The Rose Bargain

Chapter Seven

Bram approaches, and the sun comes out with his smile. His gray eyes are bright, and he’s grinning wide enough to show his dimple.

“Congratulations, Lady Ivy,”

he says, just quiet enough for me to hear.

It’s almost impossible to catch my breath, but the weight of the crown makes my victory feel real.

A footman stomps three times, and the crowd falls into a hush, but the queen is already walking back into the palace, the train of her gown trailing behind her. She waves an elegant hand dismissively. “We’ll reconvene for the Pact Parade in one half hour. Let’s have some clever bargains this year, girls. I’m getting bored.”

With the garden party still in full swing, the debutantes are shepherded upstairs to the hall outside the throne room.

There are a little less than one hundred of us this year. Twenty-four girls are covered in mud, eighteen of them have tear-streaked faces, having lost their whole futures in the course of a few hours. All of them eye the crown on my head with barely disguised envy. My stomach churns with a strange guilt.

We’re arranged alphabetically by family name, so I’m near the front.

Each girl will enter alone, present herself to the queen, and make her bargain.

It’s like this that we are delivered to her, like flowers in a bouquet waiting to be pressed between the same pages. Beautiful at the cost of being fragile and stuck forever.

Though only six of us will be making bargains to attract the hand of a prince, all of us have marriage on the mind. What bargain will help one snag a baron under fifty, a duke with a full mouth of teeth, a lord with the prettiest summer estate? These are the calculations we have been trained in.

The same awkward glances pass between me, Greer, Faith, Emmy, Marion, and Olive.

We’ve all just become each other’s competition, but the air is thick with mutual pity. We’re only able to look at each other with sidelong glances. I don’t doubt the same two questions play in all our heads: What have we done to ourselves? and What will we do to each other?

The other eighteen girls, the ones who didn’t pass the maypole test, stand in various states of disarray. A few are openly weeping, while others try to keep their heads held high. Sara and Deidre seethe.

The clock strikes three, bells tolling out above the city. The doors to the throne room swing open, and Penelope Atkins enters first.

We take a collective breath as she walks in, but the hallway stays silent, save for the sound of breathing, while we wait. We’re all too nervous to make a joke of the moment we’ve been raised for, the single opportunity we get to experience magic.

After a few minutes the doors to the throne room open once more and Penelope Atkins exits. The difference is obvious immediately.

Penelope’s once dull strawberry blond hair is now falling around her shoulders in cascades of thick, glowing auburn.

The silk slipper on her left foot is soaked through with blood.

Her skin is clammy, her face pale, but her mouth is turned up in triumph. She hobbles out of the hall, leaving a smear of wet crimson footprints in her wake.

Wendla Avignon goes next. She exits less than five minutes later, her eyes damp with tears, but no other visible differences.

Then it is my turn.

I straighten my shoulders and take a deep breath as the doors swing open before me.

I think back to myself at eleven years old, sitting on the floor of my bedroom. My blond hair was tied up in ribbons, and I was safe and small.

I used to fantasize about this moment, scrawl in the margins of my school papers what I might ask for.

I imagined asking to talk to animals or fly. I pictured myself with the ability to make flowers bloom with the palm of my hand or to conjure rain clouds from nothing. If I only had a single opportunity to touch magic, I wasn’t going to waste it. I couldn’t fathom why people would ask for something as boring as a prettier face.

I close my eyes and give myself the space of a breath to mourn for my younger self. I’m sorry, I whisper through time, for all the things you didn’t get to be.

The throne room looks so much bigger without anyone in it.

I cross the expanse to where the queen sits.

“Lady Ivy Benton.”

Her voice is low and syrupy.

I curtsy deeply and rise to meet her eyes. My hands are shaking, so I cross them behind my back and fiddle with the bow tied at the base of my spine. Perfect, I have to be perfect.

Queen Mor grins, revealing a row of perfect teeth, her canines sharper than any I’ve ever seen. “Tell me, Miss Benton, what have you come to ask for?”