Blood & Honey

by Shelby Mahurin

  “Can you use those knives?” Deveraux’s kohl-rimmed eyes fell to my open coat, to the knives strapped beneath it. “We latterly lost our knife thrower to a troupe in Amandine, and”—he leaned closer, winking—“though I myself am disinclined to choose favorites, the audience is not.”

  “Oh, you cannot be serious, Claud.” Eyes sparking, Zenna planted a hand on each of her hips. “Nadine’s act was mediocre at best—certainly not better than mine—and even if it weren’t, I’m not splitting tips with this lot. We don’t even know them. They could murder us in our sleep. They could turn us into toads. They could—”

  “Tell you that you have lipstick on your teeth,” Lou finished.

  Zenna glared at her.

  “It’s true,” Beau said helpfully. “Right there at the side.”

  Scowling, Zenna turned to rub at her incisors.

  Lou grinned and returned her attention to Deveraux. “Reid’s knives are practically extensions of his limbs, monsieur. He’ll hit any target you put in front of him.”

  “How marvelous!” With a last, lingering look at said knives, Deveraux turned to Madame Labelle. “And you, chérie . . . ?”

  “I’m—”

  “His assistant.” Lou grinned wider. “Why don’t we strap her to a board and give you a demonstration?”

  Deveraux’s brows climbed up his forehead. “I’m sure that’s unnecessary, but I do appreciate your enthusiasm. Quite infectious, I tell you.” He turned to Beau, sweeping into a ridiculous bow. His nose touched the tip of his boot. “If I might divulge, Your Highness, it is an exceptional and unparalleled delight to make your acquaintance. I’m positively expiring with suspense at the prospect of learning your myriad talents. Tell us one, if you please. How will you dazzle us on the stage?”

  Beau didn’t return his smile. His lip curled. “I won’t be on the stage, and I certainly won’t be wearing anything feathered nor fuchsia.” At Deveraux’s expectant look, he sighed. “I’ll do your sums.”

  Deveraux clapped his mittened hands together. “Just so! For royalty, we shall make an exception!”

  “And you?” Zenna asked, sneering at Lou. “Any special talents for the stage?”

  “If you must know, I play the mandolin. Quite well, in fact, because—” She hesitated, dipping her chin in an uncharacteristic display of insecurity. Though small—nearly indiscernible—the movement unsettled me. Pierced the haze of my thoughts. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Tell us,” I said softly.

  “Well . . . my mother insisted I learn to play. The harp, the clavichord, the rebec—but the mandolin was her favorite.”

  I frowned. I hadn’t known Lou could play a single instrument, let alone many. She’d once told me she couldn’t sing, and I’d assumed . . . but no. Those calluses on her fingers weren’t from swordplay. The mandolin. I wracked my brain, trying to picture the instrument, to remember the sound, but I couldn’t. The only instrument I’d heard in childhood had been an organ. I hadn’t cared to make time for others.

  “Ha!” Zenna laughed in triumph. “We already have a musician. Claud is a virtuoso. The best in the kingdom.”

  “Bully for him,” Lou muttered, stooping to save the fuchsia feathers from the snow. She didn’t meet anyone’s eyes. “I said it doesn’t matter, anyway. I’m not joining the troupe.”

  “I do beg your pardon?” Claud accepted the feathers with a scandalized expression. The wind picked up around us. It nearly blew his hat to the rooftops. “I believe I misheard you in this gale.”

  “You didn’t.” Lou gestured to Ansel and Coco, raising her voice. Snow soaked her new cloak. She clutched it under her chin to keep herself concealed. “The three of us will be traveling in a different direction.”

  Deveraux flapped his hands, and the feathers scattered once more. “Nonsense! Preposterous! As you have so succinctly surmised, the road is not safe for you. You must come with us!” He shook his head too vigorously, and the wind snatched his hat. It spiraled upward and disappeared into the snow. “No. No, I fear there is no question that our little rendezvous at the pub was fated by none other than Dame Fortune herself. Furthermore, I cannot abide you traveling the road alone. Nay, I refuse to have that on my conscience.”

  “They will not be alone.”

  An unfamiliar voice. An inexplicable chill.

  Lou and I stepped together, turning as one to the dark figure beside us.

  A woman.

