The maid watched as the pearls were clasped around the princess’s neck. The maid saw them cut down the princess until she was small, sand down her edges until she was soft, bleed the color from her hair and eyes until they were faint remnants of what had been.
And the maid realized, once the pearls were locked tight, that she and the princess were friends again. They had always been friends, hadn’t they? Why wouldn’t she want such a lovely friend?
The dame’s eyes welled with tears of joy and relief. “This will protect you,” she told her daughter. “Men will be cruel, but they will be less cruel when you are beautiful.”
“I don’t want to marry him,” the princess said. The tears in her eyes were neither of joy nor of relief.
“No one ever does.” The dame made sure the clasp would not falter. After a long quiet, she said once more, “But beauty will protect you.”
The wolf came to the castle. And the dame was right.
He sniffed around their doors and their rooms. He sniffed around their tables, their feasts. He sniffed around the princess’s skirts. But he did not close his jaws, because the princess’s beauty soothed him so.
Then that night, he found the maid, and sank his teeth into her, because she had no pearls to protect her. He left her bleeding in the hall when her only friend ran him off.
In the morning, the wolf announced he would carry the princess away for his bride, and she wept, and she, too, was learning to lie, because she called them tears of joy.
The maid did not weep, for she was the cleverest, coldest maid in Sovabin. She knew the prince and dame would send her with the princess to keep the wolf busy. She knew her godmothers were waiting for a moment just like this, when she was trapped without any hope but them.
I knew I would have to go to Minkja, or the von Falbirgs would cast me out in barren Sovabin. I knew the pearls would only protect Gisele for so long. There would be nothing, no one to protect me.
I knew from the scars on my back that Gisele would look the other way while Adalbrecht ate me alive. She would throw me to the wolves if it meant she would survive another day.
But she never suspected I, her loyal, obedient maid, would do the same.
CHAPTER TWENTY- TWO
TheThorns
By the time we get to my chambers, I can’t decide if I want to forgive Gisele or tear the pearls off her neck.
Luckily, she does it for me, unclasping them the moment she steps inside. Her hair darkens, her silhouette fills out. There’s a little rip as the seams of the gown are suddenly put to the test. “I forgot how much I hated this,” Gisele says tightly, and tosses the pearls on the bed.
Without their charm blunting the edges of my resentment, I don’t have to mull it over anymore; it’s boiling quite well enough on its own. I begin untying my apron and say brusquely, “Adalbrecht knows about the pearls.”
Gisele looks at me, then away, face hardening. “I don’t care. I never asked for them.”
But she sure cared whenIwore them. I keep that to myself. “Did you notice anything useful at the ball?”
“I’d rather wait until the others get here.”
Well, then. It seems I’m not the only one still harboring grudges.
I walk around her to go get a nightgown out of the dresser, because all I want to do is crawl into bed and not think about what happened tonight—with Adalbrecht, with Emeric, any of it. Then I think twice. Emeric will be here with Ragne in a moment, and even if I put a dressing gown on over the nightgown, I—I don’t know that I want him to see me like that.
(It was different with the pearls. It wasn’tme.)
I pull a plain kirtle out of the wardrobe instead. It’s still one for a margravine-to-be, but it’s soft, simple pine-green lambswool, meant for a quiet day in the library or a private stroll in the gardens. It’ll be comfortable enough over the linen shift I’m already wearing.
“Ragne’s sweet,” Gisele starts, pauses, carries on. “And funny. She kept coming up with names for everyone. She called Anna von Morz the Scary Dress One, and Irmgard was the Smells-Like-Feet One.”
I bark a laugh as I start unbuttoning the servant uniform. “Too bad she can’t do all the wedding events. Give me a second, and you can put this on.” This is the last part of the plan: Theprinzessinretires early from the ball, though Adalbrecht will keep the festivities going until late in the night just to prove that he can. Joniza will wait around for Gisele so they can leave together, just as they arrived. (Joniza may also be having a rendezvous with her archnemesis. I’m not sure and I’m too afraid to ask.)
Gisele isn’t listening. She’s slowly pacing around the room, taking in the deep-blue plush carpet, the rivers of velvet curtains, the view of eastern Minkja spilling out beyond the Yssar. Her fingertips run over the bedposts, the vanity, the mantel above the hearth, careful as though it’s all a spun-glass dream, breakable if she presses too hard.
More careful than she’d ever been with me.
The room—all of it, really—is a hundred times more lavish than anything she had in Sovabin. A thousand times more luxurious than the drafty, crowded Gänslinghaus. All of this would have been hers, if not for me.
