We follow one of the queen’s unsettling footmen up the main staircase, just like we did on the Pact Parade. I can’t believe I missed it before, how strange and mottled the veins of their hands are, the hollowness around their eyes. A human body wasn’t built to last forever. I wonder how old this one is, who he was before this, if he even remembers.
A steady stream of rain falls on the glass roof, and the tree in the middle of the atrium sways slightly.
“Any guesses?” Emmy whispers to me.
“Not a one,” I reply honestly.
We veer left at the top of the stairs into an expansive ballroom. My heels slip against the carpet as I stop short. All six of us take identical gasps.
The ballroom has been transformed with rosebushes, dark ivy crawling up to the ceiling, ferns shoved into every corner.
There’s an orchestra playing a strange, off-kilter tune and tables covered in mismatched iridescent china.
There’s a crowd of women here already, and I spot my mother and sister surrounded by a gaggle of my mother’s old friends, including Greer’s mother.
The queen approaches us.
She’s dressed in a gown of silver silk, so bright it looks like molten metal has been poured over her lithe body. The sleeves are covered in glass beads that trail along the floor behind her. There’s a smear of kohl around her black eyes and a bloodred salve on her lips. But what is most remarkable is the half a deer skull she’s wearing as a crown.
It’s as if she wants us to remember that she’s not one of us.
“What is this?” Marion asks.
“A tea party,” Queen Mor answers with a sick smile.
My heart is in my throat as I make my way toward my mother and Lydia, terrified that they’ve been caught up in this. I haven’t seen Lydia since the disastrous night at the masquerade ball, nor have I heard anything since Mama’s letter.
“I miss you. I miss you,” I say fiercely when I reach her.
“I know.” Everything passes between us in that wordless way only sisters understand. The guilt and resentment and love all tangled up into something too difficult to put into words, so for a moment all we can do is sit there and feel it, take the force of it as it washes over us.
I hug my mother around her shoulders and she turns around with a gasp. “Darling! The house has been so dull without you.”
Lydia nods. “It’s true. She doesn’t like me much at all anymore.”
They’ve both got a strange, glassy look in their eyes. Their pupils are too blown out, their skin waxy.
“Are you feeling quite well?” I ask.
My mother takes a sip from her porcelain teacup. “Grand. From what I hear, you’re going to win. Honestly, I didn’t think you had it in you.”
“Mama?” I ask, confused, but Greer’s mother interrupts me.
“Oh, Ivy won’t win. Both your daughters are failures. It rubbedoff on Greer, I fear. It’s the only explanation I can come up with for her disappointing performance. She’ll be victorious in the end, though. We Trummers always are.”
Before I can respond, a butler dings a bell.
“Shall we?” says the queen. Flanked by footmen, she sits down and gestures for us to join her. The table, which stretches the length of the room, is covered with more food than necessary for a tea party. Green grapes are piled high next to split pomegranates and spiral-cut hams. In front of me is a three-tier dark chocolate cake, its icing half melted by the flickering taper candles.
Someone clutches my hand, and when I look up, I’m expecting to see anyone but Greer. Her blue eyes are wide with fear as she looks straight ahead.
I glance around the table. We are surrounded by our family and friends. Greer is on one side of me, Lydia and my mother on the other. Across from me are Faith, her sharp-faced grandmother, and a man with eyes the same shade of blue as hers.
Marion sits to the left of Faith with her mother and younger sister. Down a ways are Emmy and Olive and their mothers, as well as a few of the other debutantes from the season, Deidre Rutland, Sara Middlebrook, Fiona Devon, Althea Jones, and their chaperones.
The queen sits at the head of the table, the candlelight reflecting in the empty eye sockets of her deer-skull crown.
The whine of the violins seems to itch right under my skin, and I’m suddenly ravenous.
