The Everlasting Rose (The Belles, #2)(16)

We squeeze in. A quiver starts in my feet, traveling up my legs to my stomach and chest. I can’t still myself. A landquake is erupting inside me. My heart might never find the right beat again.

Edel leans against the wall, her jaw clenched, and fists balled. “They’ve found us again,” she mutters. “I can feel it.”

“You don’t know that,” I reply.

But her words suffocate the small space. If there are guards at the door, how will we get away from them now? What if Rémy were taken—or hurt? How would we be able to help him from in here?

I press my ear to the door and catch three words: morning paper delivery.

“You can come back out,” Rémy says. “It’s all right.”

My whole body deflates, my knees buckling, the worries sputtering out like wind. We ease out of the closet. The teacup dragons squawk and push their faces against the bars of their cage. Rémy holds the tail ribbons of a pearl-white post-balloon dragged by a plum-colored teacup dragon.

“I thought it was the papers,” I say.

“So did I,” he replies.

“Who’s it from?” Edel asks. “No one knows we’re here.”

I take a piece of dried pork from our food pack and whistle. The teacup dragon dives toward me and lands on my shoulder. Rémy grabs the ribbons, breaks open the post-balloon’s back, and retrieves an empty perfume bottle and a miniature porcelain jar with several sangsues in it.

A cold stone drops into my stomach. “There’s no note.”

“The lid is engraved.” Edel crouches over my shoulder.

I squint at the tiny script, and read the word Listen.

I uncap the perfume atomizer. The sound of a woman’s voice echoes through the room. “You only get a single chance to hear this. Pay attention.”

“What’s that?” Edel asks.

“Shh.” I lift the bottle to my ear.

Edel and Rémy huddle closer. My heart trembles. The identity of the speaker crystallizes in my head.

Arabella.

“Camellia and Edelweiss, meet Ryra, my teacup dragon. Please take care of her well. Listen closely. Track the headlines, though we all know they don’t tell even a fraction of the story. With Sophia as queen, we cannot trust them to publish the truth unvarnished, but they furnish clues to the storm she’s trying to create. There are newsies doing her bidding, spreading the things she wants everyone to believe.

“Sophia has taken all the generations of Belles—Ivy and her sisters, plus yours, Valerie, Padma, Hana, Amber, and the new little ones. They’re in the most complete wing of her new prison, the Everlasting Rose. She’s growing new Belles here at the palace. I must feed my blood to two hundred fifty pods, with more to come. Sophia intends to start selling Belles to the highest bidder as soon as these new ones are big enough to do beauty work.

“You must stay as far away as possible until I can figure out the rest of what she’s up to. Here’s what I need you to do: feed a teacup dragon—Ryra, if she’s rested, or any of yours—one of the sangsues I’ve sent, which hold my blood. Doing this will tether the dragon to me, so it can find me wherever I am, and we can send messages back and forth. Send word that you’re safe. Be careful.”

The memory of Sophia’s threat about building a golden auction block in Trianon or the Royal Square coils around me like the silver chains and jeweled collars she’d use. The ones Madam Claire looped around the throats and wrists of the other Belles at the Chrysanthemum Teahouse.

“Who was that?” Edel asks.

“Arabella,” I tell her. “She’s an elder Belle. She lives at the palace and helped Rémy, Amber, and me escape.”

“What does she mean growing? She said something about pods.” Edel must have a million questions about how this was possible. “What is she talking about?”

The image of the clear vats in Sophia’s palace nursery, the Belle babies floating in gilded cradles, being fed Arabella’s blood, takes horrifying shape in my mind. “Belles are different from Gris,” I tell her. “We’re grown...in vessels.”

“I don’t understand.” Edel shakes with rage. “Babies develop in their mothers’ wombs.”

“Not us. Belle babies are more like flowers in bulbs.” The words coming out of my mouth feel thick and laden with lies. Unbelievable, even though they are the truth. This is not what Du Barry told us about our births. She said that the Goddess of Beauty sent us here in a rain of stars to be her vessels. But I’ve seen it with my own eyes.

I shake the bottle, waiting and wishing there was more.

“We have to go to the palace,” Edel says.

“Arabella told us not to.”

“So? Who put her in charge?” Edel presses. “We need to break our sisters out of prison and end this.”

It’s not lost on me that she had no interest in this line of thought when it was only Amber who’d been captured.

“Let’s send her a message saying we’re safe, as she asks, and tell her of our plan to find Charlotte. Based on my maps, I believe her to be—”

“We can’t only chase Charlotte. She could be a spirit for all we know. Sophia’s setting up a grand reveal of her body. What if she’s actually dead? What if this plan of yours is doomed?”