The Everlasting Rose (Belles, The)

by Dhonielle Clayton

  I find a seat and look for things to distract me from the chaos of thoughts in my head. Currant cushions and mahogany paneling enclose us, safe from a gathering wind. Heat-lanterns knock into one another over our heads.

  “How do those who can’t afford the lifts get up to the city?” I ask Surielle.

  She doesn’t answer, her gaze fixed ahead as if she doesn’t know me.

  The people around us clear their throats. Some laugh and hide judgmental smiles behind gloved hands.

  “The winding path, of course,” someone says.

  Lady Arane shakes her head at me.

  The lift pauses at the market quarter, where shoppers file out, eager to bargain and barter in the stores on this layer. More well-dressed passengers join us, toting hat boxes and lantern carriers and hand trollies bursting with parcels.

  We climb higher, pausing at various piers to load and unload people. I stare out the window at the twinkling lights we’ve left behind, then at Lady Arane and her disciples, who sit like statues. I’m just wondering if we’ll be taking the carriage to the very top of the mountain when Lady Arane rings a bell above her head.

  “Garden Quartier,” the porter announces, as the lift pauses at a level that glows pale green and gold from city-lanterns. Black railings hold winter flower boxes, each bloom wearing a tiny cape of snow.

  “We’re getting off,” Lady Arane whispers.

  Surielle waits for me to stand, then takes her place behind me.

  We shuffle out and join a crowd on the promenade. Blimps soar in tandem with the crowd’s movement, advertising new beauty products soon to be released and the Fashion Minister’s vivant dresses. Some feature cameo portraits of Queen Sophia and her promises for new beauty laws. Her hair is all white and loosely curled like a snowstorm trapped around her shoulders. Diamonds dot along the new teardrop curve of her eyes, and she winks at onlookers every few seconds as the blimps circle.

  It’s almost as if she’s watching me. My stomach lifts with panic. Guards patrol the crowds, studying people, but most of the shoppers slip in and out of shops, not paying them much attention.

  I glance down at the pier where we began our journey. The lights are tiny pinpricks now, and I feel like we’re so close to the sky I could steal a cloud.

  I turn around looking for the stairs, but Lady Arane moves forward and I fall into step behind her.

  We pass tightly packed shops squeezed next to each other like macarons in a pastry box. Lady Arane stops in front of a door marked CLEOME’S COLLECTION OF CURIOUS FLOWERS. The shop window boasts a miniature greenhouse bursting with colorful blooms.

  It’s empty of customers.

  We enter. A chime sounds. The ladies survey the space. I walk along the edges of the room, running my fingers over a pot of what Maman used to call skeleton flowers in our greenhouse at La Maison Rouge. Her favorite. As a little girl, whenever we’d been tasked to water them, I’d watch in awe as their white petals turned translucent when the liquid hit them, every vein and fiber inside exposed to the light.

  I pull one from the pot and put it in my pocket.

  Lady Arane whistles.

  A pretty clerk peeks from behind a curtain, spots Lady Arane, and nods. Lady Arane approaches a massive bell jar in the middle of the room. It holds a bright cleome flower. A plant-lantern oscillates above, sending down its tiny rays of sunshine.

  Lady Arane admires the flower, then whistles again, this time letting the air from her mouth rush into the holes in the bell jar.

  The teacup dragons wiggle in my waist-sash, eager to get out, as her whistle sharpens.

  “What is she doing?” I ask Surielle.

  “Using the key,” she says, without taking her eyes off the flower.

  The flower curves over and touches the glass. A nearby cabinet inches forward from the wall. Without uttering a word, the clerk hands Lady Arane a night-lantern and Surielle a heat-lantern. Lady Arane slips behind the cabinet, leading the way. Violetta and the other disciple nudge me to follow.

  A long winding set of stairs descends down into the dark belly of the mountain. I can’t see where they end.

  “Welcome to the Spider’s Path,” Lady Arane announces.

  The cabinet closes behind us.

  “What is this place?” I ask.

