The Empress Chronicles by Suzy Vitello Read Free Book Online Page B

teeth. I reach up to the bookcase shelf beside Living Matter and yank down my journal/ingestion log.
    I stretch out long on the futon, its rumply fabric bunching beneath me. As earlier, my head feels twice its usual size, my body shrinking beneath it. I separate my fingers and scan my hands for dirt. Don’t count don’t count don’t count don’t count. Dr. Greta’s voice bursts through the rhythm in my head: “Lizbeth, when you feel the urge, engage !”
    I open the diary. A sketch is in order, so I turn to what I think is a blank page and, voila, it’s not a blank page but a page full of sharp foreign script. Vowels with dots on top. Squiggles that looked like capital B . German scribble. Dr. Greta, no doubt, mindlessly infesting my food diary with shrink notes in her mother tongue.
    I run my fingertips over the blotchy ink. The next page has more notes and something written in English as well: Count Sebastian must die , it says. No explanation. Just Count Sebastian must die .
    I slap the journal closed. It feels like an omen. Some sort of prophesy. Crazy, out of control. I reach for my pills—the only thing, in this moment, that seems familiar.

Chapter Six

    The summer months passed quickly. In short order, we were to return to our winter home in Munich. Munich, where polish and stiff shoes and curtseying punctuated all hours.
    As my family prepared for our trip back to the city, a cold, damp veil of doom lingered in the halls and rooms of Possi. Mummi walked with her head down, her spaniels following her a pace behind, their snorty noses pointed to the floor like the little copycats they were. The maids and Cook ceased their chatter, working quietly, efficiently, to put the house in order. My brothers and sisters scattered, hiding in the vast far reaches of our summer castle, many absorbed in books, and those who could not yet read were off in corners with dolls and toys. Summer was lifting, moving south, and in its place was a sunken cloud that cast dew upon the landscape. Papa was off on another adventure, this time in Cairo, and Mummi shook her head whenever I inquired as to his return.
    Meanwhile, I felt I’d inhabited the body of another.
    When I passed by the great gilt mirror in the hall, I had to touch my reflection to make sure the body I saw was mine. I’d grown taller yet this summer and my dress grazed my calf, revealing two sticks from boot tops to hem. I wasn’t a homely girl, exactly. In fact, but for my teeth, I should think myself quite comely. But when I looked closer, there they were, as the archduchess had pointed out: the defects that would keep me from ever being a queen or an empress. Teeth stained the color of cider. Pewter eyes like slanted almonds in my hopelessly round peasant face. Dresses torn at the sleeves and frayed at the cuff. The woman I was destined to become was now pushing against my skin from the inside. When I jumped, I could feel the tiny swellings on my chest as separate things. My body was not as straight up and down as I was accustomed to, and from the side, a gentle sway could be seen settling into my back.
    In front of the mirror I hopped, just to decide whether I liked or loathed the bouncy, swollen lumps on my chest. Both liking and loathing were true, and this pained me. The archduchess had criticized my teeth, and my little brother, Gackl, treated me more as a playmate than an elder sister, and these truths, too, gave pause. Would I ever grow to be as beautiful as Lola Montez? Surely, she had been a girl once, thin and angled, before her bosom had swelled quite so grandly under her layers of jewels. Jewels, Mummi said, that should rightly belong to Uncle Ludwig’s wife.
    I longed for my diary, which was already packed in a crate with my pantalettes and most likely stacked in the back of the coach. Once I got back to Munich, I would write of this conundrum. This issue of being too old and too young all at once. If I could not disappear into the woods and have my