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

words, this château the size of a small city. An otherworldly palace fit more for god than king.

“Pour l’amour du ciel, it is amazing,” I whisper to Adam, half undone by wonder. “Notre Dieu himself would not be ashamed to make it his home.”

“Is our king not divine, then?” Adam responds wryly. “Such blasphemy, Cat. Consider his name: Louis Dieudonné, the God-given. A gift to France from le Dieu himself.”

When we alight, we are escorted inside by guards liveried in the House of Bourbon’s royal blue and white. There is no fanfare to our arrival; quite the opposite, as it would not do to have rumor spread of Adam’s and my presence here. This Messe Noire will be a secret one, as befits a Christian king. I barely have time to drink in the palatial marvels—towering columns, frescoed ceilings, mosaics of starbursts inlaid into the gleaming marble floors—before we are rushed through the crowd of courtiers and common supplicants milling around the halls. More than a thousand nobles make Versailles their home, and the palace is open to the public, too, allowing even the lowborn to catch a glimpse of their lord and liege.

We are shown to a room small and simple by the château’s standards. Which means only that the floor is not marble but a shining caramel parquet, and that the statues of seraphim peering reproachfully from their alcoves are not quite as tall as me.

“This will do quite well,” Adam says quietly to me, running an appraising eye over the room. “It will require a slightly different angle, but to excellent effect.”

I nod curtly, chill tendrils of foreboding creeping up around my chest, afraid that speaking will only betray my anxiety. I desperately wish I could have brought my snakes; I feel nearly naked without at least Alecto around my neck.

But we have performed alongside each other enough times now, and tangled together in my bed, that Adam has grown as sensitive as a weathervane to the gusts of my emotions. He ventures closer and gently uncrosses my arms, waiting to see if I will resist. When I do not, he pulls me flush against him, cheek to cheek.

“You are always spectacular, my diabolic priestess,” he whispers, a smile hiding in his voice. “But tonight you will be incomparable—a dark star to put Lucifer himself to shame.”

I bite my lip, stirred by his support; tenderness between us is not our wont. But before I can respond, servants come bustling in with our accoutrements.

“You have two hours until your esteemed visitor arrives,” the most officious of them tells us with a meaningful look, avoiding outright mention of the king. “Be sure that your preparations are complete by then.”

And then there is no further time to fret.

When the servants withdraw, Adam and I fling ourselves into a whirlwind of activity. While Adam tends to the devilmaker and prepares his other tricks, I get down on my hands and knees to set out candles, paint the floor with runes, and arrange the provided claw-foot table as our altar centerpiece. I also tuck macabre curiosities into every corner of the room: little bouquets of black hollyhock and raven feathers tied with scarlet ribbon, clusters of sharp avian skulls, and my obsidian scrying bowls filled with red wine and pigeon blood.

Usually we would also have my snakes and at least one ceremonial knife, but we were ordered to bring nothing that might be construed as a threat. And though we were not forbidden the use of scents, we forgo incense as well. We cannot have our reasoned king growing giddy, perhaps fearing that we mean to poison him. The Sun King has enough enemies that his taster not only samples all his food but also rubs the king’s silverware and royal toothpick on bread, in case the utensils themselves are somehow befouled. It is a testament to Athenais’s unswerving dedication that she ever managed to dose his wine at all.

When the appointed hour strikes, we stand waiting in our hooded robes, Adam poised and empty-handed, me with a flickering candle clasped between my sweaty palms. My breath nearly stutters when the gilded door swings open.

But it reveals only a slight young herald, whose eyes flare wide as he takes in the room’s dark delights. He clears his throat, struggling mightily to master himself.

“Bow before Louis, ah, Louis XIV,” he stammers, sweat pearling on his brow. I imagine it must be nerve-racking to introduce a king under the best of times, much less to a magician and a sorceress. “Par la grâce de Dieu, roi de France et de Navarre. And his maîtresse-en-titre, Francoise-Athenais de Rochechouart de Mortemart, Marquise de Montespan.”

Adam and I exchange a meaningful glance—so this was indeed Athenais’s handiwork—before the pair glide into the darkened room. As Adam bows beside me, I drop into a curtsy so deep that by the time I rise, the king has already been seated on the gold-leaf armchair that is to serve in place of a throne. The marquise sits beside him on a lower and much simpler seat, and the king’s two stone-faced captains of the guard stand at their backs.

The king himself wears no crown, nor any of the splendid garments he is known to favor. Both he and the marquise are in hooded black, for discretion as well as ceremony. Yet even without any royal raiment, there is no mistaking Louis. Beneath his hood, his famed curls tumble dark and abundant, framing a face so fine-boned and elegant it is no wonder he has broken such a wealth of hearts. With his hands laced loosely in his lap, his eyes bolt the both of us in place like flung javelins.

And though only I can see it, the Sun King radiates an extraordinary burnished glow, the likes of which my sight has never shown me outside the confines of a vision.

It reminds me of when I first saw his silhouette, the outline of his gloire blazing in the marquise’s misty future; though