Part of me had known, even then, this sword—this life—would bring pain. Part of me had known I would suffer.
I’d chosen it anyway.
Just as I chose it now.
My fingers wrapped around the cold metal of my chalice, and I knelt to fill it. No ripples emanated when I broke the waters’ still surface. Instead, it seemed to absorb the movement. Frowning, I tried to slip my hand beneath as well, to splash, to create movement, but I met with an invisible wall. I pushed harder. My hand stopped a hair’s breadth over the surface—so close I could feel the wintry cold emanating from the waters. I still couldn’t touch them. Expelling a harsh breath, I abandoned the attempt. Constantin had said as much.
I eyed the iron chalice warily. This wouldn’t be pleasant.
“Wait.” Coco clasped my forearm when I moved the cup to my mouth. “Lou first. I don’t know what’ll happen when we drink, but I doubt we’ll be able to help her.”
“I don’t think we can help her.” Still, I lowered my hand. “We don’t know what the waters will show her. How can we fight an invisible foe?”
“I’m not saying she’s incapable of fighting her own battle.” Coco rolled her eyes and bent to fill the other chalices. “I’m saying she’s unconscious. She’ll need help with the actual drinking.”
“Oh.” Despite the seriousness of our circumstances, heat crept up my throat. I hurried to help her lift Lou, gently pulling her onto my lap. “Right.”
“Tilt her head back.”
I obliged, fighting the instinct to knock the chalice aside as Coco brought it to Lou’s lips. Because Coco was right—if anyone could do this, Lou could. I held her secure, and slowly, carefully, Coco opened her mouth and tipped the water in. “Easy,” I warned her. “Easy.”
Coco didn’t take her eyes from the task at hand. “Shut up, Reid.”
Nothing happened when the cold water touched Lou’s tongue. Coco poured a little more. It trickled from one corner of her mouth. Still nothing. “She isn’t swallowing,” I said.
“Yes, thank you—” But Coco stopped abruptly when Lou’s eyes snapped open. We both stared down at her. Coco placed a tentative hand on her cheek. “Lou? How do you feel?”
Her eyes rolled to the back of her head in response, and her mouth opened on a violent scream—except no sound came out. Silence still reigned. The waters, however, rippled in an eerie sort of acknowledgment. Gripping her shoulders, I watched helplessly as she scratched at her face, her hair. Like she would tear Nicholina out by force. Her head thrashed. “Shit.” I struggled to hold her, but Coco pushed me backward, downing her chalice in a single swallow.
“Hurry!” She tossed her cup aside, bracing her hands against the shore. “Drink now. The sooner we spill our truths, the sooner we can dip Lou in the—” But her eyes too rolled backward, and though her body didn’t seize as Lou’s had, she fell sideways, comatose, her cheek hitting the sand. Eyes still rolling.
She’d looked like this once before. Seeing nothing. Seeing everything.
A man close to your heart will die.
Cursing bitterly—casting one last look at Lou, who’d gone limp on my lap—I tossed back the contents of my own chalice. If possible, the water tasted even colder than it’d felt. Unnaturally cold. Cruelly cold. It burned my throat all the way down, solidifying to ice in my stomach. In my limbs. In my veins. Within seconds, movement became difficult. Coughing, gagging, I slid Lou from my lap as the first tremor rocked my frame. When I collapsed forward on hands and knees, the edges of my vision paled to white. Strange. It should’ve gone dark, not light, and—
The burn in my lungs vanished abruptly, and my vision cleared. I blinked in surprise. Blinked again. This couldn’t be right. Had I not drunk enough? Straightening, I glanced first to my empty cup, then to Lou and Coco. Surprise withered to confusion. To fear. They’d disappeared in the mist as completely as the others. I shot to my feet. “Lou? Coco?”
“I’m here!” Lou called from down the shoreline. Surprised, relieved, I hurried after her voice, peering through the mist and darkness. Though the moon still suffused the scene in soft silver light, it illuminated little now. Shafts of it shone through the mist intermittently. Blinding me one moment. Disorienting me the next.
