The Fallen Sequence (106 page)

Cam rolled his eyes. “Because
you
know
I
know how dangerous interference is. Our end goals may be different, but we both need her to make it out of this alive.”

“Listen to me, Cam.
Everything
is at stake here.”

“Don’t demean me. I know what’s at stake. You’re not the only one who’s already struggled for too long.”

“I’m—I’m afraid,” Daniel admitted. “If she too deeply alters the past—”

“It could change who she is when she returns to the present?” Cam said. “Yeah, I’m scared, too.”

Daniel closed his eyes. “It would mean that any chance she had of breaking free of this curse—”

“Would be squandered.”

Daniel eyed Cam. The two of them hadn’t spoken to each other like this—like brothers—in ages. “She was alone? You’re sure none of the others had gotten to her, either?”

For a moment, Cam gazed past Daniel, at a space on the mountaintop beyond them. It looked as empty as Daniel felt. Cam’s hesitation made the back of Daniel’s neck itch.

“None of the others had reached her,” Cam said finally.

“Are you certain?”

“I’m the one who saw her here. You’re the one who never shows up on time. And besides, her being out here at all is no one’s fault but yours.”

“That’s not true. I didn’t show her how to use the Announcers.”

Cam laughed bitterly. “I don’t mean the Announcers, you moron. I mean that she thinks this is just about the two of you. A stupid lovers’ quarrel.”

“It
is
about the two of us.” Daniel’s voice was strained. He would have liked to pick up the boulder behind Cam’s head and drop it over his skull.

“Liar.” Cam leaped to his feet, hot fury flashing in his green eyes. “It’s far bigger, and you know it is.” He rolled back his shoulders and unleashed his giant marbled wings. They filled the air with golden glory, blocking the sun for a moment. When they curved toward Daniel, he stepped back, repulsed. “You’d better find her, before she—or someone else—steps in and rewrites our entire history. And makes you, me, all of this”—Cam snapped his fingers—“obsolete.”

Daniel snarled, unfurling his own silvery-white wings, feeling them extend out and out and out at his sides, shuddering as they pulsed near Cam’s. He felt warmer now, and capable of anything. “I’ll handle it—” he started to say.

But Cam had already taken off, the kickback from his flight sending small tornadoes of dirt spiraling up from the ground. Daniel shielded his eyes from the sun and looked up as the golden wings beat across the sky, then, in an instant, were gone.

ELEVEN

COUP DE FOUDRE

VERSAILLES, FRANCE • FEBRUARY 14, 1723

S
plash
.

Luce came out of the Announcer underwater.

She opened her eyes, but the warm, cloudy water stung so sharply that she promptly clamped them shut again. Her soggy clothes dragged her down, so she wrestled off the mink coat. As it sank beneath her, she kicked hard for the surface, desperate for air.

It was only a few inches above her head.

She gasped; then her feet found bottom and she
stood. She wiped the water from her eyes. She was in a bathtub.

Granted, it was the largest bathtub she had ever seen, as big as a small swimming pool. It was kidney-shaped and made of the smoothest white porcelain and sat alone in the middle of a giant room that looked like a gallery in a museum. The high ceilings were covered by enormous frescoed portraits of a dark-haired family who looked royal. A chain of golden roses framed each bust, and fleshy cherubs hovered between, playing trumpets toward the sky. Against each of the walls—which were papered in elaborate swirls of turquoise, pink, and gold—was an oversized, lavishly carved wooden armoire.

Luce sank back into the tub. Where was she now? She used her hand to skim the surface, parting about five inches of frothy bubbles the consistency of Chantilly cream. A pillow-sized sponge bobbed up, and she realized she had not bathed since Helston. She was filthy. She used the sponge to scrub at her face, then set to work peeling off the rest of her clothes. She sloshed all the sopping garments over the side of the tub.

That was when Bill floated slowly up out of the bathwater to hover a foot above the surface. The portion of the tub from which he’d risen was dark and cloudy with gargoyle grit.

“Bill!” she cried. “Can’t you tell I need a few minutes of privacy?”

He held a hand up to shield his eyes. “You done
thrashing around in here yet, Jaws?” With his other hand, he wiped some bubbles from his bald head.

“You could have warned me that I was about to take a plunge underwater!” Luce said.

“I did warn you!” He hopped up to the rim of the tub and tottered across it until he was in Luce’s face. “Right as we were coming out of the Announcer. You just didn’t hear me because you were underwater!”

“Very helpful, thank you.”

“You needed a bath, anyway,” he said. “This is a big night for you, toots.”

“Why? What’s happening?”

“What’s happening, she asks!” Bill grabbed her shoulder. “Only the grandest ball since the Sun King popped off! And I say, so what if this
boum
is hosted by his greasy pubescent son? It’s still going to be right downstairs in the largest, most spectacular ballroom in Versailles—and
everybody’s
going to be there!”

Luce shrugged. A ball sounded fine, but it had nothing to do with her.

“I’ll clarify,” Bill said. “Everyone will be there including Lys Virgily. The Princess of Savoy? Ring a bell?” He bopped Luce on the nose. “That’s you.”

“Hmph,” Luce said, sliding her head back to rest against the soapy wall of the tub. “Sounds like a big night for
her
. But what am I supposed to do while they’re all at the ball?”

“See, remember when I told you—”

The knob on the door of the great bathroom was turning. Bill eyed it, groaning. “To be continued.”

As the door swung open, he held his pointy nose and disappeared under the water. Luce writhed and kicked him to the other side of the tub. He resurfaced, glared at her, and started floating on his back through the suds.

