The Girl Who Chose

by Violet Grace

I could be reading into things too much, but I sense Victor is still a little bit frosty over Jules’s presence as he takes me on a guided tour of sitting rooms, a billiards room, and even a theatre with an orchestra pit.

  His chambers are posh beyond words. Windsor Castle is a dump in comparison. Every room is dripping in precious gems and trimmed with gold. It occurs to me that getting me out of the way is only part of the Order’s rush to marry me off to the Grigios. The other reason has got to be the bling. The Grigios are freaking loaded. The Chancellor and his cronies are probably rubbing their hands in glee at the thought of it.

  ‘I knew you would like it, Bella,’ Victor says, misreading my reaction to all the extravagance. ‘My mother says it needs a woman’s touch.’ He gives me a wink.

  I laugh. It’s all I can do not to vomit.

  We move on to his personal library, an enormous circular room with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on every wall. Below are more levels, with narrow outcropping walkways joined by staircases. I look over the precipice made of polished hardwood inlaid with gold leaf and count five floors of books. Natural light streams in from the windows, throwing shadows from the thick wooden beams above.

  I walk over to one of the moveable ladders on little tracks and climb the first couple of rungs, running my finger along the book spines.

  ‘Do you have any books about Venus? The goddess, not the planet.’

  ‘Of course. Venus, Venus, Goddess of Love. Hmm,’ he says, tapping the spine of a couple of books.

  He pulls three from the shelf and walks over to give them to me.

  ‘Can I borrow these?’ I figure that Fae history about Venus is going to be more useful for finding the scroll than any human book might be.

  ‘Why are you interested in Venus?’ he says.

  ‘Just curious.’

  ‘You are welcome to them. But I do not think they will be much use to you.’

  I open the first book and see what he means.

  ‘Latin,’ he says. ‘You may come here anytime you wish and I will read them to you.’

  I’m a little unnerved by the offer. I hadn’t considered asking anyone for help in my search for the scroll, certainly not Victor. But as I stare down at the book in Latin that I’m holding in hands that have lost their Art, I feel wildly out of my depth. I can’t even conjure any equipment to scan and then translate the text, or transfer somewhere I can access some.

  ‘That’s very generous of you,’ I say cautiously.

  ‘Not at all. I will enjoy every minute of it, I am sure.’

  I feel myself blushing. What is wrong with me, falling to pieces whenever he says anything nice?

  ‘We shall eat now,’ he announces.

  Victor guides me through the conservatory, complete with a grand piano and a golden harp, out to a sun-drenched terrace overlooking the lagoon.

  A girl in a maid’s uniform pours coffee as we approach. She offers me the tiniest hint of a smile. One of Mama’s girls. Word must have travelled about how I helped Maria. Three more girls appear, carrying platters of pastries, meats and fresh fruit.

  ‘Leave us,’ Victor says to the maids as soon as the plates touch the table.

  I look out at the lagoon as I sit at the table, wondering when and how I can find out more about the mermaids and their scroll. This is one of those occasions that calls for charm and persuasion, but since I’m terrible at both, I figure I shouldn’t even try. My best approach, my only approach, is to be direct.

  ‘I wasn’t exactly truthful yesterday,’ I confess. ‘Something else happened when I was on the main islands.’

  ‘Yes?’ he says, concern on his face.

  ‘I met mermaids.’

  Victor’s jaw clenches ever so slightly. ‘Ah,’ he says carefully. ‘Did they threaten you?’

  ‘No. They seemed quite harmless.’ I decide not to mention the part where they bickered over eating my body parts. ‘Are they a threat? Is that why House Grigio hunted them?’

  Victor turns deathly still. His cutlery pauses in the air, his knife glinting in the sunlight.

  ‘Are you trying to pick a fight with me?’ His accusatory stare slices through me. Out of the corner of my eye I see Jules tensing in the doorway. I scramble for the best way to de-escalate but my mind draws a blank.

  After a moment the corner of Victor’s mouth twitches upwards.

