“I never knew you were the sentimental type,” Almandine comments, one eyebrow arched smartly as they enter the main hall, where an array of her favorite treats—including distilled mulberry gin—have been laid out. “You really haven’t changed this place a bit, even after all these years.” She turns to the queen, her amethyst eyes sparkling like the crystal cordial glasses on the tray. “You remember the very first time we were here together, don’t you?” She gives a double clap. “What a party that was.”
Malfleur removes her riding gloves slowly, remembering. A great number of faerie families had been invited up to Blackthorn during the height of hunting season. Back then the fae and the human nobility were much chummier than they are today. She and Belcoeur had come along, though since they were only thirteen years old at the time, their mother tried to forbid them from socializing in the evenings. Of course Malfleur had never been one to obey rules.
“As I recall,” she says now, filling Almandine’s glass with a generous pour, “you gambled away all of your clothing in a particularly naughty game of whist.” Almandine has always been known for her promiscuity. She has even converted her home to mimic a Roman bathhouse, though it’s hardly an improvement over a common brothel.
“And you, in typical fashion, managed to give up only a single pearl from your necklace,” Almandine recounts. “You always were a coy one.”
Now Malfleur returns her smile. She remembers how they’d established the rules of their little game—for every trick taken, the player could demand that any other player in the game remove one article of his or her attire. Many of the young men—more seasoned at card games than the women—had focused their attentions on Almandine from the start, who found herself half naked by the third round, precisely because she inevitably chose materialism over modesty, far more willing to give up her fur-collared cape and gown than her jewels.
Malfleur remembers staring in shock at her older cousin, who sat on the arm of a chair, just a lacy chemise slipping off one shoulder, an emerald ring the size of a ram’s eye on her thumb knuckle, and her delicate wrist piled high with glinting bracelets as she twisted her hair and laughed with an easy, open mouth.
But when the dashing fifteen-year-old Charles Blackthorn won a hand, he turned instead to Malfleur. She reached up to touch her necklace—the only accessory she wore—then hesitated. The necklace, in fact, belonged to her mother. She’d stolen it before sneaking out of the guest quarters that night. She’d be in terrible trouble if her mother found it missing. Still, her pride prevented her from undoing even a button from her gown. And so she cleverly unthreaded the necklace, removed a single pearl from its string, and handed the pearl to him. The other men in the game laughed at her stunt and pounded Charles on the back, wishing him better luck next time.
Later that night, Charles spotted her as she was sneaking back to the rooms where her sister and parents lay sleeping. He stopped her in the dim-lit hall and took the pearl from his pocket, offering it to her between his fingers. “I would hate for your necklace to remain incomplete.”
She stared up at him and replied, “The night would be incomplete if you don’t keep it. It would mean I had not played fair, had not kept my word.”
Charles grinned. “I admire a girl who keeps her word.” The way he gazed at her, it was as though he didn’t even see the puckered white scar that streaked across her left eyelid, part of her brow and upper cheek. A burn that hadn’t healed—and never would.
“So keep the pearl, as a reminder that I am that kind of girl.”
He took a step closer and leaned down to her height. “I will keep it, then.” He held the pearl to his lips and kissed it, which sent a shiver down the young Malfleur’s spine, before he replaced it safely in his chest pocket. “You have my word,” he said.
It hadn’t been until almost a year later, when they were summering at their family’s cottage, that Malfleur’s mother finally noticed there was something wrong with the necklace, and called Malfleur to her angrily, demanding to know what she’d done. She grabbed her daughter’s wrist, hard, and made her watch as she threw the necklace into the blazing hearth, stating that it had been irreparably ruined by her whorish, thieving paws.
Malfleur began to defend herself, fury and humiliation causing the magic in her veins to boil, when Belcoeur appeared and took the blame, claiming she had borrowed the necklace to try it on and that she had snagged it, clumsily, when she’d gone out to pluck roses from the garden. Belcoeur was always doing things like that—emerging angelically at just the right time to stand up for her twin.
Back then, her sister’s sweetness had frustrated Malfleur, as though Belcoeur was purposefully reminding everyone that she was the kinder, better, more beautiful one. It was only later that Malfleur began to suspect her sister’s intentions weren’t so innocent, began to realize that Belcoeur was like a shadow—always just to Malfleur’s side, smiling benignly, waiting to inherit the light as soon as her sister left it.
After all, no one could ever compete with Malfleur’s magic—or challenge it—except for Belcoeur.
Almandine has traveled with a retinue of her favorite servants, and as she tips back her third glass of mulberry gin, one of them is rubbing her bare feet with oil—a tall, golden-skinned man with shoulder muscles that bulge through his livery. She moans softly, her eyelids half lowered.
“My dear,” Malfleur says, hiding her disgust. The memories have given her an unexpected pain in her stomach. “Have another glass.”
Almandine grins drowsily and accepts.
“Tell me.” The queen sits back down in her claw-foot chair and stares at her cousin. “Have you ever considered a different tithe?” She keeps her voice casual.
Almandine’s heavy eyelids flutter open slowly. “I . . . whatever do you mean?”
“Never mind,” Malfleur answers quickly. She expected her cousin’s confusion. Faerie tithing is quite simple—it’s an unspoken bargain between two people. A willingness, a desire. Whatever the faerie desires most is what he or she tithes. In Almandine’s case, it’s a sense of touch. In Malfleur’s, it’s youth, beauty, time. Tithes rarely change because the fae don’t change. Their core desires remain the same forever, defining who they are.
Or so Malfleur thought, until she began her experiments.
Almandine shakes her head. “You’re an odd one, my dear. I’ve never doubted that. You and your puzzles.” She instructs the servant to massage her neck next. “Speaking of puzzles, I do wonder how you really intend to take over the Delucian throne when the kingdom is ravaged by this, this . . . sleeping sickness. Do you know anything about it?”
Malfleur can’t tell whether Almandine is testing her.
“After all,” her cousin goes on. “How will your own troops survive? Isn’t it interesting how a curse has come both to devastate the palace and protect it?”
Now the queen is certain—she’s definitely goading her.
But Malfleur isn’t easily ruffled. “That’s simple, sweetheart. I figured out how to create a resistance to the sickness! The same way anyone would—by first understanding the cause.”