Under a Starlit Sky Read online

  It was rare for him to acknowledge the tensions within his family, and I kept silent in case he wished to say more on the topic. Instead, he released a sigh and kept toying with my hair.

  My mind wandered, and the thought of Anne d’Autriche’s illness reminded me of my encounter with Paris’s best fortune-teller and her prophecy, a year ago now. At the time, the magicienne had frightened me with talk of four maidens coming to court to meet terrible fates: a broken heart, a fall from grace, a betrayal, and a death. The Queen Mother had been a maiden coming to court, once, and now her health was failing. Although I doubted she was the object of the seer’s prediction, it prompted me to wonder again who the maidens were.

  As time went by, maybe I ought to find out, before further calamity struck the king’s court. I liked to see magic as a gift, and such a prophecy, far from being a prediction of doom to come, could also be used to fight future dangers and change those maidens’ fates. If there was anything I could do to stop disaster from happening, I had to act—the events of last summer had proven as much.

  Philippe shifted under me, drawing me out of my thoughts. I had assumed he was falling asleep, but he appeared more alert than I had suspected.

  “I have to ask you something.”

  A glance at his face showed sternness mixed with uncertainty on his features, so remote from the happiness he’d displayed until moments ago that my pulse quickened. I held his gaze. “Anything.”

  “You know the Duchesse de Valentinois,” he started. “Catherine?”

  I nodded, surprise at hearing the name at this hour and in this context likely plain on my face. Armand had nicknamed the woman the “diabolical duchess” on account of the fact she had made no secret of flirting with Philippe at a time when my husband struggled with his relationship with both his former lover and me. But as far as I knew, the duchess had now left court after her husband had become prince of Monaco in January. The now princess lived a thousand leagues from Paris, and I had to admit I had not spared her a thought since her departure.

  “She said something,” Philippe explained, “before she left. And I didn’t think much of it at the time, but tonight Armand said something else, and he’s always joking about these things, and I suppose it made me wonder—”

  I stopped him with a slight pressure on his chest, my trepidation worsening. What on earth was he talking about?

  “Philippe, I don’t understand a word of what you’re saying.”

  He dropped my strand of hair and pulled himself upright against the pillows to face me, all traces of earlier mischief gone. “She said Armand’s in love with you.”

  My jaw went slack. My thoughts sluggish all of a sudden, I tried to come up with an answer, and found nothing to say. Armand and Philippe had been together since they were teenagers. It was only Philippe’s marriage to me that had prompted my husband to choose between us, and he had chosen me, with the understanding that Armand would remain at court and I wouldn’t object to their friendship. With time, I had grown fond of Armand myself, and I had hoped that the three of us were now past any awkwardness. I had obviously failed to account for the Duchesse of Valentinois’s interference.

  Finding my voice at last, I said the first thing that came to my mind. “But … Armand likes men.”

  Philippe snorted. “Maybe he’s like me after all. Maybe he likes people. And he’s always going on about how pretty and perfect you are.”

  My temper rose. The duchess’s snide remark had upset Philippe, and I wouldn’t have it.

  “He says these things because he thinks that’s what you want to hear. Because he thinks teasing us will amuse you. Because we’re all friends, not because he’s in love with me!”

  But Philippe’s gaze was unflinching. “He said it again tonight. And when I asked him about it, he just … took off.”

  “He was probably drunk!” I struggled not to lose my patience and to sound reasonable, when all I wanted was a chance to growl in the duchess’s face. “And likely as flabbergasted as I am to hear you entertaining such ridiculous ideas.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “So he’s never said anything to you? Never suggested anything when I wasn’t around?”

  I took a deep breath to calm down, and realized I now knelt on the bed without remembering when I had moved. I folded my hands over my heart, in the most sincere pose I could devise.

  “He hasn’t. I promise you. Armand is your friend, and I’m your wife, and he would never do that to you. As much as I would like to say otherwise, he loves you, and he likely always will, just like I do. So please forget the duchess’s gossip and stop accusing Armand of such nonsense.”

