The Belles (The Belles #1)(9)
“I made the cocoon so she’d stop squirming,” I say, not wanting her to know that I’d spent a lot of time thinking about how to be better than her, better than everyone. I reach to squeeze her hand, but she moves it to fuss with a flower that’s threatening to drop from her bun. I remind her how she never struggles with the arcana. She earns high marks on each challenge Du Barry assigns. Based on lesson grades, Amber’s the top of our generation, always getting perfect scores from Du Barry. If the decision were based on that, she’d be chosen easily.
“If we could’ve shown the first arcana, I know they would’ve all seen more of your skills,” I say. Amber is exceptional at Manner. She’s able to soften even the voice of a teacup monkey, make the most oafish person charming, and give someone any talent they desire—cooking, dancing, playing the lute or a stringed misen—as easily as donning a different dress.
“I was supposed to be the best. I was supposed to be named the favorite.”
“We all want to be the favorite,” I say.
Her eyes narrow. “Don’t you think I know that?”
Her tone feels like a slap. She’s never spoken to me like this before.
“Ambrosia! Camellia! You know the rules.” Du Barry hitches up an eyebrow. “You’re too old for reminders.”
Amber moves two paces away, and that tiny space feels like the width of an ocean. We’re not supposed to show favoritism with one another. We’re all sisters. We’re all supposed to be equally close. But I’ve always loved Amber a little more than the others. And she, me.
Amber flashes irritated eyes at me. I don’t understand her anger. We are, each of us, in the exact same place right now. Shouldn’t we support one another?
Once Du Barry turns her back, I move close to her again and touch her hand, wanting to fix whatever just broke between us. She brushes away and cuts to the front of the group to stand near Du Barry. I deflate like a post-balloon that’s lost its air, but I don’t follow her.
We cross a series of small golden bridges that crest over the Golden Palace River. Newsies lean out of charcoal-black newsboats with their light-boxes, trying to capture portraits of us. Their animated quills scratch against parchment pads at lightning speed. They shout our names and ask us who we think will be chosen as the favorite.
“You’re a little late to place your bets, gentlemen. You’ll get no hints here,” the Beauty Minister calls out.
We cross the final bridge and stand before the royal palace. The pink marble building stretches up with turrets so high that if you climbed one, you might be able to whisper to the God of the Sky. Sugary white and gold trim each layer. My sisters and I glance up, and it feels like we’re all holding our collective breath.
I lift my skirts and trail the group up a massive staircase, losing count after one hundred steps. The click-clack of our feet pushes my heart to beat faster. At the top, the front door opens like a great mouth, and the grand entry hall swallows us. Jeweled chandelier-lanterns drop from the high ceiling, like spiders with bellies full of candlelight. The walls hold beautiful marble carvings of the stars. I want to run my fingers over them, to feel the grooves, but I can’t reach them through the row of guards at our sides.
We enter a new hallway. The ceiling paintings change as we pass. Animated frescoes arrange and rearrange into different celestial scenes: the gods and goddesses, an everlasting rose, the kings and queens of old, the islands of Orléans, the heavens. I almost fall while trying to crane my neck to look up at them.
“The Belle apartments are in the north wing,” Du Barry informs us.
“Facing the Goddess of Beauty’s direction,” the Beauty Minister adds.
We venture into the palace wing on gilded walkways that feel like massive bridges. I gaze over the railings and down onto the floors below. Royal chrysanthemum trees grow up toward the ceiling, but even their branches can’t reach us. A series of chariots drifts along a shiny lattice of cables, lifting well-dressed people from one balcony to the next.
We move past an imperial guard checkpoint. They salute us. We stop before a grand set of doors carved with Belle-roses.
I bite my bottom lip.
Imperial servants line both sides of the entrance, heads bowed, hands resting in front of them; their faces are angular with peach lips, rosy cheeks, brown eyes, and milk-white skin. They are mandated by the Beauty Minister to look this way. She’s dressed them in colorful work-dresses pinched at the waist, and they sport servant emblems proudly around their necks.
The Beauty Minister pushes the doors open.
6
My room at home used to be shared with Maman. Her four-poster bed and my smaller cot were tucked into a corner of our apartments on the seventh floor of Maison Rouge de la Beauté. Tattlers pilfered from the mail chest created secret mountains beneath my bed, and Belle-cards slipped from Du Barry’s office decorated the ivory screen separating my side of the room from Maman’s. Trinkets lined our shelves: dried petals, tiny bayou pebbles, and rainbow pearls sat like shrines to our adventures together, along with tomes of folklore and fairy tales about the God of Luck’s phoenix or the Goddess of Deception’s little silver fox. A vanity table held a washbasin, and a fireplace always roared with light. My heart flutters with the memory of it.
But I don’t know how Maman ever left these Belle apartments to go back to it.