Chapter Sixteen The Villainess Versus the Ingenue
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Villainess Versus the Ingenue
One lady of the court always succeeded in making the Emperor laugh. Queen Lia never seemed to care, but then, nobody was as lovely as Lia. Any other woman would have been jealous. Any other woman might have been right.
Time of Lies, ANONYMOUS
Dear Cobra,
I can’t take off the cursed necklace. Probably something to do with the curse. Don’t worry about it, though, the cursed necklace has no effect on me.
I have something important to tell you. The weight of the narrative has its own gravity.
The story wants certain events to happen.
The most important scenes happen no matter what, but people can play different roles within those scenes.
The Emperor rose and walked through the throne room carrying his enemy’s head, but he walked to me, not Lia, and he carried the king’s head, not the god’s.
Watch for people saying lines you remember from the books.
That’s a sign of the story falling back into place.
If you can’t change a scene, remember this. You can change the person in the scene. You can save anybody, if you’re willing to sacrifice somebody else.
Vipers together,
R.
Rae didn’t say thank you, or tell the Cobra how glad she was he had escaped.
She put the letter in a dead man’s hand, then returned to the Maidens’ Tower on a quest to find a bride.
In the original novels, Hortensia and Horatia Nemeth competed ferociously to win the Emperor’s attention.
Reading the series, Rae scorned them, but now she’d seen the Nemeths struggling in real life.
Easy to judge someone for being desperate when you were at a safe distance.
Maybe the twins weren’t greedy. Maybe they just wanted to be safe.
The twins loved their family. They were brave. One of the Horrors could make Key happy.
If either of them wanted to, after Key had mutilated their father.
As she approached the door, it opened. For a startled instant, Rae believed someone had set the candles burning early, but the silvery radiance emanated from Hortensia Nemeth’s skin. Rae presumed Hortensia had eaten the rest of the Flower by now. It didn’t seem to have changed anything.
“I was just leaving, my dear.” Hortensia did not meet Rae’s eyes as she proceeded down the shadowy staircase. Sometimes ladies-in-waiting carried lamps down the stairs so they wouldn’t stumble. Hortensia was her own lamp now.
The light disappearing down the staircase, Rae peered cautiously in through the open door, and found Horatia Nemeth grimly tidying her chambers.
“How is your father?” Rae asked apprehensively.
Horatia devoted the intensity of a sun to folding clothes. “The healers are seeing to him. The Emperor was gracious to spare his life.”
“I’m extremely sorry about what happened.”
“We must bow to the Emperor’s inscrutable will,” Horatia replied.
She didn’t mention her father insulting Rae. Perhaps the Horrors felt it was fine to insult immoral women. When enough insults rained down, everyone believed that was just how the sky worked. Only Key had cared.
Key had also violently overreacted.
Rae asked, “Did you hear a new Queen’s Trials will take place, so the Emperor can choose his bride?”
Horatia shook a sheet as if it were a sabre. “What an honour for the lady.”
“What if he chose you?” Rae asked. “Could you love him? The gods have decreed that I—I can’t be his true love, but I need to find someone who can. You used the Flower I entrusted to you. So you owe me your true answer.”
“Then, whether he be god or man, I fucking hate him, my dear.” Horatia gave her a polite nod. “Look elsewhere for a loyal queen.”
Rae sighed, unsurprised. Many would find undead attacks on their relatives a turn-off.
She pivoted. “You still owe me a favour. Can you assemble the maidens? Surely one of them will do what neither of us can, and love him truly.”
Horatia’s fist clenched in the bedsheet. Her father was wounded, and she absolutely did not care about the love life of the man responsible. Her clenched fist said all that.
Her face expressed only ladylike curiosity. “How many favours are you going to ask, my dear?”
Abruptly, Rae tired of playing nice. She wasn’t any good at that game, and nobody ever believed in it.
Instead, the Beauty Dipped In Blood’s red lips curved in a smile sharp enough to carve out pounds of flesh. “How many favours is your sister’s life worth?”
Horatia said, “I’ll assemble the maidens.”
Lady Horatia, daughter of the commander general, ran a ladies’ tea party like a military campaign.
Within an hour, every lady remaining in the Maidens’ Tower was gathered in a room known as the Room of Courtesies and Curtsies.