  Philippe’s stance relaxed a fraction, and uncertainty returned to his features. He knew I didn’t make a habit of lying, and it seemed enough to reassure him for now. Still, as I nestled next to him again to try to get some sleep before dawn, I couldn’t help but ponder how easily he’d believed the duchess’s lie and how jealous his reaction had been. I had thought such dark feelings were the preserve of his brother.

  I had evidently been wrong.

  CHAPTER II

  An early summons from the king rendered void my hopes of a lie-in.

  “What does he want?” Philippe groaned from under a pillow as I read the short note brought in on a small salver by a servant.

  “He just asks for me.” I nodded my assent to the attendant, who retired with a bow.

  A maid opened the curtains under Mimi’s supervision, and I squinted in the daylight from my seat on the bed. Gray clouds filled the sky above Versailles, a drizzle dampening the atmosphere. Although I was a morning person, wool now seemed to fill my head and I yawned, all my moves sluggish. The maid offered me a glass of water, which I drank gratefully. The combination of the journey to the castle and the subsequent party had taken its toll on me, and I longed to be back home in Paris, where I would have more opportunities to rest with the king busy with affairs of state.

  “Tell him you’re not going,” Philippe grumbled. “Tell him you’re busy.”

  He crawled across the bed to grab my waist and rest his head in my lap. Memories of the previous night warmed my limbs, and his half-hearted protestations prompted me to caress his face in an automatic gesture of affection. With his eyes closed and his features still rumpled from sleep, his expression was so unguarded that it washed away any annoyance his earlier question about Armand might have brought on.

  If I had come to understand anything about him in the past twelve months, it was that his insecurities didn’t make him like his brother—arrogant and domineering—they set him apart from him. His life was so little his own that he was terrified to lose what he came to cherish. That included me, and, unfortunately, Madame de Valentinois had known exactly what to say before her departure to make him doubt himself.

  I deposited a gentle kiss on his forehead and slid from under his weight. He let out another groan and caught my hand before I could slip away.

  “What can he possibly want? Isn’t the whole point of us being here for him to be with his mistress and leave the rest of us alone?”

  He was right on that account. The reason Louis favored these small gatherings at Versailles—his love for the place notwithstanding—was that they allowed him to spend time with Louise away from court. Whether to spare his wife, Marie-Thérèse, or to avoid the disapproval of his mother, he was careful not to flaunt his affair in front of everyone. Instead, he left the queen with his mother in Paris to visit the renovated château, even if, I suspected, most courtiers were aware of the situation.

  I kissed Philippe’s hand to extricate myself from his grasp. Mimi followed me as I hurried to the service rooms behind my main chamber, where I splashed my face with water in an effort to gather my wits. I shivered in the morning cold, my bare feet unhappy with the chill seeping in through the wooden floor.

  “Tell him he can only have you for half an hour.” Philippe’s voice filtered through the open doorway. “Then you need to c
ome back here and eat breakfast.”

  I shook my head at his attempt at setting terms. We both knew Louis wasn’t used to hearing the word no. And despite my weariness, I was intrigued by his request for a meeting. When I had married his brother a year ago, everyone had expected my duties to be the ones of an English princess at French court. But when I had been compelled to reveal I was a Source to save the king, my position had changed from one day to the next. All of a sudden the magic inside me made me valuable to Louis the magicien and not just Louis the king: his plans for an absolute monarchy and a dazzling seat of power required a potent Source at his side, and it wasn’t long before events involving his former Crown Magicien Fouquet prompted me to accept this new position.

  The fact that Louis wanted to see me now, while we were at Versailles, drove me to think he was calling upon me as his Source, not as his sister-in-law. In an effort to accede to his request promptly, I hastily washed and got dressed with the maid’s help and hurried out of my apartments with no more than a quick parting word with Philippe. He grunted from the bed, and my dog jumped on the bedcover to keep him company while I was gone.

