EIGHT

AT THE TOP OF THE STAIRS, A DOOR IS WAITING FOR US, poised between two ornate statues. Each one depicts the same girl in the white gown, one hand raised, holding a decorative glass lantern with a flame burning inside.

I stop, bracing myself on the wall. It was a very long staircase, and I’m winded.

“So…” I say over my shoulder to Ale. “Do you… think…”

I have to pause to suck in air. The sound is not flattering.

“Do you think I should knock on the door?” I manage at last. “Or is she going to open it with her special connection to all of the cathedral’s—”

The door swings inward to reveal the shadowy, imposing figure of a man.

“Hello.” I straighten up. “I’m Tatienne du Brodeur. I’m the—”

“I know,” he says.

He stands back like we’re meant to come inside, so we do. We’re in a long, narrow entrance hall. It’s empty, except for a small table in the very center holding a vase of white roses. As the man leads us along, I give them a wide berth. We don’t grow white roses in the House of Rosa. Nobody would want to decorate their home with flowers the color of death.

When we reach the far door, the strange man stops and turns toward us. He’s younger than I thought, actually—close to my age. He’s just very tall and broad in the shoulders. And he has a severe way about him. He looks like the sort of person who hates fun.

“You’re early,” he says.

“My apologies,” I say. “Perhaps there is such a thing as being too punctual, after all.”

He narrows his dark eyes. He has brown skin and perfect curly hair. His clothes, like the cathedral, are white and spotless, and the embroidery on his vest is finely detailed.

“The Heart won’t be able to meet with you now,” he says. “Surely you can appreciate how many demands she has on her time and energy.”

“Of course,” I say. “Is there somewhere we could wait, so we could start setting up…?”

He’s silent. He surveys Ale for a moment, but then, seemingly unimpressed, he turns back to me.

“What’s in your pocket?” he says.

I haven’t touched my pocket since I was standing at the bottom of the very winding staircase. I wish the people I’d eavesdropped on had mentioned something about the Heart having a fancy servant who is, apparently, all-seeing.

“Oh, these?” I reach for my sewing scissors, glad I didn’t bring something even more suspicious. “They’re just my favorite pair of—”

“You must be Madame du Brodeur!”

The voice comes from directly behind me. I want to pretend like it doesn’t scare me half to death, but it absolutely does. I scramble to collect myself and turn around with dignity.

It’s her. It’s the Heart. She’s standing right here, within arm’s reach, and the very fact of her presence is enormous—too enormous for this tiny hall. I expected her to look less immaculate up close, but her gown is pristine. Her long curls are artfully piled on top of her head, a delicate white rose still tucked behind one of her ears. I didn’t realize she was quite so tall. Or quite so elegant in the face. If anything, the statues don’t do her justice.

I meet her eyes. They’re dark and glittering.

I know those eyes. I’ve seen them before.

I drop my gaze as fast as I can.

“Yes,” I say. “That’s me.”

My voice comes out hoarse. The hall has suddenly gotten very cold.

I saw this girl in the catacombs. I saw her, and she saw me, and she had something on her hands that looked very much like blood.

“I’m so glad you could make it,” she’s saying, her accent light and airy and completely carefree. “I’m such an admirer. That gown you did last season, with the gigantic train and the— Theo, get out of their way, would you? We shouldn’t force them to linger in the hall.”

“They’re early,” the serious-looking boy insists from the door.

“I have time,” she says.

The boy opens the door and stands aside, but he doesn’t look happy about it.

I can’t go into her quarters. She’s going to recognize me. She’s going to see through me, just like the watercrea did.

Ale is nudging me into the room, and I don’t want to go, but I don’t know how to stop it, either. I find myself in a parlor with a high vaulted ceiling. The most striking feature is a towering stained-glass window on the far wall. It depicts two raised, white-gloved hands shooting a cascade of water into the air. The blue glass scatters the dark red light from the veil outside, creating shards of color all over the tile floor.

The Heart shuts the door. We’re alone with her.

I reach up to make sure the handkerchief on my head is in place. My ruined hair is so distinctive. If somebody only caught a glimpse of me, it’s the thing they would remember.

“Please, sit down,” the Heart says.

We cross the room to perch on a love seat. I’m vaguely aware that Ale is looking at me with concern.

“Is something wrong?” he whispers.

