Annette
Breakfast the first morning was a disaster. There were three long tables full of girls, each one prettier and more poised than the last. The walls were papered white with flakes of silver, tapestries depicting the cycles of the moon and stars decorating the walls, and silver mirrors were spaced so that every girl in the room could see herself in one from where she sat. The midnight arts burned in every corner of the room too, stores of Mistress Moon’s power leaking from threads of silver running through the walls. Silver held the midnight arts well and could be used to save power for later. This was too much, though.
Too much money. Too much magic.
The excess made my head ache.
“Sit where you please, everyone.” Vivienne stood behind her seat at the head of the center table. “Those of you who are joining us for the first time, please try to sit next to an older student. Our meals are, suffice it to say, unusual.”
Isabelle picked a seat, and I grabbed the one next to her. Coline pinched me as she passed and took a seat across from me. It was easy to spot us, the new girls. We all shifted awkwardly and stared at the settings as if they were likely to bite us.
“I was new once. What fun times!” A tall girl with short black hair brushed back in flowing waves and a soft purple dress that looked divine against her dark brown skin touched my arm. She took the place setting to my left and nodded to another student wearing the same shade of periwinkle but their clothes were a fashionable pair of breeches beneath a long robe. “I’m Germaine and that’s Gisèle. We arrived here the year Vivienne decided to sort everyone into rooms based on their first name, but it worked out all right in the end. She’s not an artist either.”
She winked at Gisèle and smiled, nose scrunching up in delight.
I opened my mouth and had to pause to get my name right. “I’m Emilie. It’s nice to meet you.”
We took our seats. I tried to sit as straight-backed and proper as the other girls. Germaine was gorgeous and smart, talking to Coline about politics I didn’t know or understand, and Gisèle carried on a conversation with Isabelle about some sort of merchant route. Germaine sipped water from her glass without so much as making a sound. When I picked mine up, it clinked against the plate. I didn’t belong here at all.
Couldn’t even take a sip without being blinded by magic. It burned in the back of my eyes, so bright my vision was spotty long after I’d looked away from the water. A headache took hold.
Coline muttered something under her breath, fingers moving along the tabletop as if she were gathering wool, and Germaine made a motion as if snipping thread.
“This room is designed to bombard you with visions,” Germaine said. “Vivienne wants you to learn to avoid revealing that you’re using the midnight arts, and silver is so popular in most places, you can’t avoid it. If you get used to the visions here, you’ll be used to them elsewhere.”
Magic wasn’t physical like us. We didn’t have to coax it out using soft words and gentle motions, but it helped.
“My new students, you have by now noticed that the contents of this room are designed to draw out your divining and scrying abilities.” Vivienne rang a bell. “It has long been considered rude to react to the futures of those you are dining with for fear of revealing some horrible truth. Those of you with an aptitude in the midnight arts must learn not to react, to be as sturdy as the ice atop the rushing waters of the Verglas. Those of you without an aptitude must learn to help hide any reactions from prying eyes. Remember—”
She set down the bell and raised her hands, and from the corner of my eyes, I saw Germaine wink at Gisèle. Gisèle signed something with her hands that made Germaine snicker into her napkin. Down the table, another girl signed a response.
It must have been a common occurrence because several people laughed, and Vivienne’s stoic expression nearly gave way to a smile. She made a motion for them to pay attention.
“Help those you can,” the girls said in time with Vivienne. “Hold them not in debt but in heart.”
“Though it does help if you need a favor later on,” Gisèle whispered to us.
Germaine picked up my cup of water without looking and drank all of it as if it were her own. “Oh! How terrible of me. Let me get you another drink.”
Even though it was in her hands and away from me, I could still see the ripples of power in the water dregs.
A black hack’s coat, sleeves rolled up to the elbows. Sunburned skin. Worn-down hands grasping at a bloody neck. I blinked, and all that was here was a polished silver tea set, tall and thin and too reflective to be normal, set at the center of a mirror-topped tray. Another vision, great clots of old blood, dripped down the back of a silver spoon. The taste of ash clogged my throat.
