“Easy.” Emeric’s whispers feather at the periphery of my pain. “Don’t move too much.”
I squint through white flares in my vision. I’m lying on a bed, but it’s not my own. And there’s a window across the room. “Where are we?”
“My apartment, but we can’t stay here. I doubt it’ll take them long to realize we know each other.”
Pressing my palm to my stomach as the pain in my head triggers another wave of nausea, I wheeze. “What happened?”
“I went looking for you after the dance with the peacock girl. I thought you’d gone into the hallway or something. When I couldn’t find you, I wondered if maybe you’d gone downstairs. You’d seemed kind of upset. But on my way down there, I heard screams and gunshots. I got back in time to see the police.”
“You knocked over the statue?”
He nods.
I exhale slowly. The relief that I’m still free—still alive—makes me weak. “Thank you.”
He peers into my face, his expression full of concern. “How did they find you?”
A lump rises in my throat. Tears blaze hot, boiling trails down my cheeks.
“Someone ripped off my mask. It was all over after that.” My stupid, perfect gravoir memory plays back every jeer, every horrified look, every scream. Humiliation scalds through me. Maybe if I let it burn its course, it’ll empty me out until there’s nothing left but an empty shell. One that cannot feel pain. “Cy-Cyril, he—” A sob chokes out, and I reach a quaking hand into my neckline for my pendant.
Only it’s not there. I left it in my crypt.
I turn my face into the pillows as the tide of pain and betrayal crash over me. My body convulses with the strength of my tears. I cry until I feel as though my soul is coming apart, its seams unraveling one by one until I’m nothing but a crumpled corpse left to be swept away into a tomb.
No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to push away the image of Cyril’s face, callous and impassive and so very disgusted, regarding me as if I were nothing to him.
As if I were worse than nothing to him.
Emeric’s hand rests warm on my back. He does not try to shush me or explain away the hurt. He simply strokes my spine with his thumb and hums softly. The song from my pendant.
After what feels like days but must only be moments, my sobs begin to recede. His voice soothes the ache, dulls the memories for just a breath.
“You were right,” I say. “I shouldn’t have gone. It was too much of a risk.”
He continues tracing lines on my back. The sensation ripples through me, and I try to banish away every thought so I can lie here and focus on how his touch feels instead of remembering what I am and what I’ve done.
“How’s your head?” he asks when the shaking of my shoulders has subsided.
“It feels like I’ve been trampled by a horse.”
“Oh. So not too bad, then?”
I snort and shake my head, then wince when the movement shoots pain through my skull. “Can I have something to drink? My mouth tastes awful.”
He crosses to the sink, fills a cup, and brings it to me. I gargle away the sourness of vomit, spitting it into an empty bowl Emeric provides. Then I drain the rest of the water in a series of sloppy gulps.
Wiping my lips on the back of my hand, I ask, “Do you have any caramels?”
“Do I have any caramels? Honestly, Isda. What do you take me for?” He shoves a hand into his pocket and produces a fistful for me.
I take one and place it into my mouth, letting the warm, buttery sweetness roll through me. Emeric sits on the edge of the bed and props his head against one of his hands. His fingers knot in his hair, and his other hand grips a dripping, brown rag that soaks through the knee of his pant leg. Marble dust and debris cover every bit of him, turning his once-shining black tuxedo a faded, drab gray. His cravat is undone. His shirt is ripped so that the blue stone on its leather cord is visible. Cuts on his cheeks and forehead leave nicks of blood. His black mask is gone.
But it’s his face that makes me forget the throb in my head and the ache in my limbs. That carefree expression he always wears is gone. He stares at the floor, but his eyes are far away and ringed with pain.
“Emeric?” I push myself into a sitting position. “Are you hurt?”
“Me?” He laughs, but it’s forced. “I’m fine.”
I slide next to him and pull the wet cloth from his hand. It has gone cold, but I reach up to wipe the flecks of blood from his cheeks with it anyway.
“Talk to me,” I say softly when he meets my gaze.
“What am I supposed to say?”
“I don’t know. Something. Anything.”
He pushes to his feet and tromps across the room to shove open the window. I wring the dripping rag between my fingers, letting the water splatter onto the floorboards next to the bed, and wait as he ducks his head out into the night air and gulps in several deep breaths.
I can’t take the silence for another moment. I rise, gripping the edge of the bed until my head stops spinning.
“I am so sorry,” I say. “I’ve put you in danger, and I’ve risked your career.”
“You’re standing there bleeding, and you think I’m upset about my career?” He whirls to face me. “Isda, they were dragging you away to execute you! You nearly died!”
“I know.”
“Why didn’t you stay hidden? Why did you have to be so—”
“Foolish? Irresponsible? Pig-headed?”
“—trusting?” He mops a palm over his face. “They’re so quick to call you dangerous, but the only one I saw in any kind of danger at that stupid party was you.”
I knot my hands tighter in the rag.
As he moves toward me, his voice lowers. “They scream and rail that you’re the monster, but you don’t want to hurt anyone. You simply want to live.”