“Where are you? I can’t—”
Her hand caught mine, and she stepped into sight, grinning and whole. I stared at her in disbelief. Where her skin had been wan and sickly, it now shone gold, dusted with freckles. Where her hair had been shorn and white, it now spilled long and lustrous down her back, chestnut and sable once more. I caught a strand of it between my fingers. Even her scars had healed. Except . . . except one.
I traced a finger over the thorns and roses at her throat. At my touch, her eyes fluttered shut. Mist undulated around her face, casting her in an ethereal haze. “Do you like it? Coco could make a killing doing this—transforming the macabre into the macabrely beautiful.”
“You’re always beautiful.” Throat tight, I could barely speak the words. She wrapped her arms around my waist, resting her ear against my heart. “Are you . . . better?” I asked.
“Almost.” Grinning anew at my wary expression, she stood on her tiptoes to kiss me. “Come on. I want to show you something.”
I followed blindly, my heart in my throat. A voice at the back of my mind warned it couldn’t be this easy—warned I shouldn’t trust it—but when Lou laced her fingers through mine, pulling me farther into the mist, I let her. Her hand felt warmer than it’d been in ages. And that scent in the air—like magic and vanilla and cinnamon—I inhaled it deeply. An innate sense of peace spread outward from my chest. Of course I didn’t hesitate. This was Lou. She wasn’t a Balisarda, and I wasn’t walking down the aisle. I wasn’t pledging my fate. I’d already done that.
“How did you exorcise Nicholina?” I asked dreamily. “What did the waters show you?”
She smiled at me over her shoulder, lit from within. “I don’t remember you being so chatty, husband.”
Husband. The rightness of the word felt warm. Heady. I grinned and draped my free arm across her shoulders, tucking her firmly against my side. Craving her warmth. Her smile. “And I don’t remember you—”
—spilling her truth, my mind chastised. You haven’t either. This isn’t real.
My smile slipped. Of course it was real. I could feel her against me. Slowing to a stop, I gripped her tighter, spun her around. When she looked up, arching a familiar brow, my breath caught in my throat. Truly, she seemed to be glowing with happiness. I felt like I could fly. “Tell me,” I said softly, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. “Tell me what you saw.”
“Let me show you instead.”
I frowned now. Was her skin—was it actually glowing? She waved her hands, and the mist around us thinned, revealing a stone altar behind her. On it, a young woman lay prone, bound, and gagged. She struggled to support her head, which protruded past the altar. Her hair—white as the snow and the moon, white as her gown—had been braided. The plait fell from her nape to the stone bowl beneath her throat. I stepped closer in alarm. The girl looked . . . no, felt . . . familiar. With her turquoise eyes, she could’ve been a sixteen-year-old Lou, but that wasn’t right. She was too tall. Too strong. Her skin pale and unfreckled.
“Look at her, darling,” Lou crooned with a dagger in her hand. I stared at it, unable to understand where it’d come from. Unable to grasp why she had it. “Isn’t she lovely?”
“What are you doing?”
She tossed the dagger into the air, watching it rotate up, down, catching it by the handle. “I have to kill her.”
“What? No.” I tried to stand between them, but my feet wouldn’t move. The mist had crept forward while I’d studied the girl, solidifying around us. My breathing quickened. “Why? Why would you do that?”
She cast me a pitiful look. “It’s for the greater good, of course.”
“No. That—no, Lou.” I shook my head vehemently. “Killing that child won’t solv
e anything—”
“Not just any child.” She sauntered toward the altar, still tossing her knife and catching it. The girl watched with wide eyes, struggling harder, as the scene around us continued to evolve. The waters disappeared, and true mountains formed. A temple in a meadow. Scores of women all around, dancing wildly in the moonlight. Black-haired triplets and a witch with a holly crown. But the girl on the altar couldn’t escape. The mist held her trapped in place like a pig for slaughter while Lou pointed the knife at her throat. “This child. I alone am willing to do what must be done, darling. I alone am willing to sacrifice. Why can’t you see that? I will save everyone.”
Bile rose in my throat. “You can’t do this. Not—not her. Please.”
She stared at me sadly, knife still poised above the girl. “I am my mother’s daughter, Reid. I will do anything to protect those I love. Would you not kill”—she kissed the girl’s throat with the blade—“for me?”
Incredulous, angry, I nearly broke my legs trying to wrench free. “I wouldn’t ki—”
The lie blackened and cracked before I could finish it. Like ashes on my tongue. My ashes.
