Petra and Anouk hurried upstairs, and Anouk cleaned her wounds as best she could; fortunately, the gash at the back of her head had stopped bleeding. They washed off the mud and changed clothes and then found the rest of the acolytes gathered in the enclosed cloister to watch the Royals’ arrival, their breath fogging the glass.
The Royal procession descended upon the Black Forest like something out of a dream. The flock of birds was only the first herald. Next, the treacherous mountain path, normally accessible only by foot or by mule, smoothed and unrolled itself, carpet-like, into a meandering road that led across the bridge to the abbey’s front steps. Birch trees curled their branches inward to form an archway. Snow swept itself to either side of the road and rose up in ice statues.
Anouk and Petra kept carefully to the back of the group of girls, placing as much space as they could between themselves and Frederika, who threw them wild-eyed stares.
“Look,” Jolie cried. “That must be the Court of the Woods!”
They had all heard rumors of the various Courts, and it turned into a fabulous game of guessing which Court was which and trying to name the princes and princesses who stepped out. The Court of the Woods’ delegation drove up in a hunter-green Daimler with spotless chrome and oak running boards. It purred as it stopped in front of the bridge, and a princess dressed in thick furs climbed out on the arm of a duke in an ink-black suit. Behind the Daimler, a pair of cream-colored coupes that the girls guessed belonged to the Crimson Royals pulled up, and a delegation of three—the queen and her sisters—climbed out, their eyelashes and brows dusted in butterfly wings. Next to arrive was the Lunar Court, composed of a gray-haired king and his brown-skinned son, whose barely tamed long hair was swept back in a loose plait. The Minaret Court came in a horse-drawn carriage that, no doubt, had been glamoured to look like something mundane to the Pretties in the valley—a trolley car, perhaps. A count and countess descended, both dressed in red capes and with garnets dotted around their eyes.
“Where’s the Court of Isles?” Marta asked. “They’re missing.”
Anouk kept her mouth shut. She’d been careful since her arrival not to tell anyone but Petra about the Coven of Oxford’s takeover of London. She liked most of the acolytes but that didn’t mean she trusted them. They were all willing to risk their lives for magic—it wasn’t a stretch to think they might try to seek favor among the Haute by warning the Oxford witches that Anouk and Rennar were planning their downfall.
A fleet of silver motorcycles that could only belong to the reckless Barren Court arrived, and the missing London Royals were forgotten.
There was one car left at the end of the procession, a sleek black Rolls-Royce with a gleaming hood ornament in the shape of a crow instead of a winged woman. Anouk drew in a breath. She’d seen it before, outside the townhouse and in front of Castle Ides. The door opened and there he was, Prince Rennar, dashing in his frost-gray suit and crown of golden briars. A few of the acolytes sighed. He limped only slightly. If you didn’t know his right leg was made of stone, you might not even notice.
Two lesser Parisian Royals accompanied him: a young black man wearing a hat that shaded his face and a preteen girl in a silver gown and glass slippers with polished black claws affixed to each of her fingernails. She bore an uncanny resemblance to Countess Quine, who had been dead for months and whose body, as far as Anouk knew, was still at the Château des Mille Fleurs, decomposing in the rose beds. She hadn’t known that Quine had a daughter, but the Royals valued family only as far as lineage. It was entirely possible the girl had wanted her mother dead as much as Anouk had.
“I thought Prince Rennar’s entourage would be twice that size,” Sam mused. Anouk felt a stab of guilt—it would have been twice that size if Anouk hadn’t killed the other members.
Jolie let out a long sigh and stroked her braid dreamily. Seeing the glittering princes and princesses setting their fine shoes on the abbey grounds only highlighted how bleak their home truly was. Bare floors. Dust and the cobwebs. The eternal winter.
Anouk glanced again at Frederika. A bruise was blooming on the girl’s left temple, although it was mostly hidden by her hair.
A car door slammed and Anouk’s attention returned to the Royals. The Crimson Court delegation’s vehicle seemed to have bumped fenders with another delegation’s. Curt words were exchanged between the Court of the Woods and the Barren Court, and then, suddenly, the girls heard someone pointedly clearing his throat right behind them.
Several of the girls jumped.