  ‘You are like a wildcat that needs to be tamed, Bella.’ His mouth now breaks into a proper smile and his eyes sparkle. ‘I like a challenge.’

  My head is spinning from trying to keep up with him.

  He finishes chewing a pastry. ‘The plight of the mermaids is ancient history. What’s done is done.’

  ‘The mermaids see it differently.’

  He leans forward across the table, his eyes narrowing again. ‘You would take their word over mine?’

  ‘If any alliance between us is to work, then I need to understand who I’m dealing with,’ I say, dodging his question. ‘The union of our people depends on me fully understanding the history of the Grigio empire.’

  He puffs out a breath and leans back in his chair. ‘I had nothing to do with harming the mermaids. And neither did anyone who is alive today,’ he says, an edge in his voice. ‘It is not fair for my people to be judged for an era when nature’s cycles turned on a different axis.’ His finger stabs the table for emphasis. ‘Your own uncle is of a different nature than you. Yet, you would not be judged by his behaviour.’

  ‘True,’ I say, ‘but I’m not going to profit from it either.’

  ‘True,’ he echoes, ‘but what would you have me do? Walk away from my throne and from all the people who have looked to my family for leadership and stability for generations? What would abandoning my responsibilities to millions of Fae achieve?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘But I do know that just accepting everything as the will of nature, against which we’re all powerless, isn’t an answer either.’

  ‘Help me then, Bella.’ He stretches his legs out under the table. If he notices them brushing up against mine, he doesn’t show it. ‘I am finding my way just as much as you are. We are both trying to fill shoes that at times feel too big. But we can tread a new path together.’

  His admission of vulnerability catches me off guard. It occurs to me that the combined power of our houses might be enough to right many of the wrongs in Iridesca. But right here, right now, finding my mother is the only thing that matters. And since we’re talking about mermaids and no one’s been stabbed with a butter knife, I take a risk and go all in.

  ‘Queen Melusina spoke of a scroll,’ I say. ‘A scroll that contains the power that will enable me to free my mother from Damius’s grip.’

  ‘Ah,’ he says, ‘the Scroll of Sirena. Now I see your interest in Venus is more than idle curiosity.’ He exhales slowly. ‘Never believe everything a mermaid tells you. They are feral, hostages to their basest instincts, and just cunning enough to be dangerous. They would doubtless have sniffed out your sensitive human heart.’

  His words make me feel a little foolish. It occurs to me for the first time that it was Melusina who sent me to the villa, right into the hands of the Agency. If Victor is right then it’s possible that Melusina’s real plan was to neutralise my power. Mission accomplished.

  ‘You’re saying there is no scroll?’

  Victor gives a shrug. ‘I would not rule it out entirely. There are enough legends to suggest that something existed in some form at some time. When I was a boy my nanny sang nursery rhymes about a scroll. Something about how it is woven into … what was it?’ He looks upwards, searching his memory. ‘The fabric of life. That’s right.’

  ‘Sing it to me,’ I say.

  ‘You do not wish to hear me sing,’ he says.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Bella, no,’ he laughs.

  ‘Victor, yes,’ I say with a teasing smile.

  He purses his lips as if he’s seriously weighing up his options, then he surprises me by saying, ‘As
you command, Your Majesty.’

  He stands, takes a deep breath, filling his lungs, and begins.

  Goosebumps prickle my arms. His voice. Deep, haunting, passionate. I can’t understand the language he’s singing, but I can feel it, the melody penetrating my skin and caressing me from the inside out. I’m not going to learn anything about the scroll from this song, but I have learned something about Victor.

  ‘You look surprised,’ he says when he’s finished.

  ‘I am. You’re really good. I never suspected.’

  ‘Perhaps you should give me the benefit of the doubt more often, Bella,’ he says with a wink.

  For a moment I wonder what it would be like to get to know Victor under different circumstances, when people weren’t trying to force our marriage, when my heart wasn’t aching for Tom, and when I wasn’t trying to save my mother.

  ‘The fabric of life – in the song. What does that mean?’ I ask.

  ‘Nothing. It’s just a silly song for children, Bella.’

