Midnight Beauties

by Megan Shepherd

  She spent long hours trying to discover her crux. Each morning she rose before dawn and ran laps around the courtyard until her muscles ached. She forced herself to stand barefoot in the snow, then hold her hands an inch from the scalding stove. She memorized and practiced ritual patterns of movement that spell-casters used. She locked herself in the Duke’s storerooms, even though Esme told her it was folly, and examined every herb she could find, from dried rosemary to Spanish thyme, sniffing each one, tasting them all, studying the effects they had on her to see if any one of them gave her some special spark. Then she tried the dried flowers that he stored in glass jars, laceleaf and gardenia, lotus and calla lilies. By the third week, she was desperate enough to move on to poisons. She read about each one in the stained old guidebook before carefully placing a drop of it on her tongue, but this only sent her to the infirmary with stomach cramps, where Esme made her a soothing drink of warm goat milk and honey and gave her two contraband pills (smuggled from a Pretty pharmacy in Berlin) for the pain.

  “You’re going to kill yourself, going on like this,” Esme said, handing her the warm milk. “If you have a death wish, the Baths will take care of that for you.”

  Anouk gulped down the glass of milk and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “I have to find my crux. The Baths are in two weeks. Some Pretties came this morning on the mountain path with a delivery of fresh pears—​the Royals are practically on their way.”

  She thought of Prince Rennar and felt a stab of pain again. What if he’d given up on her? She bent over and threw up. Esme grabbed the bucket just in time.

  “You need to speak with the Duke,” Esme said.

  “I don’t trust him.”

  Esme hesitated. “Yesterday the Duke asked me—​pointedly—​to carry a load of bandages down to Sam in the laundry room. A bunch of bloody towels spilled out—​Frederika cuts herself a lot while exercising. The bloodstain on one of them formed a ring around a perfect circle of white fabric.” There was a glint in her eye. “I felt like I’d hit my head. The circle of white. I just knew, Anouk. And somehow the Duke had known too. That’s why he asked me to run the errand. I was wrong: My crux isn’t bone. It’s pearl.”

  Anouk raised her eyebrows. All the other girls had decided on their cruxes. Frederika hadn’t outright stated that hers was poppy seeds, as Heida had insisted, but she claimed that she knew what it was. Esme had been the only one other than Anouk who hadn’t yet chosen.

  Esme rested a hand on Anouk’s shoulder. “You still don’t know what you’re going to carry into the flames. The Duke could help you.”

  Anouk wiped her mouth. “You can’t trust Royals.” She hesitated. “There’s a prince . . .”

  Esme’s eyebrows arched. “Mmm, I like princes. Go on.”

  Anouk looked away, toying with the damp cloth she’d used to wipe her face. “He’s not just any prince. Prince Rennar of the Parisian Court. Head of all the Haute. He conspired with a witch to trap my friends and me. They’re in cages now. He won’t free them until I do as he wants.”

  “What a complete bastard. Is this prince coming for the Eve Feast?”

  Anouk nodded.

  “He’ll be there to watch you walk the Coals?”

  “Yes.”

  Esme leaned forward. “Then you’d better walk into those Coals as the strongest beastie in the world and walk out of them even stronger—​the most powerful witch any Royal, even your prince, has ever seen.”

  Anouk smiled, but only briefly. “You shouldn’t hope for that, Esme. The odds are poor. One out of ten. If I survive, or Marta, or Petra, or any of the girls, your own chance of survival is so much less.”

  “That’s not how odds work.”

  “That’s how these odds work. Almost every year, only one girl lives. Sometimes not even that. I can count on one hand the number of times in centuries when two have survived.”

  “I choose to believe that odds are meant to be defied.” She rested a hand on Anouk’s shoulder. “I’ll let you in on a secret. Tonight, after the Duke retires to his chambers, some of us are going to walk the coals.”

  Anouk frowned. “You can’t. The Coal Baths aren’t like striking a match and sparking a fire. The Royals have to light them themselves with a whisper. They aren’t here yet.”

  “Not those Coals,” Esme said. Then she grinned mischievously. “Meet us at midnight in the courtyard. Bring Petra too. You’ll see.”

