“Sit, please,” one says to me. Dread sinks through my gut. No matter how many times I’ve been pricked, I never get used to it. I wish Madeleine was here to do it, because at least she’d tell me all the house gossip—how the courtier guests argued over color choices or traded insults after beauty appointments—and by the time she’d finish, the whole level check would be done.
Each nurse bears the same unenthusiastic expression. The women divide themselves between us with trays. My nurse takes my left arm, bunching the wide sleeves of my night robe, and ties a red string around my bicep. I invent a story about her life and pretend I’m telling Madeleine. Her name is Jacalyn, and she has two little girls in the Silk Isles, and they drink rose lemonade and lie in hammocks on their private beach overlooking the Bay of Silk. Jacalyn’s husband is a scoundrel who left them to run off to the Fire Isles.
The nurse pops two fingers in the crook of my arm and inspects the veins there. The green channels rise beneath the brown. She removes a needle from the silver tray and shows it to me before piercing my arm. I still hate how it breaks through my skin so easily, like the spot is no tougher than a tract of silk.
I grimace and clench my fingers. She taps my hand to tell me to release them. Blood snakes through a long tube. She takes three vials. One for each arcana. She unties the red string. The needle retracts. The piece of cotton she presses on the prick feels like a tiny cloud. When she lifts it, the wound heals as if she never stuck me.
“The arcana meter,” she says.
I take the small machine from her tray and hold it as she fits each vial into one of three separate compartments. My blood swirls inside the meter’s different chambers, churning, separating the proteins related to each arcana, determining which ones need rebalancing. I run my fingers over the brass body of the machine, feeling the vibrating hum of the gears working, and the indentations of the numbers that will soon fill with light to reveal my levels.
Above the first compartment, the word MANNER is illuminated, as if a flickering candle is nestled inside. Perfectly balanced, as it should be for an unused gift. She repeats it for the second vial. The word AURA shines. I touch the letters. It’s my favorite gift. The number three shows.
The nurse’s eyes bulge a little with surprise. I look up at her. She presses it again. The same number fills with light. She makes a strange, shocked sound, and notes it in a ledger book. In our lessons, Du Barry said our bodies all adjusted differently to using the arcana. She warned that if the levels dipped close to zero, a Belle could faint, sicken, or even die. We must be careful not to abuse our gifts. What the Goddess of Beauty gives, the Goddess of Beauty can take away.
Edel peeks at my meter. “That’s low. Du Barry said it would only dip to four and a half after the carnaval.”
“What was your lev—”
“Shh.” My nurse taps my arm. “You aren’t supposed to comment on each other’s levels.”
“Don’t tell us what to do.” Edel rises up.
“Calm down,” Padma says.
“The reading will be over in another minute,” Hana says.
I reach for Edel.
She pushes my hand away. “Aren’t you tired of it? Always being ordered around.”
The word yes booms inside of me.
“You are not a nurse,” the woman tells her. They argue back and forth until she calls for the servants to take Edel from the room.
“Just listen,” I tell her.
“I’m done listening.” She swats at the encroaching servants, but she’s restrained and dragged out, kicking and screaming. When we were younger, Edel would explode like a firework if she didn’t want to read the pamphlets and books Du Barry assigned, or go to bed before the first night star appeared, or eat the blood-strengthening foods made by our chef.
My nurse doesn’t react. Her face bears no trace of what just happened. She presses the final button on the arcana meter. The word AGE glows and the number five appears. Amber marches back into the room holding an arcana meter. I wonder if her levels were similar. I wonder if she’s calmer now.
Servants wheel in carts of porcelain jars with perforated lids. They lift them and reach silver tongs inside to retrieve black leeches out of freshwater. The sangsues. They wiggle and writhe, their suckers opening and closing, exposing tiny sharp teeth, as they’re placed on trays and presented to each of our nurses. Empty diamond-shaped vessels dot their backs. My insides twist with disgust. I should be used to them by now. We tended to the sangsues as children, mating them, learning how helpful their species is to Belles, discovering how they help keep our blood clean.
“These look different. Bigger. Why the diamonds?”
The nurse lifts one above my wrist. “They’re the same. Just bred to be larger and take more blood.” She pushes the leech near me. “The vessels help the sangsues filter and share more of their purifying secretions with you.” She dangles the leech over me.
“No, I’ll do it,” I say. She hands me the silver instrument. “Only two.”
She shakes her head and shows me four fingers. “Madam Du Barry’s orders. You broke protocol and your arcana level is low.”
I squirm, just like the leech stuck in the grip of the tongs. I bite my bottom lip. The quicker I do it, the sooner I get to go to bed. Then it will be morning, and one step closer to when the favorite will be named.
“Do I need to get the arm straps?” she asks.
“No.” I hold my breath and place the creature on my left wrist. It stretches out, hooking around my wrist like a bracelet made of black pearls. Its bite feels like a pinprick. The tiny suckers pull at my skin and the vein beneath. A bloom of red glows under its thin black body. The diamonds fill with my blood. I set a second one on my neck, and it leaves behind a slimy trail like a streak of paint as it finds the thick vein right under my jawbone.
“No more,” I tell her, and drop the tongs on the nearest side table. Padma whines about the biting. Hana starts to pant as three leeches affix themselves to the crook of her arm. Valerie sleeps through it all as they climb the flesh of her thigh.
The nurse shakes her head at me, removing another pair of leeches from the porcelain jar. She puts one on my right wrist and the other on my forehead. I close my eyes, take deep breaths through my nose, and try to relax as the tiny creatures fill themselves with my blood and inject me with proteins to help increase my blood flow, reset my arcana level, and drain away the excitement of the day.
8
All night I drift in and out of dreams where I’m a child again and Maman is telling me stories about the Goddess of Beauty. I hear Maman’s voice and am swept into our old room. The red sill-lanterns flutter in the windows and bathe the walls with ruby light. Younger versions of Maman and I are curled up like sweet-rope bread in the bed.