  I hadn’t heard her approach, hadn’t seen her draw near. Yet she stood no more than a hand’s breadth away, staring up at me with eerie, colorless eyes. Uncommonly thin—almost skeletal—with alabaster skin and black hair, she looked more wraith than human. My hand shot to my Balisarda. She tilted her head in response, the movement too quick, too bestial, to be natural.

  Absalon wound between her emaciated ankles.

  “Nicholina.” Coco bared her teeth in a snarl. “Where’s my aunt?”

  The woman’s face split into a slow, cruel grin, revealing bloodstained teeth. I pulled Lou backward, away from her. “Not here,” she sang, her voice strange and high-pitched. Girlish. “Not here, not here, but always near. We come to answer your call.”

  I felt her strange eyes on me as I heaved the last trunk into the wagon.

  The others hastened to secure belongings, calm horses, check knots. Deveraux had pulled Lou aside, and they appeared to be arguing over the strange woman’s arrival. I couldn’t tell. Snow blew around us in a tempest now, eliminating visibility. Only two of the torches lining the street remained. The rest had succumbed to the storm.

  Scowling, I finally turned to face her—Nicholina—but she was gone.

  “Hello, huntsman.”

  I jumped at her voice directly behind me, startled by her close proximity. Heat flushed my throat, my face. “Who are you?” I asked. “How do you keep doing that?”

  She lifted a skeletal finger to my cheek, tilting her head as if fascinated. The torchlight flickered over her scars. They disfigured her skin, twisted it into a macabre lattice of silver and blood. I refused to flinch away.

  “I am Nicholina le Claire, La Voisin’s personal attendant.” Trailing a sharpened nail along my jaw, her lip curled. The girlish cadence of her voice vanished, deepening unexpectedly to a guttural snarl. “And I will not explain the secrecies of blood craft to a huntsman.” Darkness stirred in those colorless eyes as she gazed past me to Lou. Her grip on my chin hardened, and her nails bit deep. Nearly drawing blood. “Or his little mouse.”

  Coco stepped between us. “Careful, Nicholina. Lou is under my aunt’s protection. Reid is under mine.”

  “Mmm . . . Reid.” Nicholina licked her lips salaciously. “Your name on my tongue tastes like salt and copper and warm, wet things—”

  “Stop it.” I stepped away from her, alarmed, disgusted, and glanced at Lou. She watched us from beyond the wagons, eyes narrowed. Deveraux waved his hands at her emphatically. I strode toward them—determined to remove myself from this situation—but Nicholina shadowed my footsteps. Still too close. Much, much too close. The childlike lilt returned to her voice.

  “My mice whisper such naughty things about you, Reid. Such wicked, naughty things. Cosette, regret, and forget, they cry. Cosette, regret, and forget. I can’t attest, as I’ve never tasted huntsman—”

  “And you won’t start with this one.” Coco hurried after us as Lou extricated herself from Deveraux. “He’s married.”

  “Is he?”

  “Yes.” I lurched to a stop, whirling to glare at her. “So please maintain the appropriate distance, mademoiselle.”

  She grinned wickedly, arching a thin brow. “Perhaps my mice were misinformed. They do love to whisper. Whisper, whisper, whisper. Always whispering.” She leaned closer, and her lips tickled the shell of my ear. Again, I refused to react. Refused to give this insane woman the satisfaction. “They say you hate your wife. They say you hate yourself. They say you taste delicious.” Before I realized her intention, she’d dragged h
er tongue down my cheek in a long, wet movement.

  Lou reached us at the same moment. Her eyes flashed with turquoise fire.

  “What the hell are you doing?” With both hands, she moved to shove Nicholina away, but Nicholina had already floated backward. The way she moved . . . it was like she wasn’t entirely corporeal. But her nails on my chin had been real enough, as was her saliva on my cheek. I jerked up my shirt collar, wiping at the moisture, heat razing my ears. Lou’s fists clenched. She squared up to the taller woman. Vibrated with anger. “Keep your hands to yourself, Nicholina.”

  “Keep them, keep them.” Her eyes roved the exposed skin of my throat, dropped lower to my chest. Hungry. I tensed instinctively. Resisted the urge to clasp shut my coat. “He can keep them for me. Keep them and sweep them and slowly creep them—”

  A low, menacing sound tore from Lou, and she stepped closer. Their toes nearly touched. “If you touch him again, I’ll keep them for you. Each”—she took another step, closing the distance between them—“bloody”—she leaned closer still, body taut with anticipation—“stump.”

