Hecate used to say that the Future was the one thing you spent forever waiting for but most were not ready when it arrived. Madame Linea had filled my days with so many lessons and so much training that all the seasons had run their course again, and the spring was again upon us. The days and nights ran together, with me waking with the sun to train and falling asleep with my head in the Ana and Hecate watching over me. I wasn’t sure how ready I was yet, but I would not let even a second be wasted.
On the first night of spring, my Shadow, Holocene, was late again for getting me ready for dinner. After waiting, I laced up my own corset, but I left my hair for her to tackle. She came in a rush and shut the door behind her hard. She was carrying a tray of fruit.
“I’m sorry I’m late, Farrow.”
“No apologies. Only reason,” I instructed gently.
“There was another burning. I didn’t get your honeybread. I couldn’t walk past the square,” she said, sounding ashamed.
I took an automatic deep breath after she said it, and I immediately regretted it. The acrid smell clinging to her clothes filled my lungs and triggered my memories. The smell of flesh on the pyre. The Queen was at it again.
She had begun burning girls a couple of years after the Burning in the square. I snuck away from the orphanage each time, certain that somehow she had found one of my sisters. But each time it had been a human girl tied to the stake and not my sister. I never stayed to watch the girls burn. But their screams had followed me and stayed with me. I felt as if I could hear them now as Holocene apologized.
“No apologies. Only results,” I said again.
She nodded. I could see her stall another apology as she opened her lips and closed them again. She then laid out my brushes, combs, and hair adornments like I had hundreds of times for Lavendra. Holocene then smoothed out her skirt with her hands, which trembled as she did so. She was obviously still shaken by what she had seen in the square.
“One of the girls was only fifteen. Imagine. That’s younger than us,” she said as she approached and stood next to me in the mirror. She began braiding my hair. Her fingers were clumsy and the braids imperfect.
I frowned at our reflections. The Queen was keeping the story of the Entente alive, even though I was the only one left. She was using it now, as she had then, as a way to control the Queendoms. I had no love lost for humans. And there was a certain irony in the Queen burning her own in search of the Entente. I had held firm in my belief that my sisters were gone. Otherwise they would have come back for me. But the burning smell still reached inside me and unsettled me. It brought back the day of Hecate’s Burning over and over again. I assured myself that the feeling came more from the idea of the Past than the Present.
“Here,” I said, and retwisted my bun into one that was identical to hers. When I leaned over to fix an errant stray hair at the nape of Holocene’s neck, I flinched when I noticed the scarring behind her ears from her last alteration.
Holocene was trying. I could feel the effort in the strain of her voice and in the carefulness of her step. She was trying so hard to live up to the standards of the Couterie, but the real her was bucking against the imitation and making herself visible and heard with every gesture and sound she made.
“Thank you. But Madame Linea said I had to braid it myself. I’m not Couterie.”
“What Madame Linea doesn’t know won’t hurt her,” I said. But as I looked again at the girl’s scars and as I took in the smell of her hair, I got a flash of that very bad day again. I shook it off, but not before Holocene noticed that my hands were shaking.
“At least no one would dare burn one of the Couterie. We’re too important,” Holocene said.
“The Entente used to think that too,” I said quietly.
“What?” she asked, unsure.
“Never mind,” I said. I knew better than to speak of the Entente here. But the knowledge of Magrit’s actions against her own people loosened my tongue.
“You can take the girl out of the Shadows, but she will always be one . . . ,” a voice said as the door opened behind us.
I turned around, ready to admonish someone, but instead found myself face-to-face with Tork.
“When you stand still, I wouldn’t know that you weren’t Couterie all your life,” he teased. Tork walked into the room as I admired myself in the mirror.
“Don’t be kind,” I countered as Holocene bowed and exited.
“I’m never kind, remember?” he said sternly, but his eyes were smiling.
“I think you protest too much, Tork.”
“I think once you open your mouth, you most definitely are still a Shadow,” he said.
I laughed.
Tork and I had fallen into a routine of preparing each other for our Becomings. Tork was promised to Queen Papillion of the Third Queendom, Blenheim. Somehow what I had done to Tork and Lavendra had bonded us to each other. I was grateful for his friendship. It made me feel just a bit less guilty for breaking his heart.
We spent hours talking about Queen Papillion and the prince. Tork also had the inside track on what was happening outside Madame Linea’s walls. He knew about the wave of people who had been burned at the stake in search of the Entente. He even told me about a group of underground Resistance fighters.
I wished I could tell Tork that I was planning to put an end to it all. But I kept my secret sealed. Instead, I always turned the conversation back to love and Lavendra.
“It was just a crush,” Tork said.
“You’re always thinking about her. She’s in the room. She’s in every room. I can see it on your face,” I said.
“Love isn’t for our kind,” Tork replied. “We can’t afford to fall in love. Not with each other, and certainly not with our queen or prince.”
I nodded in agreement. There was zero chance of that happening. You can’t fall in love with a dead boy.