Belle Révolte Read online

  Also by Linsey Miller

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  Books. Change. Lives.

  Copyright © 2020 by Linsey Miller

  Cover and internal design © 2020 by Sourcebooks

  Cover design by Nicole Hower/Sourcebooks

  Cover art © Billelis

  Cover image © Olga_Z/Getty Images

  Map art by Misty Beee

  Internal design by Danielle McNaughton/Sourcebooks

  Internal images © Studiotan/Shutterstock; Ozz Design/Shutterstock

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Published by Sourcebooks Fire, an imprint of Sourcebooks

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

  (630) 961-3900

  sourcebooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Miller, Linsey, author.

  Title: Belle révolte / Linsey Miller.

  Description: Naperville, Illinois : Sourcebooks Fire, [2020] | Audience: Ages 14-17. | Audience: Grades 10-12. | Summary: Told in two voices, sixteen-year-old Comtesse Emilie, whose yearning to be a physician is below her station, switches places with Annette, who needs training to develop her magic, as their homeland is threatened by war.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019032145 | (hardcover)

  Subjects: CYAC: Impersonation--Fiction. | Social classes--Fiction. | Magic--Fiction. | Fantasy.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.M582 Bel 2020 | DDC [Fic]--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019032145

  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Epilogue

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  To everyone told they were not enough.

  You are.

  One

  Emilie

  My mother did not shackle me despite my last escape attempt. It didn’t matter—the corset, layers of satin and silk, and summer heat were chains enough. I was certain I would be the first young noble lady of Demeine to arrive at finishing school under the watchful eyes of two armed guards. My mother made it seem so innocuous, talking of nothing but her perfect days looking down upon the quaint town of Bosquet while learning the correct topics of conversation, the exact ways to divine tomorrow’s weather, and wonderful illusions to cover up everything from blood stains to whole castles. The illusionary arts, the first and simplest branch of the midnight arts, were my mother’s specialty, something the perfect daughter should have appreciated. I had neither aptitude nor interest in illusions.

  Illusions were, as far as I could tell, nothing but lies. My mother was a wonderful liar.

  “I love you,” she said, her expression that emotionless calm all ladies of Demeine were expected to possess, “but I am growing weary of your rebellion.”

  I peeked out the window. We had been traveling for days, bundled up in the carriage and only stopping to swap horses. It was the carriage Mother usually took to court: wonderfully impressive on the outside, with gold and silver gilding running through the ocean colors of our family’s crest on the door, and frustratingly practical on the inside. I had been staring at the same black velvet and single lamp since we left. No amount of fiddling with the lock while she slept had freed me yet.

  “Let us rejoice, then, that your education means no one will notice I exhaust you.” I tapped the thin skin beneath my eyes where she had hidden my dark circles as she hid hers every day. “You said you would let me study the noonday arts. Mademoiselle Gardinier’s school does not teach the noonday arts.”

  The ability to channel magic was rare, and it was rarer still for it to run so steadily in a family. Traditionally, noble sons with the ability studied the noonday arts and either specialized in the fighting or healing arts. They became chevaliers or physicians. They changed the world by sword or by scalpel.

  Noble girls didn’t change the world.

  “I said I would let you study them, not that I would allow you to partake in such powerful magic, especially after that abomination you used on poor Edouard. You could have killed him.” She folded her hands in her lap, the tight sleeves of her silver overdress rustling together like moth wings. “You are a daughter of Demeine. You will learn the midnight arts, you will—somehow—impress someone well enough for them to marry you, you will have children, you will serve our people as the midnight artist and comtesse they need, and one day, you will understand why I made you do all of this.”

  Edouard, one of our guards, had caught me during my last escape attempt and laughed when I had explained my plan to join the university as a boy. Even common boys were allowed to be physicians if they were good enough and could pay the tuition.

  “Being a boy’s not that easy,” he had said, angry for the first time since I could remember. “I would know. And you’d be doing it for selfish reasons. You don’t understand. Listen to me, Emilie…”

  When it was clear he wasn’t going to let me go, I had knocked him out by altering his body alchemistry with my abominable noonday arts.

  I tugged at the high collar of my dress, sweat pooling in every wrinkle, and scowled. “I could better serve our people as a physician.”

  “The noonday arts would wear your body out in pursuit of such a dream, to the point of death or infertility.” She slapped my hand away from my collar. “Be reasonable, and perhaps you will learn you enjoy the midnight arts and the life you are supposed to lead.”

