When my eyes flutter open, I instantly regret it. My head aches a great deal and my arms are stretched uncomfortably over my head. Pain sears at my side. In the dim light, I spy a physician who sits beside my bed. His hands work through a wide tear in my chemise. Whatever he's doing doesn't help the agony.

I try to move my arms to a more comfortable position, but something holds them in place.

"Don't move, if you can, Mademoiselle," the physician says when he sees that I'm awake. "You have a small puncture in your side. The quilting of your stays and the layers of your gown worked wonders to stop the blade. If you can keep still, I'll be able to stitch you up and leave you with only the faintest of scars."

"I can," I say, though my breathing is coming faster.

I look up to see what restrains my hands, and I'm shocked to find Destan holding my wrists down over my head. He stands unnaturally still. He doesn't even flinch when our eyes meet. He stares determinedly at my face and nowhere else.

My heartbeat ratchets up and I fight a strong urge to cover myself.

"Don't worry. He's almost done," Destan says as if he senses my embarrassment.

His eyes are soft and pained and I can't look at him without my face heating. I look at the physician instead.

"What about the boy who attacked me?" I ask.

I feel Destan's hands tighten around my wrists. "He died quickly," he answers.

I killed him. My throat thickens and I feel like I may be sick.

"You did everything right," Destan says. "He would have killed you if he hadn't run into your dagger."

I know it was in self-defense, but that fact doesn't make me feel any better. "He was just a child." I let myself look up at Destan to read his face.

He looks about as sad as I feel. "Yes, and we'll make sure the person who put a knife in his hand pays for it. He or she will be held responsible for his death. Not you." Destan's eyes bore into me with a sadness that looks almost loathing. "I'm so sorry—"

"All finished," the physician interrupts. "Slow movements until we take the sutures out, Mademoiselle."

Destan releases my wrists and I lower my arms hesitantly. With a hand on my back, he helps me to a sitting position. The physician leaves and a pair of maids come into the room with a copper basin full of steaming water.

Instinctively I hug my arms around me to cover my chest and glare at Destan as I remember what his face had looked like during the skirmish. "What was that?" I cry.

Destan shakes his head and glares at me as if to silence me.

"I saw something—" I start to say.

"Mademoiselle Florette," an oily voice fills the room and Lord Gardet glides through the door to my bedchamber. He crosses to stand at Destan's side. "I'm sorry this has been your introduction to life at Versailles, but it seems like you will make a full recovery."

My skin crawls as if my awakened senses detect a wrongness about the men in front of me. I suppress a shiver as Lord Gardet's gaze falls to the gaping, bloodstained hole in my chemise.

"Thank you both for your concern, but I would like to wash the blood off myself now." My hands are sticky with it and my stomach turns as I realize that I don't know where my attacker's blood ends and mine begins.

"Of course," Lord Gardet says with an obsequious bow. "We won't intrude any longer." He heads out the door and Destan dutifully follows.

With the men gone, the maids take my ruined chemise and gently sponge away every last flake of blood till my skin is left pink and raw. Only the new wound at my side glows an angry red. While one takes away the basin of rust-colored water, the other helps me to slide into a fresh chemise and changes the bed linens.

I pull the pins from my hair and let my curls fall. The endeavor is enough to leave me feeling weak, so I'm too tired to braid my hair. After the servants leave, I lock the door to the studio and even prop a chair against the handle. I make sure to replace the palette knife I kept under my pillow with Destan's blade before I collapse into my bed.

To my dismay, the sheets smell of fresh lavender. The scent of Morel's cologne is gone and the absence of it makes an ache rise deep inside me. It rises to my throat and before I know it, tears fall along with shuddering sobs that cause my wounded side to ache something terrible.

I don't know when I fall asleep, but when I wake my room is still dark. Even through the grogginess, my senses are alive enough that there's a tingle in my palms to tell me something isn't right.

Before I can sit up, a hand closes over my mouth.

"Don't scream."

I don't scream.

I grab the knife from beneath my pillow and plunge the sharpened steel towards the soft flesh in my attacker's side. Even with the element of surprise, I'm not fast enough. A hand closes around my wrist and twists; the weapon drops from my grasp. That's when I get a better look at Destan positioned above me. He looks surprised, almost amused to find me so well armed.

"You are safe," he says. "For now. Please tell me you do not have any other weapons hidden in your bed."

I reply with a glare. "You have three seconds to leave this bedchamber before I scream."

Destan rolls his head as if to work a kink out of his neck. "Please refrain. I'm trying to save your life. Again."

I struggle to free myself from his hold, my side screaming in protest. "Against my will?"

"Do you know what I am?" he asks and I freeze.

