Glitter

  TO CALL ME homely when I was fourteen would have been a compliment. I’d grown so quickly I could scarcely put one foot in front of the other without falling to my knobby knees. Add to that my rather unsightly case of acne and a nose that already strained the word dignified, and I was the epitome of the woes of puberty.

  I was normal.

  Which would have been fine if my father hadn’t just inherited his position at court. Suddenly, the possibility of not merely a good marriage, but a grand or even royal one, turned my mother into a person I’d never known. Before my coming out, she took me to several dentists, surgeons, and dermatologists in Paris. She also secretly enrolled me in private lessons with Giovanni di Parma. An instructor of prima ballerinas, he was skeptical but intrigued when my mother approached him to teach me, essentially, Elegance: The Advanced Course.

  But it ended up being so much more than that. He taught me what my newfound beauty and grace were. And what they weren’t.

  “These are your tools,” he said to me one day after I broke down and told him the whole plot. “Your mother can’t use them if you do not allow her to. She can force you to appear a certain way, to acquire these graces and skills, but if the desire to entrap this King doesn’t come from within, it will provoke a passing base instinct in him, no more.”

  And he was right. I looked the way my mother expected, carried myself with the grace and poise Giovanni had given me, but though my mother threw me in the King’s path at every opportunity, I never endeavored to win him. And he hardly noticed me.

  Until that night when he had no choice.

  Since then, the false perfection my mother bought me, the trained grace worked into me so strenuously that it appears utterly natural, have become my armor. As the King’s affianced, I’ve been prematurely thrust into an arena of social predators, and it’s helpful that, between my height and my carefully learned poise, I do seem older. The truth is that the court of King Wyndham trades mainly in favor, esteem, and beauty. All of which I have in abundance, thanks to my sociopathic mother, who thinks I’m her lever. I hate it as much as I depend on it, and if I’m honest, I often wish I were bucktoothed and awkward again.

  It’s precisely ten to three when we arrive at a lovely building in the Rue de la Garenne. The words Giovanni’s School of Ballet for Fine Entertainment are etched, in French, into a marble façade, and the sight brings to the surface emotions I’ve been stifling for months.

  A security troll, surely assigned by the King to spy on me, opens the car door and extends a hand. Giovanni himself awaits at the entrance—a lean man with a typical dancer’s build, three centimeters shorter than me. He flashes a smile before bowing formally and kissing my gloved fingertips.

  I glance at my chaperon. “Knock to fetch me back at four. Not a minute sooner, or later.” Without waiting for a response, I precede Giovanni into the studio.

  Pretense collapses with the closing of the door.

  “Darling!” Giovanni cries.

  I toss back my veil as he pulls me close, and I squeeze his neck so hard I wonder if I might be hurting him—but I can’t make myself let go.

  “I’ve missed you, little faerie,” Giovanni says, gripping my hands in his. Despite his having been born and raised in Italy, his English is impeccable—I doubt there’s a European language he doesn’t speak—but unmistakably accented. He hesitates. “A faerie Queen now?” he asks, peering at my face as though he could stare into me. His consideration never fails. Unlike nearly everyone else in the world, he doesn’t assume congratulations are in order; he asks.

  He’s always been that way. He saw through my mother almost immediately. Lessons became a haven of sorts after that. I could confide my troubles, and he’d tell me tales of his days on the road with traveling dance companies. It was a whole other world, there in that little dance studio. Not that the work was easy. Giovanni’s not one to slack in his responsibilities, and he demanded perfection. I often went home with aching muscles, only to wake even sorer the following day.

  But when my mother asked if I was ready, Giovanni continued to tell her no, even when I was. As a fringe benefit, the extra practice carried me beyond mere proficiency, all the way to the supposedly natural elegance for which I’ve earned a reputation at court.

  It was the least of what he gave me.

  I blink furiously against sudden tears, and my Lens responds with the time.

  I have five minutes.

  “Giovanni, I’ve come to you because I trust you more than anyone else in this city. No, in the entire world.” Sad how true that is.