“Here.” Germaine poured me a cup of cloudy, steaming tea, too dark and unsettled to show me a vision in the surface. “Drink up.”
I took a sip, hands shaking. “Thank you.”
I’d been starving once, but now my appetite had fled as fast and far as Emilie. Didn’t help when a line of servants entered with trays and started serving us. I didn’t know what to do with my hands. Or eyes. None of the other girls looked at the servants, not even when they placed cloth napkins in their laps. I jumped.
There were too many knives and too many spoons, and the smell of oysters mixed with the faint taste of ash stuck in my throat. I drank tea and didn’t eat. The gossipy puddle of leaves at the bottom were bad omens, and the silver rim was nothing but staring eyes. So this was what we were—visions in polished silver and sweet tea overflowing with portents of disaster.
I had to channel the midnight arts into silver, usually, and then focus on what I wanted to scry, but here the images were endless—flashing through the water and silver and mirror and broths so fast, it made me sick to my stomach. I focused on Vivienne instead.
“Mademoiselle Charron, unfortunately, foresaw a quite dangerous accident occurring on the road during her charity work in Bosquet, and she will sadly not be able to join us for several days as she helps to prevent the event and subsequent issues from the change.” Vivienne held up her hands at the disappointed whispers. “Don’t fret, dears. She will be joining us for several days still, and those of you who excel in the midnight arts may attend those sessions instead of your other classes.”
I slumped. I didn’t excel. I couldn’t even stand to be in this room, and I’d need weeks to get better.
When supper ended, Gisèle slipped me a soft, slightly squished roll, her spectacles hiding most of her worried expression. The light caught her glasses—green lace lapping at a pale white neck and the shadow of a thick blade—and I cringed. Coline and Isabelle helped me back to our room.
Most of me felt guilty for being so needful.
But part of me liked it, the anxious looks and oddly comforting pat Coline gave my shoulder when she didn’t know what to do.
I had to get better. I had to meet Estrel.
But after that first night, I barely got better.
We spent the evenings after supper on improvement and associating. I’d followed Coline and Isabelle and prayed they’d known what it was. We’d just ended up back in our room.
Least the baths were as rich as the rest of the place—great stone pools dug into the earth and pumped full of hot water that filled the room with steam. I’d not known what most of Emilie’s belongings were, but soap was soap was soap even when it had lavender petals in it, and I’d made do with only it. There weren’t maids to look after us, thank Mistress for that, and I was more than happy to comb out Isabelle’s hair after she combed out mine. She’d laughed and said she used to do it for her brother when he was little and they were alone. Maman had always done Macé’s. I was too tender-headed and cried when she tugged, so she’d stopped combing mine.
I was too hungry to sleep, but fear kept me in bed. They’d know. They’d all know.
Couldn’t divine. Couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t even make it through a meal.
They’d find me out, arrest me, and send me to the gallows, surely.
We woke to a bell at dawn. I woke up bleary, eyes stuck together with the crunchy leftovers of sleep. We ate in the silver room, quiet and focused, and my headache returned after two sips of tea and a piece of pastry slathered in butter. I survived three bites before giving up. Least no one noticed.
Gisèle had taken to slipping me rolls every morning, though, and whenever Vivienne questioned it, Gisèle only repeated her words back to her.
“Help those you can,” she said, hand over her heart. “What sort of person would I be if I refused that call?”
We had to be allies, all of us as one, in order to survive.
Or, as Gisèle said one evening during associating, “We are our own.”
Two days out of the week, I joined Vivienne and most of the other students in the small church on the Gardinier estate. We stood in the vast, empty hall, the altar of Mistress Moon and Lord Sun rising at the front of the church, and I let myself fade off as the priest spoke. Mistress Moon surely understood—the water spilling from her cupped hands still showed my scryings when I kneeled at the feet of her statue. I kissed her talons, and she didn’t strike me down.