I had killed for Lou. The Archbishop hadn’t been innocent, no, but the others—the ones before him? I’d killed them for less than love. I’d killed them out of obligation, out of loyalty. I’d killed them for glory. But . . . that wasn’t quite right either. Drink of the waters, and spill their truth.
I could see the cracks in their magic now. Their Lou had been so convincing. So perfect. Like the Lou I’d preserved in my memory. But reality wasn’t perfection, and neither was she—not then and not now. She’d once told me it hurt to remember the dead as they were, rather than who we wanted them to be. Memory was a dangerous thing.
Time changes us all, does it not?
I was no longer the boy who’d pined after his Balisarda, who’d first held it with reverence, with pride, yet part of me remembered him. Part of me still felt his longing. Now, perhaps for the first time, I saw the truth clearly. I’d killed the Archbishop because I loved Lou. I’d killed innocents because I loved the Archbishop. Because I’d loved my brethren, my family. Every time I’d found a home, I’d fought tooth and nail to keep it.
Just like Morgane.
A thin line of scarlet wet Lou’s blade. It colored the girl’s neck like a ribbon. “You once said I’m like my mother.” Lou stared at the blood on her knife, transfixed. “You were right.” Quicker than I could react, she slashed the girl’s neck, turning to face me as the latter choked and gurgled. Her movements slowed within seconds. Scarlet stained the white stone irrevocably. “You were right.”
Drink of the waters, and spill their truth.
“Yes.” The mist around my feet vanished with the word, and I strode forward purposefully, swallowing bile. I didn’t look at the girl. Didn’t memorize her face. My chest cleaved in two with the effort. This wasn’t real. Not yet. Not ever—not if I could help it. “Yes, Lou, you are like your mother.” I took her chin in my hand, forcing her to look at me. “But so am I.”
The second the words left my lips, a wide grin broke across her face. “Well done, you.” And then the ground began to crumble, the altar and temple falling away to white sand and still water. A rushing sound filled my ears, and Lou’s chin vanished between my fingers. I clutched only empty air. Sand abraded my knees, and I glanced down to my discarded iron chalice. I touched it gingerly. Still cold.
“You’ve returned.” Constantin’s amused voice punctured the silence as I sat backward, stunned. “After Coco, I might add.” He winked at her where she sat frozen beside me, clutching her knees.
At my anxious look, she muttered, “I’m fine.”
“Did you speak your truth?”
“Every word.”
“You aren’t going to repeat it, are you?”
“Never.”
Constantin chuckled before snapping his gaze to Lou, who started to stir. He rubbed his hands together in anticipation. “Ah, excellent. Right on time.”
I moved to her side just as she opened her eyes. Her gaze darted from me to Coco, to the endless sand beyond us, and she bolted upright, craning her neck to look behind. “Lou?” I asked in confusion, lifting a hand to touch her forehead. Her bite hadn’t healed—I hadn’t expected it to, not yet—and her color looked paler than usual. As white as her hair. She scrabbled backward on her hands, still searching the beach wildly.
“Where are they?” Her voice pitched high, girlish, and my heart dropped. Not Lou at all, then. “Where are they hiding? Where are they waiting? They’re near, they’re near. They must be here.”
I stared at her in disgust. In pity. “No one else is here, Nicholina. Just you.”
“No, no, no.” She rocked back and forth as Coco had done, shaking her head frenetically. Wincing as she did. “It’s a trap. They’re here, oh yes, and they’re waiting, hiding, creeping through the mist—”
Coco knelt in front of her, grasping her chin in her fingers. “They aren’t coming. Accept it. Move on. Better yet—switch sides. Nicholina, my aunt isn’t the person you want her to be. Morgane is even worse. They don’t value you. They don’t accept you. You’re a tool to them—a means to an end—just like the rest of us.”
“No.” The word tore from Nicholina in a guttural snarl, and she clawed at her own face, scoring the skin there. When I leapt to intervene, those nails raked down my chest instead. “You. I shall deliver you with the mouse, yes, yes, yes, and we shall cut your heart into thirds—”
Constantin tsked in disapproval and waved his hand. The mist answered by swirling around her in a violent tornado, trapping her in place. Nicholina howled in rage. “They will kill us both, stupid mouse. Stupid, stupid mouse. We cannot dance, no, but we can drown. Down, down, down, we can drown. There is no hope. Only sickness.”
