Chapter 320
I don’t get far into the Crystal Palace before being pulled away to prepare for the night’s festivities.
I sit in front of a mirror framed in pearlescent shells, my skin gleaming with oil that smells faintly of ambergris. Gold dust has been swept over my collarbones, and my hair is swept into polished waves that fall down my back. Petra’s stylists flit around me, each touch featherlight but insistent. They’ve been at this for over an hour. Every time I shift or murmur that I don’t need another chain of freshwater pearls, one of them hushes me as if I’m a toddler about to ruin a performance.
“You must shine. Anything less would reflect poorly on Electra’s legacy,” Petra says from her lounge chair near the window. She wears a robe of woven glass threads that shift color with her every breath, and there’s a star-shaped clip in her hair made from a piece of inert Darklite. She looks like a goddess pretending to be a mortal, and I hate how convincing the act is.
I bite my tongue and stare at myself. I don’t look like the girl who was just trying to make the best of a school trip a few months ago. I don’t even look like myself. I look like a reflection of someone long dead—Electra from the numerous tapestries draped across the castle.
Across the room, Delphi sits perfectly still as the attendants loop lace through her braids. She doesn’t flinch when they tighten it too much, doesn’t speak when they layer soft seafoam-colored silks around her waist and press iridescent paint into the hollows of her cheeks. She’s serene. A still pond. I wish I could be more like her.
Cora lounges by the vanity closest to the door, arms crossed, eyes watching everything. She’s dressed in a form-fitting coral and gold gown that hugs her like armor. No one dared touch her hair—you can’t fix perfection. She looks lethal and gorgeous and entirely unimpressed. “It’s astonishing how much we speak on Electra’s legacy for people who’ve never spoken to her,” she says. “Tell me, Phoebe, love, what attributes do you think Electra would want her line to embody?”
“Honesty, for one,” I mutter, before thinking. “Self-respect.” The room freezes for half a breath.
One of my cousins—Eliora, maybe, or was it Thessa?—lets out a nervous little laugh. “Oh, Phoebe, you’re always so… direct.” Her smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes.
I round on her before I can stop myself. “I’m not in the mood for backhanded compliments, cousin. If you’ve got something to say, say it.”
She shrinks back like I’ve slapped her. “I—I was only—”
“Enough,” Petra says coolly, not even bothering to raise her voice. “Let’s not ruin the morning with squabbling. It’s an important day.”
Important. Of course. The day of their precious ball, completely overshadowing the reason why we’re all here. The Conclave is just tomorrow and one wrong word uttered tonight could ruin it all—if we’re all too busy fighting, there will be no one to stop Shoal from risking the fate of the world to play at being a superhero.
I rise too fast. The gown they’ve dressed me in tightens across my ribs. It’s a deep violet trimmed in silver, the skirt made from some kind of silk that shifts and ripples like a sea anemone. I hate how it feels. Like I’m pretending I belong here.
“I need a moment,” I say, pushing past the stylists.
Delphi follows me without a word. We slip through the drapes that separate our dressing chamber from the hall, then into a side corridor where the music of court life is more distant, muffled. There’s a small alcove filled with seaglass sculptures of our ancestors—eerie, thin things with blank eyes and too-long necks. We settle there. I lean against a pillar. Delphi perches on the edge of a nearby fountain, the hem of her gown catching the trickling water.
I rake a hand through my hair, dislodging a few pearls. “I can’t pretend with them, not anymore. I don’t even want to. They drugged me. Violated my right to choose what I do with my body. And now they’re acting like I should be grateful to be here, like it’s my privilege to showboat for them.”
Delphi’s eyes are calm, deep as the abyss. “What they’ve done is irreprehensible, but Phoebe… you have to learn to understand these people if you hope to ever survive them. They don’t know any other way, and probably didn’t even think to warn you about the tea.”
“That’s not an excuse.”
“I know. It’s not.” She folds her hands in her lap. “But it’s a reason.”
I blink. “You’re defending them?”
“I’m saying they’ve lived their entire lives in this palace following a very callous man’s rules. They don’t even know it’s a cage. No education, no power outside of childbearing, no voice beyond arranged ceremonies. They aren’t our enemies, Phoebe. They’re victims of the same system.”
I go quiet. The anger’s still there, buzzing beneath my skin like a wasp hive, but something about her tone—gentle, grounded—cuts through it.
“You’re not wrong,” I say eventually. “I just… I can’t stand the way Petra smiles like she thinks I wouldn’t find out what she did.”
Delphi tilts her head. Her expression softens even further. “You’ve always been a fighter. You’ve had the freedom to learn, to push back, to run. They never got that. Not really. They were groomed to become jewels on someone else’s crown. Not to question. Not to escape. If they seem hollow, it’s because they’ve been emptied.”
A breath catches in my throat. “How are you so compassionate, still? After everything that’s happened to you?”
Delphi smiles faintly. “Because if I lose that, everyone who’s ever hurt me wins.”
I stare at her, stunned.
She shrugs, as if that wasn’t the wisest thing anyone’s said all year. “Every day we live is another day to make things better. To be better. We don’t get to pick what happens to us. But we get to decide what we do with it.”
I look down at my hands, glowing faintly with the tether of the Ether. The magic hums beneath my skin, responding to my emotions. I clench my fists.
“You’re right,” I say, voice tight. “We can’t fix Estellis by condemning the women in it. We have to show them there’s another way.”
“Exactly.” Delphi stands. “That’s why you’re going to walk into that ballroom tonight not as their pawn, but as their proof.”
My eyes meet hers. “Walk?”
She grins. “They want Electra’s perfect scion. What they have is a half-blood scientist who knows her own strength and speaks her mind. Let that be their reckoning.”
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