Every day, we ate breakfast, and then the entire new group was herded to mathematics. There were twelve of us, the other students as skittish as we were. Numbers were the same no matter how much money someone had, and the teacher, an older white woman with black hair knotted up in a tight bun, let us work quietly for the start of class. The problems were easy, and my headache lifted. Returned in time for history where I knew nothing and couldn’t keep up. Coline could recite every Deme king and what they were best known for two hundred years. I could name the current one.
Couldn’t say what he was known for.
Would’ve given me away instantly.
After a light meal at noon, Vivienne rounded up Coline, Isabelle, and I for an etiquette lesson that melted into a class on hosting and conversation with the other nine of our earlier classes after two hours. We practiced sitting and smiling and saying the right thing. Apparently, I couldn’t even sit right.
But the worst class was bookkeeping and home management. We spent the afternoon going over accounts and prices and the “delicate art of negotiation” with Madame Robine Bisset, who I couldn’t take seriously. The numbers in the books, fake but still close enough to the real thing, were so high, so absurd, and so long that I couldn’t comprehend them. This was how rich people ruined nations.
They saw 2.000 gold sols on a ledger, didn’t realize how much money that truly was to most folks, and ran us all into the red.
The weekly cost of dress fabric for my fake household was three hundred silver lunes. I’d never even seen more than ten in one place. We didn’t even pay that much to Waleran du Ferrant for our land in Vaser.
My fake household spent more on the horses and hunting hounds than the servants.
I crossed the hounds from the list and added the money to the wages.
“But how will you entertain guests?” Vivienne asked. “Do not sacrifice your own financial security for such foibles. You need not give in to such demands as higher wages like has become the fashion for certain peoples these days. There are many who would be more than happy to take the job. Hard work pays heartily. A good employee will understand that.”
I added another zero. What did it matter? Once people were this rich, numbers weren’t real anymore. Prices were just ideas.
Least the sums in my ledger were all right. Coline was terrible at mathematics.
There were other classes too—music and art, architecture and room decorating, flower arrangements and conversational Thornish, the business etiquette of Vertgana, and even the whole final year could be devoted to poetry, literature, and translation. I knew none of it.
And after four days of crawling from bed to breakfast, suffering through the silver room headaches and lessons with Isabelle and Coline by my side, nothing seemed even remotely better. If anything, I was getting worse in the silver room.
Only seven other students in the whole school could use magic. Isabelle’s tuition, I learned, had been lowered because she could, making her a prize. Coline wasn’t the best at it, but passable and rich.
Seven of us, drowning in divined futures and scryed presents, and only I had a ringing in my ears and white spots in my sight. Even my nose hurt.
“You glow with it,” Isabelle muttered to me at breakfast one morning, her hands shaking as she ignored the silver tray before us. “You sure you can’t divine? You gather magic without even trying, and I’ve never seen someone do that.”
Scrying, observing present goings-on from afar, was easy, and really good artists like Estrel Charron could even scry the past. Divination—seeing the future—was like herding fainting goats.
There were dozens of futures, each one as fickle as the next, and not all of them came at once. Some showed up when an artist wanted them, but they weren’t the right future. Other times the future an artist needed faded before they could so much as catch a glimpse of it. Finding the right future—and holding on to it until they could see what they needed—required more channeling and precision than any other midnight art. Every time I tried to divine, I ended up sick.
The future I wanted was always just out of my grasp.
“I can’t divine.” I squinted at her. “I was never trained in the midnight arts. I’m probably just not used to it, is all.”
That evening before supper, Coline had passed a folded-up poster beneath the table as we waited to be served. I peeked at it, glad to look at something that didn’t hurt, and almost laughed.
