I don’t know what to say, so my tears reply for me.
“I snuck into Father’s office and found letters from Lord Elheart.” Blossom shudders. “The way they spoke about you… It was like you were cattle. I knew right then that you couldn’t have consented to being sent away. So I found out where Lord Elheart lives and Eden came with me.”
“How did you get out of the palace?” I press.
“Well…” She fidgets. “My um… my gift came in handy.”
“Gift?” I scoff.
Eden takes my hand. “We’ve only spoken with the older girls about it so far, but we think we’ve all got one.”
“Got one of what?”
She lowers her voice. “A magic gift.”
I spit out a laugh. “You’ve been reading too many fairy tales.”
“She’s not,” Blossom says seriously. “Don’t you remember that night in our dance circle? With that moon?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lie. But with both girls narrowing their eyes at me, I can’t help but remember. The tall hedgerow. The tapping of our pointe shoes against our stone. The…
…night air is cool as I lift my thigh into another arabesque. My sisters are practising with me, fluttering around our dance circle. The older girls work on variations while the younger girls twirl in their pastel dance gowns.
Lowering my leg, I ready myself for fouettés. Thirty-two of them. It’s getting late, and the guards will want us inside soon, but I still have time to go over one of Odile’s routines fromSwan Lake.
Lifting my arms, I take a deep breath, then spin.
It’s like the world falls away. I’m no longer in our dance circle. I imagine myself in a royal ballroom, dressed in black with swan feathers in my hair. Everything is right. I’m spinning, smiling, turning, breathing, living?—
“Dahlia, your fouettés are much too fast again.”
Somehow, I hold back a groan. “The musicians have left us for the night and now there is no music so perhaps, dear Blossom, my fouettés are in fact too slow?” I grin at my sister before abandoning all my ballet knowledge and spinning like a whirlwind.
Eden and Fern burst into giggles while the younger girls attempt to copy my new move. Unsuccessfully, of course.
I should probably be nicer to Blossom. Earlier today, I caught her with the young man who makes our ballet shoes. He had his lips pressed against hers while the pointe shoes he’d made for us were lying forgotten around their feet.
She’s lucky I caught her. Father’s guards were just around the corner. But I didn’t tell her that. I was too busy laughing at the goat-like sounds her apparently-now-boyfriend was making when he had his tongue down her throat.
Gross.
“That’s enough now.” Amaryllis steps between us. One look from her is enough to take the fight out of any of us, even me.
Most of the fight…
I’m about to ask Blossom if her boyfriend has any older brothers with better kissing technique when she jabs her finger towards the sky. “Look! The moon… it’s huge!”
I glance up to see the moon shining so bright, it lights up the entire garden.
I gasp. But it’s only when the moon doubles in size and a loud screech fills the dance circle that I realise?—
“That’s not the moon,” someone shouts before we’re all thrown to the floor.
Dahlia…
It’s like I’m underwater. My eyes are screwed shut. I can’t see anything, but I can hear something. A soft growl, then a purr. Like animal chatter?
Princess Dahlia…A voice sings in my mind.
