Scene XVII The Château Gardens #3
My eyes found the diamonds on her neck again, and I felt a rare shock of guilt. She thought I was truly her friend, and I wished I could be. It had crossed my mind to steal her necklace for my father, but I decided then that I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t hurt her. She was too kind to me.
“I wish I could go,” I said with mischief. “I would gorge myself on as many pastries as possible. Then I would stand on the table and sing a loud bawdy song and scandalize the whole court. I would go down in history.” I swept a dramatic bow. “Alas, I have not the dress. Nor the jewels.”
“I could give you these.” Marie reached for the clasp of the diamonds. “Come here. I want to see how you look in them.”
I obeyed her, because I always did what she said. She had a warmth, a light, that drew me into her orbit—I was a moth and she a flame, I the tides and she the moon. Whatever we were, she was always, always the light, and I the thing skulking in the dark.
I had longer hair back then, a tousle of jet black that just passed my shoulders. She tucked it behind my ears meticulously, her fingertips hot against my ears. “Lift up your hair.”
I did as asked. Tide to moon, moth to flame.
The diamonds settled their weight carefully into my skin.
Marie sucked in an excited breath. “Oh, Odile. I do wish you could see yourself.”
I was certain I looked ghoulish, a filthy peasant in noblesse gold. Still, I put my fists on my hips and struck a pose. “How do I look?”
She smiled delightedly. “Beautiful.” She began to fiddle with her earrings. “Here, let’s—”
“Marie.”
We both froze.
Madame d’Auvigny stood at the mouth of the stables, her silhouette like a giant’s against a whitewashed sky.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Her voice was not like the Step-Queen’s.
Instead of being needle-sharp, it was a blunt weapon, every syllable a hammer strike.
And with every one, Marie flinched as if struck.
“Get away from that girl. I told your father that giving you a peasant playmate was a terrible idea, and here is the evidence.” She turned her eyes on me, two boulder-gray weights that seemed to press in on my skull.
“Shame on you, leading my daughter into such boorish activities. Evidently you’ve been corrupting her, and you will be punished accordingly. ”
Fear speared through me. Serving girls weren’t treated kindly. I’d seen vicious slaps and pitiless whippings in my short time masquerading as one, and it had made me hate the Augier king all the more.
I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t speak.
My heart was pounding—I wanted to shout that it wasn’t fair, that this had been Marie’s idea.
I’d never been easily cowed, but something about Madame d’Auvigny’s looming silhouette—the sharp points of her shoulders, the precision of her stare—made me think too much of Regnault, and I couldn’t force a single word through my throat.
I turned desperate eyes to Marie. Help me, I wanted to cry. Tell her the truth. Tell her I don’t deserve punishment. Do something. Anything.
But Marie was looking at her feet.
“Marie, come away,” Madame d’Auvigny said with vicious calm.
“You’re going to get your dress dirty. And get that necklace off that girl’s neck.
If that cow from Malezieu saw how you’d sullied them…
well. She has the King’s ear, and we need his favor, and I will not have you ruining this for me with your foolishness. ”
Marie didn’t look me in the eye. With cold, jerky movements, so unlike the warmth of minutes before, she pulled the diamonds from my neck.
My cheeks burned with humiliation as their weight left me.
The fragile trust we’d built over weeks fissured more with every movement.
And when she walked away, leaving me there alone, it shattered with a snap.
Fortune, for once, was on my side. In the chaos of the banquet, my punishment was forgotten, and I was assigned to serve the noblesse.
One red-clad, masked figure among many, I went unnoticed.
And I profited from the chaos and press of the crowd to bump into Marie d’Odette—lingering tired-eyed and inattentive near the wall—knock her to the floor, and pretend to help her up while slipping a chain of shimmering diamonds from her neck.
“I don’t know when I lost it. I’m not sure if it was during the banquet or after.
” A breeze has picked up, ruffling the short, downy hairs that frame Marie’s face.