I shake my head. I can still pretend to be an ordinary seamstress. I just have to learn more about this girl and her water. That’s all.

The Heart brings over a silver platter of food. I wonder why her servant didn’t stay for such a job. There are no signs of any maids, either. In fact, I notice as I subtly glance around, the room looks a bit dusty. I can see it floating in the beams of light filtering through the window.

The Heart pops the cork of a bottle that was already open and pours us very generous glasses of white wine.

“I’m sorry about my brother,” she says over the gurgling. “He means well. He’s just tragically uptight.”

I glance at the parlor door. So he wasn’t a servant. Now that it’s been pointed out to me, the two of them do resemble each other, all tall and dark and graceful.

Having a brother is very… nonmystical of her. The watercrea in Occhia didn’t have a family. I don’t know what to make of it. I don’t know what to make of any of this.

“He won’t—” I clear my throat. My accursed voice is still coming out raspy. “He won’t be joining us?”

“Oh, he’ll already be locked up in his study.” She waves a white-gloved hand at the far side of the room. “He loves his work too much to sit around and engage in our chatter.”

She plops down across from us in a flurry of skirts.

“But for me…” She nudges the silver tray closer to us. “Getting to know my people is my favorite part of being the Heart of Iris. It’s so much more intimate than standing on top of a fountain and looking down at you, although of course, I love that, too. Cakes?”

I eye the tiny squares, frosted in delicate pastel shades. I try to convince myself to pick one up.

The girl takes a gulp of her wine.

“Anyway, Madame du Brodeur, let’s talk about you.” She looks at Ale. “And you, as well. Are you her assistant? What’s your name?”

Ale freezes, looking mortified. There are approximately three cakes in his mouth.

“You can call me Verene, by the way.” The girl realizes that he’s incapacitated and jumps in to fill the silence. “Madame du Sauveterre is fine if you insist on sticking to formalities. Please tell me how you’d like to be addressed. And then tell me everything about yourselves and your work.”

I glance up to see her settling back onto her love seat, like she fully expects us to regale her with hours of seamstress stories.

I can’t sit here for that long. Not with her right across from me, staring at me so attentively.

“Actually, Madame du Sauveterre—” I say.

“You really can call me Verene,” she says.

“V-Verene,” I say. “If it’s not too rude to suggest, perhaps we could talk as we begin our work? I must admit, in situations such as these, I often find that I become rather… shy.”

She’s quiet. Just for a moment. I resist the urge to slip a hand into my pocket and make sure my sewing scissors are still within reach.

“Of course it’s not too rude!” she says. “You’re the brilliant artist. We shall do whatever makes you the most comfortable. Let me just show you to my—”

She leaps to her feet and abruptly sways, like she’s dizzy. Ale reaches for her, because his instinct is to be a polite gentleman. I’m halfway to my feet, because if something is happening, I have to be prepared. But she’s already braced herself on the arm of the love seat and recovered.

“Oops,” she says. “I think I drank that wine a little too fast.”

She winks at Ale before she strides away. He blushes demurely.

“Get ahold of yourself,” I mutter at him, trailing behind Verene out of the parlor.

“She’s nice,” he whispers. “I was so afraid. But she’s nice.”

That doesn’t change what I saw in the catacombs.

We quietly follow Verene into a side hall. There are three doors, and Verene heads for the one at the back. She opens it—it wasn’t locked, I observe—and slips through.

“Emanuela,” Ale whispers, hovering for a second, “if she can really make water out of nothing, that would be amazing. It would solve everything.”

For a moment, I imagine the streets of Occhia filled with beautiful, bubbling statues of Verene. I imagine my people gathering in the cathedral and singing to her as water pours down on their heads. I imagine them calling her the Heart of Occhia and worshipping her forever.

My stomach turns.

“Well—” Ale is still talking, apparently. “It would solve almost everything. We’d still have to figure out… y’know. How to get the water back home. But if she agreed to—”

We reach the doorway and stop short. Verene is waiting there for us.

“I have to ask you a very important question,” she says.

She leans closer. I catch a whiff of sweet, flowery perfume, and it takes everything I have not to leap back.

“Is something wrong?” she says softly. “Do you not have enough food?”

I open my mouth.

“You ate the cakes very quickly,” she says, looking at Ale. “And I’m not trying to be rude, I promise, but you both look a bit… peaky.”

