The Girl Who Chose

by Violet Grace

  ‘Now you eat,’ Mama demands, placing the tray next to my bed.

  ‘Not hungry,’ I murmur.

  ‘You no like Mama’s cooking?’ She pulls a grater and a wedge of cheese out of the front pocket of her apron. ‘Everyone like Mama’s cooking,’ she says as parmesan rains down onto the pasta.

  I yank the blanket over my head.

  I must have dropped off because I’m woken by Mama bringing me more food, this time a selection of pastries and a cup of coffee.

  I take a sip of the coffee and taste nothing.

  Callie hovers in the doorway. ‘Prince Victor has returned to see you, Your Majesty. He is quite insistent.’

  ‘I can’t,’ is all I manage to say.

  As the day passes, there are two more trays of food and two more insults to Mama’s cooking. Alone again, I sit up and try to summon the Art. Still nothing. Resting doesn’t seem to have brought it back.

  I wonder if the radio weapon has somehow turned me into a normal fairy, one who needs a wand to conjure the Art. It’s a long shot, especially since I wasn’t able to use a wand even when my Art wasn’t damaged, but it’s all I’ve got. I reach for the chrome-plated teaspoon on the saucer of my coffee cup and think back to my very first magic lesson with Gladys, recalling her instructions as if it were yesterday. Steadying my breathing, I visualise moral energy pooling deep within me and then travelling up through my arm and along the spoon.

  Nothing.

  I try again, and this time I swear the spoon feels slightly hotter. After several more attempts the spoon begins to spark and sizzle. But that’s all it does.

  No matter how hard I try, the teaspoon is like a flint without fuel and all I manage to conjure is a bad electrical smell.

  I need to bide my time, conceal my missing Art. My power is the only thing the Order values about me. This could be all the proof the old guard needs that I am unworthy to sit on the throne. I can’t even be sure that the Protectorate, who have always been loyal to me, would be willing to guard a queen who is only human after all.

  Anxiety rises up in me, like rats gnawing away at my insides. And then I’m falling. Or rather, sinking, to that desolate place without time, without beginning or end, where it’s easier to just keep sinking than it is to claw back out.

  I’m still hiding under my blankets when I sense someone at the door.

  ‘Permission to enter, Your Majesty,’ Jules says.

  ‘Okay,’ I mumble, pulling the blanket from my head.

  Jules stands at the side of my bed, looking unusually flustered. I wonder if she’s worked out that I no longer have the power to channel the Art. Maybe she can sniff it out with her unicorn senses. After a moment, she drags a chair over to the end of my bed and sits in it, awkwardly clearing her throat.

  A few more excruciating moments pass in silence.

  ‘Out with it,’ I say, unable to bear it any longer.

  Jules’s eyes dart about, and after a long silence she takes a deep, steadying breath and begins. ‘Deep down, I always knew I was scaevus. But it was the first day of my seventh year when it was revealed to others.’

  I watch her guardedly, unwilling to say anything that might incriminate myself. She bites her lip and looks up to the ceiling as if she’s hoping the welling tears will roll back into her tear ducts.

  ‘I was chasing a boy,’ she says. ‘He’d stolen my blanket, I think. We were playing. Running. I was excited by the thrill of the chase. Then I transed. In front of everybody. I was so scared and confused that I wasn’t able to stop it. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t go back – not ever. I’d seen what had happened to warders like me.’

  ‘Warders?’

  ‘That’s what they called us in the orphanage.’

  Orphanage? I realise I barely know anything of Jules’s past, of this woman who has sworn a solemn oath to protect my life with her own, and has done just that on numerous occasions. In fact, it dawns on me that I’ve never heard her speak this many sentences in a row before.

  ‘I slept in garden sheds and train stations. I’d occasionally find the news bulletins discarded in gutters or littered around rubbish bins. If they were about you, I would savour every word.

  ‘There were photos of you, showing how you were growing up. All your lavish birthday celebrations, and your triumphs in training. I memorised your quotes and sayings. I devoured anything that hinted at the restoration, about how much you were looking forward to returning to Albion to take up your duties on the throne. It felt like we were growing up together. I could only dream of such a life.’