HIS MOST BRIGHT MAJESTY
HENRY XII KING OF DEMEINE
WEARS DOWN THIS NATION LIKE MAGIC
WEARS DOWN HACKS—
TO DEATH
Isabelle winced when she read it and passed it along. “You shouldn’t have that. What if you get us in trouble?”
“I would rather get in trouble,” Coline said. “At least then I know I tried.”
“No point in being nosy about things that don’t apply to us,” some girl down the table said.
I did laugh at that. “Must be nice to be so rich, laws and death don’t apply to you.”
Coline shot me an odd look. I shrugged. Right, I was Emilie des Marais. Here, I was so rich that laws didn’t apply to me.
“If you don’t know why you should care about other people, especially the people who are dying for you,” I said, not looking down the table, “then you shouldn’t be in charge of anything, much less people.”
After that morning, a stifling silence filled the silver room before breakfast. Mostly when I entered. Coline loved it.
It exhausted me.
I crawled back into my bed that fourth evening—a whole bed to myself!—and ran a hand along the soft pillows. The quilts were too heavy for summer, but I pulled them over my head anyway. The dark eased the ache in my head, and the thick cloth muffled Coline and Isabelle’s whispers. It was evening, well past supper, and my stomach had finally settled. I’d managed a whole bowl of soup tonight. The fuzzy feeling of half sleep fell over me.
“Emilie?” a soft, musical drawl trickled through my quilt.
I turned my nose into the pillow cover, inhaling lavender and barberry. “One second, Alaine.”
“You’ve slept in the same room as me for nearly a week, and I held back your hair as you dry heaved.” A hand touched my back. “How could you have already forgotten my name?”
I jerked up, more awake than getting dumped in the Verglas would make me. Fool—my sister Alaine was long gone.
“Sorry, sorry.” I leapt to my feet, chest cold and belly dropping, and wiped my face. My sleeves came away damp. “What’s wrong, Coline?”
Coline was leaning against my headboard, one hand on the wall and one still outstretched to me. She was in a different dress than the one she had worn all day, this one a pale spring-green like fresh mint and spotted with little opalescent beetle wings. I hadn’t bothered changing.
None of them fit anyway. Vivienne had brought a tailor to the school to have me fitted for new dresses, underthings, and even a new corset. At least Emilie seemed to have worn only stays like me before this.
“You’re not getting better at ignoring the visions,” Coline said, no trace of kindness in her voice. “You’re only better at hiding your exhaustion from Vivienne, which may very well be part of the training given our expected comportment, but you need to eat real food, not only soup, a handful of crackers, and a sticky bun the size of your head.”
I finger-combed my hair and smoothed out the wrinkles of my dress. “You gave me that bun.”
“It was the bun or nothing, and so I picked the bun,” she said. “Isabelle, please ally with me.”
“Yes, Emilie,” said Isabelle, not raising her face from her mathematics notes and probably unaware of what we’d been talking about. “Coline is correct. Listen to her.”
Coline patted Isabelle’s shoulder. I rolled my eyes and stretched, back creaking. If Coline’s arrogance were rain, there’d never be a drought again.
“I’ll go find the kitchens,” I said. “Let me do it alone. I need quiet.”
I tapped my head, and Coline nodded. “Fine. Go eat, or I’m asking Germaine what to do about you.”
I wandered out of our room and down to the grand foyer. At night, the white marble was ghostly white, and walking across it was like gliding over ice, the cool breeze spilling in from the open windows the burst of air from pushing off. I checked the door for guards or servants, even though Vivienne said we were allowed onto the grounds so long as we didn’t try to leave the estate. Outside, there was only the night and me. I raised my hand to the dark.
“Mistress,” I whispered. “Please let tomorrow go better.”
Light flickered overhead. A moth smacked into my hand. I lurched, palm stinging. The moth bumped into me again, feathery black feelers rapping at my knuckles, and the midnight blue fluff of its body pressed into the little crack between my thumb and first finger. I turned my hand over, and the moth settled there, spreading out its wings in a crown of pale moonlight. The wings were as deep blue as its body on the underside, but the tops were pure magic, smears of trapped power. A creature of clear night skies.