  Louis waited for me in his antechamber, and he dismissed guards and servants as soon as I stepped inside his apartments, my breath wheezing after the short walk. He stood before two gilded stand mirrors, and for a heartbeat the thought crossed my mind he’d summoned me to ask my opinion on his outfit. The blue silk ensemble was trimmed with gold galloon and buttons, which glittered magically in the bright light of the many candles lit around the room. His long blond hair framed his face in the same way his brother’s dark hair outlined his.

  I muffled a cough into my handkerchief before giving him a smile along with my curtsy. “Good morning, Your Majesty. You asked for me?”

  He surveyed me for an instant, his golden gaze seemingly taking in every detail of my rose gown, whose bodice and skirts were lined with tiny silk flowers and gems. His impassive expression softened, and he gestured for me to join him.

  “Good morning, Henriette. Did you enjoy the party last night?”

  The question was perfunctory, as his attention had already drifted to the mirrors before us. I gave an equally polite reply, my curiosity piqued despite my persistent weariness. The situation reminded me of the last time we’d found ourselves together in another antechamber with a mirror: at the time, we’d performed a spell to unveil Fouquet’s plotting.

  Following the same train of thought, Louis asked, “Do you recall our spell at Fontainebleau?” I opened my mouth to reply, but he went on without waiting for me to acquiesce. “Today I would like us to enchant these mirrors so one will allow me to see what’s reflected in the other.”

  A slight frown tightened my brow. This was complex magic, which we’d never attempted before. The spell in itself was complicated, and it sounded like Louis wanted it to last for as long as possible. Magic was by definition ephemeral: spells lasted for a few minutes, a few hours, a few days at most. Few magiciens in history had had the power to cast long-lasting spells, Fouquet being the only one I had ever met. It turned out the price for his gift had been terrible. Many Sources had died by his hand before we’d defeated him in Nantes last September. As everyone doing magic knew, the more intricate the spell, the greater its dangers.

  “It’s an expansion of the spell we used last time,” Louis explained, focused on his goal. “Instead of seeing what one mirror has seen, I’ll be able to see what this mirror reflects in that mirror.”

  He pointed at each mirror in turn, and I nodded. I understood the principle of the spell: We had to make the mirrors both reveal what they witnessed and link them together, so one would be the gateway to the other. However, an uncomfortable thought crossed my mind: the memory of another linking spell, one Fouquet had forced me to perform to tie Philippe to Louis and murder them both. I swallowed, my throat still tingling from my earlier coughing fit.

  Louis’s confident gaze landed on me, oblivious to my misgivings. He offered me his hand. “Shall we?”

  Calming my uneven breath, I slid my fingers into his. “What’s the wording of the spell?”

  As the Source, I was to speak the spell and to lend my magic to Louis so he could shape it into reality. I practiced saying the word a few times under my breath, getting used to its sound and weight until I could sense the power in it. Then I squeezed Louis’s hand, schooling my expression into one of calm and confidence. Louis and I had worked well together on ambitious spells before. This was just another one of those.

  We faced the mirrors.

  “Raccorde.”

  With self-assured practice, Louis drew my magic to him: the golden flecks floated toward the mirror on the right in a bright swirl. I held on to one with my mind and closed my eyes to follow it inside the first looking glass. There the enchantment scattered into multiple glittering particles, like stars in a clear night sky. They danced before my eyes, dazzlingly distracting. Hesitation gripped me for a heartbeat—which one to follow? Then an odd instinct whispered to me it didn’t matter: I could just stay here and admire this wonderful spectacle for a while. Stargazing into infinity, a calm settled over me. Breathing was easy, or maybe I wasn’t breathing at all. Time became suspended, my mind disembodied, and I couldn’t have said who or where I was.

  No matter, the night whispered again. Stay and rest and watch.

  Reste et relaxe et regarde.

  I floated under the starlit sky, and let peace swathe me in a warm embrace.

  Reste.