  “One of the largest palace fortresses ever built,” Lady Arane tells me. “It was called the Yellow Sapphire, but was abandoned by superstitious Queen Jamila because it’s believed to contain an entrance to the Goddess of Death’s caves. But people say that about many places. Regardless, it’s been sealed off and remained unused for decades.”

  We weave through sharp passageways. The skeletons of post-balloons and night-lanterns scatter the floor. Tapestries of cobwebs coat the walls. The Iron Ladies use their daggers to rip them down so we can continue to pass. We walk for what feels like three hourglasses. I try to remember all the turns.

  Five lefts, and six rights. If I have any hope of trying to make my way back, I have to memorize it.

  Surielle hands me a pouch full of water. I gulp it down, then sprinkle some on my fingers, jamming my hand in my waist-sash for the teacup dragons. Their little tongues lick my fingertips thirstily.

  Ahead, the silhouette of a man is outlined in the warm glow of a fire-lantern.

  Lady Arane whistles again.

  The man pivots and parrots her tune.

  I freeze. The power of the arcana collects in my hands.

  It’s Auguste.

  The sting of seeing him again pins me in place. My legs are weak under me. His hair is cut short and his skin too pale now, the color of eggshells.

  Violetta pushes me from behind. “Move forward,” she orders, but her words don’t register.

  My mouth is dry. I feel like all the blood inside me has drained out. I had worked on steeling my heart against this moment. I had trained it against the sound of his voice and let Rémy creep into the crevices left behind. I had thought my feelings for Rémy, combined with my anger, would stamp out any flicker of feeling left inside me.

  But they haven’t.

  “May your threads be strong,” he says to Lady Arane.

  “And may your web serve you well,” she replies.

  The cadence of his voice slips beneath my skin.

  “Your Grace,” she says.

  “Please don’t call me that.” He frowns.

  My heart becomes a drum, each beat growing louder and louder, my pulse furious.

  “Let me introduce you to my esteemed ladies. My first disciple, Lady Surielle. Second disciple, Lady Liara, and third disciple, Lady Violetta.”

  They each bow in turn.

  The arcana linger right under my skin, reacting, joining the anger inside me. I fish out the skeleton flower in my pocket and sprinkle it with water drops from the water pouch. The petals lose their color and reveal their insides.

  “And of course you already know our favorite Belle, Camille Beauregard,” Lady Arane says.

  I step forward into the night-lantern light.

  His mouth drops open and his eyes comb over me. My gaze burns into his. My nerves tingle with revenge. The world around us dissolves. The mountain. The Iron Ladies. The pockmarked lanterns. The teacup dragons.

  It’s just him and me.

  Memories of the night of Sophia’s party hit me in waves—the secrets I’d shared with him spat back at me in front of everyone, my private words twisted into unrecognizable shapes and stretched out in the open and subjected to judgment, our closeness exposed to light and air and shriveling like rotting fruit.

  His eyes telegraph a thousand apologies.

  The teacup dragons gaze out of my waist-sash and cock their heads to the side.

  “Camille.” My name sounds like a firework when he says it. A loud, popping thing that echoes off the walls. It throws me out of our bubble and back into the long corridor with the Iron Ladies gawking at us.

  “What is this about, Lady Arane?” I ask. “Is this some sort of trap?”<
br />
  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s an enemy.” I grit my teeth.

  “Not to us.”

  “Camille, let me explain...” Auguste starts toward me with his hands out.

  I stretch the petals of the flower in my hand until they’re the size of the lift carriages we took up the mountainside. Lady Arane and her disciples jump back, shouting in alarm, but I pay them no mind. I cinch the petals around Auguste’s waist, trapping him in place. “Don’t come near me.”

  “What are you doing, Camille?” Lady Arane steps closer to me, but I am still as stone. “He’s taking us to see Princess Charlotte.”

  “Step away or I’ll snap him in half,” I tell her, “and then do the same to you.”

  “Let us talk in private,” he says, his breath ragged as I coil the stems tighter and tighter around his waist and rib cage.

