Page 47 of A Treachery of Swans

“It’s beautiful,” I breathed, and my fingers itched to tuck the necklace away. But then Marie said—

“Aimé’s stepmother gifted it to me to wear tonight. ‘If you wear a lady’s jewels,’ she said, ‘then you’ll remember to act like one.’?” She made a face. “I can’t tell if she likes me.”

“Sounds patronizing,” I grumbled as she swept her glossy ringlets off her shoulders, baring her neck to me. Something about the sight of it, the sun-kissed column arching gracefully into sharp shoulders, made me flush. I didn’t understand it, and I didn’t want to.

Hastily I clipped the diamonds around her neck and stepped back. “It’s like the Step-Queen thinks you need taming,” I said.

Marie wrinkled her nose. “It does look like a collar, doesn’t it?Mothers.I don’t want to be tamed. I don’t want to be likethem.I want to see the world, not be trapped in a stupid marriage. Aimé doesn’t want this, either.” She sniffed, then smiled faintly. “We have some time before the banquet. We should go to the stables—I hear the King’s got a new stallion. Imported from Lore, my father said. I’ve never seen a horse from Lore.”

“Won’t your parents be looking for you?” I asked. I’d been taking my duties as her companion rather seriously—I couldn’t afford to get in trouble and ruin my cover.

She shrugged. “Eventually. So we should hurry.”

And so we did. We escaped to the stables and stole hay from theloft and fed it in great chunks to the sleek bay beast that would be King Honoré’s mount. When we grew bored, Marie pulled me aside and spun me in a circle and said, “I wish I could bring you with me to the banquet.”

My eyes found the diamonds on her neck again, and I felt a rare shock of guilt. She thought I was truly her friend, and I wished I could be. It had crossed my mind to steal her necklace for my father, but I decided then that I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t hurt her. She was too kind to me.

“I wish I could go,” I said with mischief. “I would gorge myself on as many pastries as possible. Then I would stand on the table and sing a loud bawdy song and scandalize the whole court. I would go down in history.” I swept a dramatic bow. “Alas, I have not the dress. Nor the jewels.”

“I could give you these.” Marie reached for the clasp of the diamonds. “Come here. I want to see how you look in them.”

I obeyed her, because I always did what she said. She had a warmth, a light, that drew me into her orbit—I was a moth and she a flame, I the tides and she the moon. Whatever we were, she was always, always the light, and I the thing skulking in the dark.

I had longer hair back then, a tousle of jet black that just passed my shoulders. She tucked it behind my ears meticulously, her fingertips hot against my ears. “Lift up your hair.”

I did as asked. Tide to moon, moth to flame.

The diamonds settled their weight carefully into my skin.

Marie sucked in an excited breath. “Oh, Odile. I do wish you could see yourself.”

I was certain I looked ghoulish, a filthy peasant in noblesse gold. Still, I put my fists on my hips and struck a pose. “How do I look?”

She smiled delightedly. “Beautiful.” She began to fiddle with her earrings. “Here, let’s—”

“Marie.”

We both froze.

Madame d’Auvigny stood at the mouth of the stables, her silhouette like a giant’s against a whitewashed sky. “What do you think you’re doing?” Her voice was not like the Step-Queen’s. Instead of being needle-sharp, it was a blunt weapon, every syllable a hammer strike. And with every one, Marie flinched as if struck.

“Get away from that girl. I told your father that giving you a peasant playmate was a terrible idea, and here is the evidence.” She turned her eyes on me, two boulder-gray weights that seemed to press in on my skull. “Shame on you, leading my daughter into such boorish activities. Evidently you’ve been corrupting her, and you will be punished accordingly.”

Fear speared through me. Serving girls weren’t treated kindly. I’d seen vicious slaps and pitiless whippings in my short time masquerading as one, and it had made me hate the Augier king all the more.

I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t speak. My heart was pounding—I wanted to shout that it wasn’t fair, that this had been Marie’s idea. I’d never been easily cowed, but something about Madame d’Auvigny’s looming silhouette—the sharp points of her shoulders, the precision of her stare—made me think too much of Regnault, and I couldn’t force a single word through my throat.

I turned desperate eyes to Marie.Help me,I wanted to cry.Tell her the truth. Tell her I don’t deserve punishment. Do something. Anything.

But Marie was looking at her feet.

“Marie, come away,” Madame d’Auvigny said with vicious calm. “You’re going to get your dress dirty. And get that necklace off that girl’s neck. If that cow from Malezieu saw how you’d sullied them… well. She has the King’s ear, and we need his favor, and I will not have you ruining this for me with your foolishness.”

Marie didn’t look me in the eye. With cold, jerky movements, sounlike the warmth of minutes before, she pulled the diamonds from my neck. My cheeks burned with humiliation as their weight left me. The fragile trust we’d built over weeks fissured more with every movement. And when she walked away, leaving me there alone, it shattered with asnap.

Fortune, for once, was on my side. In the chaos of the banquet, my punishment was forgotten, and I was assigned to serve the noblesse. One red-clad, masked figure among many, I went unnoticed. And I profited from the chaos and press of the crowd to bump into Marie d’Odette—lingering tired-eyed and inattentive near the wall—knock her to the floor, and pretend to help her up while slipping a chain of shimmering diamonds from her neck.

“I don’t know when I lost it. I’m not sure if it was during the banquet or after.” A breeze has picked up, ruffling the short, downy hairs that frame Marie’s face. In the moonlight her eyes are twin silver ponds, rippling with regret. She rubs her arms, and I nearly offer her my jacket. Five years may have passed, but some part of me is still drawn to her, still seeking her out in the dark, even though I once vowed to hate her.

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