“But it’s true. People like you...” I trace the creases his dimples have left in his cheeks, swallowing the way my heart feels like it might burst as I do. “Unmarked, lovely, perfect people would only be corrupted by my darkness.” I think of how I made the Council Head lose his mind, of the horrible images I planted into his memory, of the pleasure I took in having such an effect on him. I think of the lead tenor whose femur I snapped. I think of the woman in the ballroom whose blood I spilled.
And I think of how I don’t regret a single one of those actions.
My fingers feather across Emeric’s cheekbones, and he watches me, a tempest in his eyes.
He’s too good.
He deserves more. Better.
“Isda.” His voice is gravelly as he presses his mouth to the center of my palm. “You’ve seen my past. You know I’m not perfect.”
“That’s not the point.”
His jaw hardens. “That’s exactly the point. We’re all monsters. Every single person in this Memory-damned world.” He places his hands on either side of my face. “What someone looks like isn’t what determines their humanity.”
He ducks close—so close I can see every fleck of amber in his eyes, every lash trembling against his cheeks. My heart might have stopped beating. I cannot breathe. Cannot think.
“I may not be able to see your memories,” he murmurs, “but I have heard you sing. I’ve felt the vibratos and crescendos of your soul in every part of mine. You are no more a monster than I. You are a song.” His fingers trace along my gnarled cheeks, around my twisted nose, across the jagged edges of my brow. “One composed of a thousand different instruments all perfectly harmonizing into the melody they were crafted to create. A masterpiece.”
He smiles, and I’m undone.
Those dimples. Those stupid, stupid dimples.
I knot my fingers in his collar, pulling him against me, and his lips come down hard on mine. I taste sunshine and summer and burnt sugar. His hands weave into my hair and drag me deeper into him.
My resistance vanishes. I wrap my arms around his neck, easing him back onto the bed with me.
We are the music that wove the world. The soft buzz roll of sticks pitter-pattering across a snare drum like rain. The laughter of violin strings like grass billowing in the wind. The birdcalls of twin piccolos. Every piece of earth and sky harmonizing as one master symphony, one venture into the expansive realm outside my tiny sphere of safety.
I rise like the swell of the sea, a crescendo of movement; he falls like rapids over a cliff, a diminuendo of emotion.
My whole body is alive in a way it never has been before. It’s as though I am full of elixir, vividly aware of every touch, every caress, every brush of his lips against my trembling ones.
He has ignited me.
It isn’t until he pulls back with concern in his eyes that I realize I’m crying.
“Did I hurt your head?” he asks.
“No,” I say, drawing him back against me, even as my chest aches with the motion.
Because I’ve been waiting my whole life to have someone care for me in this way. And I feel how much he cares for me as deeply as I feel his kisses burning their way along my jaw. I’ve longed for this forever. Hungered for it. Craved it.
Now that I have it, I know I shouldn’t keep it.
For all his words, he has not seen the corruption of my soul. The beast who burns me from the inside out. The fury that lives deep in my veins.
This boy, with his caramels and his dimples and his lullabies, is too good for the things that lurk below my skin.
I blink the tears away and crush myself against him, drowning out the doubts with the surge and tide of our kiss, and I pretend for just this moment that I could be the girl that belongs in his world.
I pretend that I could be worthy of someone like Emeric Rodin.
Just when I’m beginning to believe my own lies, a door bangs open somewhere downstairs.
Emeric and I rip apart and bolt upright, panting. We stare at each other, wild-eyed and panicked, for a split second before Emeric darts on silent feet for the door. “Stay here,” he whispers.
“Emeric!” I reach for him, but he’s already slipped out onto the landing. I sink back onto the bed, reaching for the pendant that is not at my throat. “Be careful...”
I wait for what feels like an eternity listening to the thud-thud-thud of my heart. I strain my ears for a crash or a shout from below, but nothing ever comes.
I’m about to sneak out to go look for him when a quiet footstep creaks on the landing. Relief floods through me. Emeric has come back.
But when the door eases open, it’s not Emeric’s broad shoulders and dusty tuxedo that fill the doorway, but the tall, willowy frame of Cyril Bardin.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Cyril’s eyes find mine. “Isda!” He leaps across the room and enfolds me in his arms, pressing my face into his chest. “Thank Memory... I was afraid I was too late, that someone might have found you...”
I stand there, still. Not returning the embrace, but not resisting either. “I’m all right,” I say. “More or less.”
He holds me at arm’s length and surveys the grime on my face and gown. His expression breaks. “Look what they’ve done to you.”
I stare at him woodenly, a thousand words battling behind my lips, words of accusation, of betrayal, of hurt. But none of them are strong enough to capture what I feel, so I keep my mouth shut.
He reaches out to brush something off my chin with his thumb, and his voice drops to a broken whisper. “I’m so sorry for what I said. I had no choice. I was just instated as Head of the Council.” He pauses, wringing his hands. “If they knew I’d been keeping you alive, they would have arrested me, too, and then we wouldn’t have a chance.”
I want to believe his words, to believe there was a reason for everything that happened.
But that’s the problem with believing. It doesn’t guarantee truth.
