Glitter Read online

  This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical and public figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical or public figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2016 by Aprilynne Pike

  Cover art copyright © 2016 by Emi Haze

  Interior powder art © 2016 by Shutterstock/artjazz

  Map adapted from Jacques-François Blondel’s Architecture Françoise, vol. 4 (1756)

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us on the Web! randomhouseteens.com

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Pike, Aprilynne, author.

  Title: Glitter / Aprilynne Pike.

  Description: New York : Random House, [2016] | Series: Glitter | Summary: “A teenager living in an alternate-history futuristic Versailles must escape its walls by selling a happy-inducing makeup called Glitter”—Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2015039116 | ISBN 978-1-101-93370-1 (hardback) | ISBN 978-1-101-93373-2 (ebook)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Courts and courtiers—Fiction. | Drug dealers—Fiction. | Versailles (France)—18th century—Fiction. | Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. | Science fiction. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Girls & Women. | JUVENILE FICTION / Royalty. | JUVENILE FICTION / Action & Adventure / General.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.P6257 Gli 2016 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  Ebook ISBN 9781101933732

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v4.1

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  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map

  Prologue

  Part One: The Price of Freedom

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Part Two: The Price of Friendship

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Acknowledgments

  Aprilynne Pike

  TO KENNY,

  FOR HOURS OF WORK AND LOADS OF PATIENCE

  1. Hall of Mirrors

  The Queen’s Apartments

  2. Peace Drawing Room

  3. Queen’s Bedchamber

  4. Salon des Nobles

  5. Antechamber of the Grand Couvert

  6. Guard Room

  7. Escalier de la Reine

  8. Loggia

  9. Salle du Sacre (Coronation Room)

  The King’s Apartments

  10. Guard Room

  11. First Antechamber

  12. Second Antechamber

  13. King’s Public Bedchamber

  14. Council Chamber

  The King’s Private Apartments

  15. King’s Private Bedchamber

  16. Clock Room

  17. Antichambre des Chiens

  18. Dining Room

  19. King’s Private Office

  20. Arrière Cabinet

  21. Cabinet de la Vaisselle d’Or

  22. Bathchamber

  23. Louis XVI’s Library

  24. New Dining Room

  25. Buffet Room

  26. Louis XVI’s Games Room

  The State Apartments

  27. Drawing Room of Plenty

  28. Salon de Vénus

  29. Salon de Diane

  30. Salon de Mars

  31. Salon de Mercure

  32. Salon d’Apollon

  33. War Drawing Room

  34. Hercules Drawing Room

  The Queen’s Private Cabinets

  a. The Duchesse de Bourgogne’s Cabinet

  b. Cabinet de la Méridienne

  c. Library

  d. Bathchamber

  e. Private Office

  Madame de Maintenon’s Apartments

  f. Second Antechamber

  g. First Antechamber

  h. Bedchamber

  The King’s Private Cabinets

  i. King’s Private Bath

  j. Gilded Cabinet

  The Courtyards

  A. Queen’s Courtyard

  B. Monseigneur’s Courtyard

  C. Cour de Marbre (Marble Courtyard)

  D. Cour Royale (Royal Courtyard)

  E. Cour des Cerfs (Courtyard of the Stags)

  F. The King’s Private Courtyard

  G. Cour des Princes (Princes’ Courtyard)

  H. Chapel Courtyard

  I RUSH THROUGH the catacombs, my face shrouded beneath the brim of a cap, skimming by the empty eyes of ancient skulls. I’m fast and sleek in my borrowed jeans but feel scantily clad without the heavy silk and brocade skirts to which I’m accustomed. I retained my corset: not out of an affinity for this particular one, but because my innards feel like jelly without stays, and tonight I have need of a strong spine.

  I pause in the halo of a light to look at the half-crumpled bit of paper Lord Aaron passed me this afternoon. Once more I scan the hastily scrawled words and peer at the landmarks around me; as far as I can tell, I’m in the right place.

  Just one more thing to do. With a dull thud my bag hits the dusty ground, and I take three brisk steps forward. I shiver—from the chill, from nerves, from exhaustion—and stand with my legs slightly apart, arms raised. Almost immediately—though I’d have sworn I was alone—there are hands searching my body, and I close my eyes against the humiliation. They pat my arms, my legs, my inner thighs, the hollow between my breasts. Mercifully, the ordeal is brief.

  But a set of hands stops at the boning of my stays.