“That’s not true.” My voice is raspy and weak. “I do want to hurt them.”
“All right, if I’m being honest, I’d like to hurt them right now, too.”
He stops in front of me. Only inches away.
He reaches up to gingerly tuck the hair behind my ear. “Let me take you away from here, like I said before...to somewhere you don’t have to wear a mask, somewhere you can live out in the open—somewhere you can be free.”
“Like where your mother took you and Arlette?”
Visions of dashing across green, rolling hills dotted with marigolds the color of butter flash across my mind. I imagine catching fireflies with Emeric in the dark, singing under a bright expanse of stars, parading through the burbling streams I’ve seen only through other people’s eyes.
I want that.
“Yes,” he says, then pauses and shakes his head. “No. Better than where Maman took Arlette. Because we’ll go someplace where you can’t be found.”
His voice cracks on that last word, and I frown. “You mean... Arlette was caught?”
“She was.”
How did I not know this? All this time I’ve been focusing on her earlier years as she discovered her power. I never took the time to press forward to more recent memories. I always assumed she was still hiding out in that little house among the apple blossoms and rippling grass.
I sink onto the edge of the bed. “How did they find her?”
“I’d tell you the story, but... It’s not something I much like to talk about. Why don’t you see for yourself?”
He begins to sing his mother’s lullaby again, quietly, as though he’s afraid of what I might find in his music.
I sink into his tide and press slowly through the memories there, searching for Arlette in each until I find the most recent one of her.
Arlette appears to be around nine years old. She wears a brown dress and has her hair done up in a pair of pigtail braids. Without a mask to hide her face,
her gnarled cheeks are almost rosy in the sunshine. Emeric tugs her through the underbrush of some kind of forest.
“All right. Here it is,” Emeric whispers, pulling her to a stop next to him. He releases her hand and pushes aside the branches of a bush to reveal a view of a small village.
Dappled sunlight shines across Arlette’s face as she beams. “Marvault,” she breathes. “It’s exactly how you remember it.”
“Beautiful, right?”
She ducks her head into the leaves to get a better look. The village is still a mile away, down a sloping hill and across a bubbling spring, but its bright red roofs are as brilliant as ever.
“Do they really sell candies in the town square?” Arlette asks.
“The best candies in the world.” He pauses, then says, “All right, second-best. No one beats Uncle Gérald’s caramels.”
She giggles, and the sound of it settles something deep in his heart.
As he takes in the wonder in her expression, the joy in her smile, he presses a comforting hand to her back. This is the first time he’s seen her happy in weeks. All she’s done lately is stare out the window, her eyes blank, her mouth drawn. Barely eating, barely talking.
Their maman has sensed the change, too, Emeric can tell. She’s always had meetings with the other parents who are hiding gravoir children, but she’s been sneaking off to speak with them more and more the past few months, coming home with secret books and trinkets—a leather cord with a blue stone for Emeric to wear “for Arlette’s protection,” a set of symbols to carve into Arlette’s palms that were meant to compound Arlette’s power “just in case.”
None of it has seemed to give Arlette hope. If anything, it has made her quieter, more withdrawn.
What Maman doesn’t understand is that Arlette doesn’t wish for more power or protection or for Maman’s group of gravoir sympathizers to fight for her. What she wants is a friend. A life. A childhood.
But now as she looks down at the village, she’s laughing, and Emeric finally feels like he can breathe again. If he can give her small moments like this—moments where she can forget what she is—perhaps she’ll hang on long enough for Maman’s group to figure something out that could free her.
“Tell you what,” he says. “You stay here, and I’ll go get us some of those candies. I’ll be back in a half hour.”
She turns to him, face as bright as the village’s colors behind her. “Really?”
He tugs one of her braids. “Really. Don’t move from this spot.”
She nods eagerly, and he plants a kiss on her forehead before jogging out of the forest.
Moments later, he’s dropping a few coins into the candy merchant’s palm in exchange for a bag of assorted bonbons. “Merci,” he says, turning to make his way back through the throng of people. He whistles as he walks, nodding hello to a weaver beating the dust out of a rug.
As he angles toward one of the side streets, movement drags his attention to the other end of the square. A shadow hunches behind a cart of potatoes. A child. He squints and shades his eyes to get a better look.
The figure shifts, and a flash of sunlight slants across her face.
The blood drains to Emeric’s feet.
His bag of candy hits the ground as he bolts across the square to his sister, panic slamming through his chest.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Panic floods me as surely as it floods Emeric’s body in the memory.
“I told you to stay behind!” he whispers when he reaches Arlette, pulling her deep into an alleyway and away from the crowd.
She tugs her arm out of his grasp and drifts back toward the sunlit square.
“Arlette?”
She stops at the edge of the shadows. “There are so many of them...” She pauses, eyes flicking from person to person as they bustle past. “Are people this colorful in all the cities? And this loud?”
“Arlette, we have to go.”
If she hears him, she does not acknowledge his words. She watches the salespeople shouting their wares and the buyers scurrying about, a soft, curious grin softening the corners of her mouth.