A horn blares outside, and I jump. Cyril nudges me toward the door. “That’ll be my cab. We have to get you out of here before anyone discovers where you’ve gone.”
“But Emeric—” I begin.
“We’ll worry about the boy later,” he says, pulling me out onto the landing and down the stairs. His hand is like a vise around my arm, and his footsteps thud on the steps so loudly I wince.
I look around frantically for Emeric as we descend. “You didn’t see him when you came in?” I whisper, craning my neck to search one of the hallways before we round the corner.
“No. I’m sure he’s fine,” Cyril responds, his words clipped.
His grip is so stiff I’m starting to lose feeling in my fingers. “Cyril, you’re hurting me.” I yank on my arm.
His hand softens a bit, but he does not release me. I stumble after him, my legs clumsy and slow.
“We have to find Emeric,” I say, dragging back on my arm and planting my feet with every ounce of strength I have. “I won’t leave without him.”
Cyril heaves an impatient sigh. “Emeric will be fine. No one is after him. The sooner I get you away, the safer he’ll be. Now come on. We don’t have much time.”
“For what?” I ask as he pulls me down another flight of stairs. I wish my head would stop spinning so I could think clearly. “And wouldn’t it be safer to go out the back, bring the cab around there?”
Cyril ignores me, charging for the front door and pulling me out into the frigid night.
The frozen air drives barbs into my exposed skin, sending me into a round of violent shivers that makes my aching skull throb. I shake my head to clear my vision. A black carriage stands waiting in front of us, and behind it is another horse with some kind of cart—
“Isda, run!” Emeric’s shout breaks the night from my right.
I whip around in time to see a p
oliceman shove a gag into Emeric’s mouth. Emeric’s eyes are wide, and he struggles against ropes wrapped around his wrists and ankles. A pair of men hoist his writhing form into the carriage. Panic spasms through me.
“Cyril! Do something!” I yank on his arm.
But Cyril isn’t looking at me or Emeric. His eyes are on the cart parked behind the carriage. “Here’s the gravoir,” he says to a second policeman, who hops down from the cart and strides our way.
I blink from Cyril to the policeman, my mind still swirling with pain and confusion. But when the policeman gets near enough, Cyril shoves me into his grasp.
“Wait. No. Cyril!” The policeman drags me to the cart, which is nothing more than a glorified cage on wheels.
Cyril wipes at a smudge on his jacket and frowns. “Damn it, Isda, you got blood on my best suit.” He turns toward the carriage.
“Cyril!” I scream as the policeman lifts and tosses me into the cart as though I weigh nothing. I land hard on my side as the door slams shut. The whole thing shudders when the lock slides home.
Pausing with his hand on the carriage door, Cyril glances back my way. He smiles, and it’s unlike any smile I’ve seen on him in my life.
And yet...it’s not. I’ve seen glimmers of that cold calculation in his eyes before. When Emeric nearly caught me that night I knocked over the candelabra. When he told me his plans to drive LeRoux to madness. When Emeric blew that kiss to my perch.
“Don’t make a scene,” he says.
And then he climbs into the carriage where they’ve stowed Emeric and pulls the door closed behind him.
Frost slaps my cheeks as the cart lurches forward. I scramble to the side and cling to the bars, shivering madly in my tattered gown as my fingers turn blue. Every time the cart slams against the uneven stone streets, my head feels as though it’s being smashed into the opera house’s tile all over again, and I grit my teeth to keep from crying out.
The pain in my skull makes it difficult to think. All I can see is the glimmer in Cyril’s eyes when he looked at me. The way his nose wrinkled ever so slightly as though I were something foul he’d stepped in.
Is this all part of some act? Is he trying to show Channe he’s a Council Head they can trust?
Is he willing to sacrifice me to keep his image unblemished?
I want to believe that is the only explanation—that he has chosen ambition over me. That would hurt less than the other possibility...the one lurking in the back of my mind that I desperately wish I could push out.
No one was in Emeric’s apartment with us. Cyril could have taken me out the back door and sent the police off in the opposite direction. The Cyril I’ve known since birth would have done that.
He had the chance to save both me and his reputation, and he chose not to.
As we rattle through the streets, a terrible dread fills me, and it hurts so much more than the cold.
Perhaps I’ve been wrong this whole time. Perhaps Cyril is not who I thought he was.
Maybe Emeric was right. About everything.
All of the nights I spent modifying memories at the opera house for Cyril, all the times I manipulated LeRoux on his orders...
What was it for?
He once called me his “lucky vial of elixir.” Maybe that’s all I was.
I wrap my arms around my knees and press my fists to my temples.
I’ve seen him paste on winning smiles and schmooze with politicians and businessmen for years. He always knew what to say to get people to play into his hands, and I admired him for it.
Turns out he had been doing the same to me all along.
My eyes burn, but I refuse to cry for him.
He doesn’t deserve my tears.
I let my mind go numb as I stare out between the bars of my cart. Faces flash in windows as we clatter by and then disappear quickly behind anxiously drawn curtains.
If only I could use my power without needing to hear my victims sing or scream. Despite the fear the policemen hide behind cruel grimaces, I pose little threat to them as long as they don’t sing.
