Shouts and yells ring through the apartment. Feet tromp along the floor.
I sit up and rub my eyes. The scent of burning feathers, parchment, and wood stings my nose. A pair of strong arms pulls me out. Flames rush up the left side of the bed. The curtains flap and hiss.
Smoke fills the room.
“Wait! My Belle-book.” I try to turn back.
“The bed is burning,” Rémy yells.
I snatch at the curtains. He grabs my arm, but I struggle away. “Don’t touch me.” I lunge at the bed again.
He throws me over his shoulder like a satchel. I kick and punch at him. It makes no difference. “I’m supposed to protect you.”
“I don’t need your help. Put me down.” He totes me into the main salon and puts me on a couch.
Elisabeth paces in front of her office, her cheeks flushed, a hand in front of her mouth.
“I have to get back in there. I have to get my Belle-book,” I cry out.
She looks at me like I’ve just said I have wings and can fly. “I can have Mother send you another one.”
“But—” I race forward and try to go back inside my bedroom. Servants block the doors. Rémy sighs.
“It’s not safe, miss,” one says.
“The fire will be out soon,” another assures me.
I start to cough. More servants wheel in breakfast carts with carafes of snowmelon juice and water.
Rémy hands me a glass. I reluctantly take it and gulp down the cool liquid.
The bedroom doors snap open. A servant wipes soot streaks from her cheeks. “The fire’s out. The bed will be replaced.”
“What caused it?” I ask.
“The bed warmer, my lady. There was a book inside it.”
Every muscle in my body clenches, and I rush forward into the room. No one stops me this time.
Servants break down the burnt bed, carrying off bedposts scarred by the fire. The sheets are charred black and eaten away. The metal bed warmer lies open like a pie without a crust. The remains of Maman’s Belle-book are inside it. How did it get in there? The scent of fire brings back Maman’s funeral and the flames that engulfed her body, smoldering the bed of Belle-roses, tearing first through her silk dresses, and then her skin and body. When I think too hard and my eyes get all blurry, I still see those tiny sparks flickering off the pyre like fireflies as Maman’s body disappeared, and my old life evaporated.
The loss of her Belle-book feels like the last piece of her is gone. I sit at the edge of the burnt bed with my head in my hands until men come to tear down what’s left.
I don’t move from the spot for hours. Not even when Elisabeth tells me I have beauty appointments. Not even when Bree brings me a cart of food. Not even when the men return to construct a new bed.
I rest my head on my knees and listen to the thud of my heart.
“Will you just stay there all day?” a voice says.
I look up. Arabella stands over me. Her long veil dusts the floor and her crown glitters.
“Get up,” she orders, grabbing my arm and pulling me to my feet.
“What are you doing?” I yank away from her.
“Checking for burns. Do you have any?”
“No.”
“In any pain?” She lifts my arms and inspects my hands, her touch rough.
“No.”
“Then you need to focus on helping Princess Charlotte before the queen’s Declaration. It’s in three days’ time. The palace grows more dangerous every day, and Sophia will only get worse. You weren’t hurt this time, but—”
“Sophia had something to do with this?”
Bree walks through the door holding newspapers.
“Sophia is involved in everything, and the sooner you realize that, the better.” Arabella rushes away.
Bree bows at Arabella as she passes. The doors close with a thud behind her.
“Are you all right, miss?” she says.
I can’t answer her question. My eyes fill with tears. My skin prickles with goose bumps. Rage thunders in me like a great storm. The heat of it warms my blood more than the arcana. The hairs on my arms lift as if lightning is near.
Sophia took away the last thing I had of my mother.
38
I go to the Imperial Library to find out if there’s any record of Belles having an ability to heal. The space could fit all four wings of Maison Rouge de la Beauté and the surrounding forest and gardens. The shelves are mountains scaling the walls, tapering toward a sky of stained glass. Balconies split the room into levels. Ladders click along poles and hold servants squeezing books into nooks. Spiral staircases and tiny lifts connect to the very top. Maps of Orléans stretch along the walls, showing the kingdom’s growth over time. A wall of royal emblems illustrates the tiers of the high and middle houses. Velvet armchairs and puffy couches are scattered around small tables. Reading-lanterns are clustered near visiting patrons.
This place has to contain an answer to my questions about the arcana. The things Du Barry never told us.
Rémy waits for me at the door.
“I’ll only be a few minutes. Maybe a full hourglass?”
He nods.
I walk through the aisles, letting my hands drift over the spines. I pull a book from the shelf and open the pages just to smell them. When I was little and in trouble with Du Barry, I’d hide in our library. Maman would find me curled up behind a shelf with a reading-lantern and a book of fairy tales. I’d make a little tent out of my traveling cloak. She’d hunker down with me and read one of the stories with tough words in it. I was much more interested in falling into stories than completing Du Barry’s assignments.
The scent of oil lamps and old paper and leather circulates. It makes me miss the tenor of Maman’s voice and the perfume of her skin and how her arms made me feel like I’d never fall. The thought of Maman’s burnt Belle-book brings tears. She’d want me to help Charlotte. She’d want me to do what’s right.
Glass cabinets line a wall, displaying newspapers from various years. I gaze into them. The headlines are sluggish, showing their age. I’m drawn to the ones about Princess Charlotte.
PRINCESS CHARLOTTE HASN’T AWOKEN FOR A MONTH
THE QUEEN ISSUES A PALACE LOCKDOWN
AFTER THE PRINCESS FALLS ILL
IMPERIAL SERVANTS PUT IN STARVATION BOXES
AFTER THE PRINCESS REFUSES TO WAKE
THE FALLEN PRINCESS RUMORED TO BE NEAR DEATH
ROYAL POISONMASTERS BROUGHT TO THE PALACE
TO TASTE THE BLOOD OF THE SLEEPING PRINCESS
Her portrait is printed in the paper. Cameos sit side by side, showing what she looked like before—big hazel eyes, a freckled nose and round face, a small forehead like her father’s—and after the sleeping sickness. She’s still beautiful, even when asleep. Soft mouth, curls draped around her shoulders, a jeweled hair comb instead of a crown.