  “What have we here?” My brain can’t wrap around the man’s words until I realize they’re French. All the lords and ladies of our court study the language—speak it with passable fluency at least weekly—but this raw, native accent is something else entirely. Of course it is. I’ve fled from a court that’s practically another world. But the reminder is jarring. I mentally fumble for a suitable response, praying my faux accent won’t render it unintelligible.

  “It’s only a—stop!” But a shadowed form has already yanked the hem of my shirt up to my shoulder blades, and I feel a gentl
e tug at the laces. The binding fabric falls away, and my entire abdomen sets to quaking as the heavy undergarment drops to the ground. Two dozen cleanly sliced satin ribbons reveal that the person standing behind me has a very sharp knife. I pull my shirt back down—lest they try to cut that off too—but probing fingers merely frisk my soft belly and leave me be.

  “Intéressante,” comes a voice from the dark, his throaty R so classically French. This is no Sonoman nobleman, French only in memorial and mockery of a bygone age. He says something else, too fast for me to follow, but unmistakably a command, and nimble feet patter all around me. I can see some of the people in the dim underground light, but with the shadows cast across their faces, I couldn’t identify a single one.

  “Do you have it?” the rumbling voice asks.

  “Have what, monsieur?” I reply, trying to sound strong.

  A bark of a laugh as he steps more fully into the light. “Runaways always think I’m stupid. They’re putting their very lives in my hands, but they think I’m stupid.” He’s at least as old as my father and wears a scraggly half-beard that somehow doesn’t strike me as casual or shoddy. A leather coat drapes his shoulders, looking almost like a cloak. His eyes are dark, and there’s a black word tattooed on his neck—but the light isn’t bright enough to read it. “The money, girl. Do you have the money?”

  “I don’t think you’re stupid,” I say first, feeling an irrational need to defend myself. “The…person who arranged this meeting didn’t know your current price. But I brought—”

  Something cold presses against my neck, stopping me even as I step toward my bag: the unmistakable feel of a gun barrel.

  “I haven’t gotten to where we’re standing right now by getting myself dead,” the man says, his voice silky. “What’s in the bag?”

  “Some money. Jewelry. It’s all I could get my hands on.” Shut up! Don’t babble! I bite the inside of my lip and force myself to stand straight, my arms curled into a perfect ballet pose—at my sides, but not quite touching my body. Posture speaks louder than words, my dance instructor often said.

  “I’m a fair man,” the dark figure says as the gunman tosses my backpack to him, chilly gun barrel never breaking contact with my skin. “My rate is five hundred thousand, and I’ll only take from your bag what’s needed to cover that. We can fence the rest if you want; wherever you’re going, I’m sure you’ll need the change.”

  What I’ve stolen will surely be enough.

  “I don’t ask why and you don’t ask me how. For five hundred we’ll remove your tracer, scramble your profile, and work up a new identity, complete with a passport.” As he speaks, he unzips the backpack by feel. “Have one of those faces? Another hundred thousand and I’ll put you under the knife.”

  I suspect he’s not just offering a nose job like the one my mother foisted on me before my début.

  “That…might be necessary,” I say at last. One week ago I was nobody—today I have one of the most recognizable faces in the world.

  “I’ll be the judge,” the man says, much too casually, holding up a cluster of glittering sapphires on a golden chain.

  The largest piece. Maybe he’ll take that and be satisfied.

  Lord Aaron and I…liberated this particular set of jewels from a friend. Her family. Their most treasured possession. Guilt has hollowed my insides, but if this man really can sell me my freedom, it will have been worth it.

  The Frenchman is studying the sapphires and, I assume, estimating their worth—when surprise dawns in his eyes an instant before flaring into anger. “Where did you get these?” he demands, thrusting out the necklace with a sharp jangle. “How did you break into the Palace of Versailles?”

  Something about his tone assures me that if I don’t answer honestly and immediately, he’ll have no qualms about ordering his henchman to shoot me. “I didn’t break in. I broke out.”

  “Out? You’re from the palace?” He stomps toward me without warning, and before I can so much as blink, he flips the cap off my head and grabs my chin with rough fingers. He twists my face from side to side, scanning my features in the dim light as I let out a stifled mew of pain. His mouth sets into a grim line before he glances down at my discarded corset and kicks it savagely. “Your pretend past getting boring? Ready to join the twenty-second century? Tired of living in your stolen palace? Of wearing your stolen jewels?”

  “They’re not stolen,” I lie. “They belong to my family!” My heart pounds so hard the sound fills my ears.

  “They belong to France!” the man snaps, his grip tightening. My face will be bruised tomorrow—assuming I live that long. “Just like our palace, our land, and everything else you godforsaken Louies have taken from us.”