  * * *

  “I can’t believe you talked me into this.”

  Petra stood in the falling snow with her blanket wrapped around her and hooded over her head. The moon was hidden by the storm clouds. Anouk hugged her own blanket around her shoulders, letting the snow land on her bare hair. The courtyard was quiet. The beds of coals that Duke Karolinge had carefully been preparing lay untouched. For a few humiliating moments Anouk wondered if Esme had been playing a joke on her—​get the new girl to stand outside in the snow in the middle of the night.

  But then the clock struck midnight, and she heard footsteps on the cobblestones.

  “Esme?” she asked.

  “Shh!” Four girls, hidden by makeshift cloaks, scurried into the courtyard. Anouk could barely make out the glint of Esme’s dark skin. “We can’t let the Duke hear us. The punishment for meddling with the preparations for the Coal Baths is expulsion.”

  Petra gave Esme a long, doubting look. “Why exactly are we meddling?”

  Before Esme could answer, two more girls appeared at the far end of the cloister and tiptoed across the courtyard to join them. Anouk recognized Jolie’s braid and Karla’s skipping walk.

  “Is this everyone?” Esme whispered to them.

  “Sam’s too scared to come.” Jolie rolled her eyes, but she looked anxious too.

  Karla gave a guilty smile. “I didn’t tell Frederika about it. She’s so strange! I was afraid she’d do something crazy and the Duke would find out.”

  Esme nodded. “Let’s begin, then. You’ve all seen the Duke preparing the coals, right? They won’t be ready until the day before the Baths, when the Royals arrive. There’s nothing magical about them at the moment. They’re just charcoal bricks.” She grinned. “We’re going to light them for a firewalk.”

  “Um, why?” Petra asked.

  Esme gave her a sly look. “A firewalk is tradition. I found instructions carved under my bed by the previous girls who came here. Every year, acolytes walk the coals early as a sort of blessing. They say that the scariest part of the Coal Baths is taking the first step into the flames. But the eight of us will have already taken that step. Well, a practice step. For luck.”

  Petra rolled her eyes. It was snowing harder now and she didn’t seem amused. She turned to Anouk and muttered, “There’s a reason I never applied to university. I’m not a fan of hazings.”

  “We need all the luck we can get,” Anouk countered.

  Petra grumbled, but she didn’t leave.

  Esme produced a book of matches from her pocket. “Karla and Jolie, take some matches and light the coals from that end. Anouk and Petra, take the other end. Marta and Heida, we’ll light the coals in the middle.”

  The girls set to work. Anouk held a flame to the nearest blackened chunk of wood, and Petra crouched by the bed of coals and poked them with a hemlock branch to stir the embers. Karla did the same, stirring the coals until they sizzled, then she tossed the hemlock branch on top and dusted off her hands.

  “The real coals in the Coal Baths won’t be like these,” Esme explained. “They’re sparked by a Royal whisper, not a match. It’s possible for us to walk across these hot coals and not burn our feet, even without magic. The first thing you have to do is kick off your slippers and plunge your bare feet into the snow. Then walk quickly, but don’t run. The lighter your steps, the less likely you’ll disturb the coals and snag one between your toes. Saying a prayer first wouldn’t hurt.” She kicked off her own slippers and gave the other girls a hard look. “No screaming. No crying. Wake the Duke
and we’re all out.”

  Anouk swallowed.

  “You first, Anouk,” Esme said. “In the real Baths, we go in order of height. But I’m making the rules here, and it’s last to arrive, first to firewalk.”

  Anouk didn’t move. All of them stared at the live coals. No one else seemed inclined to step forward either. Heat rolled off the coals in waves. Anouk followed the wavering bands of air upward, past the falconry mews. She nearly jumped when she saw a face framed in the window. Frederika. A chill spread over her. She nudged the others and nodded toward the window. “We have an audience.”

  Heida shrugged it off. “Frederika won’t tell the Duke. Even if she did, he’d just think she was crazy.”

