Page 28 of Kingdom of Flames & Flowers
The crowd gasped. The queen stood up from her throne, eyes sharp. My jaw dropped, and the surrounding girls gawked and elbowed each other, forgetting for a moment we were supposed to all be terrified and competing against each other.
Azalea stood before us, transformed into an exact twin of the queen, minus the silver eyes.
I stared. How had she done that with justmakeupand a wig? It almost seemed magickal!
“What sorcery is this?” the queen hissed, anger flushing across her pale skin.
Azalea flinched, then rushed forward with a wet rag.
“No sorcery! Look!” She dragged the rag across her nose, wiping off a large smear of cosmetics. Her own larger, more pronounced nose stared back at us, shattering the illusion.
“Here, I will show you!” she continued, rushing back to the cosmetics and picking up a few items. She rushed over to the queen and started working on her nose again.
“It’s all about shading and painting. It’s a visual trick,” she explained desperately, drawing dark lines on either side of her nose, then blending them out. We all watched in fascination as her larger nose disappeared under the paint, and she carefully sculpted the queen’s nose back onto her face.
The queen sat back on her throne, suitably impressed. “What skill,” she mused quietly. “I did not know such feats were possible.”
Azalea stepped back, nervously clutching her materials.
“Well done, daughter of the artisan quarter.”
The queen clapped, nodding her head. As if the queen’s actions were a blessing, the crowd rushed to add their own applause, thunderous and enthusiastic.
Azalea flushed, then moved to wipe her face. The queen stopped her with one motion of her arm.
“Leave it while you’re here, as a reminder to everyone of your skill.”
Azalea nodded, then came and squeezed down next to me on the steps. I stared at her hard as she sat down, feeling for a moment as though I were next to the queen’s younger sister. I shook my head, turning to watch the fireguards quickly clear away the materials.
Who was next?
The queen gestured her hand carelessly. “You two. The twins.”
I used her distraction to glance up at Zion. His face was an impassive mask, so different from the open emotions he displayed when he paraded around as Zariah. I glanced up at the ceiling, which was free of the dragon’s dark shadow. Perhaps he was gone today.
Heather and Hyacinthe went green as they stood and shakily made their way toward the middle of the ballroom. Neither of them dared to correct the queen about them being twins. As if that even mattered. Hyacinth was slightly taller than Heather, whose hair was a slightly darker shade of brown than her older sister’s. They clutched each other’s hands hard, and mine twitched in reflex. It would be nice to have someone I could safely show my fear to, instead of having to maintain an unaffected mask at all times.
Two fireguards approached, one carrying what looked like a string box and the other a small table.
Hyacinth took the strange box from him and arranged it just-so on the table. It was a rectangle covered in strings, with chipped gold embellishments along the top. It looked old. Heather stood slightly in front of her, looking ready to puke.
But then Hyacinth withdrew two small metal hammers from within the instrument and gave a few taps. Haunting, beautiful sounds filled the space, echoing off the pillars and floating toward the ceiling.
Music.
The muttering stopped, and the hall went deadly silent.
Hyacinth took a deep breath and looked to her sister, who nodded weakly.
The song itself was charming and beautiful with Heather’s voice singing a pretty melody that was a warm compliment to the instrument’s notes. Yet, Hyacinth and Heather were clearly terrified, which made for a difficult show. They would have been better off playing in a corner somewhere as background music and not as the main event. Even Zion looked bored, his head leaning against his hand propped up on the armrest of his throne. His eyes drifted shut.
I half-suspected the queen to end it early, but she simply sat listening, neither hating it nor enjoying it. When it ended, the two girls bowed, and the queen nodded slightly in their direction. The fireguards took the table and the instrument away, and they scurried back over and squeezed in on the end after Azalea.
“I forgot the words!” Heather mouthed to me, horrified, but looking relieved that the entire ordeal was over.
I didn’t need to look at the queen to know who would be next. They would design the order to humiliate me. Leilani would be next. The queen would call up Fressia after her and then have me go last, just so she could prove how lacking I was compared to such perfection.
I wiped my sweaty palms against the cool marble floor underneath me. I hoped my plan worked.