  His soft blue eyes sober. “What can I do for you? Your com was most…general,” he says with a gentle smile.

  “Pretend you’re giving me further instruction in grace and poise.”

  “But you don’t need—”

  “And do not ask questions when I come to you.” I press on before I can lose my nerve.

  He pauses. Looks me up and down. I’m in a black robe à la Piémontaise today, simply cut. Subtle, if there is such a thing in Baroque fashion. Not severe enough to indicate mourning—not with my daring décolletage and dark green satin trim—but plain enough that Giovanni will deduce that I’m attempting to blend in. “How often will you be coming?”

  “We’ll have a standing weekly appointment on the day of your choosing.” And though I know he’d be willing to do it for nothing, I add, “Your standard fee will be deposited, as before.”

  He nods. His eyes are hooded and I know he wants to press further, but his affection for me holds him back. “Should I be concerned for your safety, chouchou?” is all he says.

  My smile is calm, but sure and steady. “That need not be your concern.”

  His expression darkens at my nonanswer, but he doesn’t say more.

  I decide he deserves something. “I’m not going to be Queen,” I say. “Not if I can help it.” It’ll have to suffice. “Might I make use of your back door?”

  He doesn’t like it, but I know already that he’ll help me. At two minutes of three I slip out the back door of his dance studio. No black sedan is in sight, but with a quick glance down the alley I find Saber waiting, a dark gray coat swathed around his shoulders despite the warmth in the air. He’s dressed to draw absolutely no undue attention to himself, and an unembellished black hat sits low on his forehead, shadowing his features. I walk over and stand before him, one eyebrow raised expectantly. “You’re taking me to Reginald?”

  “Reginald doesn’t want to see you.”

  “But—” I snap my mouth closed, refusing to argue with this man who, I must remind myself, though he’s handsome enough to have invaded my dreams every night these past few days, is simply a cog in the machinery of an illegal industry I’m being forced to participate in. A grumpy cog. I don’t want his friendship even if he were inclined to offer it. I don’t. “He promised me supplies, and he must know I can’t simply shuttle down to Paris at his bidding.”

  “Can’t you?” Saber spares me a quick glance, and his eyes freeze me in place not only with their color, but also with their coldness. They’re green, a hue I always thought of as warm, but his gaze reminds me of nothing so much as iced crème de menthe.

  I stand straighter, making full use of my above-average height, and lift my chin so the shadow from my hat covers only my eyes. “No, I cannot. I’m a lady of the court of Sonoman-Versailles, not to mention affianced of the King. I’m watched and questioned and badgered constantly.”

  “Then maybe this isn’t a great idea,” Saber says, his face impassive, his lips barely moving.

  I deflate, struggling to cover my dismay at the way this man—a drug dealer, for heaven’s sake—has seen right through me. I fix him with a stony glare, and he matches it.

  But after only a few seconds, he backs down, looks away, and digs through a messenger bag at his hip. So it was a bluff—Reginald hasn’t actually empowered Saber to terminate our arrangement. I breathe carefully, my hands shaking at what should have been a m
inor confrontation. He rattles me as no one else can, not even His Illustrious Majesty.

  By the time he holds out a packet wrapped in brown paper, I’m back to myself—my posture erect, my face neutral. But I won’t soon forget the way he stripped away my defenses with a handful of words.

  “These are empty pots and makeup bases. Now, you listen for a sec,” Saber says when I reach for the packet. My hands are clasped on one end and his on the other, one flinch from a tug-of-war. I have to grit my teeth to prevent myself from yanking it away and clasping it safely against my chest. “Pay close attention to dosage—these aren’t cupcake sprinkles. Don’t get lavish.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” I hiss.

  “I’m about to spend an uncomfortably short amount of time instructing you on the tiniest slice of what you don’t know about Glitter. My lady,” he adds when I shoot him a cutting glare.

  I don’t correct him. The fact that someone from the “real” world offered me a title at all is unusual.

