Page 4 of A Treachery of Swans

“I suppose…” Marie places a skittish, silver-pale hand on my arm. “I suppose I could, if it does not take too long.”

“I will keep it brief, I promise,” I say, holding back a smug, triumphant smile. “Believe me, Marie—you haveno ideawhat’s in store for you.”

SCENE IIThéâtre du Roi

Backstage

The corridors of the Théâtre du Roi always smell like sorcery.

It’s a subtle scent, impossible to name by those foreign to magic, a creeping stain of iron and sage that stings the back of the tongue. It precipitates in milky droplets on the aged wood, wriggles down the throat, and curdles in the lungs, turning every breath into a heavy, intoxicating thing. It’s a smell that gnaws, a smell that hungers.

It’s the smell of home.

I take an eager gulp of it as I pull Marie d’Odette d’Auvigny down the stairwell and into the dressing rooms. I want to take her through quickly, to bring her to the spot where Regnault is expecting us, but Marie breaks away to marvel at the racks of vibrant clothing, the intricately painted masks arrayed upon tables, and the prop swords bristling from a chest along the far wall. As before, she controls her expression carefully, but there is a wondering light inher eyes as she bends to pick up a feathery headdress.

I bite back a groan of annoyance. “We should go,” I prompt, taking the headdress out of her hands. “Staying too long in the dressing rooms can have… scandalous connotations.”

“Is that so?” Marie says distractedly, releasing the headdress and turning to dip her finger into a jar of red liquid. When she raises her now-crimson fingertip to the light, a single drop falls onto her pristine dress, and she frowns. “Good Mothers, is thisblood?”

“Mulberry syrup,” I say hastily, picking up the jar and setting it out of her reach. “I thought you wanted to retire soon.”

Marie sticks her finger into her mouth, casting a final longing glance around the room. “I suppose Ididsay that,” she admits. “It’s simply been some time since…” She breaks off.

I frown. “Since?”

“Since I’ve been able to breathe,” she murmurs, so quietly that I wonder if I’m meant to hear it at all. I don’t pry. Whatever sob story she might have, it’s filled with expensive dresses and scurrying servants and goblets of crystal with golden rims. Why should I pity her pain, when she weeps into pillows of the most pristine silk?

After what feels like an eternity, Marie d’Odette strides back over to my side, theclackof her heels muffled on the stained carpet. “Where to now?”

“Right this way,” I say cheerily. I pick up a still-lit candelabra from the vanity as we go, taking the lead as we dive into the darkness.

The backstage hallways of the Théâtre are unwelcoming things, the notched walls hung with ancient, abused paintings in desperate need of dusting. Cobwebs crowd every edge and corner, their stretched shapes flickering in the candlelight.

To my growing frustration, I hear Marie’s footsteps pause again. I turn to see her staring at one of the vast landscape paintings. I know what has caught her attention—it used to catch mine when Iwas younger. Beautiful, brightly hued wildflowers scattered over an Aurélian hillside. A lovely little mill in the distance, churning glittering water. A lost hope, a what-once-was. Beauty, when the kingdom still had it, before Morgane took it away.

“These must be from before Bartrand de Roux’s betrayal.” Marie speaks with a schoolteacher’s condescending air, making me bristle. As though I, of all people, might need to beeducatedon the kingdom’s history. She presses her fingertips to the flowers with a sorrowful look. “That sorcier took so much from us.”

I swallow back a bite of bitter fury. Everyone always blames the sorcier. Bartrand de Roux, the Spider King’s advisor. The story goes thus: after decades of serving the crown, Bartrand grew greedy for power, tired of having to bow at the feet of a red-blooded king. And so one night he staged a coup, using forbidden magic to try to usurp the crown. Whatever he did, it was so horrifying that it caused the threeBonnes Mèresto flee. The youngest, Morgane, cursed the kingdom in retribution: to never witness beauty again, to languish under gray skies and colorless fields. That year, spring saw nothing but wrinkled, wilted blooms, and in the winter the snow fell black as soot.

In the end, only one thread of magic remained. A gift, a gift the King claimed had been given to him by Morgane herself before her disappearance. The Couronne du Roi, a crown of seemingly unlimited power. When few crops grew that first year, the King placed the Couronne upon his brow and conjured more, ones that could survive under dreary skies. When his palace’s famous roses withered away to nothing, he forged new ones with stalks of iron and petals of solid gold. When his courtiers dared question him, he turned them into gilded statues and left them to stand in the entrance hall of the Château as an eternal warning.

But that was not enough. Nothing was enough. His paranoia was insatiable—it grew and grew, until he dared not look his ownson in the eyes, until he saw enemies in every shaded alcove and lightless corner.

He ruled for one hundred fifty years, blessed—or cursed—with an unnaturally long life. And with every day, he plunged further and further into madness, until finally he snapped. Without warning, without reason, he fled, vanishing deep into his palace like a spider into the dark.

Two weeks later, they found him dead, withered away to a husk in a hallway none knew existed.

That part of the story is never talked about: how no one knows why the Spider King went mad, just like no one knows what truly happened the night of Bartrand’s betrayal or where the Couronne really comes from. All they care about is that a sorcier is to blame.

And if one sorcier, why not all? That was the Spider King’s reasoning when he’d outlawed any magic but that of the Couronne, declaring it evil. Many sorciers fled the country. Those that remained lived half a life, forced to powder their wrists to hide the shimmering of their veins, to spend the next two hundred years cowering in fear from the hatred of the King and the masses.

Without sorcery, they were—are—powerless.

But if I succeed in this heist, their fates will change at last.

Marie is still lingering in front of the painting, lost in thought. I grit my teeth, rolling my shoulders to try and force myself to calm down.I ought to have simply knocked her out,I think glumly.

“Marie,” I say, feigning an alarmed glance over my shoulder. “I think I hear someone coming. Let us go before we’re caught down here.”

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