A Stareater.
“Aren’t you a pretty thing?” I pushed on down a path I knew led to the kitchen buildings. “Hungry?”
Most moths were attracted to flames, but these went after magic. They fed on the power of midnight artists, churning the blood from their prey into pure power that glowed in them like stars. I’d only ever seen one before, and it had nibbled at Alaine’s fingers till she flicked it away.
“I’m not much of a snack,” I said to it. “You’ll have to find someone else.”
It folded up its wings, unfurled a single, long tongue from its head, and the light surrounding it faded. The tongue pricked the skin of my hand.
“Fine. Don’t bleed me dry.”
The dark had sunk beneath the leafy canopy and blanketed the whole of the grounds in the chilled smudge of night, rustling leaves and my soft breaths blurring the line between sound and silence. I glanced up at the starlight picking its way through the leaves in shaky slits. It was like Mistress Moon had reached out and run her thumb through the sky, smearing dark gray clouds across the purple night till only a dim moon remained behind. The yeasty scent of fresh bread hit me, and I followed it to a large, domed kitchen. The butter-yellow light of candles and fires leaked out the opened windows, steam dancing in the glare. I peeked through the cracked door.
Empty.
The kitchen was a small slice of chaos, bread proofing on one side and a whole course of things bubbling away above coals on the other side. There were five doors, three shut, and I crept inside enough to see. On one of the tables near my door was a basket full of vials that made my ears hum. My moth shuddered against the back of my hand.
Alchemistry.
There were a dozen different vials in the basket. The arts were complicated little alchemical things, not something I was familiar with. Objects full of magic broke down as quick as bodies.
It was the channeling that killed artists. We had to channel the magic through us to make it do our bidding, but the longer it was in us or the more that went through us, the more damage it did.
I picked up a small jar of honey infused with dandelions for protection, lavender for sleep, and a speck of magic to make all the ingredients last. I’d never met a real alchemist. They weren’t as rare as artists but mostly worked in larger cities with physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” a lilting voice said. “Mademoiselle Gardinier should’ve told you that.”
I put the vial back. “Sorry. I didn’t—well, the moth, and then these were interesting and…”
I trailed off, blushing, and shook my head.
Let the sky swallow me up, Mistress. Please.
“That’s new,” said a chef dusted in flour. She grinned, tongue between her crooked front teeth, and bowed her head to me. “I’m Yvonne.”
I swallowed. It was the twin in purple, the one who’d been selling sage water the day Emilie and I had swapped places. She couldn’t have been older than eighteen but walked like she owned the place. She might’ve for all I knew, and I stayed near the doorway, glancing round at the pot bubbling on the stove, and still-fresh greens scattered about the counters and cutting boards, and nets hanging from the rafters. Yvonne busied herself with the pot, brown sleeves of her blouse rolled up to her elbows, and brushed one broad smear of something from her skirts. The warm, black skin of her forearms was peppered with dark little oil-burn scars. Cooking wasn’t the only thing happening here. The basket was hers.
“You’re an alchemist,” I said. “A proper one.”
Alchemists could gather magic and store it in objects—using that power to extend the life of herbs, improve a coughing syrup, or bolster the powers of a poison—but not channel magic to use the arts. Most sold their creations in apothecaries or worked for physicians and surgeons. I’d never met one. Their wares cost too much.
“Yes, though that’s the first time someone’s called me a proper one.” She cleared her throat, and I realized she’d been waiting for me to share my name.
I bowed back and smiled. “I’m sorry—Emilie.”
“Well, you better come in and shut the door, Sorry-Emilie. I need the heat to stay the same.” Yvonne beckoned me inside and froze. “You’re Madame Emilie des Marais.”
