Grim Lovelies (Grim Lovelies 1)

She tugged her feet out of his grasp, embarrassed by the scars and the missing toes and the questions Beau always raised about them. “Don’t start, Beau.”

She climbed off the table.

“Take these off,” he said suddenly, tugging at the dish gloves. “I want to hold your hand. Really dance.”

“But we don’t know how.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

She pulled off the dish gloves—?at least he’d dropped the subject of her toes. “And the apron,” he said, digging his fingers into the fabric at her waist. “I hate them, all these stupid things she makes you wear. Dressing you up like a doll.” His voice had grown low.

“Beau, are you all right?”

“Take it off,” he said, pulling at the ribbons behind her neck. “You aren’t some plaything. It isn’t okay, her ordering you around. Prince Rennar was right. You shouldn’t be sweeping her floors.”

“But it’s my job.”

“You get paid for a job. A job with no pay is called slavery.” He tugged at the apron.

“Beau, what’s gotten into you? The Mada is . . . she’s like our . . .”

“She’s not our mother,” he said flatly.

The music from the ballroom stopped abruptly. For a moment the house was silent. No laughter, no clinking glasses, only the slowly bursting soap bubbles in the sink.

“Anouk!” Mada Vittora suddenly called. “More wine!”

Anouk gave Beau a hard look as she pushed his hands off her shoulders, then retied the bow of her apron. She smoothed her hands over it, pulled back her hair, and carried the wine decanter to the ballroom. They had cleared the table, throwing napkins on the floor and haphazardly stacking the rest of the dirty dishes, and now they leaned over a map of the city that was unrolled on the table. Prince Rennar held a dagger over the map, speaking in a low whisper as he made small, precise cuts. Anouk kept her eyes averted, but she glimpsed silver powder on his lips. What magic were they doing now?

As she poured the wine, she tried not to make it obvious she was listening. Rennar was speaking the language of magic: the Selentium Vox, the Silent Tongue. Members of the Haute spent lifetimes mastering it. Mada Vittora spoke it better than most. The townhouse library was filled with rare handwritten volumes of Selentium Vox grammar and vocabulary, books that Anouk borrowed and pored over at night so that she would be ready to help her mistress if the time ever came. And it had, once. There had been an evening over the summer when Mada Vittora had guzzled too many limoncello tonics and couldn’t remember the words to a love spell she’d meant to cast on some famous Pretty movie star. Anouk had snuck into the library and sorted through the volumes using the bits and pieces of Selentium Vox she’d taught herself until she’d found the right book. She left it out on the bistro table in the courtyard, open to the correct spell; Mada Vittora discovered it and, in her tipsy state, assumed she’d found the spell herself.

When Anouk went back to the kitchen, Beau was gone. Probably sulking in his room on the far side of the courtyard. Was it her fault he and Mada Vittora hadn’t ever gotten along? The Mada had given them life. Human life. Words to speak their thoughts, hands to do work, clothes to dress themselves, and all the other gifts that came with being human, like music and laughter and fairy tales, things Anouk clung to like precious jewels.

Before Mada Vittora—?well, that was only darkness. It frightened Anouk to think about those days. She knew what she had been: animal. She didn’t know what type—?none of them knew—?but what did it matter? Animal was animal. Mangy and hungry. Alone and vulnerable. She knew she’d been this, but she didn’t remember. All she had was a hazy feeling of dread, like trying to rush home before a winter storm strikes, and that’s how she’d given her past a name: Dark thing. Cold place. It made her first memory all the sweeter: Roses and thyme. Waking on the attic floor with all the rest of them looking down at her. Beau. Cricket. Hunter Black. Luc, the eldest, who looked twenty but had been human for only five years. He’d wrapped a blanket around her and stroked her hair and said, It will all be well, you’re safe now, it’s scary now but you’ll learn. A puddle of blood had stained the floor beneath her. Viggo’s, though she hadn’t known it at the time.

And the Mada. She had been there too, of course, perfumed by the trick’s marjoram and wormwood and foxglove, the words of the Selentium Vox whisper still on her lips. When her eyes had found Anouk’s, she had tilted her head and smiled.

This one’s sweet, isn’t she?

Anouk was lost in the memory, elbow-deep in cleaning the dishes, when she heard the click-click of heels on the kitchen floor. Mada Vittora came tottering in, drunk, her cheeks flushed unbecomingly.

Anouk pulled off her gloves. “Is dinner over? Shall I fetch the Royals’ coats?”

Mada Vittora waved vaguely. The top button of her blouse had come loose and was dangling. “Viggo’s seeing them out. He’s going to Castle Ides with them to handle the final paperwork.”

An image flashed in Anouk’s head of Prince Rennar and she felt a stab of regret that she wouldn’t see him again. Why did she care? Honestly, she should be relieved that he and the other Royals were gone. But there had been something about the way he had looked at her so keenly, as though he knew something that she didn’t.

“It was a good party, I hope?” Anouk asked.

Mada Vittora took a step and slipped on the soapy water. She cursed and kicked off her heels. Her bare toes were surprisingly pale, like Anouk’s. Except, of course, that she had all ten.

“Better than we dreamed.” Her eyes glistened with the alcohol. “Big things are going to happen. Just wait and see.”

“Oh . . . good.” Anouk had been referring to the food.

Mada Vittora saw the unraveling button and frowned. “Attash betit . . . betit . . . betit . . .” She couldn’t recall the last word of the repair trick.

Anouk feigned a cough. “Truk.”