Then she spoke again.
Warmth suffused my entire body.
“I thought you weren’t”—her voice pitched lower than before, and she gritted her teeth in concentration—“worried about dying? Or have you—finally—accepted the truth?”
Lou.
I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t calm the racing of my heart. It was her. It was Lou.
The waters must’ve weakened Nicholina enough for her to break through, or—or perhaps they demanded truth, even now. They knew Nicholina didn’t belong. They knew whose body she inhabited.
Constantin sighed. “The bickering was diverting at first. Now it isn’t. Spill your truths, all of you, or leave this place in peace. I don’t have all night.”
“Really?” Lou fought to smile, still panting. “What else—do you have to do? This is—your sole purpose—isn’t it?”
He glowered at her. “Charming as always, Louise.”
She bowed, failing to hide her grimace as Nicholina threw them against the cage. “I—try.”
“Your truth,” he insisted, voice hard.
Her face spasmed, and when she opened her mouth once more, I wasn’t sure who spoke: Lou or Nicholina. Either way, their truth spilled from them unapologetically. Strong and without strain. “I am capable of great evil.” The words hung in the air between us, as sentient as the mist. They waited, coiled, for my response. For my clarification. For my own truth.
I looked directly in her eyes. “We all are.”
As if exhaling on a sigh, the words dissipated. The mist went with it, leaving Lou sprawled unceremoniously in the sand. Constantin nodded. “Very good, each of you. One of life’s greatest trials is to acknowledge our own reflections. Tonight, you have seen yourselves. You have drunk of the waters, and you have spilled their truth.” He extended his hand to the shore. An emotion I couldn’t place shone deep in his eyes. Perhaps sadness. Wistfulness. “Go now. Let their wisdom flow through your veins and restore you.” To Coco, he murmured, “I hope you live your truth, Cosette.”
She gazed out at the waters with an identical expression. “I hope so too.”
In the stillness of the moment, Nicholi
na lunged toward the path with a feral cry. A desperate cry. I caught her before she could escape, hauling her over my shoulder. Her fists pounded my back, weaker than they should’ve been. Her hands still tender and raw. When she moved to kick my groin, I caught her shin, holding it away from me. My own hope swelled in my chest. Bright and savage. “You’re going to injure yourself.”
“Let me go!” She bit my shoulder like a rabid animal, but the thick wool of my coat prevented much damage. “You’ll kill us! Do you hear me? We’ll drown! We cannot dance beneath these waters. We are too heavy, too many—”
“Enough.” I marched her toward the water with steely determination. This time, my feet broke its surface without resistance. We’d been granted permission to enter. To heal. Behind us, Constantin vanished, leaving Coco to stand alone. She gave a curt nod. “We finish this now, Nicholina. Get. The. Hell. Out. Of. My. Wife.”
She shrieked as I threw her headfirst into the waters.
Mathieu
Lou
The water was freezing—shockingly and cripplingly so. My muscles seized on impact, and my breath left in a painful, startled rush. My lungs immediately shrieked in protest.
Fucking fabulous. Fucking Reid.
He’d meant well, of course, but couldn’t the heroic brute have checked the waters’ temperature first? Perhaps taken a dip himself? I certainly couldn’t dance as a block of ice. And my eyes—I couldn’t see anything. Whatever moonlight had shone above hadn’t managed to penetrate below, plunging us into pitch blackness. A fitting end for Nicholina, that. A true taste of her own medicine. If possible, she seemed to like the dark even less than me, and in her utter hysteria, she thrashed wildly, vying for control. Sinking us like a brick.
Stop it. Clenching my aching teeth, I struggled to move my arms and legs in unison. She floundered in the opposite direction, and our skirt tangled in our feet, thick and heavy and dangerous. We sank another inch, and another and another, each of our panic feeding the other, heightening to a collective sort of frenzy. Nicholina, I said sharply, ignoring the roaring of my heart. It nearly exploded in my chest. Stop struggling. We need to work together, or we’re both going to die. I’m a strong swimmer. Let me lead—
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