Page 185 of Immortal Rose

Glenmoor returned his attention to the painting. He waited until the door had clicked shut before speaking again.

“I anticipated Hugh would make one final, desperate act to save the King,” Glenmoor said, tapping at the bottle. “You truly believed you would be able to deliver Immortal Rose to him on this night—on my night?”

The ice of his words sent an involuntary rush of fear through me.

“He has always been as hotheaded as a stallion,” Glenmoor continued. “And, as expected, he has sprung a trap that ensures I have everything I need to see him ruined. In truth, I deserved a better opponent.”

I bit back a smirk, averting my gaze as he studied me.

“How quiet you are. Have you nothing to say in your defense? No pleas for mercy? I can practically feel your thoughts racing, but there is no need. It is over now, child.”

My fingers knotted around one another with the restraint it took to hide my smugness. “And if I wanted to now accept your earlier proposal?”

He ran his tongue over his teeth. “I’ve no need of you now. There is another perfumer far more willing and capable—one your grandfather couldn’t stamp out.”

I kept my face impassive, as if I was above such baiting. But if I could get a name out of him, we’d know the true poisoner . . .

“We know about the DeForests,” I said. “They have been dealt with.”

Glenmoor laughed—if it could be called a laugh. Every emotion felt mimicked and learned. “Dear me, is that why I saw them at this very fete? Come now, you’ll have to be cleverer than that if you’re hoping to provoke me into giving them up.”

They’re here. My pulse quickened. The poisoner was here, among us.

At my answering silence, he inclined his head, exposing his long, delicate neck. For all his power, connections, and wealth, the rookery would have gutted him like a fish in under ten clicks of a watch’s hand.

“Magnificent, isn’t she?” he said, nodding to the portrait of Queen Titania looming above us. “A mortal queen, more beautiful than even the fairies. Elegant. Refined. Humanity perfected. How far we have fallen from her.”

The artist had, by some magic innate to his soul, painted the Queen’s dark skin in such a way that it glittered like starlight. Her ermine state robe flowed around a gown of iridescent pink. In one hand she held a scepter; in the other, a wreath of fairy blossoms that had long since vanished from our world.

“Did you know, Miss Lockwood, that it takes over two thousand silkworms to create a gown?” Glenmoor said, slipping behind his mask of geniality once more. “One as magnificent as hers must have involved thousands more, surely.”

The abrupt twist to the conversation sent a sliver of dread through me. I cast a surreptitious glance around myself, searching for something weighty. Heavy enough to maim. There was a crystal tray on the side table, a footstool . . . Nothing within immediate reach.

“Until I was denied my father’s business interests, I had no desire to learn how silk was made,” Glenmoor continued with a soft laugh. “But I’ve become rather taken with the elegance of the process.”

The duke smiled at my silence, stepping closer. The hair rose on my arms.

“You see,” he continued, “after the silkworm spins itself into the very cocoon meant to transform it, it is left out in the sun to wither, or it is steamed or boiled. In the end, the result is the same.”

My stomach tightened, but still, I said nothing. That suited the duke as well.

“The silkworms cannot be allowed to hatch and emerge,” he said. “In doing so, they would break the single thread of silk wrapped around them, rendering it worthless.”

He drew another step closer. I stiffened at the sensation of his finger ghosting over my sleeve.

“Some silkworms are born for breeding,” he continued, “but in their lowly, reduced state of existence, they cannot fly. They cannot escape the natural order of our world. Their brief lives have no value beyond the offering of that lone strand of silk, which will one day adorn a superior creature. A lord or lady—perhaps even a queen.”

Apparently, we were dispensing with all subtlety now. “I cannot help but think this is becoming a rather tortured allegory.”

“Is it?” Glenmoor said. “It only strikes me that your perfume is not so very different. Flowers cut down in their prime to steal their essence, animals slaughtered for their musk and ambergris. And yet, when you dab the perfume to your wrists, only the impression of loveliness remains. A silkworm dies, and the memory of its brief life fades at the first brush of silk against skin.”

His finger hooked over the edge of my bodice and I slapped it away. He laughed at his little game, but the move had served its purpose. The confidence I’d felt upon entering cracked, sending a shiver of uncertainty through me. His words were less frightening than the unpredictability of where he was leading me with them.

“That is the deception of beauty, is it not?” he continued. “It mesmerizes you, so you do not think to look for its shadow, where death and pain linger. It is pleasure itself, a luxurious moment of forgetting that all life is ephemeral and that everything has a cost.”

“That is quite easy to say when you are never made to pay it,” I ground out.

His smile was worse than his touch. “Correct, Miss Lockwood. Some are born to enjoy beauty and pleasure, and others are destined to bear the cost. In time, the kingdom will come to understand my plans. They will be grateful for the elegant world I have created for them. As the years pass, no one will remember the poor, wretched creatures sacrificed to achieve it.”