  He spends several minutes explaining how each piece works and how to prepare a batch of dosed cosmetics. I listen carefully, even though it is as he said yesterday—as simple as melt and mix. “It’s the measurements that are key,” he says, handing me a small bit of paper that simply has three sets of ratios on it. Found on the floor, it could refer to anything. Smart. “Prepare it wrong and you’ll have all the King’s horses and all the King’s men on us in a day, and if that happens they will trace it back to you. Do you understand me?”

  My chin jerks up and down because my mouth is too dry to speak.

  “This is everything you’ll need for one hundred containers of your cosmetic…stuff. I’ll bring the same amount next week, and then we’ll reevaluate demand.”

  “That seems reasonable.”

  He holds out a small black bit of plastic, perhaps ten centimeters square. “Digital scale. Measures in micrograms. Reginald figures you’ll want no more than a hundredth part of Glitter in those cosmetics.”

  “So little?”

  “He wasn’t kidding when he told you it’s strong. Higher doses are exponentially more effective. The difference between a good weekend, a bad weekend, and a funeral can be measured out on the tip of your pinky. Better too little than too much—especially since you can’t control how much makeup your friends are going to smear on themselves.”

  My legs start to tremble at his warning, but I’m busy committing his words to memory, so I don’t reply.

  He pulls more from his leather bag: a tiny inverter hot plate, a few glass dishes, some glass rods called pipettes. “And this,” he says, handing me two tubes of plain lip balm. “Reg says you’re making some colorless?”

  “For the men,” I confirm. “Though some will probably also use the rouge.”

  He scoffs openly at that. “The men? I thought you were just going to pass it around to the executives’ wives while you all sit around and drink tea.”

  “Oh, gentlemen will be in attendance too. The palace has more than its fair share of kept men.” I lean forward, allowing my pushed-up cleavage to show a little, just to throw off his tightly held composure. “You don’t think our company has run so smoothly for nearly a hundred years because men were in charge, do you?”

  His eyes jump up from my breasts to my face, and it’s clear he assumed exactly that.

  I straighten, removing my enchantments from his view again with a jolt of satisfaction. “We may emulate the court of the Sun King, but make no mistake: Sonoma is a modern corporation, and its court isn’t so backward-thinking as you clearly believe. Many of our men routinely use cosmetics, and even those who don’t certainly aren’t intimidated by a little sparkle now and then. Are you?”

  His cheeks flush, and after clearing his throat, he continues. “Okay, so you have your little party with your friends, you drink tea, you have snacks, and then you pass around the spiked cosmetics. That’s your plan?”

  He makes it sound ridiculous, and the furor in his green eyes throws me irrationally off-balance. “I’ll have you know I’ve been laying groundwork for this for two days. The court is already—”

  He holds up his hands. “I really don’t want to know. Just make sure you don’t let anyone leave for a good hour after you bring out the cosmetics.”

  “As though any decent hostess would.” My voice is dripping with condescension and I don’t even try to hide it. He’s exquisitely beautiful, brimming with power and simmering anger, but I certainly wouldn’t consult him on the fine art of the luncheon.

  “Decent hostess,” Saber says with a deep, low laugh. “What you’re essentially doing is tricking these women—these people—into a serious addiction. I don’t think the word decent has any place in this conversation.”

  His bluntness might be refreshing, were he not using it to bludgeon me.

  It’s not like I have a choice. Telling them what the cosmetics truly are is out of the question. I trust the discretion of my fellow nobles about as far as I trust His Majesty the King. If any of them guess what’s really in my special cosmetics, their likely refusal to make future purchases will be the least of my problems. I have to keep the dosage low enough that they don’t realize they’ve been drugged at all—that they just feel good whenever they use the makeup I gave them, so they’ll buy more.

  This will also maintain a veneer of plausible deniability for me; how was I to know what was in the historically appropriate makeup my supplier sold me? I was as duped as anyone! All the court of Sonoman-Versailles needs to believe is that my secret makeup supplier is the best in the world and my product well worth the outrageous price.

  And it’s temporary, I remind myself. A few months. Nothing can be so bad for a few months. It’s not like this can kill them—look at my father. He’s been using for ages.