  Nicholina grinned down at her, unaffected, despite the way the wind rose and the temperature plummeted. Coco glanced around. Alarmed. “Silly mouse,” Nicholina purred. “He hunts even now. Even now, he hunts. He knows his own mind, didn’t tell me to stop.”

  “You lie.” Even I heard the defensiveness in my voice. Lou stood rooted in front of me. She didn’t turn around when I touched her shoulder. “Lou, she’s a—”

  “But can he stop?” Nicholina circled us now, like a predator scenting blood. “Hunt and stop? Or stop and hunt? Soon we’ll taste the noises on his tongue, oh yes, each moan and sigh and grunt—”

  “Nicholina,” Coco said sharply, seizing Lou’s arm when she lunged. “Enough.”

  “The snake and her bird, the bird and his snake, they take and they break and they ache, ache, ache—”

  “I said that’s enough.” Something in Coco’s voice changed, deepened, and Nicholina’s smile vanished. She stopped circling. The two stared at each other for several seconds—something unspoken passing between them, something dark—before Nicholina bared her throat. Coco watched this bizarre display of submission for a moment longer. Impassive. Cold. Finally, she nodded in satisfaction. “Wait for us at the forest’s edge. Go now.”

  “As you wish, princesse.” Nicholina lifted her head. Paused. Looked not to Lou, but to me. Her grin returned. This time, it was a promise. “Your little mouse will not always be here to protect you, huntsman. Take care.”

  The wind caught her words, blowing them around us with the snow. They bit at my cheeks, at Lou’s cloak, Coco’s hair. I took Lou’s hand in silent reassurance—and startled. Her fingers were colder than expected. Unnaturally cold. Colder than the wind, the snow. Colder than Nicholina’s smile.

  Take care take care take care.

  “Don’t let her rile you,” Coco murmured to Lou after she’d gone. “It’s what she wants.”

  Nodding, Lou closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she exhaled, the tension left her shoulders, and she glanced up at me. Smiled. I crushed her against me in relief.

  “She seems like a real treat,” Lou said, voice muffled by my coat.

  “She is.” Coco stared down the alley where Nicholina had disappeared. “The sort of treat that rots your soul instead of your teeth.”

  Deveraux approached through the snow. With a resigned sigh, he laid a hand on my arm. “The wagons are packed, mon ami. We must depart with the tempest, lest we miss our opportunity. Dame Fortune is a fickle mistress, indeed.”

  Though he waited expectantly, my arms refused to move. They held Lou in a vise, and I couldn’t persuade them to let her go. I buried my nose in her shoulder instead, holding her tighter. Her cloak smelled unfamiliar. New. Like fur, damp earth, and the sweet, bitter scent of . . . something. Not magic. Perhaps wine. I frowned and pushed her hood aside, seeking her skin, the warmth I’d find there. But the unnatural cold in her hands had crept upward. It froze my lips as I brushed them against her throat. Alarmed, I met her eyes. Green now. So green.

  “Be careful, Lou.” I kept her cocooned within my arms, blocking the others from sight. Trying and failing to warm her. “Please. Promise me.”

  She kissed me instead. Gently disentangled herself. “I love you, Reid.”

  “It isn’t supposed to be like this,” I said helplessly, still reaching for her. “I should come with you—”

  But she’d already stepped back, turned away. Clutched Coco’s hand like she should’ve clutched mine. Her other reached for Ansel. “I’ll see you soon,” she promised, but it wasn’t the one I wanted. The one I needed.

  Without another word, she turned and vanished into the storm. I stared after her with a creeping sense of dread.

  Absalon had followed.

  The Missing Prince

  Lou

  The trees watched us, waiting, listening to our footsteps in the snow. They even seemed to breathe, inhaling and exhaling with each faint touch of wind in our hair. As sentient and curious as the shadows that crept ever closer.

  “Can you feel them?” I whispered, cringing when my voice reverberated in the eerie quiet. The pines grew thicker in this part of the forest. Older. We could barely walk through their boughs, and with each step, they touched us, dusting our hair, our clothing, with glittering crystals of snow.

  “Yes.” Coco blew air into her hands, rubbing them together against the chill. “Don’t worry. The trees here are loyal to my aunt.”

