Chapter Twenty #2
Roland slapped his hand against his armrest. “Enough, Marguerite. What do you know about exaltation?”
It was an Alvionish word. She sounded it out, and I knew she was a stranger to it.
He clicked his tongue. “What can I offer you?”
Marguerite wiped her hands on her gown, her gaze traveling up and down his body before settling on his face. Then she laughed. “Do not flatter yourself.”
“I wasn’t offering myself—”
Marguerite lifted her palm to silence him. “We will have ourselves a trade. What you two want most, for what I want most. Fair is fair.”
Venusborn and their trades. Roland eyed her skeptically, sensing a trick, but she’d provided us with an opening we couldn’t refuse. “Fine.”
“So, you’ve found this proof.” Her small nose wrinkled. “Tell me what you suppose it means.”
“Your abilities changed when you met the king, did they not?” I said. “You found you could do more than just improve his looks. You could stop him from aging altogether. You could suspend his life.”
She shifted in her seat. Ah. There was the fear. But it was not the fear of being caught somewhere you shouldn’t be. It was the fear of impending loss.
“And now your methods are not working as well as they had before,” I guessed. “Philippe is aging. Dying. Perhaps, if we understood why, we could help you. Prospero was searching for something. Did he come here? Question you, at all?”
“Oh, yes, but he was not as direct as you. Prospero went after my ladies, cornered them, tried to bribe them to share my secrets. He planted spies in my household. His Mercuries opened my letters.”
“Exaltation was one of Prospero’s theories,” I explained to her. “He thought the position of the planets might affect our magic in strange ways. When Venus is in Pisces, for example, your powers would expand. You might even be able to grant Philippe immortal life.”
In Alvionish: “He believed this exaltation was how I kept Philippe alive all these years?”
I nodded.
She brushed lint from her gown, switching back to the comfort of Lionessian.
For my sake, she spoke slowly. “When I came to court, I was seventeen years old. I was to serve Queen Charlotte and apprentice to an old Venusborn who died soon after my arrival. Exertions in the bedchamber.” She snorted.
“As soon as he saw me, old Philippe was infatuated. I held him off for several years, until I was nineteen, but what men want, they have. And Philippe was a king. I came to love him in my way. We understood each other, our capacity for—” She searched for the correct word.
“—excess. He has always looked the other way, you must understand. Having me near him has always been enough for the lovesick fool.” She coughed, folding her hands together.
“When I was twenty-one years old, he fell in a jousting accident, tore out his eye. He should not have competed at his age, but he wanted to impress me.”
“But Philippe has both of his eyes,” said Roland.
Marguerite lifted her hand again. “He also had broken ribs, a broken pelvis. He lay for weeks in bed. I sewed his eye back into his face. To this day, he cannot see from it. It is as if it is made of glass. Yet he lives because I poured my soul into his body to heal him. I was weakened—I hardly survived it. You know, Roland, how healing living things drains us. How Venusborn magic can repair a torn stitch in an instant, leave it intact forever, but a man?” With a shake of her head, she laughed, but there was only sadness in it, and no mockery.
“That requires everything we have. When I was finished, he was magnificent. The spots on his hands, the wrinkles around his eyes, the grays in his hair, you see—gone.” She snapped her fingers.
“And if I heal him this way every few weeks, he does not age a day. This year, Philippe is one hundred and eight years old.”
One hundred and eight. “When you heal the king, can you do so at any time of the day? Or the year? Is Venus in a certain position?” Roland asked.
She sighed. “No, it is any time.”
“You said the magic weakened you,” I said. “Does it weaken you still?”
She laughed dismissively, barely sparing me a glance.
“How?” I pressed. “Show us.”
“Your word?” She was staring at Roland.
“Yes, fine,” he said impatiently. They must have exchanged something between minds, something she wanted Roland to do for her.
She was a regal, beautiful woman, shining like a pearl.
Then she thawed. Her face dripped like wax.
Her cheeks sagged, lines cracked through her forehead and around her nose and lips.
Her skin so dry and brittle it could be peeled from her skeleton.
“I use more and more of my magic to hide this, each and every day. Soon I will die. And Philippe will die. Because I am so depleted, I cannot keep him alive much longer. By preserving his life, I’ve destroyed my own. And together, we will crumble to dust.”
It was not immortality.
No, it was something more sinister. Marguerite, tipped over. Sand streaming from her body into the king’s, gifting him more time at her expense. Gifting him the tautness of her skin, the color in her cheeks and the luster of her hair.
She smirked at our distress. “Prospero knew of this when he ordered you to return to Alvion, Roland. I begged you not to go, but you didn’t listen, did you?
He took you away from me because he hoped you would do this for your king.
If he only understood how to give you this gift, he would have bled you dry, stuck the king onto your arm like a leech. You were right to kill him.”
Roland was bone white with horror. “Is there no cure?”
She laughed. “I have had all my scholars researching my predicament, to no avail. It is irreversible.”
“Perhaps Prospero’s theory was wrong,” declared Roland.
“Perhaps,” she said. “Although…” She addressed me now.
“Have you spoken to his ghost? You want to find Prince Hal’s killer.
” She smiled softly, and I was disturbed to be so easily read.
“You also want to understand this exaltation. He may have answers for you. Prospero the All-Knowing. Is that not what he was called when he lived? Have you been to Bastian, dear one?”
Slowly, I shook my head.
“Really?” Her lip curled. “Well, you’ll find it is a most fascinating place. The dead are so eager to talk, to unleash the secrets of the living.” Her eyes cut to Roland. “Your promise.”
Roland hesitated for a moment, then placed a hand on her arm.
His dawn-colored magic surged up her body, smoothing and tightening her wrinkles, clearing her eyes so they shone bright as jewels, warmth blooming again in her face.
The purple veins on her hands sank back into her skin.
Every feature chiseled again by angels. She sighed happily and pinched her cheeks.
Roland stood so abruptly he nearly knocked his chair over.
Marguerite beckoned him. “No, no, no! Sit, Roland. I know you are upset, but there are two of you. I’d like something else from our friend Bianca here.”
Warily, Roland sat again.
“I’m curious to know how the two of you met,” she asked sweetly. “Tell me the story.”
“There is no story,” Roland said.
“Of course there is. The two of you cheated my game last night. That made me very upset. I wonder: Did you know until I revealed it, Bianca, how desperately he longs for you?”
Roland stiffened. My breath caught.