  ‘Where I’m from, children’s songs and stories often conceal the deepest truths.’

  He shrugs again.

  I tell him that Melusina thinks that his family once knew about the scroll and that there may be clues to be found buried deep in his family history.

  ‘I can ask my court, if you’d like.’

  ‘They won’t mind that I know about the scroll? You don’t mind?’

  Victor smiles. ‘Why ever would I mind?’

  ‘Well …’ I choose my words carefully. ‘There is a risk, isn’t there, that the discovery of the scroll, and the restoration of the mermaids’ power, would lead to the destruction of House Grigio?’

  This draws a full laugh.

  ‘Excuse me, Bella,’ he says, recovering. ‘I did not mean to laugh at you. House Grigio is built on firmer foundations than silly songs, I assure you. If it could be destroyed by a collection of words dreamed up for water nymphs, it would have crumbled into the lagoon long ago. It would hardly deserve to have stood in the first place.’

  ‘You’re not concerned by the scroll at all?’

  ‘No,’ he says, the remains of a smile still playing on his face.

  I don’t know what to say to this. The mermaids gave me the impression that they and the Grigios are mortal enemies. But Victor’s so open about it. He doesn’t deny terrible things happened in the past. And he certainly has no concerns about the scroll.

  Roberto appears through the door on the terrace, tapping his watch.

  ‘You must excuse me, Bella. It seems we have lost track of time. Now I must meet with the Cerchio. It will be long and boring and I will spend every minute of it thinking how much I would prefer to spend the day with you.’

  He invites me to stay and explore the library, before standing and walking to my side of the table. He brushes his lips across the back of my hand and I flinch slightly, remembering the look on the Luminaress’s face. But if Victor notices something is wrong with my power, he doesn’t show it.

  Walking back to my apartment with Jules at my side, I’m surprised to find myself smiling.

  My smile evaporates when I open the door to the apartment.

  The Luminaress is sitting on my couch, calmly sipping tea. She looks at me with cat’s eyes: unsmiling, appraising and terminally unimpressed.

  ‘It is time we had a little talk.’

  I force myself to walk towards her, doing my best to look unfazed. But I know she’s not fooled.

  ‘In private,’ she adds, with a curt nod towards Jules.

  I do a snap risk assessment of my two options. Both of them suck. Is it worse for Jules to learn about my lost Art, or for me to be left alone with someone who most likely knows I am powerless to defend myself?

  ‘The First Officer stays.’

  Pencil-thin eyebrows rise slowly to meet her severe silver hairline. ‘Have it your way,’ she says.

  I sit on the couch opposite her, instinctively clocking the exits. ‘What’s on your mind, Madeline?’

  The Luminaress delicately places her teacup and saucer on the table beside her, her movements slow and precise. She takes in a breath through her nose and lets it out, her lips puckering.

  My teeth bite into the inside of my cheek.

  ‘The Chancellor’s secrecy and deception about our business in Serenissima is indefensible,’ she says crisply. ‘I did not support his methods.’

  I didn’t see this coming. If she’s not careful she might stumble into an apology.

  ‘I see that my words surprise you,’ she says.

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘I do, however, support your match with Crown Prince Victor. You have been lost and lonely in Trinovantum. The boy healer, he was unsuitable.’

  I stiffen at the mention of Tom. It’s not just the way she talks about him as if he can be discarded like an ill-fitting coat. It’s also the implication that I’m constitutionally incapable of making a good decision on my own.

  ‘I know this is not easy, but it is what it is. We would be foolish to pretend otherwise.’ She leans towards me, suddenly looking … well, not exactly kind, but slightly less scary. ‘I do not believe you to be as committed to the union of houses as the Chancellor assumes. So I have come to say this: returning to Trinovantum would not be the balm you think it to be. You were miserable from the day you arrived. Faking your smile by day and wilting at night.’

  I can’t hide my shock at her insight. I hardly know her, and yet she understands me better than almost all of the people giving me counsel. I hate that she’s right.

  ‘Oh yes, my dear. We knew. We all knew.’ Her voice softens a little, and for the first time, I wonder if she actually cares.

