Poison Priestess by Lana Popovic (classic books for 7th graders txt) 📕

the leaden sky, swollen with more impending snow. “Perhaps Claude’s life was worth more than both of ours combined.”

“I cannot speak for you, ma chère, but I value my life more than some stranger’s, no matter how sweetly dispositioned,” Adam responds with a touch of impatience. He does not approve of my prolonged melancholy, not when, in his estimation, I chose the only rational path available to me. “You know that the marquise would have disposed of her even without our help. And there is always a price to pay for a triumph such as ours. I should pay it gladly a thousand times over, if it means making something of myself.”

And am I equally willing to sacrifice others for my benefit? I wonder bleakly, my eyes still cast up. While I have reconciled myself with the necessity of meting out well-earned deaths to the reprobates at court, am I just as ready to cull the innocent when it suits my purposes?

And if I am, does that not make me into a villainess far worse than the marquise?

The gimlet sky stares grimly back at me like some forbidding god, offering no reply.

I might have wallowed in my misery for weeks or even months to come—that is, had Adam and I not been summoned to Versailles to perform a Messe Noire for the king himself.

“This royal summons is her handiwork, mark my words,” I repeat to Adam as we rattle like peas in my carriage, along the rutted road that wends through the snowbound countryside and culminates in Versailles. “It smacks of the marquise. What do you suppose her design might be?”

“From what you have told me of her, I expect she means to tantalize the king,” Adam responds.

He is much less troubled than I am by this turn of events, so excited he can barely sit still. He drums his elegant fingers impatiently along his thighs, vigor snapping in his eyes. Unlike me, this summons has only ignited his ambitions.

“Perhaps she can sense him tiring of her, and she seeks to revitalize their spark with a taste of the forbidden,” he suggests. “And what better curiosity to present him with than Satan’s own priestess and priest?”

“But do you not think she might be setting some kind of snare for us?” I ask, my chest tight with disquiet. “The king is a self-proclaimed devotee of the sciences. What interest could he possibly have in a Devil’s Mass? Remember, he even had his police storm the cité’s havens back in the fall. Why would he allow something of this ilk under his own roof?”

“Perhaps he is only indulging his maîtresse,” Adam offers with a shrug. “Stranger things have been done in the name of love. Or he may even be approaching this with a skeptic’s eye, the better to debunk our claims of devilish communion.”

“I expect the consequences of failing to divert him would be steep in either case,” I mutter to myself. “A fine predicament.”

“Dieu merci, Cat, what does it matter why he calls for us?” Adam demands with a hint of sharpness. “Is this not what we have been waiting for—an opportunity to ensnare the king himself, to make him our audience? How are we to garner his good graces if we never even perform for him?”

I nibble on my knuckle, unconvinced.

“Perhaps,” I say uncertainly. “Though you are right in any case; it is not as if we could have told him no.”

“Are you still comfortable with what we discussed?” Adam asks, fixing me with an intent gaze. “My devilmaker will serve us well, but the pièce de résistance must depend on you.”

“Do not worry about me,” I say shortly, turning to the window.

“But, Cat, you are certain you will be able to do it?” he demands. For the first time, his composed aspect betrays a hint of anxiety. Perhaps that is what his frenetic animation truly is, nerves masquerading as zeal. “I know the tension will run high, but—”

“It will run higher still if you do not cease pestering me,” I snap, rounding on him. “I said I could do it, and I will. Now let us concentrate on making this an evening His Majesty will not soon forget.”

Adam opens his mouth as though he wishes to add something else, then thinks better of further provoking my ire. He is right; we both know that tonight’s success largely depends on me. There is nothing to be gained by thinning my nerve before we even arrive.

We lapse instead into a tense silence, each lost to our own thoughts. It is just past the early winter sunset when our carriage draws through Versailles’s soaring gates.

The gold leaves are wrought into fantastical shapes; curling fleurs-de-lis, overflowing cornucopias, Apollo’s masks, and entwined L’s honoring the king’s Christian name. They make me feel as though we are entering not just the château’s marbled cour d’honneur, but le paradis itself.

I had thought myself prepared for the sight of the château, after all the stories I have heard of its delights. I know its extraordinary gardens contain more than a thousand sparkling fountains, and a cruciform canal large enough to host a sailing ship flotilla. And the marquise has rhapsodized over its pleasures to me many times, telling me of torchlit picnics in the parks beneath bursting fireworks, gondola trips on the canals by night, and even nocturnal theaters held in the orangery, with its miniature trees and pillars of lapis lazuli.

But I could not have conceived of Versailles’s colossal expanse, nor of its snow-limned splendor.

Under a sky still flushed from recent sunset, the château glows like a tremendous jewel. The sun’s last, lingering rays light the facade’s golden embellishments with an almost holy fire, and a candle flickers in each of its countless windows. Doubtless fragrant beeswax to the last, as the Sun King surely does not skimp when it comes to his own light. How much such an extravagance must have cost, I cannot begin to fathom. It is wondrous beyond all