Duke Karolinge gave them a stern look. “Girls. You’ve seen cars before. You’ve seen dresses and diamonds. Don’t embarrass yourself by swooning over riches. Show the Royals that you are not impressed by their glamour; you didn’t fight your way here to learn how to shroud yourself in luxury. You came with nobler aims.” He added in a gentler voice, “Tomorrow you will have your chance to prove your worth.”
A ripple of anxiety spread through the girls. As dazzling as the Royals’ glitz was, it heralded the next day’s deadly trials.
“Today, however,” the Duke continued, “is just like every other day. There are chores. Responsibilities. Go.” He barked the command and the girls leaped to attention. “Do a final check of the guest rooms. Freshen the rose petals. Glasses of champagne waiting in each room. Anouk.” He rested a heavy hand on her shoulder. She flinched, all too aware of the bell hidden in her clasped palm. “They’ll expect perfection from tonight’s Eve Feast.”
Her shoulders relaxed when she realized he was talking about her cooking. “They’ll have it.” Not that they deserve it.
His black eyes held hers for a long second, and she felt her cheeks burning as brightly as the stolen bell. She threw herself into a long, sweat-soaked afternoon over the kitchen stove.Sam and Karla were abuzz with gossip as they helped her chop and peel. They discussed which Royal lady wore the loveliest dress, which had the most enviable shoes, which young men they’d sneak into a closet with. If anyone knew about Frederika’s attack that morning in the goat pen, it was forgotten, eclipsed by the Royals’ arrival.
While preparing courses, Anouk stole glimpses out the kitchen windows, but she never caught sight of Rennar. He was likely in one of the elegant upper chambers with the other guests, sipping something sweet, speculating about which girl might survive the Baths. She wondered if he’d told the other Royals about her—the beastie girl he’d bargained with—or if their deal was a secret.
While the soufflé was baking, she grabbed the leftover ham scraps and stole away to visit Little Beau. When she reached the bottom stair, she made out a figure kneeling in the mud in front of Little Beau’s stall. She slowed, uncertain, the memory of Frederika’s ambush that morning still fresh. She grabbed one of the shovels. But from the clothes, she could tell that the person was a Royal. He was whispering something too low for her to hear. She curled her fingers around the shovel handle. If he tried to hurt Little Beau . . .
“Excuse me, monsieur.” Her words were hard.
The man turned. She couldn’t see his face in the shadows, but she recognized the hat. It was the baron who’d arrived with Rennar. He took a step into the lamplight.
Anouk’s throat went tight. It was a face she hadn’t expected. She was used to seeing his face dusted with potting soil, not rouge.
“Luc?” Her voice was breathy, uncertain. She felt as though she were seeing a ghost. Then he grinned and the spell broke.
“Dust Bunny.”
“Luc!” She dropped the shovel, stumbled toward him, and tripped over a basket of eggs, but he caught her before she fell. Laughing, she ran her hands over his arms and the sides of his face. “You’re here! You’re . . . you!”
“I came with Rennar from Paris.”
“But you were—”
“A mouse? Don’t remind me. He changed me back six weeks ago. I’ve been at Castle Ides with Viggo and the Goblins, keeping them company. Yesterday, Rennar handed me these pretty clothes and said we were taking a trip to the Black Forest. You can imagine my surprise. Which was even greater when he explained he’d made a deal with you and that my humanity was the prize.”
Anouk shook her head, confused. “But I saw you just this morning in an enchanted mirror. You were still a mouse in a cage.”
“Ah. What you saw was a different mouse, not me. Rennar changed me right away, but it seems the cat and the wolf had gotten used to having a mouse caged next to them. It kept them from wanting to kill each other. So Rennar had the idea of putting a regular mouse in the cage to distract them.”
Anouk groaned. “He might have bothered to send me a message. I spent weeks thinking he’d backed out of our deal, thinking you were still trapped!”
Luc rested his hands on her shoulders. “It’s okay. I’m me. And I’ve missed you, Dust Bunny. I came down here as soon as I could slip away from the Royals because I knew that wherever Beau was, you’d be nearby. Anouk, you can’t seriously be considering undergoing the Coal Baths.”
She lifted her chin. “I’m here, aren’t I? Of course I’m serious.”
He muttered something under his breath. “You must have hit your head. You can’t trust the prince.”