The curtains were delicate seashell pink, the chairs and tables dainty as confections made from sugar.
The only gentleman in attendance was Lady Parthenope’s flatulent lapdog.
People swiftly grew tired of nightmares coming true. Everyone seemed relieved to sit around and gossip.
The Beauty Dipped In Blood prowled around the dainty furnishings, on the hunt for a heroine.
The late king had kept many ladies-in-waiting, but several were killed in the ghoul attack at the Court of Air and Grace, more when the dead rose from the abyss to eat the rich, and yet more had fled in terror.
Fewer than a dozen remained, but Rae knew exactly what she was looking for.
There were two main types of heroine. Lia’s kind, the most gorgeous woman in any room, radiant in both face and character, desired by all.
Another type of heroine was the type written for women readers to relate to.
Someone not that pretty, while conforming to all social standards of attractiveness.
Often skinny and brunette, though dishwater blondes, slightly-fiery redheads, and girls born with mystically strange-coloured hair might be considered.
If the heroine believed she was a painfully ordinary individual despite her naturally purple hair.
This type of heroine was often shy, though possessed of inner strength that would eventually awe everybody around her.
She didn’t think she was beautiful, but luckily other characters assured her when you really looked at her, her true beauty shone.
Other characters also called her clever or stubborn or amazing, though she seldom showed those traits, because readers might not relate to them.
The hero was always mysteriously drawn to her, which made giving a specific reason to be drawn to her totally unnecessary.
Rae always found that type of heroine insulting. Why should women relate to someone with as much personality as a rice pudding?
This was no time to quibble. They had an emergency on their hands. It was imperative Rae discover Little Miss Nondescript But Irresistible immediately.
A few ladies seemed cautiously hopeful about the Emperor. Getting married was a noblewoman’s only means of employment, and this was an exciting new job opportunity. Rae simply needed to select the right candidate.
Several ladies became visibly uncomfortable under the Beauty Dipped In Blood’s intense scrutiny.
“Must you be so obvious, glaring the competition away?” spoke up a lady in orange muslin.
“I don’t have time to be subtle.”
Intricate schemers sometimes waited years for their plans to pay off, but she was on the clock here! Rae rolled her eyes, dismissing the lady in orange as a contender. Too much personality. And too many friends; this kind of heroine would have two at most. More likely none.
A couple of ladies were reading religious tracts. Rae saw why that might seem a good idea, if you were being considered as a bride for the gods’ son, but she knew Key. He wouldn’t want to be worshipped. He wanted to be loved.
Nobody in the room even had a mystical hair colour.
“Not even a sassy redhead,” Rae murmured.
“Red is actually a very unusual hair colour,” a woman said in an offended voice.
“Not in books!” The woman stared as if Rae was deranged. That was fair.
A couple more ladies were discussing other men they had their eye on. Rae mentally scratched them off her list. Life was too short to deal with love triangles.
A woman in mint green whispered shyly to Lady Parthenope, “The new Emperor does have a certain dark allure, but… he appears deranged and immoral.”
“A gods’ son can’t be immoral,” contributed another woman, face hidden behind a religious tract. “Everything a gods’ son does is by definition moral. He’s punishing evildoers.”
“By having ghouls eat them?”
The religious lady shrugged. “Divine wrath. Very standard. I, for one, support the merciless extermination of sinners.”
Everyone edged away along the exquisite sofas from the supporter of merciless extermination. A girl in the corner almost dropped her book.
Rae shook her head. Key didn’t need that kind of positive reinforcement.
“I won’t enter a Queen’s Trials in which I might get killed, in order to marry someone who might kill me. I think the murderous impulses are a problem,” the mint-green-gowned girl persisted.
In the books, these Trials were held later, once the ladies of the court knew how devoted the Emperor could be to a woman he loved. Right now, this woman didn’t know Key. It was understandable that she didn’t want to risk her life. Others nodded in agreement with her.
Rae needed to convince these women, and she believed she knew how. So many wanted stories of beasts and beauties, agony and redemption. So many dreamed of love stronger and more terrifying than death.
Rae suggested, “Think outside the box.”
She raised her voice, loud enough to make the whole room turn and listen to the sales pitch.