Midnight Beauties (Grim Lovelies 2)

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.