There she is! So nice of you to finally join us,” Lavendra drawled as she looked up from the Ana when I walked into the sitting room that night. She pulled it close to her chest protectively. The Ana was indeed a Couterie’s most prized possession. And studying it the most important part of their duties. Madame Linea herself gathered all the information for the Ana and even sewed and bound the pages so that no other hands than the Couterie’s and her own were ever in possession of it. But the Couterie helped too in filling them—pasting in portraits and letters and even handwritten bits of information Linea delivered. As much as the Ana could be seen as a labor of love, it was also a tool of memory. What better way to remember the facts if you literally had your hands or pen on every single scrap of your royal’s life?
She was on a chaise in the center of the other Couterie and Shadows, who were playing games, knitting, and singing songs at the piano.
“Lucky for you, my craving for honeybread has passed. Get me some hibiscus water, would you?” she asked, and returned to the book.
Usually my feet would reflexively take me to the kitchen to respond to her latest whim. But my feet did not move. Ire filled me again. I had given five years of service to this plan. I had nothing to show for it, except a penchant to serve a spoiled girl.
Instead I steeled myself and said through gritted teeth, “Lavendra, I challenge you.”
The room fell silent. Knitting needles stopped clicking, a chess piece was dropped back on the board, and whoever was at the piano stopped mid-concerto.
Lavendra laughed, breaking the silence.
“You can’t possibly be this ridiculous,” she assessed after a long pause.
All the other Couterie, except Tork, joined in her laughter.
“What’s all the commotion?” Madame Linea demanded, entering the room.
“Farrow just told the most amazing joke. Do share it with Madame Linea.”
“It’s not a joke,” I said. I straightened my spine, checking my own posture as Lavendra had instructed mere hours ago. “I challenge Lavendra. I want to take her place as Couterie to Prince Mather.”
Madame Linea took a shallow breath. From everything she’d told us, even though the ability to challenge existed, not one Shadow had ever exercised it in all the years she’d been Madame.
“Very well, I will contact the Queen.”
“The Queen?” I asked.
“Who do you think administers the Challenge?”
The truth was, I didn’t actually know what the Challenge entailed. I’d tried to pick up hints about it from my fellow Shadows, other Couterie, and Linea herself. The best explanation came from Jacoby, Tork’s twin and Shadow.
Twins were rare in the Queendom but common in the Couterie, because neither twin would ever be required to go under the knife. I wondered sometimes if that was why Tork was different, lighter somehow. He had family. Even if I never saw them behave as anything other than Couterie and Shadow.
“It’s a test of who knows the royal best,” Jacoby said while folding Tork’s laundry perfectly. “But it’s an unpassable test. Because the Couterie have the advantage of possessing the Ana, and the Shadows were left only whatever scraps of knowledge they have learned from their Couterie. It’s an impossible test that the Couterie is destined to win—What possessed you anyway?” He asked suddenly.
“I wanted to wear something before Lavendra does. It’s my raison d’être,” I said lightly. But Jacoby was serious.
“You should challenge Tork. No Shadow has studied his Couterie as closely as you. And no one could match their Couterie as closely as you.”
“It would be like the moon pretending to be the sun. Everyone would know the light I cast was just a reflection. Not the real thing,” he said matter-of-factly.
“That’s not true,” I countered.
“I am awkward and exacting. He’s a star.”
“Only because he was always in the way of your light,” I said, using his metaphor.
He took this in and softened as if considering it.
Then he shut down.
“It doesn’t matter. He is not going anywhere except to Queen Papillion’s palace. At least I get to go with him, even if I am in the shadows where I belong.”
“But you can’t forget your light, Jacoby, wherever you are. I won’t.”
He took me in for a beat before folding the last piece of laundry. “It would have been nice to wear something first though. Come on. It’s time for dinner.”
I let my encounter with Jacoby sink in and arrived at dinner five minutes late. Even after years of pretending to be one of them, sometimes seeing all the matching faces reminded me of the pain from the doctor’s knife, as well as the breadth and depth of human cruelty. And seeing Jacoby think so little of himself made me see another pain I hadn’t really imagined. What it must be like to be in a literal sibling’s shadow like Jacoby was.
I touched my nose, missing my old one—one that I realized too late had been identical to Hecate’s. The doctor did more than change our physical appearances. With every cut of the knife, she told us that our Couterie was above us and we Shadows were not as good. Not as worthy. I had my own sense of worth. I was Entente. The other Shadows did not have that.
The dining room was the size of a ballroom and was the heart of the Couterie’s manse. The table itself was a marvel, unlike anything I’d seen. All the Couterie ate every meal together at the hand-carved table of three concentric rings, which must have taken carpenters months to construct and claimed at least three giant ElmWoods from the Dark Wood at the edge of the Enchanted Forest. The middle circle had fifty seats, one for each Queendom’s Couterie. The outer ring had one for each of their Shadows. We Shadows sat and ate behind the Couterie, both to learn from them and to attend to their every need. Madame Linea sat at her own circle in the center of the other two rings. The outer circles and their seats moved in tandem around Madame Linea’s like the rings of a planet, with the aid of an intricate set of gears installed beneath the circular floorboards by a watchmaker. The purpose: for Linea to observe all.
Lavendra wasn’t there. She was still sulking in her bedroom. Looking around one last time, I took a deep breath, mustering up every ounce of courage I had, and sat in Lavendra’s seat next to Tork just before the table’s gears began to shift.
There was an audible gasp from Couterie and Shadows alike. I was challenging more than Lavendra. I was challenging the Couterie way of life.
“Enough of this drama, ladies and gentlemen,” Madame Linea ordered. “Dinner is served.”
As the room filled with chatter and the sound of forks against plates, Tork leaned close and whispered lightly, “So you’re really going through with this?”
I swallowed hard, feeling a hint of nausea that had nothing to do with the movement of the table, and took a swig of the lavender nectar.
Tork took me in before saying, “Maybe you really are Entente. First a challenge. And now you’re really taking her place.”
He looked at me as if he were seeing me for the first time. His eyes were wide, and he blinked hard.
I shrugged it off. “Maybe we’re all overdue for a change.”
“How does it feel to be in the seat of a Couterie?”
“No different,” I demurred, sinking farther back into the tufted chair.
“Well, I think it’s time we Couterie had some new blood.”
I studied him a beat. Was he messing with me? Couterie never sided with Shadows over other Couterie. I found myself strangely nervous under everyone’s gazes and wondered where this conversation was going.
“Since when did Lavendra fall out of your favor?” I asked.
As soon as the words left my lips, Tork’s cheeks reddened, suggesting that it was quite the opposite. I stared at him a beat, surprised. It had never occurred to me that anyone could love Lavendra, let alone Tork. And love was just as foreign to Couterie as it was to the Entente.
“You don’t want her to be Couterie, because you like her,” I tested.
“Let me know if you need any help preparing for the Challenge. Relax, Farrow. I am not pining away for you. I have another reason to be invested in the outcome of this contest,” Tork said, ending the conversation just in time for dessert. I took this in.
Apparently I wasn’t the only one with secrets.