“Oh, that?” I’m speaking a little too quickly. “We stayed up all night preparing for this appointment. We were very nervous. That’s all.”

“There’s no need to be nervous,” Verene says. “You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I say.

“And everything is all right at the Circle du Brodeur?” she says.

“Yes,” I say.

“And you’re not lying to me because you’re too shy to ask for help?” she says.

“No,” I say.

“If you ever need anything, you can ask me, you know,” she says. “Anything at all. I won’t be able to magic it up like I do the water, of course. But I’ll find a way. That’s what I do.”

“We know,” I say. “Thank you.”

I come dangerously close to meeting her eyes. I quickly look away.

“Well, all right,” she says, but I can tell that she’s not convinced.

We’re in what I assume to be her room. It’s a high-ceilinged, hexagonal space, with a plush canopy bed underneath a beautiful chandelier. It’s also a huge mess. There are literal piles of white gowns on the floor. I would say that it’s totally unnecessary for her to be commissioning a new one, but I happen to think one can never have enough gowns.

“So.” She marches into the room and quickly kicks something under the bed. Judging by the sound, it’s an empty wine bottle. “Based on what I told you in my invitation, I’m sure you have ideas. Perhaps you can start by showing me your drawings?”

“Of course,” I say, setting down my sewing kit. “I— Oh. Hmm. I must have left my sketchbook in the parlor. I’ll go get it. But if you’d like, my assistant would love to see some of your favorite gowns. You have so many beautiful ones.”

“Certainly,” she says, and reaches for the heap of clothes on her bed. “So, I like this one because of the pearls. They’re just very pretty in the light—”

The dress is a hideous mess of lace and bows. I glimpse that much before I slip out of the room. I shut the door most of the way and survey the empty hall, my heart pounding in my ears.

I’ve quickly gathered that Verene enjoys talking. If she’s busy carrying on about her gowns, I can get away with a little more time than it reasonably takes to walk down to the parlor and fetch a sketchbook out from between the love seat cushions. But I still won’t have long.

I don’t know what, exactly, I’m looking for. I just need something else—something besides a glimpse in the catacombs that I could barely comprehend.

I try the second door in the hall and peek inside to find a dimly lit bedroom. It looks like the much neater sibling of the bedroom I’ve already seen.

The knob of the third door is locked. I decide that makes it the most promising avenue. I glance back at the end of the hall, where I can faintly hear Verene prattling on, and root around in my hair. There are still a couple of pins buried deep. I stick one into the lock and start jiggling. Breaking and entering wasn’t a formal part of my Occhian education. I merely got tired of trying to snoop around people’s houses during dinner parties and running into locked doors.

When I ease open the door and realize I’m looking at a study, I freeze. Verene said her brother spends a lot of time in his study. But after a moment, it becomes very obvious that the room is not only empty but abandoned. There are no books on the bookshelves and nothing on the desk. There’s a thick layer of dust on all the furniture.

I slip inside and shut the door. There are no lanterns lit. The only light comes through two narrow windows at the back. The veil is starting to turn black as night falls, and I have to squint to see.

Hanging on the wall behind the desk is a map of the city of Iris, drawn from above. There’s the cathedral, of course, and the winding streets that form an intricate ring around it. From here, it’s easy to see that the neighborhoods aren’t laid out in an exact copy of my home. This city is almost like Occhia. But it’s not.

My eyes catch on a small dot drawn near the back corner of the cathedral. It’s right where the watercrea’s tower would go.

There used to be a tower here. There used to be prisoners wasting away in cells and a woman taking their blood and a city living in fear. And they tore it all down and wiped themselves clean and now they have… this. A girl and her brother, living in an empty cathedral, surrounded by more water than they’ll ever need.

I wonder how a city could possibly change so quickly.

Behind me, the door creaks, and I stiffen and turn around, already working on my excuse.

It’s not Verene’s brother, whom I expected. It’s a woman I haven’t seen yet. She’s small and bony, with a touch of gray in her hair. She’s wearing a white apron, and she’s looking at me with flat, dark eyes.

“Snooping?” she says without preamble.

“Looking for the washroom, actually,” I say, curtsying. “I’m Tatienne du Brodeur. I’m a seamstress of the Circle du Brodeur. I just stopped in to work with Madame du Sauveterre on her anniversary gown. And you are…?”

“All the guests snoop,” she says. “You’re curious. I know.”

“Well,” I say, “perhaps a little.”

