Chapter Nine #2
The girl’s pretty face creased with a frown at my rejection.
“How dull,” she said. “I hope you will not prove yourself a bore, just when we’ve all gotten so excited to meet you.
” Settling the bottle back down in front of her, she smiled up at me.
“I am Miss Anais Tremblay, and here with me are Miss Manon Blanc and Miss Clio Lavoie.”
I struggled to keep my expression neutral as she gestured breezily to the girls on either side of her.
Clio was seated the closest to me, her knees pulled coquettishly against her chest, leaving the smooth length of her legs exposed.
Dark-haired and dark-eyed, she, too, fixed her gaze on me, her olive skin luminous even in the clouded moonlight.
Manon Blanc was another matter. Though she’d glanced at me when I’d first appeared on the balcony, her attention was now fixed firmly on the book which was splayed open across her lap, her chin lifting only for a moment in my direction when Anais called on her.
She was sharp-featured, her complexion similar to Eliot’s if not a shade darker.
Rather than netting, her tight curls had been fashioned into a series of intricate braids and pinned at the base of her neck, ribbons in the same light peach shade as her dress woven throughout herhair.
Manon. Clio. Anais. Eliot had warned me about all three of these girls. My eyes traced a path between Manon and Anais, their bodies touching in an almost-continuous line from their shoulders to thighs. The hound to her hunter.
“Lovely to make your acquaintance,” I replied, nodding. “Tell me, do you frequently spend balls outside in the rain? Your modistes must despise you.”
An exchanging of looks, fleeting and surreptitious. It was Clio who spoke next, in a murmured tone as if disclosing a secret. “Actually, Miss Lovett, it is for you that we’ve come out here,” she said. “We would like the opportunity to speak with you…privately.”
There we are. “Of course.”
Encouraged, Clio went on. “This is not a competition you can get through without friends,” she continued more boldly. “We wish to know whether you’re interested in becoming ours.”
I noticed how her gaze flicked back to Anais as she spoke, as if asking permission. So there was our ringleader. It didn’t surprise me; there was a brashness to the taller girl that made me think she was not one to bow before others.
She deals in gossip…but is loyal to only one.
Eliot’s precaution rose to the surface of my mind as I again traced the distance between Manon and Anais, then the comparatively larger gap between Anais and Clio.
I wondered if the latter realized that the friendship she claimed was an unequal one—or if she cared.
“Tempting,” I said in reply to Clio. “Though, treasuring my friendships as I do, I would never begin a new one without feeling certain I had explored all options.” I paused. “Tell me, is your group here the only one of its kind amongst the maidens, or are there others?”
Another flurry of glances, passed like notes between them.
This time, Anais answered—a bit more reluctantly than she had previously, her tone warier now that I’d strayed from her preferred script.
“There are the Dabos loyalists, of course,” she said, her nose wrinkling in distaste.
“Masochists, if you ask me. How any maiden could cling to the daughter of the woman who would banish every Weaver in the nation if she could is utterly beyond my comprehension. And there is the Owl and her little contingent of voyeurs.” Her eyes clipped to the curtain of rain, as if anticipating a form lurking behind the obfuscating cascade, then traveled back to me.
“Don’t worry—she can only watch you through mirrors she’s marked, and all our rooms have been kept under lock and key. ”
Again, I masked my reaction. The Owl—such a moniker could only refer to Eliot’s All-Seeing Eye, Marie-Louise Rochefort.
Whether the silkwitch had glimpsed, through her collection of mirrors, any secret of Ophelia’s would be valuable to know; I made a mental note to seek Marie-Louise out in the days to come.
Unless she finds you first. The thought unnerved me more than I liked.
Not even a full day into the competition, and already I had been sought out by four of my fellow silkwitches—Sybil earlier, and now Anais and her flock.
If I didn’t take care, it wouldn’t be long until one of them managed to corner me, turn me from the cat into the mouse.
“You will find that we are more civilized than all of them, Miss Lovett,” Anais continued, drawing me back to her. “We understand the sanctity of sisterhood. If you help us, we shall help you.”
I matched her smirk with one of my own. “How noble. Though, sisterhood aside, there can be only a single victor crowned.”
Anais shrugged, a lofty roll of her shoulders. “A harsh reality.” She demurred. “We prefer not to dwell on it.”
Her stare held mine—bright and keen, unblunted by the champagne at her feet. The longer I spoke with her, the surer I became that she had not drunk a single sip from the bottle, that every piece of this interaction had been deliberately, intentionally staged, arranged like set pieces in a play.
Well, over the past year, I had become more than an adequate performer. Tilting my head, I pretended to debate her offer. “Which group was Ophelia Lear in?”
Anais’s brows raised; next to her, Manon’s hand flinched as it turned a page.