  Lord Aaron and I didn’t expect a smuggler with standards. And we certainly didn’t anticipate patriotism. “I’ll take them back,” I say. I’m begging, falling to pieces, but I don’t care. I can’t care. “I’ll find something else; I just need a little time.” I can’t imagine what I could possibly bring him that would be worth half a million euros, but there must be something….

  The man throws my bag to the ground at my feet and lays the necklace of blue stones gently, almost reverently, atop it.

  “Bonne nuit, mademoiselle,” he says, touching the rim of his hat in mock salute as he backs into the darkness of the catacombs. “I can’t say it’s been a pleasure.”

  “Wait!” My voice cracks, the desperation bleeding through. “Please. Let me bring you something else. Something you’ll accept. You said five hundred thousand. Maybe I—”

  “That was before I saw your face,” the man says, and I can tell he’s turned away from me, though I can no longer see him in the blackness.

  “I’m not like them.” My voice is weak. Until last week I never considered whether those words were true.

  He gives a derisive snort. “The fact that you’re a Louie isn’t what concerns me. I don’t like you people. I hate it when my contacts send you to me. But if you were a different one, I might take the job for no other reason than to thumb my nose at that ridiculous boy-King of yours. But not you, Mademoiselle Grayson. Not you.”

  I can’t stifle a gasp at the sound of my name; I’m still unused to my own renown. He steps back into the light, and I wish he’d stayed in the shadows as his eyes rake over me with a glint that’s equal parts loathing and lust.

  “You thought I wouldn’t know who you are? Do you have some crazed illusion that any reasonably well-informed citizen of Earth wouldn’t recognize your face in a second? With more cameras in the world than human eyes, it’s hard enough to make a nobody disappear. But you? Not even remotely worth the risk.”

  “I can get the cash; I’m sure I—”

  “Impossible,” he says, and though he cuts me off, he sounds more like he’s talking to himself. “Not even for a million euros. Not for two million. The surgery alone would be…”

  I’ve heard businessmen talk like this before. No matter how much he might hate me, he loves money more. Money—and the challenge. I almost dare to hope.

  “Five million. In euros,” he emphasizes, and my hope shatters into pieces—five million pieces. “None of those credits your people throw around as though they were worth something.” He rolls his eyes and adds, almost to himself, “Absurd currency system.”

  “If I bring you five million euros,” I manage between clenched teeth, “you’ll take the job?” There’s no way I can get it—even in the months I have. But I have to ask.

  He studies me, and it takes every ounce of my willpower to meet his eyes without squirming. “I’m good enough. Even for you. If you truly think your pathetic life is worth five million euros, then, yes, I’ll take the job.” He shrugs. “But it’s an easy promise to make, seeing as how there’s no way anyone at Sonoma would let a citizen—even your lofty self—get their hands on so much real money.”

  “How can I contact you?”

  He laughs heartily at that. Then the smile drops from his face and he
points a long, thin finger at the ceiling above me. I raise my eyes to look, but the pop of a bursting lightbulb hits my ears an instant after the tunnels are plunged into utter darkness. Fine bits of glass rain down on me, and I duck to the ground, hands over my head.

  “Go back to Versailles, Your Majesty.” The man’s voice echoes in the darkness, coming from every direction at once. “You’ll find no help in Paris tonight.”

  “DANICA!” EVEN WITH her hushed whisper, Molli’s giggles give her away before her high pompadour can claim the honor. Rather a feat—thank goodness she’s not sporting feathers in her hair tonight. After a quick glance down the hallway, I join her in a small nook behind a set of heavy damask curtains. Lord Aaron and Lady Mei are with her, leaning out a picture window, sharing a cigarette. Someone has hacked M.A.R.I.E.—Lord Aaron, no doubt.

  “Be careful,” I say, the finicky words escaping my mouth before I can clamp down on them. “The smell seeps,” I continue in an embarrassed mutter. Though it’s been only two months, I feel as if I’ve aged ten years since my failed escape attempt, and it’s starting to show. Seventeen going on thirty, I suppose.

  “Oh, lord have mercy on us if we damage His Royal Highness’ precious frescoes,” Lord Aaron mocks. His eyes aren’t as playful as his tone, and he meets my gaze briefly before blinking away all trace of our shared secrets.

  “Lean way out,” Lady Mei says, passing me the hand-rolled cigarette and shifting her skirts aside so I can bend as far through the window as my stiff bodice and wide skirts will allow.