She can’t sleep. Doesn’t want to. She’ll have plenty of time to sleep later, she thinks morbidly, if the sickness gets to her. What does it feel like, she wonders, to be trapped deep in the illness that is ravaging their country?
She’s got to get William to her sister. She’s suddenly intensely consumed with the urgency of it. She needs to see Aurora. She needs to save her. What has she been doing, spying on nuns and freeing a narwhal? Traipsing through the countryside and flirting with a prince? She’s no longer angry at William. She’s angry at herself. If she had just stayed the course, everything might have been different. She has to make things right.
Isbe throws back the covers. The sauna must have dehydrated her. She can’t think. She needs water, badly.
She stumbles out into the hallway, which is cold and echoey. She wraps her arms around herself and tries to remember which way they came. She’s pretty sure Annette pointed out where the kitchens are, but the layout of the house is unlike any other she’s been to. She turns left, then takes another left, then after about forty paces she feels around for the staircase she could swear was at the end of the next corridor. . . .
She’s not sure which wrong turn she has taken until it’s too late. She stumbles into a vast, bright room rich with moisture and minerals. She hears a tinkling sound like a gently flowing spring. This must be one of Almandine’s bathing chambers. She is about to back out, but then it occurs to her that perhaps the fountain is potable. Maybe she could just take a quick sip before finding her way back.
She takes a few steps toward the plashing fountain—and hears a gasp.
Isbe freezes in place, with no idea whether the other person in the room has spotted her.
There’s another gasp, and then the sound of a woman moaning.
Isbe’s ears blaze in alarm. Oh, no.
Has she walked in on Lady Almandine with one of her paramours? Isbe feels dizzy with humiliation and disgust. She has to get out of here somehow!
Carefully she takes one step backward, extending her hands to make sure she doesn’t bump into anything and make a noise.
Almandine releases another moan. Except it’s not exactly a moan, and certainly not one of pleasure. It’s more like a groan, and a little bit like a quiet sob.
As Isbe stands there trying to figure out how to make an exit without drawing notice, it becomes obvious that these are sounds of anguish. Isbe doesn’t know what to do. She would just bolt, but something keeps her rooted to the spot. She has never been at ease with people crying, and truth be told, it never occurred to her that the fae could cry. Maybe it isn’t the lady of the house after all. It might only be a troubled servant.
“Pardon me,” Isbe finds herself saying. “Can I . . . is there something I can do?”
Water swishing.
The person is in one of the baths.
She can’t imagine the household staff freely availing themselves of the mistress’s baths. Isbe swallows hard. So then it must be Lady Almandine.
The woman sucks in a breath. “Belcoeur?” she asks abruptly, her voice ragged and shaky. “How—” Almandine’s tone changes, hardens. “Your face . . . no. Who are you?” she demands.
“Madame, I apologize, I just—”
“Have you come to help me out of my bath? Here then, fetch my robe,” she commands in a husky whisper.
Isbe should really run out of the room, but part of her is riveted, tingling with curiosity. Besides, fleeing would make her seem suspicious. If the lady has mistaken Isbe for a servant, that’s far preferable to her discovering the truth. “Your robe? But . . .”
“Don’t be stupid. The robe, on the back of the Adonis!”
“I—where?” Isbe fumbles, trying to figure out how to explain. Lady Almandine has clearly not noticed what some find obvious—the blankness of Isbe’s eyes. The way they seem to wander, unseeing. She starts to walk to her right, and the faerie huffs. “That’s Apollo. The one under the west window.”
Ah, that helps at least. Isbe moves in the opposite direction—toward the hottest, brightest part of the room, where she can sense the sun has moved past its highest point in the sky. She bangs her shins on what seems to be a large marble vase out of which a small tree sprouts, then feels around, knocking into several more plants and trees until she finds a rather large sculpture that resembles a Greek god, one arm extended—on which hangs a thick knit-silk robe. She grabs it and hurries in the direction of Almandine’s voice—the lady has been muttering to herself, her voice like leather on leather.
Now, as Isbe approaches her cautiously, she makes out some of the words the faerie is saying. Daisy is as Daisy does. Always was. Always was. She tsks to herself. I should have known. She always was.
“I’m sorry?” Isbe asks as she approaches the vast marble pool in which the faerie has been bathing. No steam rises to greet Isbe’s hands, and she realizes the water is cold. And it’s the dead of winter. The woman must be freezing!
“I said I should have known!” Almandine bursts out, clearly distraught.
Isbe holds open the robe, averting her eyes out of politeness, the way Aurora taught her to do.
Lady Almandine stands up with a dripping swoosh and slides her arms into the robe’s sleeves. Isbe can feel how disturbingly thin the faerie is, all muscle and bone—and how she seems to shudder with cold. “I should have known,” the faerie repeats more quietly. “She always wanted what Daisy had.”
“Who’s Daisy?”
“It’s what she called her sister. You look a bit like her—your face, your . . .” She trails off.
“Whose sister?”
“Malfleur’s, of course,” the faerie practically spits. “Their silly flower nicknames. But she was too jealous. Always too jealous of Belcoeur. Belcoeur, who could make even the pestilent vines that pesked pesked pesked the forest and stung our ankles bloooooom with sweet blossoms. Malfleur couldn’t stand it.” Almandine grabs Isbe’s wrist with slender, clammy fingers. Isbe’s pulse races. “I should have known. After what Belcoeur did to her.”
“Let me build you a fire,” Isbe says, thinking quickly, hoping to urge Almandine on. The woman is clearly rattled, but Isbe is desperate to hear more. Belcoeur kind? Beautiful? The envy of Malfleur? It runs against everything she’s ever heard about the famous faerie twins. If she offers further service to the faerie, perhaps the lady will spill more details. “You are too cold.”
“Am I?” she murmurs. “I hadn’t noticed, I . . . It doesn’t matter. I should have . . .” Her listlessness unnerves Isbe. “No wonder her sister stayed in Sommeil. I would have too. I should have known.” That last utterance a stone plunked into a pool, its weight subsumed and silenced by the water.
“Known . . .”
“What Malfleur wanted. What she . . . what she took. What she’ll take. From all of us.” She leans closer to Isbe. “All of us,” she hisses.