My stomach drops. What I saw during the attack? It was all real? I don't even know how to explain it.

He seems to sense my apprehension. "You saw my face, my real face — in the frenzy of the attack."

I'm not sure whether I should admit to it or not, but I'm too curious to resist nodding my head in consent. "What was that? Your face. It's like you wear a mask."

"It's not a mask. It's a glamour. It's part of who we are. " He releases me from his grasp and moves to sit at the foot of my bed. His weight leaves me, taking his warmth with him. As I wrap blankets tighter around me, he is suddenly unable to look me in the eye. Instead, he watches his fingers play with the ruffles of my quilt.

"And what are you?" I sit up and contemplate moving for my knife, which lays on the floor.

"Faerie," he whispers.

"Faerie." I test the word carefully and it tastes like a forgotten memory. They told tales of Faeries when I was in the orphanage. Tales of warning that children who wandered into the woods would get snatched up by the Faerie folk and replaced by a Fae child. "From children's stories?" I ask.

"I suppose in a way — but the tales are far from the whole truth."

I think I know the answer, but I still ask, "Are you dangerous?"

He nods slowly.

My head spins as I try to take in his confession and fear travels like ice through my veins. "Then why are you here?" Did Morel know? Is this why he never brought me here?

"Because Gardet suspects that you know something. When your senses were heightened during the fight, I believe you were able to see through my glamour, if only for a moment."

My thoughts stop their racing, and my instinct to survive takes over. "He knows I can recognize the glamour?" I ask.

Destan looks up at me, confused. "You can recognize the glamour? Even now?"

My stomach knots as I scan Destan's face. "Yes. I can't see through it like I did, but there is something patently unnatural about so many of you. The Queen, Lord Gardet...they're too symmetrical."

"The Fae are vain creatures. Few have the courage to give themselves flaws when they call up their glamour, even though we use it to blend in."

"Why? Why hide your beauty?"

"The secret of the Fae's existence is their greatest weapon. It has allowed them to infiltrate the highest levels of society, place themselves in positions of power and manipulate rulers to their will." His nose wrinkles in disgust.

"What if they find out what I can see? What's going to happen to me?" I pull up my knees and hug them to my chest.

"Nothing. Because unlike the Fae, I value mortal life, but you must not let anyone know what you've seen tonight. I will tell my father you hit your head and have no recollection of anything that happened after we danced at the ball. Can you stick to that story?"

"I can," I say, but Destan doesn't look convinced. "What?"

He grimaces. "Remember when I told you that I can read your every thought on your face?"

Heat flares in my chest. "If you don't think I can keep your secret why risk telling me this? Are you not loyal to your kind?"

"I am only half-Fae. They are part of me, but I will never be one of them. I have all my father's power and all of my mother's mortality. My father wants to bestow immortality on me, but so far I have refused."

My mouth dries. Lord Gardet looks like he can't be more than a few years older than Destan. "Immortality has no appeal to you?"

"No. Not while I know what they do. They put their puppet on the throne and then party away the royal coffers." He runs a hand through his dark curls. "The Fae will drain France of all its resources then leave it to burn. That's the trouble with immortality, mortal lives become expendable things." His shoulders droop with some great weight.

Does he think of the war? Does he think of me? I want to comfort him, but I don't know where to begin. We have really just met and now he's sharing secrets with me from the end of my bed. Secrets that could get us both killed. I reach up and brush my fingertips across his cheek, unsure of what I expect to find. His skin is rough, but very real. He flinches away from my touch.

"What do you really look like? Beneath the glamour," I whisper.

The general sitting on my bed shifts nervously. I blink and there he is, pointed ears and all.

I understand now why he had to hide (aside from the strange ears of course). Beauty like that is impossible. My trained eyes try to memorize his features — so perfectly placed and shaped by the hands of a master sculptor. "You are truly..." I try to swallow away the tightness in my chest "quite handsome," I say with a breathy laugh. My heart races at the realization that I could get to paint this face. If I live.

"It has its benefit," he says with a mirthless laugh. Something about this conversation has taken a toll on him. He rises to leave. "My father mustn't know you suspect anything. Not ever."

I nod with understanding and bite my tongue. There are answers I still need.

He heads for the door but stops. "Keep that knife sharp. Keep it close."

"Thank you," I say, even though it's not enough. He has saved my life twice now and I don't know how to repay him.

When Destan shuts the door behind himself, I feel tears of frustration well in my eyes. This placement in the king's court was supposed to be my salvation, my security. Only now I know it's not even the king's court at all. This court belongs to a race of beautiful monsters who will suck the fragile kingdom of the last of its marrow. The tears flow freely; I have nowhere.

***

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