Midnight Beauties (Grim Lovelies 2)
She carefully stowed the bell in her pocket, then clipped off a bit of Little Beau’s fur and tied it with thread; she would use it as a fake crux. Little Beau nosed her jacket again and looked at her with big eyes, letting out a heavy breath.
* * *
Over the next three days, the Cottage was a flurry of activity. Anouk barely knew when it was day and when it was night. The Royal procession was due to arrive at any moment, and the acolytes were kept busy preparing the guest rooms with fresh linens and sprinkling the requested rose petals everywhere. Anouk stayed in the kitchen with Karla and Jolie, organizing the new ingredients and planning a menu that would please eight Courts of Royals from across the near realms. She baked star-anise croissants and pain aux raisins. She selected a triple-crème Crémeux des Cîteaux for the cheese course, planned a winter salad with buttermilk dressing, began slow-braising the pork, set out the quail to thaw, selected brussels sprouts and pancetta to go with the salmon they were keeping on ice. And the desserts! Clafoutis fruit pie, cream puffs, upside-down tarts, chocolate gâteaux, and macarons colored with the dust from butterfly wings.
Her mind was always on the bell in her pocket. Whether she was in the ice pantry, the confectionery, or the roasting room, she checked for it obsessively. In the canning room, she was so distracted, she didn’t see the shadow looming outside the door or the shovel that came rushing out of the darkness and slammed into the back of her head.
* * *
She blinked awake, coming into a blurry kind of awareness. The back of her head stung. She touched the area, and her fingers came away bloody.
Someone was dragging her.
The person pulled her down a hallway she didn’t recognize until she smelled the reek of goats. She was in the cellar. She tried to lift her head but a bolt of pain shot through it. The hard ground bruised her back, ripping her muslin dress to tatters, but whoever was dragging her didn’t seem to care.
She squinted through her blurry vision until a storm cloud of black hair became clear.
“Frederika! Let me go!”
She kicked, but Frederika’s grip on her ankles was firm. No amount of twisting or kicking freed her. She heard fabric tearing on the floor. Frederika dragged her down a stone step, and her head smacked it, sending a starburst of pain across her vision. When the stars cleared, she found herself in the goat pen. There was a lantern on the milking table. And a knife.
Anouk scrambled to her hands and knees in the mud. The smell of goats was overwhelming. From the next stall, Little Beau started barking and scratching at his locked door.
Frederika picked up the knife with one hand and the lantern with the other.
“What are you doing?” Anouk cried, cradling the back of her head. “The Royals will be here any moment! Is this about the odds? One in ten surviving? Hurting me isn’t going to help you!”
“It isn’t about the odds. I need my crux before the ceremony.”
“Poppy seeds?” Anouk felt dizzy. “There are some in the storerooms . . .”
“My crux isn’t poppy seeds.” Frederika looked at her own reflection in the knife blade. “I knew my crux as soon as you arrived. The night before, I had a vision of a girl climbing a vine, and then there you were.”
“So . . . the vine? That’s what you want? Let me get my jacket. It’s right in that stall. I have more seeds in the pocket.”
“That’s not what I need.”
Anouk’s stomach plunged. The cold mud was starting to make her teeth chatter. She could taste blood deep in her throat. The whole back of her neck felt tender, as if something were broken, and her ribs were just as sensitive. “If not the vine . . .”
“I dreamed of a girl who could wield magic. It’s a simple idea. If I take the blood of something that changed from Haute to Pretty, and if I carry it upside down into the flames, then the opposite will happen to me: I’ll go from Pretty to Haute. I’ll become a witch.”
“You think I’m your crux?”
“Not you. Your blood.” Frederika removed a glass jar from her apron pocket and stepped forward with the knife. Anouk pushed herself to her feet, pressing a hand to her ribs. She felt for the bell in her apron—?if there was ever a time to break the rules, it was now. But her eyes went wide. Her apron was ripped. The bell must have fallen o
ut, into the mud . . .
She dropped to hands and knees and searched through the muck. The goats, sensing tension, bleated deafeningly. Was this why Frederika brought her here, to mask her screams?
Her hands came up empty. Her pulse raced. She’d left Rennar’s mirror hidden in the trunk in her bedroom. What could she use for defense? There was the dung heap. A trough of kitchen scraps. No spare tools within reach, no loose boards . . .
Frederika lunged.
Anouk scrambled forward and braced herself against the trough. She pushed it into the center of the pen, keeping it between her and Frederika. Frederika moved left; she moved left. Frederika went right; so did she.
“Frederika, this is crazy! Beastie blood has never been a crux!”
“Only because there have never been beasties here before.”