  But Anouk couldn’t shake off Frederika’s presence so easily. Just that morning, Frederika had been in the kitchen before dawn when Anouk, still half asleep, arrived to start cooking their porridge. Frederika was holding a paring knife. For a second, they had only stared at each other, Anouk suddenly fully awake, an awful tension between them, and then Jolie and Karla had come in, yawning and tying their aprons, and Frederika plunged the knife into an apple, chopped off a hunk, and chewed it slowly.

  Anouk reluctantly toed off her slippers. She knew that rubbing her feet in the snow would numb them and also create a layer of water that would insulate her soles from the heat. There was nothing enchanted about walking over hot coals. This was a poor substitute for magic and only made her miss the real thing fiercely.

  She lifted her foot, felt a wave of heat, and winced. Even if it wasn’t magic, it was still dangerous. But if she couldn’t walk across plain coals, how would she walk across enchanted ones?

  Heida taunted, “Sizzle, sizzle, little worm, how I want to watch you squirm.”

  “Knock it off.” Petra gave Heida a shove, but Heida just snorted.

  “Oh, come on! If you don’t like to think about burning alive then you shouldn’t have come. Admit it. We all know the odds we face. There are ten of us. We’ll be lucky if one of us survives. We have two weeks left to breathe. To eat. To dream. Then . . . sizzle, sizzle, little worm.”

  “Shh.” Petra’s scold was quick. “What are you, a poet now? Don’t say that. More than one of us could make it. There could be two survivors.” She glanced at Anouk. “It’s happened before.”

  “Yes, once in the last fifty trials,” Lise put in.

  Esme rested a hand on Anouk’s shoulder. “You’re the only one who hasn’t decided on her crux, Anouk. Some witches say that it was during the firewalk that it came to them, like a flash of lightning. This could be your chance.”

  It could be her only chance.

  Anouk tossed aside her blanket and stepped onto the coals. They hissed as they burned off the wet snow that had been giving her feet a small bit of protection. Heat radiated upward around her. She clenched her jaw and took another step. Miraculously, she didn’t burn. The coals felt rough beneath her feet, hot but not scalding. She walked with quick, light steps. The other girls cheered her on in hushed whispers. She grinned. It really wasn’t that difficult. Then the sound of barking, close and fierce, ripped apart her concentration.

  She stopped.

  Little Beau was loose in the courtyard. He was by the gardening shed, with his head tilted up toward the falling snow. He was howling, howling, howling. Anouk saw it in a flash. It didn’t seem real. Like a vision. She looked up in the direction he was howling, squinting into the falling snow. A bird was flying overhead. Its shape was just a dark shadow, and for a second Anouk thought it was one of Rennar’s crows, but then she heard the faintest tinkling sound. A bell. It was Saint.

  It all happened in a split second. But that was a split second longer than it was wise to stand on burning coals. Pain suddenly shot through her feet, and the vision—​if it was a vision—​disappeared. All she saw was red. She threw a hand over her mouth, stifling a scream, and sprinted the last yard. She plunged her feet into a snowbank, fell back, and stared up at the sky, breathing hard.

  The other girls surrounded her.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Why’d you stop?”

  “How did Little Beau get free?”

  She sat up abruptly. So it wasn’t a vision. Little Beau ran up and licked her cheek. She grabbed him by the scruff of his neck to make sure he was real. Despite her burned feet and the cold snow seeping into the rest of her, she suddenly grinned.

  “Oh Lord, she’s lost her mind,” Karla lamented.

  “No,” Anouk said, grinning wider. “Little Beau just showed me my crux.”

  Chapter 13

  Esme bandaged Anouk’s feet. Petra helped her hobble up to bed. But even with their ministrations, it was ten days before Anouk could walk again. They told the Duke she’d fallen ill after eating poison sumac while trying to find her crux, and he hadn’t questioned it. Petra kept her informed as the preparations intensified. Every morning, a near-constant string of enchanted Pretties arrived with mules laden down with supplies: Boxes of dried rose petals that they were ordered to sprinkle around the entire abbey. A hundred silver place settings, enough for everyone in all of the eight Courts, and a hundred crystal wine goblets. Crates of Anjou pears, Majorcan oysters, cured Spanish ham, champagne bottles packed in straw. The pantry was overflowing with fresh ingredients from all corners of the globe. The dessert pantry—​usually used to store potatoes—​now actually contained chocolate and marzipan and Madagascar vanilla.

