Malice

Queen Mariel are already seated. Tarkin looks exactly as Calliope had when the ratty dog succeeded in dragging Rose’s breakfast plate from the table and gobbling up every crumb. But Mariel looks thin and drawn despite her Grace gifts. And she’s restless, constantly rearranging the pendant at her throat or smoothing her skirts.
Beside them—a jolt flashes through me.
Aurora.
Her eyes are more blue than violet today, like forget-me-nots in a morning sun. But there’s a gray cast to her skin. She scans the crowd and does a double take when her gaze passes over me. Her lips twitch like she wants to say something, but she only gives a barely perceptible dip of her chin, and then looks away.
“Whatever this is, I wish they would get on with it,” Rose mutters in annoyance. But her hands quaver as she fluffs the lace at her neckline.
We don’t have to wait long.
Tarkin rises and the suffocating room falls silent. I think I can hear the patter of a hundred Grace hearts.
“My court.” Candied sunlight glints on the jewels in his rings. The Briar rose on his signet flashes scarlet. “Graces.”
There’s a tremulous ripple in the sea of gilded eyes and powdered necks. Mariel’s knuckles on the arms of her throne go white.
“Would you not agree, Graces, that the Crown shelters you?” Tarkin pins a cerulean-haired Grace with his attention until she squeaks out an answer.
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Do we not honor you with our patronage? Value you above all else in this realm?”
Other murmurs of assent, laced with a slinking undercurrent of unease. I can smell it in the air. Like rotting seaweed.
“Then I am utterly befuddled,” the king goes on, false concern dripping from each word, a tone I recall from our meeting in the war room, “as to why one of you would want to openly flout the laws that keep you safe. Why you would bite the hand that so lovingly feeds you. Surely such flagrant disrespect cannot go unpunished.” He lifts the chin of a pleasure Grace with two meaty fingers. “What say you?”
The Grace’s deep brown skin is waxy beneath her armor of golden paint. She hesitates, but only for a heartbeat. “The realm is generous to us, Your Majesty. It deserves our service.”
Tarkin weighs the words. The tips of his crown shine like spears.
“My thoughts exactly.” He releases the Grace, and I can just glimpse her shoulders drooping. “We deserve your service. The Grace Laws are in effect for your protection. To keep those away who would want to monopolize your gift. To keep you here, in Briar, where we can make certain of your well-being. Where we can keep you in the comfortable lives every Grace should enjoy.”
“Not my life,” I mutter. Laurel elbows me.
Tarkin motions to Mariel. The Briar Queen sits taller at his recognition, but her expression remains stony. “My queen and I are much distressed, then, to learn of a Grace who has defied those laws—not once, but twice.”
Graces pivot right and left like snared rabbits, desperate to discern which one of them might be missing.
A side door bursts open and a Grace is hauled inside between two guards. Her simple woolen dress—a far cry from the usual Grace wardrobe—is torn at the sleeves, dirt smeared at the knees and bodice. I know I’ve seen that shade of hair before. A deep russet, with bright threads of crimson and gold.
A name begins to rustle at the outskirts of the crowd as soon as it lands in my mind.
Narcisse.
The music Grace I met at Aurora’s dinner.
Laurel’s fingernails dig into my flesh.
“Narcisse.” Even Tarkin’s booming bass is hardly audible over the rush of mutterings and shifting bodies. “Of Willow House. You stand before your peers charged with violating the Grace Laws. What say you?”
The guards shove her to her knees. Narcisse cries out, the heels of her palms skidding against the jeweled marble floor. Mistress Lavender inhales sharply.
“I did not mean to offend Your Majesty.” Her voice is barely more than a kitten’s mewl. It has nothing of the melodious ring I heard when we met before.
Tarkin looks to the mezzanine of nobles and shrugs. “She did not mean to offend.”
Laughter follows, and I wince. It’s the same fanged sort of laughter that’s hounded me for years.
“I find that hard to believe, Your Grace.” Tarkin rubs his chin. “Seeing as this was not your first offense against the Crown.” More mumblings from the nobles. Narcisse looks confused. “Indeed, two years ago, you were accused of refusing to use your gift. Isn’t that right?”
“I— I—” Narcisse looks to her sisters, chin wobbling. But no one can help her now. “I was never charged. I made a mistake. I was afraid.”
“Afraid?” Tarkin presses a hand to his heart. “What have you to fear in this realm?”
Laurel and I exchange a look. Everything. She has everything to fear.
Narcisse is weeping openly now, tears leaving tracks in the dirt on her face. “Willow House was slipping in the standings. I didn’t want to be sent to a lesser house if my elixirs were weakening. And so I asked our housemistress if I could limit my patron appointments. But I never—” She chokes on a sob. “I was taking two dozen appointments a day. I would have Faded if my patron list didn’t lessen.”
Two dozen appointments. That’s more than even Rose might see in a day. Do all the greater houses require such a schedule from their Graces? Narcisse was cruel to me at Aurora’s dinner, carelessly so. But I’d never thought of what she might be enduring beneath her mask of haughty vanity.
“Do we not provide for our Faded Graces?” A trap wrapped in velvet.
“It isn’t the same,” Narcisse insists. “The best a Faded Grace can hope for is a marriage or to become a housemistress. But I couldn’t count on either.”
“And so you acted out of greed?”
“No.” She shakes her head. Bits of copper dance in her hair. “No, I—”
But Tarkin doesn’t let her go on. He circles her