I’m flinching at every sound. Is this how your new life will always be? says a voice inside me. I wonder if Charlotte is awake, and if the queen is stronger.
I shudder and gaze around. Has Sophia sent someone after us? Are all the soldiers in Orléans searching? What bounty did she place on our heads? What is she doing to my sisters? What will Du Barry say when she learns of what happened? What happened to Bree?
After a few more moments, I become certain that Rémy has been identified and taken into the ship’s custody. I watch the staircase he ascended, and when I spot his familiar shape, I exhale with relief.
He slips back into the seat beside me like he’s only been gone for a few seconds. He hands me a sausage roll. “All they had. Pick around the meat. Smelled a little rancid.”
I unwrap the paper and sniff the oozing roll. “Where’s yours?”
“We have to save for when we dock.”
“We’ll share it.”
“No, you eat.”
I break it in half.
“Why can’t you just follow instructions?”
“I thought you knew me by now.”
We chew in silence. It isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever tasted, but it’s pretty close.
Amber stretches.
“Wake up,” I whisper.
Her eyes flutter and then pop open. “Camille . . .”
“Shh.” I cup her face.
She sits up slowly. “Where are we?”
I lift her hood. “On a ship to the Spice Isles.”
“What happened?” she says groggily.
“I’ll tell you when we get off.”
“Look.” Rémy points out the window. The glowing towers of the Spice Islands’ port city rise in the distance. Gilt-lanterns hang out of windows, casting an aurous glow over all the buildings. Blue-sailed ships are docked in the port.
“Port ahead! City of Metairie,” a man shouts and rings a bell.
People gather their belongings and shuffle to the stairs.
Rémy stands. He shapes the hood around my face. “Eyes down, all right? Both of you. You’re merchants now, not such an esteemed birth.”
Amber and I nod.
The boat docks. We shuffle off with the crowd. The pier is a chaos of bodies and sounds and movement. Newsies hold up papers, and a storm of post-balloons whirls overhead.
“The queen is dead!” one shouts. “The queen is dead!”
“What?” I gasp, my eyes wide. “No!”
“Metairie’s latest news!”
“Read all about it. Ten leas a pop for the Spice Isles Sentinel.”
“I’ve got the latest pictures in the Orléansian Times.”
“My tattler tells all. Reputable sources only. Firsthand accounts.”
I try to glimpse the headlines. The newsies’ hands wave in the air, scattering the ink across the pages. I catch pieces of it.
QUEEN’S HEART STOPPED
SLEEPING PRINCESS CHARLOTTE HAS DISAPPEARED
KING IN RETIREMENT
REGENT QUEEN SOPHIA TO BE CORONATED
PALACE IN MOURNING
THE PRINCESS TO MARRY MINISTER OF
SEAS’ SON, AUGUSTE FABRY
QUEEN’S LONGTIME LOVER LADY PELLETIER FLEES PALACE
My heart shatters. I stop, doubling over. Shopkeepers are working to swap their pier-lanterns with mourning ones. A black glow settles over the small market.
“We must move,” Rémy says.
“Where?” I ask dumbly. It is all too much.
“This way.” Rémy navigates through the crowd, dodging bodies. The crowds thin out. Pockets of men are hunched over wooden crates. They’re playing cards, slamming down chips and hollering out insults.
“It’s here,” Rémy says. We pause in front of a building with a tiny sign that reads PRUZAN’S SALOON AND BOARDINGHOUSE, FINE WHISKEY, BEDS, AND DECENT FOOD. The saloon has a pass-me-by appearance, with boarded-up windows and post-balloon slots that look wired shut. A wobbly porch wraps around its face like a crooked smile. Stretching five stories high, it swallows nearly half the street, and has three empty storefronts on the first floor with cobwebbed windows and faded signs.
We climb the stairs.
“Wait here with Amber,” Rémy says.
The card-playing men look up.
“Why are we here?” Amber asks.
I don’t hear her question at first. My head is buzzing with the headlines about the queen and Auguste.
Rémy returns with a dangling key. “A room with two beds for my wife and servant.”
“Servant?” Amber scoffs.
“You weren’t awake to have an opinion,” he says.
Inside, the saloon feels like one of our old dollhouses in the playroom at home. Banisters hold constellations of cobwebs. Sitting rooms spill over with tipsy sofas and moth-eaten covers, and the furniture is piled high with old-fashioned post-balloons, buckets, house-lanterns, drapery, older télétropes, bolts of lace, half-burned candles, broken spyglasses, ear-trumpets, and more. “This way.” A woman leads us up the front staircase. She slumps forward, limping like she’s walking over hot coals. “I put you in the back, where it’s quiet.” She wears a long handmade dress that drags at the hem, and little heeled shoes that probably leave sores on her big toes. The halls creak with each step she takes. I keep my head lowered and don’t make eye contact. She shows Rémy how to open the door, and points the way to the bathing room. The humble space has two beds, a desk, a tiny cookstove, and a large window overlooking the street.
“Dinner’s at eight. Kitchen closes before the midnight star.”
“Thank you,” Rémy says.
She shuts the door behind her. I set Arabella’s toilette box on a small table.
We all find places to sit. A silence stretches between us, and we’re too tired and weary to talk about what we have to do next.
A knock pounds at the door.
Rémy steps carefully to it. “Who is it?”
“Fresh macarons,” the voice says. “For you and your wife.”
The hairs on my arms lift.
“We don’t want any. Thank you.”
The knocking persists.
Rémy puts a hand on his dagger.
“They’re the best in Matairie. Best in all of the Spice Isles.”
“Go out there, and shoo them away,” I say. Amber and I pull up our hoods.
Rémy opens the door. A cloaked woman stands there, holding a tray of yellow macarons. She reveals her face and I gasp.
Edel smiles back at us. “It took you long enough.”
Dear Reader,
This book contains my personal monster.
I started The Belles almost a decade ago, but it’s a story that’s been living inside me since I was twelve, long before I ever had dreams of being a writer, before I even thought that was possible.
When I was a pimply, puffy-haired preteen in the mid-1990s, I overheard a conversation at my local suburban mall among several men about their respective girlfriends’ bodies. They were thumbing through a popular magazine as they discussed how much better their girlfriends might look if they had longer and leaner legs, bigger breasts, different hair textures, a more slender frame, softer skin, and on and on, comparing them to the celebrities voted the most beautiful women in the world that year.