  Her cheeks flush with embarrassment. ‘Forgive me for such a transgression, Your Majesty, but I wished I could be you. I coveted your life, to be so secure and to never want for anything.’

  ‘My life was nothing like that,’ I say, my voice flat.

  ‘I know that now,’ she says. ‘I know that our lives were not so different after all.’

  I sit up in my bed. The disillusionment is imprinted on her body.

  ‘How did you go from being a street kid to the First Officer of the Protectorate?’ I ask.

  ‘One night I made the mistake of stealing from General Sewell. I tried to relieve her of her knuckledusters.’ Jules smiles briefly. ‘It was the best mistake I ever made. Instead of imprisoning me, she recruited me, enlisting me and training me in the Art – and the martial arts.’

  Jules runs her fingers across her own knuckledusters, a standard-issue chromium wand for all the officers of the Protectorate.

  ‘She never asked about… my … about me. I think she knew, but she never mentioned it. The Protectorate is the only family I’ve ever known,’ she says with both gratitude and pride. ‘And General Sewell was the closest person to a mother I ever had.’

  Sadness creeps into her face. No doubt she’s reliving General Sewell’s murder by Damius at the V&A.

  ‘I’m sorry, Jules. I… I didn’t know.’

  I feel like the worst friend in the world for not realising how much Jules had lost in that fight last spring. She was all duty and business as usual once we returned to Windsor. It didn’t occur to me that her grief for the General extended further than losing a colleague.

  ‘Where are your parents?’ I ask.

  ‘I do not know,’ she says quickly.

  ‘We could try to find them,’ I say. It’s the least I can do for a friend who has given me so much. And the thought buoys me a little. Digging up buried information is one useful thing I can do that doesn’t require the Art.

  ‘No, Your Majesty,’ Jules says definitively. ‘I have learnt to live without them.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean we can’t find them now,’ I push. ‘You must long for parents.’ I blink my tears away.

  ‘It is true, Your Majesty. For a time it was my deepest desire. I would have traded my soul to know the love of a parent. But now I am older. I know,’ she taps her heart with her fist, ‘that they do not wish to be found. It is better that way, for them and for me.’

  ‘But Jules —’

  ‘I said no.’

  I sit back and absorb that.

  ‘You’re right, I guess. I always imagined that I’d want my dad back,’ I say. ‘I’d invented this whole stupid fantasy where he was perfect, where he was some great scientist who worked out how to do magic. Now I know the truth, I wish I could have the fantasy back. I should have known. He didn’t come to Iridesca through some stroke of individual genius. He had to have help from the Agency and its resources.’

  Jules shifts in her chair and runs her hand through her short, spiky hair. She stands as if preparing to make a formal announcement.

  ‘It is true your father is a monstrous man. I would like to shred his testicles on Mama’s cheese grater.’

  My eyes widen and I let out a burst of laughter.

  ‘But you are not punishing your father with all of this rumination on the past,’ Jules continues. ‘All you are accomplishing is allowing him to hurt you more.’

  She
strides towards the window, before turning to face me.

  ‘I have learned that obsessing over what I did not have solves nothing. You must focus on what you do have. We cannot decide our parents, or the people who are supposed to love us when we are young. But we are not children anymore. We can choose who we love and who we will accept love from.’

  ‘Are you talking about my father or Tom?’

  ‘In this instance, I am referring to Samuel Maxwell. But as your friend, I will also say this to you, Chess. People can wait their whole lives for someone to look at them the way Master Williams looks at you.’

  She sweeps open the curtains and I put my hand up to shield my eyes from the bright light.

  ‘I will send your maids to assist you to dress,’ Jules says.

  ‘I just need a bit more time.’

  Jules nods and shuts the door behind her.

  I think about our conversation until the sun begins to sink in the sky of Serenissima. Jules’s words about my father are the light at the top of the pit of darkness I’d fallen into. I resolve not to allow him to hurt me anymore. I have to focus on my mother. And on getting the Art back.

  I spring out of bed, taking a quick shower before calling for my maids to dress me for dinner. While I wait I try the Art, but it’s still nothing more than a ghostly flicker.