“No. Well, yes,” I said. “But you don’t have to call me ‘Madame’ or anything. You can just call me Emilie.”
“Of course.” She bowed her head again, shoulders stiff. “As you like.”
I did not like this odd, new wall between me and maybe the only person who’d grown up like I had.
“May I ask what the magic you stored in these is for?” I gestured to the basket of vials, and the moth hopped from me to one of the vials, my blood staining its white wings spider-lily pink. “I can see the magic, but I’ve never been good at alchemistry.”
There was nothing worse than being sick enough to take medicine but not sick enough to have lost your sense of smell.
“You can see the magic in this?” Yvonne reared back slightly, eyes widening and lips pulling into a grin. She pointed at the basket. “You can tell I’ve put magic in it?”
I nodded. “It’s like looking at heated iron. Looks the same but the air around it’s different. You can always tell.”
“You know most people can’t always tell, don’t you? Not after the art’s been worked?” she asked. “It took me an hour to convince the apothecary in Bosquet this was actually alchemical and I wasn’t scamming him.”
“Apothecary’s a fool, then.” I peeked at the other little vials. “They’ve all got a bit of the midnight power in them. Not a lot and not doing anything. Have you ever used a hack? If you did once, maybe they could prove it for you?”
She glanced at me over her shoulder, wide eyes a bright amber in the light. “I have not. I wouldn’t even know how to go about hiring one. Mademoiselle Gardinier is very particular about hers, and they’re not allowed to work with anyone but her students to limit the damage.”
“I’ve never worked with one either,” I said. “Was it one of the fancy apothecaries?”
“Very,” said Yvonne, smiling now. “What can I do for you, Madame?”
I shook my head. “The silver room makes me sick to my stomach and then not eating makes it harder to sleep and being tired makes it harder not to get distracted over breakfast, and I was wondering if I could get something to eat. Nothing fancy.” My stomach rolled at the idea of pigeon pie or heavy red wine–braised lamb, which had been the meals for the last few days. “Less fancy the better, probably.”
“Of course. Allow me a moment.” Yvonne vanished into another room or pantry and returned with a little bowl and small loaf of bread in her arms. “There’s a clean stool to your left if you’d like to sit. Unfortunately, this isn’t the main kitchen. Mademoiselle Gardinier is allowing me the use of this building in exchange for some recipes and alchemical work. It’s not as well stocked as the main kitchen, though.”
“That’s fine.” I folded myself onto the stool. “Do you need help?”
“No, but the offer is appreciated.” Yvonne focused on her pan, the violet tucked into her left hair bun bobbing. The familiar sound of sizzling egg hit my ears, and she flipped it with all the grace of a juggler before the king. In no time, she presented me with a small plate of bread with a fried egg in the middle. “Madame.”
“Thank you!” I shooed the moth away from my hands. “You sure there’s nothing I can help with?”
Yvonne’s pleasant facade shifted.
“Actually, Madame,” she said with a wide, tense smile. “I would like to ask a favor of you, since you are apparently very gifted in the arts.”
No one had ever called me gifted. “What’s the favor?”
She ducked her head in a half bow. “If you are willing, I would very much appreciate it if you could be witness to the fact that my alchemistry is real and sign a short note attesting to it, so I can have proof for the apothecary.”
“What’s the point in being noble if I can’t do something like that?” I looked around. “Do you want me to do it now?”
Emilie wouldn’t mind. Probably. And Vivienne was always going on about our responsibilities to the Deme people.
I wrote out a quick note with some paper and a quill Yvonne had nearby and signed it with a neat little signature far smoother and straighter than anything I’d ever written.
Looked like the words of a proper lady of Demeine.
I’d been practicing Emilie’s signature in case I needed it for Vivienne or Emilie’s mother.
“Good enough?” I asked.
She nodded, distractedly tucking it into her pocket. “Thank you very much. It is harder than I thought to start an apothecary.”
