pictures the pointed face and sharp, pronged tongue of a snake. “It is not for us to say. Sister Agnes will summon Reverend Mother Hildegarde. She will make the decision about what to do with our visitors.”
“Yes, Sister Genevieve,” says a third, quieter than the other two. “Please,” she says to Isbe and William with a rabbitlike sniff, “follow me.”