  ‘It broke our hearts to watch your daily path towards despair. I am not blessed with tact and sensitivity and nor do I wish to be. I do not apologise for the words I said about your parents. My tone might have been ill-advised, but not my sentiment.’

  When she said my father was a ‘poor choice’, that he was ‘beneath’ my mother, I wanted to rip her head off for dishonouring him. For trampling on my memories – the only thing I thought I had left of him. But now I know different. I have to concede that she’s right again, this time about Samuel Maxwell. It makes me wonder what else she could be right about.

  The Luminaress at least has the virtue of levelling with me. I doubt that we’ll ever be besties, but I’m starting to wonder if I’ve judged her too quickly. As I watch the old woman sitting across from me in her embroidered frock and comfortable shoes, my mind jumps to Gladys. Also prickly but wise. I ignored Gladys’s advice and it didn’t end well. For her, or for me.

  ‘Your mother,’ she continues, ‘was a remarkable woman. But also reckless. It was one of the many qualities I admired about her – we all did. We had such hopes.’

  She pauses a moment, looking off into the distance, caught up in memories.

  ‘It may surprise you, Your Majesty, that I too was young once, idealistic in my own way. Led astray by flights of fancy.’ She catches herself, her eyes piercing me once more. ‘And then I learned that the will of nature always prevails. One person cannot change the direction of the tide, no matter how determined she might be. All she will do is suffer and then eventually drown.’

  Okay, now I have no idea what she’s talking about.

  ‘Your mother has also learned the lesson of nature’s laws to her detriment,’ she says, looking directly into my soul. ‘The changes she inaugurated could not be sustained and so Mother Nature corrected the balance with war. Uncountable lives – destroyed. It is hard to explain to those who were not there.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ I say, shaking my head. ‘I don’t need to have been there to know that my mother’s actions did not make what Damius did inevitable. He chose to trash Trinovantum and kill all those people. It was not nature that ripped my mother’s life force from her body; she didn’t bring it upon herself. That’s all on Damius. Damius is to blame for Damius’s actions.’

 
; ‘So much like your mother,’ she says gently. ‘When you reach the season of life I have, seen what I have seen, you realise that change can be no more forced than the leaves of trees be made to surrender their hues.’

  ‘We’re going to have to agree to disagree on that one.’

  ‘Do not be so hasty, girl. I have not yet reached the point I wish to make.’

  ‘Well, go on then.’

  ‘All of this is by way of approaching the matter of the Art.’

  My mouth turns dry. Looks like I didn’t dodge the bullet after all. The Luminaress darts a glance at Jules.

  ‘The Art is the foundation for our traditions. A queen must be the exemplar of the Art; it is a responsibility bestowed upon her through the ages by Mother Nature.’

  I try to swallow but it feels like I have razor blades stuck in my throat.

  ‘I have been informed that you have had contact with the nereids.’

  ‘I’ve spoken with their queen, yes.’

  ‘Is that what they call her?’ the Luminaress says in obvious disgust. ‘She is no more a queen than your chambermaid.’

  I bristle at her tone but think it’s best to keep my mouth shut. For now.

  ‘I am not privy to the content of your conversations, as you have chosen not to confide in me or seek the counsel of other members of your Order. But if I know anything about nereids, they will have made promises to you – promises that may or may not be kept.’

  Her eyes do not leave me as she reaches down to her cup, sips her tea. I sense she’s trying to read me, hoping my body will convey to her what I have so far refused to say with words. I sit as still and neutral as I can.

  ‘I’m not judging, you understand,’ she says. ‘It is in their nature to be duplicitous. They can be no other than they are. But you are vulnerable. Your constitution is your strength, but even great strength can be turned on itself.’

  ‘Thanks for your concern, but I’ve already drawn my own conclusions about the mermaids,’ I lie. After what Victor told me, I am seriously starting to worry I have been too trusting. But then again, what choice do I have? My mother told me to go to the Grigios, and the Grigios are connected via the mermaids to a scroll that may free her. I need to see where the path leads.