  “We had a bargain,” she reminds me.

  “Our bargain is on hold,” I yell.

  Anger flares in Lady Arane’s black eyes as she glances from Auguste to me. Her jaw clenches and her cheeks vibrate with rage and helplessness. Finally, she nods and her disciples move farther into the passageway, but their daggers remain fixed on me, glinting in the night-lantern light. Ready to stab me at any moment.

  Auguste and I stand face-to-face. I hold him pinned like a doll. His eyes gleam.

  “Are you going to let me out of this flower?” he says.

  I tighten it around his waist, thickening the fibers until they’re like metal and have the capacity to crush his bones. “Should I?”

  “I’m sorry,” he stammers out through labored breaths.

  “Sorry?” I laugh. That word is too small to wipe away the things he did to me. “That’s it?”

  “I admit it all. I was wrong. At first, my mother had me convinced that helping her was the right thing to do.”

  “You lied.”

  “I withheld information.”

  His expression is anguished, but I can still sense his smugness, like his lips would betray him at any moment and tip into a half-smile.

  The memories become a tornado, the turning of a télétrope off-kilter.

  The way we argued.

  The laughter.

  The way he slipped beyond my boundaries.

  The sparring.

  The way he touched me.

  The secret post-balloons.

  The way he kissed me.

  Sophia’s voice rings out between us: “I’ve been told you think I’m a monster. That you called me that, in fact.”

  “You told Sophia everything she needed to know to terrorize me and my sisters.”

  “I didn’t know what I was doing.”

  “You made me love—” My voice breaks, and I clear my throat.

  “I loved you,” he says. “I still do.”

  The words are like poison darts to the chest. The betrayal twists into bitterness that feeds the anger.

  “I tried to stop it all, but I was too late. The pieces were already in motion.”

  I don’t believe him.

  I can’t.

  “I was just a game token on a board to you.”

  “No, you were much more,” he insists, struggling against his bonds. “I hated having to...”

  His words become a vise tightening around my heart, so I force him to feel the pain, too. I tighten the petals around his core, and he lets out a piteous cry.

  His words stumble out between gasps for air: “That’s why I’m here. When I realized I couldn’t stop what I’d started, I convinced Sophia to choose me as her king. I knew I was clever enough to get her to. Then, I could stay close and disrupt all her plans. I’ve been working with the Iron Ladies for the past month. Right, Lady Arane?”

  Lady Arane steps out of the passageway, arms crossed, sweat shining on her gray forehead. “It’s true. He’s been our palace informant. Integral to keeping tabs on Charlotte and her condition.”

  “How?” I prod.

  He slumps forward. Sweat pours down his face. “I can’t feel my legs.”

  I loosen the petals’ grip on his waist ever so slightly.

  “After what happened with Claudine, I found Violetta and helped her leave the palace. We kept in touch. When she joined the spiders, I fed her information, and she got me a meeting,” he tells me.

  Lady Arane confirms his story with a nod.

  “See?” he says, his eyes hooded and—I notice for the first time—ringed with bruises from lack of sleep. “I tried to fix what I’d done. I don’t expect you to forgive me. What I did was a betrayal, and trust is a thread between people. Once broken it’s hard to mend.” He sighs. “I know what I did. I know I couldn’t possibly make it up to you, or have a second chance.”

  “No,” I spit.

  “But I have your sister Padma with me. I hope you’ll talk to her and confirm that I’ve treated her with nothing but the utmost respect.”

  I lose my concentration and the flower shrivels. Auguste falls forward, crashing to the stone ground with a thud.

  “Padma? She’s here?” My vision blurs.

  “I convinced Sophia to let me take her with me, so I could maintain myself for the papers. But in reality, I wanted to help her find you. And I knew you’d be upset, and I’d feel that wrath.” He rubs his rib cage. “Deservedly so.”

  “Upset,” I say, my laugh sharpened by fury. “Take me to my sister.”