  I shivered in response. It had nothing to do with the cold. “Why?”

  “Pretty lies or ugly truth?”

  “The uglier, the better.”

  She didn’t smile. “She feeds them her blood.”

  We smelled the camp before we saw it—hints of smoke and sage on the breeze hiding a sharper, acrid scent within them. At close range, however, one couldn’t mistake the bite of blood magic. It overpowered my senses, burning my nose and throat, stinging my eyes. The tears froze in my lashes. Gritting my teeth against the bitter wind, I trudged onward, following Nicholina through snow drifts as high as my knees. “How much farther?” I called to her, but she ignored me. A blessing and a curse. She hadn’t spoken a word since we’d left Troupe de Fortune in Saint-Loire. It seemed even she feared the forest after dark.

  Coco inhaled the blood scent deeply, closing her eyes. She too had grown quieter over the past couple of hours—tenser, moodier—but when I’d questioned her, she’d insisted she was fine.

  She was fine.

  I was fine.

  Reid was fine.

  We were all fine.

  A moment later, Nicholina halted outside a thick copse of pines and glanced back at us. Her eyes—so pale a blue they shone almost silver—lingered on my face before flicking to Coco. “Welcome home.”

  Coco rolled her eyes and moved to shove past her, but Nicholina had vanished. Literally.

  “A real treat,” I repeated, grinning despite myself at Coco’s irritation. “Are all your sisters this charming?”

  “She isn’t my sister.” Without looking back, Coco swept aside a branch and plunged into the trees, effectively ending the conversation. My grin slipped as I stared after her.

  Ansel patted my arm as he passed, offering me a small smile. “Don’t worry. She’s just nervous.”

  It took every bit of my restraint not to snap at him. Since when did Ansel know more about Coco’s feelings than I did? As if sensing my uncharitable thoughts, he sighed and hooked my elbow, dragging me after her. “Come on. You’ll feel better after you’ve eaten.”

  My stomach growled in response.

  The trees thinned abruptly, and we found ourselves on the edge of a rocky clearing. Campfires illuminated threadbare tents stitched together from bits of animal skin. Despite the inordinately early hour—and the cold and the darkness—a handful of witches huddled around the flames, clutching thick, matted furs for warmth. At the sound of our foo
tsteps, they turned to watch us suspiciously. Though they ranged in age and ethnicity, all wore identical haunted expressions. Cheeks gaunt. Eyes hungry. One woman even gripped her auburn hair in her fists, weeping softly.

  Ansel stumbled to a halt. “I didn’t expect there to be so many males here.” He stared at a young man roughly his age with undisguised yearning. “Are they . . . like Reid?”

  His name cut through me like a knife, painful and sharp. I missed him. Without his steady presence, I felt . . . out of sorts. As if part of me was missing. In a way, I supposed that was true.

  “Maybe. But if they are, I doubt they realize it. We’ve grown up believing only women possess magic. Our dear Chasseur . . . changes things.”

  Nodding, he tore his gaze away, cheeks pink. Coco didn’t look at us as we approached, though she did murmur, “I should probably speak with my aunt alone.”

  I fought the urge to poke her in the cheek and make her look at me. When she’d spoken of her aunt’s protection, of an alliance with her powerful kin, this was not what I’d envisioned. These witches looked as if they’d keel over from a strong wind, or perhaps even a sneeze. “Of course,” I said instead. “We’ll wait for you here.”

  “That won’t be necessary.” We all jumped as Nicholina materialized beside us once more. Her voice had lost its girlish pitch, and those silver eyes were flat, expressionless. Whatever show she’d performed for Reid’s benefit, she didn’t care to continue for us. “Josephine awaits the three of you in her tent.”

  “Can you stop doing that?” I demanded.

  She twitched, every muscle in her face spasming, as if in physical protest to my question. Or perhaps to my mere voice. “Never address us, little mouse. Never, never, ever.” Sudden life flared in her gaze, and she lunged, snapping her teeth viciously. Ansel reeled backward—pulling me with him—and nearly toppled us both. Though Coco stopped her with a quick, forceful hand, she’d still drawn near enough for me to feel the phantom brush of her teeth, to see the sharpened tips of her incisors. Waving skeletal fingers in my direction, she crooned as to a baby. “Or we will gobble you up whole. Yes, yes, we will—”