  ‘Prince Victor has called on you numerous times, Your Majesty,’ Brina says primly as she enters my room.

  Callie giggles behind her. ‘More like every hour.’

  I tell Brina I’d like a gown that’s bright and bold.

  ‘The Chancellor has called on you several times too, Your Majesty,’ she adds, returning with a ruby gown.

  ‘Perfect,’ I say, stepping into it. I inspect myself in the mirror, checking to see if my missing Art is somehow visible. Reassuring myself that I don’t look any different, I make my way down to the living quarters.

  ‘Look what the cat dragged in,’ Abby drawls. She’s reclining on the daybed in the lounge room. Her eyes don’t leave the magazine she’s reading as it magically hovers above her. ‘Most people would be content with being a queen, and having everyone jumping to meet their every desire. But not this one.’

  She waves her hand in front of the magazine, turning the page, still not looking at me.

  ‘Nope. She has to play hard to get with another guy, throw a tantrum and run off to someplace, only the Goddess knows where, and cause a diplomatic incident.’

  I let it all wash over me. I know this is about Tom.

  ‘Thanks for the warming elixir,’ is all I say in reply.

  ‘Just doing my job.’

  I survey the scene in the lounge room. Every surface is covered in bouquets of flowers in crystal vases, interspersed with jewellery boxes tied with pretty little ribbons.

  ‘And she notices,’ Abby says. ‘Your reward for all the havoc you caused is your new boyfriend turning the place into a florist-cum-jewellery store. What a charmed life you lead.’ Looking over at me, she adds, ‘While you were busy licking your wounds, I helped myself to the nicest pieces. I knew you would have wanted it that way.’

  Abby’s magazine floats down from above her head and slams onto the coffee table. She sits upright and stares at me, not bothering to conceal her anger beneath the snark.

  ‘You never deserved my brother,’ she says.

  ‘You think I don’t know that?’ I say, turning away from her and walking into the dining room.

  Mama is setting three places for dinner around the dining table for Jules, Abby and me. Despite my best efforts, my maids still insist on eating in the kitchen. I stop and do a double take. Jules is helping her. They’re chatting and laughing, an unlikely familiarity between them. A girl enters the dining room through the servants’ entrance, carrying dishes of pasta and meatballs. She looks up at me, and before she can catch herself, her face breaks into a beaming smile, and then, just as quickly, she looks down, the smile replaced by uncertainty. She expertly places the dishes on the table and then drops into a full and deep curtsey.

  ‘I know you,’ I say, even though I can’t place her. She stares intently at my feet. Finally it comes back. ‘The dungeon. You were the girl in the dungeon at Windsor. Maria.’

  She nods hesitantly.

  ‘You live here now? In the Grigio castle? How?’

  Maria looks helplessly at Mama, who answers for her.

  ‘Mama take in girls from all over Iridesca,’ she says in a hushed voice, so unlike her usual self. ‘When your Protectorate brought her to me —’

  ‘Jules?’ I say, pivoting to my bodyguard, who’s now frozen stiff, clutching cutlery in her hand.

  ‘I only … I only took steps to see that she relocated safely,’ Jules says quietly, colour creeping up her neck and turning into blotches on her face.

  Jules’s embarrassment at having her kindness uncovered is as perplexing to me as the fact that she helped Maria in the first place. Even though she’s scaevus too, she had no obligation to go out of her way to help Maria, and she is the First Officer of the Protectorate – an organisation charged with apprehending scaevus girls. I look at her in wonder, certain that I’ll never understand my rule-bound bodyguard. Why go to the trouble – and risk – to ensure Maria would be safe? I’d say it was an act of moral kindness. And yet, like all Fae, Jules insists that morality is a mark of human frailty, a curse that Fae like her are not burdened with.

  I look at Maria. Her cheeks are rosy, her eyes sparkle with contentment and her clothes are clean. She looks nothing like the terrified, malnourished girl I saw in the dungeon only one year ago. She starts towards me, tentative at first, before lunging and flinging her arms wide, squeezing me into a hug. A moment later Mama shoos her away, telling Maria to busy herself.