What I wouldn’t give to get my hands on a catalyseur.
By the time we reach the entrance of Channe Prison, my body is convulsing in the cold. I can’t move my legs, and it takes every bit of strength I have to pry my fingers from their frozen hold on the bars. The police yank me down from the cart, banging my knees on the stone walkway in the process. I bite down a yelp.
“Shut up,” one of the men barks, hauling me through the front gate. I crane my neck to see where Cyril’s carriage has gone, but it has disappeared. I’m towed past a dozen guards and into a dark stairwell that must lead to the prison cells.
“Wh-what ab-b-bout Emeric-c-c?” I manage through chattering teeth.
The nearest guard backhands me across the face, and another cry chokes out before I can clamp it back. “I thought I told you to shut up.”
I press my lips tight and focus on trying to get my legs to cooperate so that the police don’t have to drag me.
Inhale. Exhale. Find my center. Settle in the silence. Don’t think about where they might be taking Emeric. Don’t consider what is going to become of me. Don’t allow Cyril’s betrayal to break me.
The air grows darker and colder the farther we descend. When the stairs finally level out, a long, black corridor lined on both sides by iron-barred doors stretches in front of us. The only sound that breaks the thick silence as the police jerk me forward is the solemn, ragged breathing of prisoners as we pass their cells. Yellow eyes peer out from the darkness. Smudged hands grip the bars on their doors.
I shudder away from their gazes and focus on keeping my head high and my back straight.
One of our company stops and pulls open a door, and the policemen holding me kick me across the threshold. My feet catch on an uneven lip of rock, and I crash against the ground as the door grinds closed behind me. A key scrapes in the lock.
I shoot a scathing glare back at them, but they are already gone.
Nursing my aching head and ignoring the white flashes of light that jolt across my vision with every movement, I push myself upright and scrabble around the cell looking for some way out. My search does not take long. The space is small and carved entirely out of frigid stone. All I find is a chunk of rock dislodged from the corner, but the crevice it left in the wall when it fell out is barely big enough to fit my fist.
I sink to the floor and lie with my back to the wall, wrapping my arms around my knees to warm the chill in my bones. My dress still reeks of blood and vomit, and the boning in my corset digs into my ribs as though someone is pressing a knife to my side.
But I do not cry. I do not pray or sing or plead.
They think they can keep me here. That the iron and stone will intimidate me. That the darkness will break me.
They forget I was raised in the darkness, that I’ve been imprisoned my whole life.
They can threaten me with blade or poison or death, but they cannot make me afraid.
Not anymore.
I close my eyes and wait.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The whine of my prison cell door’s hinges jolts through my awareness hours later. Adrenaline courses through my body and makes my head feel as though it’s been split through with an axe. I bolt upright and move back into the farthest corner from the door.
A pair of guards drag a tall, struggling form into my cell.
My heart stops. “Emeric?”
He lifts his head. “Isda!” He hurtles forward, but the guards yank him back by a set of iron shackles.
As I dive for him, another pair of guards jerk me sideways, wrenching my arms behind my back so forcefully my shoulder pops. I hiss.
“Ah, what a happy reunion.” Cyril strides into the room, his face lit eerily by a small lantern in his hand. I find it suddenly diff
icult to breathe.
“What do you want?” My voice rings sharply in the small space.
“As Head of the King’s Council of Channe, I have come to discuss your sentences.”
“As though anything about our sentences is up for discussion,” I spit, wishing there was something I could say, something I could do that would hurt him as much as he’s hurt me.
“Well, Isda dear, it is true that your fate is unchangeable. We simply cannot allow a gravoir to live. Your execution will take place tomorrow morning.” He pauses, eyes glinting. “However, it seems your scheming has yielded results that may benefit young Emeric here.”
“What do you mean?” Emeric’s jaw clenches as he speaks, as though he’s working very hard to keep from shouting.
“As it turns out, the new lead tenor in this season’s production of Le Berger has caused a significant stir among the citizens of Channe. Word has spread throughout the city and surrounding areas about this young prodigy.” Cyril sneers down his nose at Emeric. “It seems people are willing to pay quite the sum to hear you sing, boy.”
Emeric’s nostrils flare.
“The promise of a substantial income like this is an unmistakable opportunity. Beginning my time as Channe’s Council Head with such a surge in profits could bring the city together under my rule. It would be a fantastic way to inspire trust and confidence in my appointment.”
“I won’t do the show if you kill her,” Emeric cuts in. “Behead me if you like, Monsieur Bardin.”
Cyril laughs. “It’s really charming of you to think you have a choice.”
“You can’t force me to sing.”
“Ah, by the time we’re done with you, boy, ‘convincing’ shouldn’t be necessary.”
“What are you saying?” I ask.
“The King’s Council has agreed that a fine will be sufficient enough of a punishment for Monsieur Rodin. But not of money. We’ll require a hundred thousand vials of memory elixir.” He lets that sink in, his mouth twisting in a sick smile that makes his teeth glitter.
My jaw drops. “A hundred thousand? How is that better than execution? There won’t be anything left of him in there if you take that much.”
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