  My mother was always reasonable, as a good lady of Demeine should be, and unlike me, she never wore her emotions on her face.

  “This will be good for you,” she said. “Marais was too rural for you to make friends of the appropriate station
. You will need allies at court.”

  “Yes, I cannot wait to meet them.”

  “I see sincerity was another of my lessons you neglected.” She leaned across the carriage, fingers skimming my cheek, and recoiled when I flinched. “You are not a child any longer. You are sixteen, and soon you will be old enough to inherit your father’s responsibilities along with the title you disregard. I remember when that was not even a possibility. You have so many more opportunities than girls in the past, than other girls now, and it is insult to refuse them.”

  I was an insult to our name, and my very dreams, to be a physician and study the noonday arts, to channel the magic of Lord Sun through my veins and save the dying, were the worst insult of all. I wanted the wrong things. I wanted too much.

  “Noonday artists change the world, whether through the fighting or healing arts. That is a responsibility that comes with power you cannot comprehend. You are young. You will learn.”

  Demeine was blessed with two types of power: the noonday and the midnight arts. Each drew power from Lord Sun or his Mistress Moon, but Lord Sun was far stronger and even more fickle. The fighting and healing arts were used to change the physical world, and as such, required immense amounts of power. Such magic wore the mortal body down bit by bit until the ability to channel faded or the artist died.

  Noble girls could not be allowed to handle such corruptive power.

  There was nothing to learn. I comprehended the fact that I was a body, not a person, quite well.

  “‘I will learn,’” I said, the small nothing town of Bosquet rushing past our carriage window. “Is that a command or an attempt at reassurance?”

  “Please, Emilie, we both know you are incapable of following even the simplest of orders.” She twisted her first two fingers, broke the illusion hiding her fan in her lap, and flicked it open. “I prayed to Mistress Moon to console my grief at having to be apart from you, and she sent me a vision of you happy and content at court. You will be fine.”

  Mistress Moon’s magic and the lesser power required for the midnight arts—illusions, scrying, and divination—wore the body down much more slowly but required excessive self-control. It was a safer, slower burn, but midnight artists couldn’t change the world. They only observed it, or, if they were good, changed how others observed it.

  Perhaps Demeine was as it was, ruled by a court on the cusp of rightly losing control, because we let no one new change it.

  I had to change the world. I had to prove to my mother that the whole of my being wasn’t wrong, that I wasn’t a disappointment.

  “Maybe you saw a future where I became a physician,” I said.

  The gods could take the time to answer her prayers but not mine. How paradigmatic. Divination was guesswork, hardly quantifiable. A diviner could see a dozen different futures, and none might come to pass. If a midnight artist even could divine. Many never mastered the skill.

  “Though, admittedly, you appeared to have taken none of my clothing advice in my divination; you were not wearing a physician’s coat,” she said. “You stand at the edge of a great future.”

  “Whose?” I lifted a silver chain, worth more than all of Bosquet, from my chest. The layers, the jewelry—I couldn’t breathe much less move for fear of drowning in silver and sweat. No wonder we were expected to be silent and still. Even this left me light-headed.

  Oxygen deprivation.

  “All power has a cost,” she said as the carriage slowed to a stop, “and you were born with power—your title, your wealth, your magic. This is your cost, Emilie des Marais, and it is your duty to pay it. Power demands sacrifice.”

  “This isn’t fair.”

  She laughed, the apathetic mask she kept up at all times slipping. “Really? There will be girls at school who lack your name, your money, and your magic, and they will not treat you as kindly as I have. You are arrogant and stubborn. Mind your tongue, or you will have no friends, no happiness, and no future.”

  She had never called me a disappointment, but I could taste it in the silence between us. I was not the daughter she had always longed for. At least magic would never abandon me.

  “You are my daughter, and I love you. I am pushing you to do this because I know Demeine will laugh you out of university. I do this because I love you.” She ran her fingers through the strands of her silver necklaces, where she stored small lockets of power. Her illusion settled over me like snow, soft and cold and suffocating, and I knew no one would be able to tell how hot and miserable I looked. “Time to go.”

  We had stopped at a stable on the south side of town. The noises of Bosquet were louder now, and the shadows shorter, squat stains beneath our feet. The town had an open-air market and church at the center, and we had passed between storefronts and housing and orderly gravel paths shaded by linden trees with interlaced canopies. Our driver had already vanished inside the stable, and the guards lingered on the other side of the carriage. A crowd had gathered in the shade of the trees across from us. Behind them, a white poster with green ink had been stuck to the trunk of a tree.

