Sophia reaches her hand out to me. I take it. She squeezes. “Make me the most beautiful,” she says, then closes her eyes.
Bree drapes her face with the measuring lace. The cloth drifts up and down as Sophia takes deep breaths. I shake out the nerves in my fingers. Bree nods encouragingly. I press my hands to my stomach, then run them over the mascara cakes and pastille waxes and hair-color pomades and texture wands.
Sophia’s breathing slows. It’s so quiet in the room I can hear each inhale and exhale. I cover her with bei powder and brush it into her hair. The two-toned hair color I gave her still shines brightly. My hands tremble. I’m caught off guard. If I’d known I would be working with Sophia today, I would’ve planned out every single moment.
Make her beauty mean something. Maman’s wisdom echoes inside of me.
“Are you going to begin or just play with my hair?” Sophia says.
“Yes, Your Highness.” My mind whizzes through dozens of looks like the spinning of a roulette wheel. Pictures of her from the tattlers, the scandal sheets, the newspapers, and the beauty magazines. I strike certain color schemes and hair textures from consideration. I want to do something original.
I close my eyes.
My nerves tingle with power. The arcana stir inside me like flickering candles. The warmth moves from the bottom of my toes to the crown of my head and the very tips of my fingers. Bree helps me paint her hair with oil-black hair cream, then streak it with red. I plunge my hands into the strands, pushing the color through it. I wrap a tendril around a rod to give her the perfect coil, and mix two skin tones together—seashell white and a dark citrine brown. The skin colors her parents each chose for themselves.
Not a drop of sweat appears on her face. Kohl pencil marks map the changes I’ll make: higher cheekbones like her mother’s, a button nose like her father’s, and deep sloping eyes. I resist the urge to do more, remembering Ivy’s warning and what happened last time.
“Your Highness,” I whisper.
“Yes,” she replies.
“I’m finished.”
“So quickly? You didn’t do any body work.”
“I wanted to be sure I was headed in the right direction first.”
Sophia springs up. “Bring the full-length.” She slips back into her bathing gown.
I wait for her praise, craving it like a hot luna pastry.
Three servants march forward with a gilded mirror. She eyes herself, running her hands through her hair and over her skin, then leans close to the glass, inspecting her new cheekbones and nose. She bats her eyes, then pivots to see her profile. “I look too much like my mother.”
“I did that on purpose, since the queen is incredibly beautiful.” I search her face for any trace of happiness.
“I know she’s beautiful. But I don’t want to look like anyone else. I want to look like no one in the entire kingdom.” She studies her naked body. “Try again, favorite. And give me larger breasts. The size of grapefruits. They always seem to shrivel down by the middle of the month. Also, a creaseless eyelid. Those are trendy now.”
The air streams out of me like a crumpled post-balloon.
She gulps down another vial of Belle-rose elixir. Her servants help her back onto the treatment bed.
I take a deep breath. Bree hands me a square of chocolate and whispers, “For strength.” She winks. “And patience.”
I smile at her. “Thank you.”
The chocolate dissolves on my tongue, and I think about the pounds of the stuff we devoured in the lesson rooms. I remember when Du Barry paired us up to change our very first person. In our lesson rooms, we’d stood beside the beds, and Penelope the kitchen sous chef had lain across mine. Hana and I held hands as we gave her a new hair color, eye color, and skin tone. But it all turned out brassy orange, and took three more tries to get it right. Du Barry had fed us chocolate squares to help us maintain our stamina.
I erase Sophia’s new skin color and make her beige as a crepe. I use a hand-iron to press out the coil in her hair and give her strands as straight as a board. I add a teardrop curve to her eyelids, and take away the crease. I add thirteen tiny freckles to a new, slenderer nose. I use metal tongs to pull at her skin to add volume to her breasts and curvature to her waist.
She looks like Hana. It makes me miss my sister.
Sweat drips down my cheeks. Bree hands me a glass of water, which I drink down in one gulp.
“I’m finished,” I say.
She jumps out of bed and goes straight to the mirror again, examining herself from all angles. “The breasts are perfect. And I like the hips. But”—she pivots to face me—“I’ve never liked dark hair.” She fingers her waist-long strands. “It was always my mother’s—and sister’s—preferred shade.” Sophia kisses my cheek. “You are strong, yes?”
“The strongest,” I say.
She giggles. “Let’s try again. I’m not quite satisfied.”
I force a smile and turn my back to her, pretending to rifle through a cabinet of Belle-products. Sophia gulps down another vial of Belle-rose elixir and climbs back onto the treatment bed. I press a hand to my stomach, trying to slow my breathing. Exhaustion seeps into every part of me.
I wave Bree over. “Bring me my leeches, please, and quickly.”
“Yes, my lady.” She scurries off.
I run my fingers across glass pots, opening and closing compacts as if I’m preparing, until Bree returns moments later. She opens the porcelain jar, flashing its slimy contents. I reach my fingers in and grab a leech. It writhes within my grip. I hook the creature around the back of my neck. Its tiny teeth bite the skin. I wait to feel the tingle of its secretions pumping into me.
I steel myself and return to Sophia’s bedside. I mix a new skin color—rich pearl white and buttermilk. I recreate the same two-toned hair color with a deep scarlet and ash blond. I give her my mother’s face—thin sloping nose, light brown freckles, a pink bow of a mouth. In my current state, my mother’s visage is all that will come to me.
“Done,” I say, almost out of breath.
“A looking-glass,” Sophia says. Her attendant holds the hand mirror over her and she smiles. “This is perfect for now. A good start.” Sophia’s eyes bob open and shut. “I’ve had too much Belle-rose elixir to do this anymore.”
Her attendants help her shimmy into a robe and out of the room. When the doors close behind her, I collapse forward onto the treatment bed.
“Are you all right, my lady?” Bree asks, but my mouth is too tired to open. She helps me into a chair.
The overuse of the arcana dulls my senses; the room feels thicker around me, and I feel too thin to be part of it. My legs shake and coat with sweat. My limbs are light as feathers, ready to drift off in the wind.
She hands me a cup of spicy cayenne tea and another sliver of chocolate, and adds a leech to each wrist. I close my eyes and sink into a nap.
Bree jostles my shoulder. “Lady Camellia, it’s time to go. Do you feel better?”
I stumble awake. “Yes. How long was I asleep?”