In the moonlight her eyes are twin silver ponds, rippling with regret.
She rubs her arms, and I nearly offer her my jacket.
Five years may have passed, but some part of me is still drawn to her, still seeking her out in the dark, even though I once vowed to hate her.
“The Step-Queen was furious. The necklace was an heirloom, worth as much as an estate. She called me frivolous and careless. She went so far as to ask if I had stolen it. So you can imagine how she reacted when she ordered my rooms searched and found the necklace under my pillow.”
Something inside me wilts. So that’s what happened. I had thought myself careful, clever even. Subtly plucking at a knot that I myself had tied, unraveling it without anyone noticing. But it seems I was wrong.
“She was most angry at my mother. For raising a thief and a liar as a daughter. Told my mother she never wanted to see my face at court again, that she would ensure the Dauphin would never marry me. So you see. Reputation ruined.”
And I’m the one who ruined it, I should say, but I can’t bring myself to admit the truth. And why should I? That would only make her resent me, and she’s much too useful. I need her on my side if I’m going to complete this mission.
Instead, I press my hand to my throbbing arm. An owl hoots in the distance. The night bears down, coldly watchful, and I find I can’t look Marie in the face. “You’re worried about your reputation, yet you’re helping me ,” I point out. “Despite the fact that I’ve stolen your identity. Why?”
She chews on her bottom lip, troubled. “You managed to convince Aimé to ask for your hand in marriage, which I do not know if I could have done. You’ve avoided suspicion thus far.
I imagine you will continue to do so—if you were to do something truly ridiculous, then you wouldn’t have gone about it this way, because anyone will realize something is wrong if Marie d’Odette d’Auvigny begins to act bizarrely. ”
I stare at her in surprise. She has read me like a book, and the realization leaves me simultaneously awestruck and deeply uneasy.
She continues, “Besides, I do not think you intend to continue this charade forever. If I were to guess, you plan to eventually reveal your true identity. You’ll want to gloat, show the court how you fooled them. Once they know you were never truly me, I will be absolved of any blame.”
I snort. “You really think you know everything, don’t you?”
“I know you,” she says quietly.
No, you don’t, I want to scream. Because if you did, you would never be standing here, trusting me like a fool.
Marie’s eyes are soft, and I clench my teeth, suddenly hating her, hating what she does to me.
“I care little for the court,” she says finally.
“It is a vile, unwelcoming place. Aimé is all that is good about it, and you’re protecting him.
This arrangement of ours is bizarre, I will admit, but…
this winged form is proving useful. And…
you’re not as wicked as you pretend to be, Odile.
I think, when the time comes for you to make a decision on this quest of yours, you will make the right one. ”
Ah. That’s what this is about. She thinks she can change me.
“You’re wrong,” I say sharply, pushing up off the well, ignoring the throb of my wounded arm. “I know what you’re thinking: that deep down I have a good heart. That I will turn back to the light. You have no idea what I’m capable of. You have no idea what’s at stake here.”
“I do,” she says quietly. “You told me yesterday. Magic. And if you would simply tell me the truth, the whole truth, about what you’re trying to do, I could be your ally.
I miss the flowers dearly, Odile. I want to see real white snow, not the soot-black curse that smothers us every winter.
And I wish, more than anything, for a world where you don’t have to be afraid every time you spill blood. ”
I hate her. I hate her. Because for a moment I am tempted. For a moment I want to tell her everything. She’s under my skin, tugging at my most soft-bellied desires, making me hesitate, making me weak. But I’m not thirteen anymore. I won’t fall for that again.
“You enjoy this, don’t you?” I seethe, gripping my injured arm. “Toying with my emotions. Dissecting me, piece by piece.”
“I told you, sorciere,” says Marie—infuriating, ethereal, unbreakable Marie, Marie who betrayed me, and whom I betrayed in turn. “I’m good at puzzles.”