  At the edge of that crowd was a girl, who despite her flax dress dusted with dirt, despite her white skin spotted with sunburn and old bruises, and despite her brown hair in desperate need of styling, looked like me. I might have mistaken her for some unknown half-sister if either of my parents had ever been inclined to such affairs.

  Perhaps Lord Sun had finally answered my prayers.

  “Wait,” I said quickly, grabbing my mother’s wrist before she could leave the carriage. “Give me a moment to prepare myself, please.”

  I did not let go of her immediately as I usually did, and her gaze dropped to my fingers. She took my hand in hers and nodded.

  “What do you think that crowd is?” I asked.

  Her eyes didn’t leave our hands. “Mademoiselle Charron is in town to inspect the artists in your class. I am sure she’s providing free scrying and divinations to those who need them. All of her writings are in green for some ill-graced reason, but so goes the odd trends of youth, I suppose.”

  “That’s nice of her.” I moved my other hand, palm up and burning in a sliver of sunlight, out of her sight. “Can we wait until there are fewer people? You knotted me up in new clothes and shoes, and I have no desire for an audience.”

  She laughed, a sound I hadn’t heard in ages, and nodded. “Very well.”

  “Thank you.” I channeled the power I had gathered in my free hand to the one holding hers.

  It slipped under her skin with the soft sizzle of heat against flesh. Her head jerked up, but I held tight, the magic slithering through the nerves of her arms to the dark little spaces of her mind, until the inner workings of her body shone with my power like a layer of gold silk. We were all nothing but lightning in a bloody bottle. I deleted the alchemical components in her mind that controlled wakefulness. These last moments would be like a dream.

  My mother slumped in her seat, asleep, and I stepped out of the carriage. My own body would pay the price for this; I would not be able to sleep for a day or two at least. I had five minutes at most, and no idea if this would work. It was arrogant to think I would get away with it.

  But arrogance and magic were all I had.

  Even a chance was worth it.

  I was far too overdressed for the crowd, but the people were more focused on the poster than me. My mother was right—it was advertising Estrel Charron’s services—and the girl who looked like me was mouthing the words to herself as she read. I slipped into place next to her and tilted my head till my mouth was even with her ear. I was slightly taller and certainly heavier, but we had the same hazel eyes. The silver moon necklace at her throat glowed with power.

  “Wouldn’t you love to meet her?” I asked the girl.

  She couldn’t pull her eyes from the poster. “Love to, but it’s tomorrow, and I’ve got to be home tonight.�
�

  “What if I could offer you the chance to not only meet her but learn from her?”

  Her face whipped to me, and her eyes widened. She whispered with all the gentleness one said a prayer. “What?”

  “I am Emilie des Marais, comtesse de Côte Verte, and I’m supposed to start my training at Mademoiselle Gardinier’s today but would much rather study the noonday arts at university,” I said, smile growing. She didn’t stop me, so some part of her was listening. “How would you like to pretend to be me and study the midnight arts at Mademoiselle Gardinier’s with your beloved Estrel while I take your last name and study the noonday arts?”

  She stared. She did not say no.

  “It will be dangerous, and I will do what I can to protect you if we are caught,” I told her softly, “but some dangerous things are worth the risk.”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes.”

  I would prove myself, prove I wasn’t a disappointment or insult, and I would change Demeine. If the world wouldn’t give me the chance, I would take it myself.

  Two

  Annette

  I ate dirt as a child. Nothing grew the summer I turned six; Vaser’s dry fields filled only with cicada husks. Lord Sun had not been merciful, giving us endless days of heat without rain, and Monsieur Waleran du Ferrant, comte de Champ, whose family watched over our lands, hadn’t sent near enough help. Maman was pregnant with Jean, Papa was busy working, and Macé was seven and going through a growth spurt, crying till I gave him my supper. I’d cried too, but quiet, and pulled at my sides like I’d be able to pry open my ribs and scratch the hunger out of me. I’d been a good sister, then, and dirt was better than Macé crying. Tasted like the air after Alaine’s funeral pyre.

  “Your family must be proud.” The shopkeeper smiled up at me and handed over the little satchel of everything Macé would need in Serre. “A varlet. There’s a good career for a country boy.”

  I was not a good sister now.

  “They’re very proud of him,” I said, tucking the packet into my bag. It wasn’t a lie. They were. Of him. “He’s leaving next week, and I’ll be sad to see him go.”