She dropped her voice. “He claims he’s tired of ruling. He’s agreed to give up his power and put it in the hands of the other orders, even to let the Pretties make some of their own decisions.”
Luc gave her an odd look.
“Look, I don’t trust him either, but we’re facing the same threat, and in a sense that makes us allies. Have you heard what’s happening in London?”
Luc’s face turned grave. “Yes. It’s all the talk in Paris. As soon as Rennar turned me human, I heard it on the lips of every lesser Royal. It’s all over the scryboard wires too. Double moons. Black rainbows. Apparently, when it first happened, the Pretties in London panicked. The witches cast a spell to convince them it was only an optical illusion caused by low-lying pollution. Still, the Haute is worried. There’s never been anything like this before.”
“That’s just it,” Anouk insisted, “there has been. I found something here in the Cottage library. The books are old, but the few pages I could salvage made reference to plagues that aren’t so different from the ones happening now. Gray rainbows instead of black ones. Three moons in the sky instead of two. Rainstorms of worms instead of toads. All of this happened five hundred years ago, across all of Europe, from Dublin to Prague. These plagues occur whenever the balance between technology and magic is upset. It’s referred to as the Noirceur, or the Darktime. Someone must have erased it from all the modern Royal records, but whoever it was overlooked the Cottage library. And the Duke has more books in his private collection, but I’m not allowed in.”
“You’ve broken into locked libraries before. Why don’t you use a whisper?”
She haltingly explained to him what had happened with her arrival and Saint’s bell. Luc’s face turned very grim. “Anouk, you’ve been here this whole time without your magic?”
She nodded reluctantly, then thrust a hand in her fresh apron and pulled out the bell. She smiled. “A few days ago, I stole it back. I’m going to carry it into the flames with me.”
“That’s your crux? Are you sure? The odds of survival are one out of—”
“I know.” Her fingers closed over the bell as her smile disappeared. “Alors, don’t remind me.”
The bell, her crux, would keep her alive, but she didn’t want to think about what that meant for the others. Petra. Esme. Marta. Jolie and Karla and Sam. Heida and Lise. Even Frederika. If she lived, odds were the others wouldn’t.
“You have to be completely certain, Anouk. You aren’t a Pretty, and the flames are designed to test Pretties. Who knows what they’ll make of you.”
She frowned at him. “Don’t make it sound like I’m spoiled cabbage, Luc. I’m a beastie and you are too. That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“Of course not, but is it enough to protect you from the fire?”
She shoved the bell in her pocket. “I’m certain, Luc. I promise.”
Music began playing in the great hall overhead. Luc didn’t move, but Anouk tipped her chin up, listening keenly. It was a dreary dirge on violin and viola, but hearing any music at all at the Cottage was like stumbling on a coconut-cream cake in a cemetery.
“The Eve Feast is starting. Zut, I haven’t finished mulling the wine.” She eyed Luc’s baron’s crest more closely. “No one knows you’re a beastie?”
He adjusted his hat. “Not a bad disguise, eh?”
“We can use this. If the Royals think you’re one of them, you can listen in for any mentions of the Coven of Oxford or the plagues in London. For all we know, some of the Royals might be in league with the witches. Could you do that?”
“Dust Bunny, I didn’t just water roses for Mada Vittora. I’ve been a spy longer than you’ve been alive.”
“Go, then,” she said, giving him a gentle push toward the stairs.
The music stopped and was replaced by the Duke’s muffled voice. He must have been introducing each of the delegations as part of his welcome speech. Luc reached the stairs but then raised a finger and circled back. “Ah. I almost forgot.” He reached into his pocket. “I brought this for Beau. He loved cupcakes.” He produced a slightly smushed miniature cake with dark brown frosting.
“Dogs can’t have chocolate, Luc.”
Little Beau, on the other side of the bars, whined low and insistently. Anouk knelt down and scratched his head, then fed him the ham scraps she’d pilfered from the kitchen. He wagged his tail.
Luc started for the stairs.
“Hold on.” She snatched the cupcake out of Luc’s hand. “Give me that. There’s no rule that says I can’t have chocolate.” She took a hefty bite, and for a wondrous but too-brief second, she leaned against the stairwell and savored the taste.
She finished it, then dusted off her hands. “Right. Now we can face the most powerful people in the world.”