“But most of them don’t go so far as to pick the locks,” she says.

I smile politely. “Could you show me to the washroom?”

Her face betrays nothing, but she stands aside to let me out. She shuts the door behind me, pulls a key out of her apron, and locks it.

“And yes,” she says. “It belonged to her. That’s why it was locked.”

“What?” I say.

“The study belonged to the Eyes,” she says.

A chill runs up my spine. From the way she says the Eyes, I know exactly who she’s talking about. She’s talking about this city’s version of a woman who kept people in a tower and took their blood.

“She… she had—” I’m struggling to figure out the words. “My apologies. I just didn’t know the Eyes had a… study.”

“It was where she tutored them,” she says. “She never hired any tutors. Always did it herself.”

“Tutored who?” I say.

The woman looks at me like I’m very dense. “Her children.”

My first thought is that a watercrea couldn’t have had children. My second thought is that I don’t know why I’m so sure about that, because apparently, I don’t know anything about watercreas at all.

“Were you here?” I say, my mouth dry. “Before… before the Heart was…?”

“Before the Eyes got sick?” she says. “Yes. I was a nursemaid for the twins. Now I’m their housekeeper. So you can understand why I don’t appreciate it when people pick locks to snoop around in their private quarters.”

“I’m very sorry,” I say with incredible humbleness, if I do say so myself. “I wish I wasn’t so nosy, but I just can’t seem to help myself. Anyway, I’ll just be on my way to the—”

Then I see the stain on the housekeeper’s white apron. It’s just a smear on the corner, but it’s unmistakable.

Blood.

It takes me a moment to realize that I’ve been staring at it for too long. The housekeeper has followed my gaze.

I wait for her to explain why there’s blood on her apron. She doesn’t.

“The washroom’s around the corner,” she says. “Off the parlor, next to the big white vase.”

She makes her way out of the hall. But not before she gives me a final, watchful look over her shoulder.

I’m suddenly very aware of the fact that I left Ale alone. I grab the sketchbook as fast as possible and return to Verene’s bedroom. She’s sitting at the dressing table on the far side of the room, Ale hovering politely over her shoulder. She’s showing him her jewelry box. There’s a white rose tucked behind his ear, just like the one behind her ear.

I don’t know why the rose is the thing that feels like entirely too much, but it is. This girl is hiding something. She can’t just sit there with her sparkling eyes and her singsong voice and put flowers in my best friend’s hair.

“Oh, there you are,” Verene says as I join them. “We were just—”

I put the sketchbook on the dressing table. “The drawings.”

Verene flips through the sketches. I scanned through them earlier and discovered that they’re all hideously frilly.

She stops on what’s undoubtedly the ugliest one. “Oh, I like this. It’s so dramatic. That’s what I want. I want to look… inspirational.”

“You are inspirational,” I say.

I need this to go faster. I need to learn as much as I can about the water and where it’s supposedly coming from. And then I need to get out of here and plan. I can’t think with her in my face.

“Oh, thank you,” Verene says sweetly, like people tell her she’s inspirational all the time. “I suppose I mean that I want to look more inspirational than usual. I just… well, I just love the people of Iris so much. When they see me, I want them to feel like…”

She trails off, studying herself in the mirror. For a second, I catch myself studying her, too. I take in her radiant skin and her soft hair, and I think about the way I looked right before my wedding. I looked perfect. Almost as perfect as she does.

“I want them to feel like we can do anything,” she finishes. “Together.”

“That’s a wonderful sentiment,” I say. “There is one thing about the gowns—since they are rather large, we just want to make sure that they won’t get in the way of your business as the Heart. Could you just describe what sort of things you’ll need to do with your magic—”

She’s looking at me in the mirror. She’s looking at the handkerchief over my hair, like it’s the first time she’s really noticing it. And then, before I can stop it, she’s looking right into my eyes.

I remember what the watercrea said to me when she had me captive on Ale’s bedroom floor.

Once I see you, I can’t let you go.

Verene turns around.

“Wait,” she says, a note of realization in her voice.

I rip off my handkerchief and fling it over Verene’s face. For a split second, she’s very still. I’m very still. I moved so quickly that I surprised even myself.

She reaches up and starts to pull the handkerchief off.

No. She knows who I am now. She knows what I saw.

I can’t let her go.

So I lunge at her and knock her off her chair.