  An icy draught crashed over me. Cold encased me, wrenching me away from the infinite firmament. No! I struggled against the ties bringing me back to earth, against the terrifying cold seeping through every pore of my skin, against the threads of my dream that threatened to turn into a nightmare. Noise filled my ears, and pain engulfed my lungs, and cold gripped my limbs. I screamed.

  A shout echoed mine. “Henriette!”

  I flailed, water splashing around me, light blinding me. More indistinct shouting deafened me. My breathing was ragged.

  “Henriette!”

  Something lifted me out of the water, and my limbs shook uncontrollably. My eyes fluttered open at last, and a gilded ceiling swayed above me. The pattern was familiar.

  Versailles’s gilded ceiling.

  I was at Versailles, and I was drenched, and I was shivering, and I was weightless. The wall paintings moved past me, and all of a sudden I was wrapped in warmth again. Several silhouettes shifted at the periphery of my vision. I listened to my breathing until sounds resolved into conversations around me. Then one voice cut through the fog.

  “Henriette, my love, look at me.”

  I blinked. My eyesight sharpened, and the silhouettes became people. Servants buzzing around a copper bathtub. Doctors in black robes gesticulating. My ladies clutching each other by the window. The bright figure of the king standing nearby.

  “My love, just look at me.”

  Heaviness weighed down my body, and turning my head toward the familiar voice took more effort than I ever thought possible. As I moved, my listless mind kept inventorying its surroundings, like a traveler returning home after a long journey and taking stock of what had changed in their city. The pillow under my wet hair was soft, and the bed under me sturdy and motionless. The room was more heavily decorated than my own bedchamber, with golden patterns on every surface. The canopy above me was a midnight blue that reminded me of a night sky, without stars.

  My gaze landed on the person at my bedside. Philippe’s face was a mask of anxiousness, and tears ran freely down his cheeks.

  “What—?” My voice a raspy whisper, I couldn’t finish my question, unsure of what I meant to ask.

  Philippe let out an incredulous gasp of relief and planted a fierce kiss on my cheek. “Oh, my love, you scared me half to death!”

  He gripped my hand like a lifeline as the doctors and my ladies flocked around him, their voices overlapping in their eagerness. My mind still clouded by confusion, I focused
on Philippe, whose gaze raked over my face as if trying to memorize every detail.

  “Enough.” The voice of the king slashed through the babblings of the gathered crowd. “She’s awake. You may all leave now.”

  Philippe bristled. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  His gaze left mine to hold his brother’s, and for a suspended moment, no one moved in the warm bedroom. My sluggish thoughts registered the sudden tension in the air, Louis’s tense jaw and Philippe’s defiant pout. I tried to form a sentence to stop them from arguing, but before I could speak, Louis waved the matter away.

  “My brother will stay. The rest of you go.”

  The servants and my ladies were the first to shuffle outside, but the doctors hesitated.

  “You too,” the king said, his tone turning harsher with impatience. “We’ll call you back when we need you.”

  Dismissed, the men left. As quiet settled over the room, so did the tumbling thoughts in my head. My mind clearer every second, memories of the morning flooded back: Louis, the mirrors, the spell.

  The spell.

  My pulse quickened. The spell had gone wrong, and I had become lost, and—

  “Did I faint?” I asked, my voice already stronger.

  Silence greeted my question, and my gaze went from Philippe’s colorless features to Louis’s stern expression.

  “Henriette,” Philippe said, his tone gentle, “you were unconscious for over an hour.”

  I blinked at him, then looked at Louis for a sign that I’d misheard him. “What?”

  “We couldn’t wake you up,” Philippe went on, his tone still patient. “Until the doctors suggested we plunge you into a cold bath, but then you stopped breathing—” His voice broke, and he wiped more tears off his cheeks with his shirtsleeve.

  It struck me then that his shirt was soaked, his coat discarded on the floor. Horror at what had happened and guilt at having scared him engulfed me. My breath caught in my throat, and I coughed, my eyes watering. With soothing words, Philippe lifted me and rearranged the pillows until I sat upright in the bed. My breathing eased, my lungs shuddering with each breath.