“Lear?” Clio asked before either of them could interject. “Why?”
I blinked guilelessly at her. “It is her place I’ve taken, is it not? Perhaps I’d like to honor her precedent.”
“Lear had no friends.” Anais’s voice had shed all of its sly flirtation; she sat straight-backed, her demeanor rigid, like a rope pulled tight. “She cared only for herself. Before you commit yourself to following her precedent , Miss Lovett, I would advise you to consider where her path led her.”
Her words had the flat rigidity of a blade, and I winced when they struck me.
The reaction seemed to subdue the other maiden—as rapidly as she’d stiffened, Anais was melting again, her lips curling in a mischievous smile.
Leaning back against the window, she laid a hand on the knee of the girl beside her.
“Manon tells me you are carrying more than a few secrets yourself. Is that right, dearest?”
At Anais’s touch, Manon’s gaze left her book.
Marking her page, she tipped her head daintily back, her nose lifting into the air as if to catch a scent.
“Several,” she said. There was a smudge of lipstick on her front tooth, as vivid as a bloodstain when she spoke. “I think three, at the very least.”
My heart jumped, though I tried to suppress it. I recalled Manon’s Wit from Eliot’s lesson in the Diplomat— she can smell hidden things , I believed he’d said. What lies had the silkwitch detected on me?
“Three?” Anais’s reply was tinged with scandal. “My, that is quite a lot.” She tsked , the noise rapping like a switch across my knuckles. “I find secrets are borne easier once they are shared, don’t you?”
Slowly, she bit down on her bottom lip, Manon and Clio exchanging conspiratorial looks on her either side. The motion triggered another snatch of Eliot’s speech: Her Wit allows her to compel any person to speak the truth with merely a brush of her lips.
A chill ran down the back of my neck, the light and noise of the ballroom behind me becoming altogether more tempting. I was beginning to feel as though I’d overstayed my welcome.
“Though perhaps you have allies enough already.” Anais spoke just as I’d been preparing to dip my head in farewell.
Her attention was fixed not on me but farther down the terrace, where I saw with a shock of horror a pair of men standing by the windows just as we were, shielded from the rain and with drinks in hand.
Even in the darkness, I could tell that Eliot’s expression was concerned, his gaze, which had been lingering on me, jumping away at Anais’s notice.
I gritted my teeth. Fool. What was he doing out here?
“Mr.Lear seems quite attentive to you, Miss Lovett,” Anais said, turning away from the men.
“To be honest, I was uncertain whether we’d see him this year at all, considering the great loss he endured last summer.
It is curious that he’s offered you up to Noé; he looks as though he’d rather keep you to himself. ”
A flash of heat seared me. “Mr.Lear’s great-uncle was my guardian,” I replied, snuffing out the panic before my misstep could be noted. “We are related in every way but blood—he sees me as one would a cousin.”
Anais gave a low hmm . “But how distant of a cousin, is thequestion.”
Abruptly, she rose from the windowsill, her hand lifting in a wave. “Oh, Mr.Lear!”
I felt a stab of physical pain, like a dagger driven into my side, as down the balcony, Eliot’s chin snapped our way. With an inaudible murmur to his companion, he strode over to us, his ambling pace somehow skeptical, like a raised brow, as he came to a stop several feet away.
“So sorry to interrupt, Elly.” Anais grinned up at him, stepping close to his side.
I blanched at her easy intimacy, at the nickname that fell so naturally from her tongue, speaking of a long history that I was not part of.
I’d forgotten that her father was a Weaver, like Eliot’s own—that, likely, they’d known one another since they were small.
The abrupt remembrance made me inexplicably jealous.
“The girls and I were just speaking with the charming Miss Lovett, and we are simply beside ourselves with curiosity,” Anais said. “Tell us, what is it that made you pick her for the Vainglory, above all others?”
Finally, Eliot’s gaze cut my way. For a moment, I thought I detected something shifting behind the hazel of his irises—a brightening like a streak of sunlight through the trees—but as quickly as the emotion emerged, it retreated again.
“Charity,” he said flatly.
To my back, Clio laughed, a mean, surprised bark.
My jaw tightened at the sound, humiliation a sudden, ripe burst in my core.
I parted my lips just as a noise like the eruption of a great wave stole my reply.
Inside the ballroom, the crowd’s animated chatter had crested into an uproar; I twisted to get a glance at the source of the commotion and was met only with a moving sea of backs, jostling against one another for space.
It was then that I felt it. In the private confines of my mind, there was a sudden shift—like a disturbance in the air, the whisper of footsteps in a previously unoccupied room. Where my thoughts had always been mine, and mine alone, I now sensed…someone else.
A presence, like a feather stroking along the underside of my skull.
Beside me, Eliot shuddered. The Weaver King had arrived.