  “Once they put it on their skin, you’ve got about five minutes before—”

  “Euphoria will kick in, yes. I remember from watching my father,” I interrupt.

  Saber gives me a silent stare, and I’m just starting to think I’m going to have to say something—possibly even apologize—to get him going again when he resumes. “You watched your father receive a very high but carefully moderated dose of a substance he’s been using for over a month. This’ll be different. The reaction of first-timers can vary from a pleasant drowsiness to fits of bliss to manic energy—even at doses low enough that they’re unlikely to realize they’ve been drugged. We almost never start newbies on doses as high as your father.”

  A prickle of unease travels up my spine. “Why not?”

  “Reginald needed him hooked hard and fast, didn’t he?”

  My entire neck grows warm. There’s something wrong here. “Why would—”

  Saber’s face flushes red, and I realize he’s told me something he shouldn’t have.

  “My father was targeted.”

  Saber tries to get the conversation back to the supplies, but I’m having none of that.

  “This is why my father’s the only noble in the palace using Glitter, and also happens to be getting it from the only Parisian drug dealer, who happens to know that his daughter is trying to escape from Sonoman-Versailles.”

  When Saber’s mouth snaps shut, I know I’m onto the truth. This isn’t about my father. This isn’t even precisely about Glitter. This is about me. Seemingly unimportant words from my conversation with my father sail into my thoughts. About the night he met Reginald.

  We talked.

  About what?

  You, mostly.

  Pieces like little bits of a puzzle are coming together in my mind, revealing one brilliant, devastating whole. My father was bait. Getting Glitter into the high-priced world of Sonoman-Versailles was Reginald’s aim. Possibly since the moment he realized who I was in the catacombs. “This is a setup.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Liar!”

  My accusation makes Saber’s fidgeting hands still.

  “He’s been pla
ying an elaborate game of chess with my life.” I count off on gloved fingers. “He knew who my father was when he approached him in the tavern. He gave him free merchandise, knowing he would become a regular client, which was bound to attract my notice eventually. And he’s too careful for me to put this all down to coincidence. The pieces are lined up precisely where he wants them.”

  Saber says nothing, which only confirms the veracity of my theory. Reginald would have denied it, but he’s not here.

  I’m practically speaking to myself now as I verbalize my thoughts even as they form in my head. “He wanted the Sonoman-Versailles market, but he knew I wouldn’t give it to him unless I thought it was my own idea. I’m such an idiot.”

  “Pretty much.”

  I grit my teeth against a violent retort. It’s strange, talking to Saber. He’s a minion of some kind—I don’t know exactly what his role is—but he acts like he’s doing me a huge favor by deigning to even speak with me. Like I’m a rotten fruit he’s been assigned to clean up. Not simply like he’s better than me, but like there’s something wrong with me.

  To be treated like a distasteful chore doesn’t sit well. Worse, I want to impress him—this silent, moody person. I want to sparkle for him and see his eyes light up when I come around. But he scarcely seems even to see me. His eyes slide away whenever they meet mine, and I know it’s not because he’s shy. I can tell.

  “So, is this little reveal enough to make you pack up shop?” Saber asks, letting his messenger bag fall back to his hip and crossing his arms over his chest.

  And I don’t have an immediate answer. Is it? Is the fact that Reginald placed this opportunity in front of me a reason not to accept it? I’ve spent months wracking my brain for an answer, and this is the only one that has suited. Besides, I’ve already set the stage by parading my faux-Glitter lip gloss about the palace for the last two days, and news of my party is spreading like wildfire through the grapevines of the nobility. It feels like a high-speed rail engine—too much momentum to stop. “No.” I mean to declare the word, but it comes out in a whisper.

  Saber looks down, hiding his face, but I catch his expression nonetheless. He’s disappointed. Which doesn’t make sense either. Why does he hold me to such a high standard? Why is he repulsed that I’m enmeshing myself in his industry? “Your decision.” He removes and unrolls an odd white contraption from his bag and drops to one knee. “If you could lift your skirts.”