  ‘No, no, please,’ I say to Mama. ‘Really. It’s fine.’

  And it is. The last time I felt such uncomplicated affection was, well, never. But it’s more than that. After months of feeling like I’m a complete screw-up – like whatever I do, no matter how well intentioned, turns out to be wrong – at least I can see that my decision to free Maria was unequivocally and unquestionably good.

  I slowly release her. She wipes her eyes with the corner of her apron and I wipe mine. Mama beams at Maria as they both head back to the kitchen.

  I look to Jules, who continues laying out cutlery as if she’s studying the map of a battlefield, concentrating on enemy manoeuvres.

  ‘So, care to explain yourself?’ I say jokingly.

  There is no one in earshot except for Abby, who already knows Jules’s secret, yet still Jules whispers. ‘Every girl like me, the world over, knows about Mama. Or the legend of Mama. I didn’t believe the stories when I first heard them. It seemed too much to hope that there would be a Fae woman who would take in abominations —’

  ‘Jules, don’t talk like that.’

  ‘It’s just a word, Your Majesty.’

  ‘No, it’s not. Words have power, they can build you up or corrode you like acid.’

  Jules shrugs. ‘When you freed Maria from the dungeon in Windsor,’ she says, ‘I concluded that the most likely outcome was that she would be arrested again and imprisoned elsewhere in Iridesca. I made a few discreet enquiries and then escorted Maria to the castle.’

  ‘How many girls like Maria has Mama taken in?’

  ‘Most of the maids and cooks in the castle are Mama’s.’

  ‘That must be over a hundred girls,’ I say.

  ‘And that’s just in Serenissima. Mama has a network the world over.’

  I smile at the thought of all these scaevus girls hiding in plain sight, under the noses of the very people who would have them killed.

  I feel ashamed and powerless and frustrated all over again. I’ve spent a year as Queen, smiling and waving and supposedly raising morale, when I should have been doing things that really matter to people’s lives – like rebuilding, and changing the ridiculous laws about scaevus. I’m not naive enough to think that I could overtur
n centuries of prejudice with the stroke of a pen or a royal decree, but I didn’t even start to agitate for change.

  ‘I will fix this, Jules,’ I say.

  ‘Your Majesty?’

  ‘I know I have no authority over these laws of nature you Fae insist on, but I promise you this – my mother and I, we will change this world of yours. There will come a day when these girls and women will come out of the darkness and fly free.’

  Jules stares at me. Abby, who has taken her seat at the table, is unusually silent.

  ‘You don’t believe I can do it?’

  ‘On the contrary, I do believe. It is just difficult to comprehend that anyone would care enough to even try.’ Jules swallows hard. ‘It is an honour to know you, Chess Raven.’

  ‘I hope I’m not interrupting anything?’ says a male voice.

  Victor strides into the dining room, commanding attention. He’s dressed in grey pants and a white shirt with sleeves rolled up to the elbows. Three of his bodyguards remain in the doorway, their eyes everywhere.

  ‘You have made a full recovery, I trust, Your Majesty?’ he says formally. The boyish charm from our first meeting has disappeared.

  ‘I have, Your Highness. Thank you for asking,’ I say, matching his tone. ‘House Raven is in your debt, as am I personally. I thank you.’ I’m doing my best impersonation of what I figure the Chancellor would want me to say in this situation.

  ‘Assisting you was our duty and our pleasure.’ He pauses. ‘Your Majesty,’ he says, gesturing with his eyes towards Jules, who’s standing at my side, and Abby, who’s munching on a meatball. ‘The room is a little crowded.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Could you leave us, please?’

  Abby stops chewing mid-mouthful and looks at me. Her fork clatters onto the plate as she pushes her chair back. Picking up her dish of meatballs, she lets out a pained sigh and leaves without a backwards glance. Jules lingers, waiting for my instruction. I nod, signalling for her to leave.

  Once Jules closes the doors behind her, Victor sits down at the table opposite me.

  ‘I trust you have everything you require,’ he says.

  ‘Everything. And more.’ Without thinking, I look in the direction of all of Victor’s gifts.