  Auguste traverses the tunnels swiftly and silently as if the path is ingrained in his muscle memory. The shape of him is the same, long and lanky, and his stride is confident, his steps pounding like he owns the very ground he walks on.

  I ball my hands into fists, trying to quiet every roiling part of me that wants to reach out and hurt him the way he hurt me.

  Our footsteps reverberate down the long, winding hall. The cold of the mountain feels caught in the stone all around us, as if the smooth rocks could release snow and wind at any moment. I clench my teeth to keep them from chattering. The Iron Ladies follow behind us, their whispers crescendoing as we snake along.

  He steals glances at me.

  I glare back.

  There’s no warmth for him left.

  “Violetta first brought me here,” he says, taking a left turn. “She showed me the tunnel network. We started working together right after Claudine’s death.”

  The sound of her name still takes the breath out of me.

  “I feel horrible about what we did to Claudine,” I admit. I don’t know how to make it right. I don’t know if I can ever fix it.

  “So do I,” he replies. “I want to fix so many things that have happened.”

  “I should’ve stopped it. I should’ve refused to participate.”

  “You couldn’t have. The rest of us in the room should’ve challenged Sophia. Stood together against her terrible game. We can’t expect one person—or even two—to take the entire burden of resisting on their shoulders. We all have to stand up and say no.”

  I don’t know if I ever want to stand with him. Even if he’s done the right thing in our time apart. His betrayal is a wound—crusted over, perhaps, but infected and bruised.

  “After you woke Charlotte, everything was in chaos. The queen’s body needed the ritual treatments to begin its journey to the afterlife, rumors about Charlotte spread everywhere, Claudine’s death became newsie fodder, and your escape hit the press like a storm. That, at least, provided the perfect distraction so that we could move Charlotte,” he says.

  “Well, aren’t you a hero?” I snap, the anger inside me loose and ready to hit him once more.

  “I’m not telling you this to make you feel differently about me. It’s probably too late for that. I don’t expect you to forgive me. I don’t even know how to ask. But I wanted you to know what happened before you see Charlotte.” He nibbles his bottom lip.

  I find a pinprick of light ahead to fixate on. I won’t look at him. I won’t give him any indication of how I feel about any of this.

  We
turn right. The tunnels smell of metal and iron and rust. Mining-lanterns hang from strings on the ceiling, casting sickly flickering light on the walls.

  “Sophia has turned the palace and Trianon into her playground. Installing beauty checkpoints alongside security ones, so she can control everyone.”

  The image of her shifting blood cameos comes to mind. Then, she was simply keeping tabs on her court. Now, she’s found a way to watch everyone, the entire world.

  “She tortures those who she deems more beautiful than she. If they don’t comply, she locks them up until they relent. She’s created new starvation boxes that allow her to watch as their beauty drifts away.”

  “Sounds like Sophia. She’s been given everything she’s ever wanted and now, she might be queen.” A cold, slippery sensation trickles through my gut. “Who is doing her beauty work?”

  “I don’t know,” Auguste replies.

  I think of Ivy and Amber. Of Edel. The things she could be forcing them to do.

  The narrow passage opens into a large courtyard before a once decadent palace carved from the belly of the mountain. Gold-and-silver filigree crawls over tall towers. Heat-lanterns and night-lanterns dance around each other, becoming tiny suns warming and lighting the darkness.

  “All the passages are plugged with blockades except for this one,” Auguste reports.

  A set of guards acknowledge him with a nod. They step aside and allow us entry to climb the stairs behind them.

  We mount the seemingly endless steps leading to the palace entrance far above. Gilded lifts sit in disrepair with rotten cables. I can imagine the once grand balconies overlooking lavish gardens of mountain flowers, the layers of luxurious private chambers, sumptuous feasts, and overflowing pitchers of champagne and wine, incandescent-lanterns made to capture the light of the outside.

  At the top, Lady Arane and Auguste whistle a matching tune. It excites the teacup dragons. They escape my pouch, racing up to the cavernous ceiling and chasing one another like aggravated post-balloons.