Articles boast different theories: imperial doctors blame sleeping draughts and poppy illness, tattlers and scandal sheets speculate about love sickness because Princess Charlotte’s favored suitor, Ren Fournier, accidentally drowned days earlier, and many courtiers believe that someone tried to kill her because she was just too beautiful.
“Interested in royal history, Lady Camellia?” a voice says. I turn, and a pair of piercing brown eyes stares back at me. Deep wrinkles rim her mouth and eyes. Her hair frizzes around her head in a lovely disc shape. “I’m the royal librarian. Can I help you with your selections?”
“Actually, I’m interested in Belle history.”
“Right this way.” She leads me through countless aisles, snaking left and right. Spines show titles like The History of Orléans and The Policies of Queen Marjorie II and Imperial Laws Throughout the Verdun Dynasty, and so on. There are art books and romance novels and children’s tales and thousands of rows I can’t see.
She pulls back a gauzy curtain and ushers me into a small alcove. These shelves hold books bound with red leather. Tables hold maps of Maison Rouge de la Beauté, newspaper advertisements for the teahouses, and imperial beauty law ledgers. Display boxes feature first-edition beauty-scopes, framed pictures of gardiens, Belle-cards from past generations, and ancient beauty tools marred by age. Small beauty caisses, ranging in size and age, sit in the corners.
“We should have everything you’re looking for. Otherwise it’s in the library at your home.” She lugs heavy tomes from the shelves and sets them on a nearby table. They have titles like A History of the Goddess of Beauty and the Belles, The Very First Belles, The Mythos of Belle Origins, Belle Beauty Trends, Queens and Belles—the Most Important Royal Relationship, and more. “Here are a few to get you started.”
“Thank you.”
I circle the alcove, admiring all the bits of Belle lore. I open gardien journals, scanning the text for any mention of the arcana and their healing powers.
One is written by Du Barry’s fourteenth great-grand-mère:
Day 12 of the Philippe Dynasty, the Year of the God of the Sky One of the little Belles doesn’t have a Manner arcana. Every time the girls are tested, she cannot soften a temperament or bestow talent. Instead, her subject’s skin warms and their spine begins to protrude from their back, as if it might actually push through their skin. She won’t be viable. I must reexamine how she became damaged.
Another is from her sixth great-grand-mère:
Day 274 of the Clothan Dynasty, the Year of the God of the Sea I have to keep one Belle from the latest generation home. She has a darker side to her arcana. Her gifts behave erratically. Almost backward. Instead of removing wrinkles, she creates them. Instead of softening one’s manner, she worsens it. Instead of making her clients beautiful, she distorts them. She killed a teacup house cat yesterday by slowing its heart. And the day before, she froze the blood of a bird.
I will work with her to reverse this. Or to control the manifestation of the dark side. But it troubles me. Something went wrong during her birth. I force her to pray to the Goddess of Beauty each night and leave candles at an altar. She’s been cursed.
Maman’s arcana accidentally did the same thing. But a complete reversal of the arcana? I cup my wrist and trace the veins there, wondering if I can do the same. If the arcana can kill, surely they must be able to heal? But how?
The librarian returns with open scrapbooks. “I thought you might find these interesting. Mostly reputable, but there are a few tattlers and scandal sheets in there, too. They often hint at the truth at times, but never tell anyone a librarian told you that,” she says, setting down three in front of me.
“Thank you,” I call out as she leaves.
The pages crackle like the ones in Maman’s Belle-book as I turn them. The pinch of the loss comes back again. Many of the headlines are so old they no longer flash on the page.
GODDESS OF BEAUTY PUNISHES THIS GENERATION
OF BELLES WITH FAULTY GIFTS
BEAUTY CARNAVAL WILL LAST TWO MONTHS THIS YEAR
WITH A WHOPPING 212 BELLES TO BE PRESENTED
COURTIER STUCK IN PERMANENT GRAY
STATE NO MATTER THE WORK OF THE BELLES
BECAUSE OF CONTAMINATED BLOOD
I shove the scrapbooks away. I’m no closer to finding what I’m looking for. The pieces to this puzzle seem too fuzzy and too out of reach.
“Researching yourself? Isn’t that a bit narcissistic?”
A smiling Auguste slips into the alcove. Each time I see him feels like it’s the very first time. His scent finds me from where he stands—salt, sand, and the seas: the comforting scents that waft inside my windows in the morning when I open them.
“I’m looking for information to help the queen. What are you doing here?”
“I’m looking up something for my father, if you must know,” he says.
My heart hiccups as he approaches. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“I thought we were done with your warnings.”
“Are you following me?”
“Yes, I saw you.” His eyes twinkle. “And I had to come bother you.”
“Is that what you’re going to tell the Minister of Justice? When you’re arrested, don’t come crying to me for help.” I hide my smile by looking at another gardien’s journal. In the silence I hear him lick his lips and take small breaths and swallow. I try to focus on the words. They blur on the page.
“If someone wanted to change every single part of themselves—including the shape of their fingernails—could you?”
“Tired of the way you look?” I tease.
“No,” he says, and toys with a beauty-scope.
“You ask a lot of questions.”
“Some women find it charming.” His gaze is so intense it sends a shiver through me. “I guess not you.”
I laugh.
“I just like to know things,” he says, and puts the scope down with a thud. “And I know a lot about you.”
“Like what?”
He moves beside me. “That you have three gifts from the Goddess of Beauty.”
I nod, unimpressed. This is something widely advertised.
“That you, obviously, can change a person’s outward appearances, their manner, and age.”
Also, make someone ugly. Also, stop someone’s heart.
“Did I lose you?” He fishes for eye contact.
“No, I was just thinking about the other night. The card game.”
“I heard about that. But you shouldn’t feel bad. Sophia is . . .”
“Frightening,” I whisper.
His eyebrows leap up in surprise. “She’s misguided.”
“That’s what you call it?”
He shrugs and runs his hands through his hair. Its brown waves tumble right back to his shoulders.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” I say.
“You aren’t shy.”
“I’m not afraid, either,” I say, thinking about the person I was before I was named the favorite—before I came to court, before I met Sophia.
“And she’s my future wife.”
I flinch. The words unexpectedly sting. “Has she made her choice? I hadn’t heard.”
“It’s inevitable,” he says cockily.
“Is that so?”
“Wouldn’t you choose me?”
I laugh.
“I’ll take that as a yes. But I don’t know if I want to be married to her. We’re just so . . .”
“Different.”
“You could say that.” His eyes drift over me. “I guess I’m looking for something else.”