“Look at their faces,” she says distantly. “They’re so pretty.”
He follows her gaze to a small group of children sitting in a circle playing with marbles. Their freckles stand out against pink cheeks under sun-kissed eyelashes.
“You are as pretty as they are,” he says.
She cocks her head. “Have you ever played that game before?”
He glances back at the children, impatience and fear making his vision hazy. “What? Yes. Of course.”
“Why haven’t you taught it to me?”
“I’ll teach it to you right now. At home. Let’s go.”
One of the boys squeals a victory, and Arlette smiles. “They seem nice.”
“We’ve got to get out of here.” Emeric tugs on her sleeve, but still she does not move. With a glance over his shoulder to make sure no one’s looking their way, he leans down to scoop her up. As soon as he does, she goes rigid.
“No!” Her voice is too loud. Too noticeable. “Don’t touch me!”
“Shhh!” Emeric soothes, releasing her, shielding her from the view of the few passersby who have turned their way. “It’s all right. Shhh.”
“You always ruin everything.” She smacks him away with her hands, which are still bandaged from when Maman carved those symbols into her palms the other night. “I want to play.”
“Well, you can’t.” The words come out harsher than he means them, and she blinks up at him, eyes wide and fresh with tears. He sighs. “I’m sorry. But we really need to go. It’s not safe for you here.” His whole body is quivering, his arms and legs buzzing and ready to bolt.
Tears dribble down her cheeks. She wrings her hands so hard the knuckles peeking out of the bandages bulge white as she darts another look past Emeric’s elbow.
He grabs her wrist, but her sobs escalate quickly, and she shoves him away. “Stop it, Emeric!” she snaps. “Leave me alone!”
Her shrieking draws more attention from the square. Sweat trickles cold down Emeric’s back.
A thousand plans for escape fly through his mind at once, and all of them hinge on one thing: He needs to calm Arlette down before she draws too much more attention.
So he does the one thing he can think of to soothe her.
He sings.
As his voice fills the shadows between the buildings, she quiets, and her fingers cease their twisting. He reaches for her hand, ushers her deeper into the alleyway.
At first she lets him lead her away, ducking her chin into the collar of her jacket and letting her braids drop over the sides of her face. But then she stops.
Emeric sings on, a little more urgently, tugging as insistently on her hand as he dares, praying his grip doesn’t hurt the wound on her palm.
She raises her gaze to his, and he takes a step back.
Her eyes are glassy, distant. Her pupils have dilated, nearly consuming her irises. They stare at the necklace at his throat—the blue stone Maman gave him the other night “for Arlette’s protection.”
She licks her lips and grins a predator’s grin, all teeth and angles and nothing like Arlette.
Terror unfurls in Emeric’s veins, and he presses on with his song, pleading with his eyes and his insistent yanking on her hand to come away from all of the people.
Arlette whips out of his grasp and bolts into the town square.
“Arlette, no!” He dives after her.
The world erupts into blinding, golden light. A force stronger than stone knocks Emeric and everyone else in the square to their knees. Emeric tries to shake it off, struggles to push forward, but it’s as though his limbs have been bound. Elixir streams out of his ears, bright as sunlight, hot as stars. It pours toward Arlette’s tiny frame, twirling an
d winding alongside the elixir of every other person in the square. She drinks it all in, gulping like a starving Forgotten Child. Bright light blazes through the bandages on her hands as she raises them to the sky.
Emeric’s heart might have stopped. Something inside of him feels as though it’s been cleaved in two. Still he keeps singing, as though some part of him hopes she might hear the lullaby and come back to herself.
There is a gunshot. Blood appears on Arlette’s right shoulder, and she slams to the cobblestones. The elixir in the air spatters against the street like rain.
Relinquished from whatever power dropped them to their knees and drained away portions of their memories, people scream. Run. Shout.
Emeric sprints toward his sister, fear making his movements jerky. His shoes soak with elixir.
Before he reaches her, a herd of police swarm and hoist her tiny frame onto their shoulders.
Emeric chases after them, trying not to look at the scarlet trail shining in their wake through the golden puddles.
But they are too quick. They toss Arlette into a black, barred cart before Emeric makes it halfway across the square. His agony and despair are as sharp as though they are my own, his thoughts as immediate as though they have come from my own mind.
This is my fault.
I should never have brought her here.
“This might be the gravoir Bardin’s been looking for,” one of the policemen says to the other as they climb onto the cart and crack a whip. The horses lurch forward. “Let’s get her to him as quickly as possible. Might get a few extra coins if we’re right.”
“Oui. It’d be nice to get a break from combing the stupid wilderness looking for her,” another one responds.
Then they wheel around a corner, and Emeric is alone in a sea of chaos. He slows to a stop, staring blankly at the place where the carriage disappeared. His mind whips from one half-formed thought to another until it lands on one word.
Maman.
He whirls and dashes for home, pounding through the stream, crashing through the forest. Panic surges through his legs, pushing him faster, faster, faster.
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