  Once Esme declared Anouk healed, she peeled off her bandages and carefully tested out the tender soles of her feet.

  “Not a moment too soon,” Petra observed coolly. “The Royals will be here in three days and it wouldn’t look good to have you hobbling around.” She leaned forward. “Come on, tell us. What’s this crux that you discovered in a fit of burning feet? You’d better dig around the storerooms and get a sample.”

  “It isn’t in the storerooms.”

  “Everything’s in the storerooms. The Duke has fossils of ancient creatures I didn’t think actually existed. There are seeds from some bizarre fruit tree that went extinct centuries ago. Thank God my crux isn’t anything rare. Could you imagine if your connection to magic was something that existed only on, like, one random island?”

  Anouk slid on her shoes, wincing slightly, then belted her dress with a rope. “Is the Duke in his study?”

  Esme raised an eyebrow. “I thought you didn’t trust any Royals.”

  “I don’t.”

  She gave the two of them a wry smile and then gingerly made her way through the dormitory hallways and down to the private wing that housed the Duke’s chambers. Through a window outside his study, she caught a glimpse of the courtyard. The coals were now almost as fine as sand; they glittered beneath the sun. The ground had been freshly swept, and chairs—​more like thrones—​were arranged in front of the coals. Frederika was out there now, dragging freshly cut hemlock branches into a pile, and Lise was shoveling snow.

  Anouk took a deep breath and knocked on the Duke’s door.

  There was a pause, and then: “Come in, beastie. I’ve been waiting.”

  Anouk had never seen the Duke’s private study. The only ones allowed inside were Marta, to feed Saint, and Heida and Lise, to clean. Anouk blinked, surprised by the sudden opulence. Glittering gold goblets, velvet drapes, and the books! Row after row of books, each bound in rich leather, lovingly cared for, books that looked far more valuable than the ones in the library that she and Marta had thumbed through.

  Her gaze settled on Saint, perched on a stand at the end of the bookshelves, the golden bell around his neck.

  The Duke was seated at his desk, writing something. He stood when she entered. “You’re surprised by what you see.” He motioned to the glitz. “It is not my choice. I prefer a simpler atmosphere. It is strange for a Shadow Royal not to care about pretty things, I know, but they are merely artifacts entrusted to my care. If I could, I’d ship all of them back to Castle Ides.” He paused. “Except the books. Those cou
ld stay. Tell me, are you feeling better? Poison sumac, was it?”

  His gaze was firmly planted on her feet in a knowing way. She cleared her throat and eyed Saint. “Yes . . . poison sumac. But I came to ask for help. The ceremony is in three days and I’m still not certain what my crux is.”

  “I know why you’re here.” He studied her for a long time, so long that she started to shift uncomfortably, and then he sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Sooner or later every acolyte comes for help.”

  Had Petra come? Had Esme come? Had Mada Vittora once sat here on this hard wooden bench with doubt and fear in her heart?

  “I remember your mistress when she was your age.”

  Anouk’s eyes snapped to him. “You were in charge of the Cottage then?”

  “No, it was run by a duke from the Barren Court, but I came with the Royal procession to witness the Baths. I was a minor duke at the time. Sixty years old, although I looked to be about your age. We do age, you know, though much more slowly than Pretties. Mada Vittora was a great beauty. She came from a seaside village in Italy, though it was the Parisian Court who enlisted her services after she survived the trials. She was so determined, so beautiful, so bold when she faced the flames. She’d seen nine other girls die before her, yet she didn’t bat an eye. She clutched three long-stemmed roses and strode into the Coals and out the other side like it was nothing. We all knew she’d be a force to reckon with.”

  Anouk wandered down the length of the bookcase while he spoke, running her finger along the spines. “Why do you think she survived and not the other girls?”

  “The simple answer is that she found her true crux. But cruxes are deceptive. They’re only a symbol; there isn’t any inherent magic in them. Does it matter if a girl walks into the flames holding an acorn or a feather? Not exactly. The Coals don’t evaluate whether or not you’ve found your true crux—​they determine whether you’ve found your true connection to yourself. You must believe you’ve found your crux.”