Midnight Beauties (Grim Lovelies 2)

he said, giving him a gentle push toward the stairs.

The music stopped and was replaced by the Duke’s muffled voice. He must have been introducing each of the delegations as part of his welcome speech. Luc reached the stairs but then raised a finger and circled back. “Ah. I almost forgot.” He reached into his pocket. “I brought this for Beau. He loved cupcakes.” He produced a slightly smushed miniature cake with dark brown frosting.

“Dogs can’t have chocolate, Luc.”

Little Beau, on the other side of the bars, whined low and insistently. Anouk knelt down and scratched his head, then fed him the ham scraps she’d pilfered from the kitchen. He wagged his tail.

Luc started for the stairs.

“Hold on.” She snatched the cupcake out of Luc’s hand. “Give me that. There’s no rule that says I can’t have chocolate.” She took a hefty bite, and for a wondrous but too-brief second, she leaned against the stairwell and savored the taste.

She finished it, then dusted off her hands. “Right. Now we can face the most powerful people in the world.”

Chapter 15

The Eve Feast transformed the normally bleak great hall into a banquet room from out of a fairy tale. In lieu of musicians, Royals summoned music from the elements: piano from the snow hitting the windows, timpani from the stones that made up the church walls, violin from the flames licking the hearth. Delicious smells rose from the serving dishes Anouk and Jolie and Karla brought out from the kitchen, cinnamon and pine­apple, orange and nutmeg. The twin dining tables, so rough-hewn that the girls got splinters while eating their porridge, were now draped in shimmering gold lace that caught the candlelight. The Royals’ soft chatter, flowing in and out of a dozen earthly and magical languages, was pierced by laughter. The antler clock in the nave had changed its carvings to show depictions of fir boughs and stags.

The Parisian Court had the center of one of the tables, next to the Crimson Court princesses, one of whom kept purring in Rennar’s ear, her long red fingernails tracing small circles against the sleeve of his suit. On Rennar’s other side, Quine’s daughter sipped watered-down wine, looking bored, waving a black-clawed finger in and out of the candle flame before her.

Luc was seated across from Rennar, next to a trio of empty places that should have belonged to the Court of Isles from London and that was marked with their crest of obsidian and diasporite.

“This makes me think of your story,” Anouk whispered in Luc’s ear as she served him a fat slice of blackberry pie. “?‘The Northland Maidens.’?”

He raised an eyebrow. “The Northland Maidens” was a tale of seven beautiful girls selected each year by the village priestess in a land where the sun never set. There was a grand feast in the girls’ honor with plum wine and venison steaks, the lion’s share of the village’s winter food stores. The girls’ cheeks and shoulders were dusted with tinted sugar, and they were draped in garlands of fir; the villagers took turns serving them. At the end of the feast, the seven girls were thrown into the sea to appease the ancient gods.

Luc’s dessert fork hovered over the pie. “That’s a bleak comparison, Dust Bunny.”

Anouk nodded toward the other acolytes, serving the Royals wine and dessert. “But accurate. Tonight a feast; tomorrow some of us will be dead.” Bitterness filled her mouth, and she swiped the fork from his hand and stole a bite of pie. The taste of dark berries and butter lingered on her tongue. “At least in the story, the maidens were the guests of honor at the feast; they didn’t have to be the servants.” She jerked her chin at the Crimson princess flirting with Rennar. “Do you think they suspect they’re dining with a beastie?”

“You think they’d still be sitting here if they did?” He took the fork back from her pointedly and dropped his voice even more. “Listen, do you really believe Rennar will give all this up? This glamour? This power?”

Across the table, the princess kept purring in Rennar’s ear. A drunken smile teased the corners of his lips, but it didn’t match the sober look in his eyes.

“I think there could be more to the prince than we know,” she said noncommittally. In truth, the pie was sitting like a heavy stone in the pit of her stomach. The feast did feel eerily similar to the one for the ill-fated Northland Maidens. The end of the feast didn’t mean certain death in a watery grave to appease ancient gods, but still, her odds weren’t good. Then again, when had her odds ever been good? She’d defied the odds countless times. She’d survived Mada Zola’s machinations. She’d battled topiary soldiers and Marble Ladies. She’d faced a frozen death in the Black Forest and lived. She touched the outside of her dress, feeling the lump of the bell for reassurance.

She became aware of a sense of being watched. Across the table, the Crimson princess with the red nails was entwining her fingers with Rennar’s, whispering something into his ear, but Rennar’s eyes were fixed on Anouk.

She tipped up her chin, put plates and cutlery on a silver tray, and took it back to the kitchen. She could still feel his eyes on her back. Was he also thinking of the unlikely odds? Wondering if he’d placed his bet on a poor choice?

Her mind was so absorbed with the story of the seven sacrificed girls that she didn’t register the sound of a shoe scuffing the ground as she passed the confectionery. She squeaked as two hands tugged her into the dark pantry and shut the door behind her. The silver tray slipped from her hands and she cringed, awaiting the crash of broken plates and cutlery, but—?

There was only silence.

Then: “Incendie flaim.”

The voice was like crackling coals; a voice she knew. A flame sputtered to life in the palm of Prince Rennar’s hand. It threw back the shadows and lit up both of their faces as well as the shelves, normally bare but now laden with chocolate bars and flour sacks and tins of marzipan.

She glanced down.

The silver tray, with its spilled plates and cutlery, floated six inches from the floor.

“Maigal doucie,” he whispered, and the silver objects rested themselves on the ground as quietly as an exhale. Anouk realized she’d been holding her breath.

“That’s a pretty trick,” she said in a low enough voice that they wouldn’t be overheard. The flame lit up a smear of pastel blue on his bottom lip—?the powder he’d swallowed to cast the whisper. On instinct, she reached up and wiped it away.

His head turned slightly, following her finger.

She jerked back her hand. “You . . . had powder on your lips. It was bothering me.” She swallowed. “Always the maid, I guess.”