“Can I ask why you’re working as a chef, then?” I finished off the last of the toast, and she took the plate from me. “And in Bosquet? I saw you selling tea with your sister.”
“Oh. Yes, that’s Octavie’s thing. She’s saving up to travel with some cartographer to map the world before someone else does. Our parents were merchants, and our mother’s from a small city-state north of Kalthorne. They have a shop in Lily-in-the-Valley.” She waved off my question politely, and part of me relaxed now that she had. It was nice just talking to a person. No rules. No Vivienne judging. No lies. She talked with her hands too, great passionate gestures as if she were painting a picture. “I have some of her family recipes. We moved here before the Empire got huffy about worshipping the Lord and his Mistress. Mademoiselle Gardinier asked my mother to help with some Kalthorne recipes, but my mother wanted to stay at her shop. She’s enjoying having Octavie and me out of the house. So I took the job instead. It’s not a full job and doesn’t pay much, but it’s a job.”
She didn’t say they’re a bit hard to come by, but I heard it in the way she paused and her jaw tightened.
“I’m glad you did.” Listening to her be happy made me happy, and the alchemistry looked fascinating. “Thank you.”
“And you, Madame,” she said. The tone was light enough to be a joke to test the line.
“Really, I know folks say it all the time and don’t mean it, but I would like it if you used my name. If you want,” I said quickly. “I’ve never really used the title before.”
“Emilie.” Yvonne lifted her head. “Thank you.”
* * *
I woke up the next day to the moth, scarlet and fat, fluttering near my head, and at breakfast there was an extra place set beside Vivienne. The other girls whispered to one another, and to me, even though I heard none of it. Coline shook her head to some question Isabelle asked. The mirrored comb in her hair sparked and caught my gaze. I froze in the doorway.
Shaking, bloody hands knotted in gold hair. The slack-jawed stare of death in storm-gray eyes.
The vision snapped. A shock, white hot, shot through me like someone had lit a match right before my eyes. I squeezed them shut.
Couldn’t even get in the door, and I was crumbling. The magic wasn’t wearing me down yet, but even the midnight arts could break down a body over time, and I was failing so spectacularly at controlling my divining that surely I’d be nothing come winter.
I sunk as low in my chair as my clothes and manners would allow, and Isabelle, frantically blinking away a vision too, touched my arm. I shook her off.
Estrel Charron would know. Oh, Mistress, what if she’d scryed it? Divined it?
No, I wasn’t that important. She never would’ve looked for me.
But she didn’t need magic to see how much of a failure I was.
A server set down a squat bowl of fruit, and a vision swirled in the reflective silver—blood splattering across a white gown. Why were none of my scryings normal things like a lightning storm or caravan arriving home three days early?
The vision lingered. Silver specks drifted through my sight like snow, a hook of blue splitting the room in two.
“Students!” Vivienne’s voice forced me to look toward the front of the room. She was a smear of white. White hair. White skin. White dress. White snow powdering around her.
Mistress, this was worse than ever before. Artists didn’t have to be able to see to do magic, but seeing nothing but this white forever would be annoying.
“I am aware that some of you have had the pleasure of meeting Mademoiselle Estrel Charron at court, but please bear with me as I introduce her to your peers,” Vivienne said, and even through the snow, I could see she was smiling widely. Her hand reached out and found an arm. “Students, this is Mademoiselle Estrel Charron, the royal diviner. Estrel, these are my current geniuses.”
The others tittered and nodded, already sitting. Estrel was too country to demand standing, even if she was the royal diviner. She was only a blur of green and red to me.
And across the table, across the fourteen girls between us and a dozen trays and pitchers, across the onslaught of silver that still burned my eyes, my vision cleared and Estrel Charron stared straight at me. I couldn’t see anything but her eyes.
“Please, call me Estrel. We’ll start after breakfast,” she said, gaze sliding from me to the next girl. “Every midnight artist in this room needs quite a bit of work.”