Bill might have been invisible to the pretty girl with corn-colored curls who was standing in the doorway in a long cranberry-colored gown—but Luce wasn’t. At the sight of someone in the tub, the girl reared back.

“Oh, Princess Lys! Forgive me!” she said in French. “I was told this chamber was empty. I—I’d run a bath for Princess Elizabeth”—she pointed to the tub where Luce was soaking—“and was just about to send her up along with her ladies.”

“Well—” Luce racked her brain, desperate to come off as more regal than she felt. “You may not s-send her up. Nor her ladies. This is my chamber, where I intended to bathe in peace.”

“I beg your pardon,” the girl said, bowing, “a thousand times.”

“It’s all right,” Luce said quickly when she saw the girl’s honest despair. “There must just have been a misunderstanding.”

The girl curtseyed and began to close the door. Bill peeked his horned head up above the surface of the water and whispered, “Clothes!” Luce used her bare foot to push him down.

“Wait!” Luce called after the girl, who slowly pushed the door open again. “I need your help. Dressing for the ball.”

“What about your ladies-in-waiting, Princess Lys? There’s Agatha or Eloise—”

“No, no. The girls and I had a spat,” Luce hurried on, trying not to talk too much for fear of giving herself away completely. “They picked out the most, um, horrid gown for me to wear. So I sent them away. This is an important ball, you know.”

“Yes, Princess.”

“Could you find something for me?” Luce asked the girl, gesturing with her head at the armoire.

“Me? H-help you dress?”

“You’re the only one here, aren’t you?” Luce said, hoping that something in that armoire would fit her—and look halfway decent for a ball. “What’s your name?”

“Anne-Marie, Princess.”

“Great,” Luce said, trying to channel Lucinda from Helston by simply acting self-important. And she threw in a bit of Shelby’s know-it-all attitude for good measure. “Hop to it, Anne-Marie. I won’t be late because of your sluggishness. Be a dear and fetch me a gown.”

Ten minutes later, Luce stood before an expansive three-way mirror, admiring the stitching on the bust of the first gown Anne-Marie had tugged from the armoire.
The gown was made of tiered black taffeta, tightly gathered at the waist, then swirling into a gloriously wide bell shape near the ground. Luce’s hair had been swept up into a twist, then tucked under a dark, heavy wig of elaborate curls. Her face shimmered with a dusting of powder and rouge. She was wearing so many undergarments that it felt as though someone had draped a fifty-pound weight over her body. How did girls move in these things? Let alone dance?

As Anne-Marie drew the corset tighter around her torso, Luce gaped at her reflection. The wig made her look five years older. And she was sure she’d never had this much cleavage before. In any of her lives.

For the briefest moment, she allowed herself to forget her nerves about meeting her past princess self, and whether she’d find Daniel again before she made a huge mess out of their love—and simply felt what every other girl going to that ball that night must have felt: Breathing was overrated in a dress as amazing as this.

“You’re ready, Princess,” Anne-Marie whispered reverently. “I will leave you, if you’ll allow me.”

As soon as Anne-Marie shut the door behind her, Bill propelled himself out of the water, sending a cold spray of soapsuds across the room. He sailed over the armoire and came to rest on a small turquoise silk footstool. He pointed at Luce’s gown, at her wig, then at her gown again. “Ooh la la. Hot stuff.”

“You haven’t even seen my shoes.” She lifted the hem of her skirt to show off a pair of pointy-toed emerald-green heels inlaid with jade flowers. They matched the emerald-green lace that trimmed the bust of her dress and were easily the most amazing shoes she had ever seen, let alone slipped onto her feet.

“Oooh!” Bill squealed. “
Very
rococo.”

“So, I’m really doing this? I’m just going to go down there and pretend—”

“No pretending.” Bill shook his head. “
Own it
. Own that cleavage, girl, you know you want to.”

“Okay, I am pretending you didn’t say that.” Luce laugh-winced. “So I go downstairs and ‘own it’ or whatever. But what do I do when I find my past self? I don’t know anything about her. Do I just—”

“Take her hand,” Bill said cryptically. “She’ll be very
touched
by the gesture, I’m sure.”

Bill was hinting at something, clearly, but Luce didn’t understand. Then she remembered his words right before they dove through the last Announcer.

“Tell me about going three-D.”

“Aha.” Bill mimed leaning against an invisible wall in the air. His wings blurred as he fluttered in front of her. “You know how some things are just too out-of-this-world to be pinned down by dull old words? Like, for example, the way you swoon when Daniel comes in for a long kiss, or the feeling of heat that spreads
through your body when his wings unfurl on a dark night—”

“Don’t.” Luce’s hand went to her heart involuntarily. There
were
no words that could ever do justice to what Daniel made her feel. Bill was making fun of her, but that didn’t mean she ached any less at being away from Daniel for so long.

“Same deal with three-D. You’ll just have to live it to understand it.”

As soon as Bill opened the door for Luce, the sounds of distant orchestra music and the polite murmuring of a large crowd flooded into the room. She felt something pulling her down there. Maybe it was Daniel. Maybe it was Lys.

Bill bowed in the air. “After you, Princess.”

She followed the noise down two broad, winding flights of golden stairs, the music getting louder with each step. As she swept through empty gallery after empty gallery, she began to smell the mouthwatering aromas of roasted quail and stewed apples and potatoes
au gratin
. And perfume—so much she could hardly inhale without coughing.