“No.” I kept my voice low, shook my head fervently. Tried to ignore my own mounting panic. There had to be another way. My eyes swept over the witches again, assessing. Thirteen in all—six Dames Rouges, judging from the scars on their skin, and seven Dames Blanches. The former would need physical contact to harm, but the latter could attack at any moment. My mind searched wildly for an advantage. Any advantage. Could L’Eau Mélancolique affect our magic? Repress it? If we could somehow lure Morgane into the waters . . . I tested my own patterns. The golden cords rose instantaneously. Shit.
Worse still, one cord continued to shine brighter than the rest, pulsing with insistence. The same cord that had answered at the lighthouse. The same cord I couldn’t pull. I wouldn’t pull.
Save her, the magic whispered. Save them all.
I continued to ignore it.
Coco cried out as her strings tightened, and Lou took advantage of my distraction, finally twisting free. “Look, maman, look.” She waved her hands in a placating gesture. “I’ll play with you now. I’ll even trade toys: me in exchange for Beau and Célie.” Though I still shook my head, reaching for her, she kicked away and continued determinedly. “But you can’t harm them again. I mean it, maman. Any of them. Beau, Célie, Reid, Coco—they’re all safe from this point onward. No one touches them.”
The pattern pulsed. My head continued to shake.
Morgane didn’t seem particularly surprised by Lou’s request, nor did she laugh or dance or goad as she once would have. “You can see how that might present a problem, daughter. With your death, the prince and huntsman will also perish.”
“You assume I’ll die.”
“I know you’ll die, darling.”
Lou smirked then, and the sight of it struck me like a physical blow. Only days ago, I’d feared I would never see that smirk again. My body tensed with barely controlled restraint. “I guess we’ll have to play to find out,” she said.
She started for shore once more.
“No.” I caught her arm. She hadn’t suffered this long—she hadn’t sacrificed everything, walked through literal fire, exorcised a fucking demon—to give up so easily now. Coco had said one life wasn’t worth more than another, but she’d been wrong. Her life meant more. Beau’s and Célie’s lives meant more. And Lou—her life meant most of all. I would ensure she lived it. I would ensure they all lived. “You can’t do this.”
She kicked upward to kiss me in one last desperate plea. “I can’t kill her if I keep hiding, Reid,” she breathed against my cheek. “Remember what your mother said—closing my eyes won’t make it so the monsters can’t see me. I have to play. I have to win.”
“No.” My jaw locked. I couldn’t stop shaking my head. “Not like this.”
“Either I kill my mother, or my mother kills me. It’s the only way.”
But it wasn’t. It wasn’t the only way. She didn’t know that, of course. I’d refused to speak the alternative aloud, refused to acknowledge it even in my own thoughts. The golden cord quivered in anticipation.
Lou had already given so much. She’d journeyed to Hell and back to save us, shattering herself in the process. She couldn’t die now. And if she didn’t die—she spoke of killing her mother lightly, as if matricide wasn’t an unspeakably heinous act. As if it wasn’t unnatural. As if it wouldn’t break her all over again.
“No.”
My purpose resolved as I clutched her face. As I brushed the water droplets from her lashes.
So beautiful.
“You test my patience, children.” Morgane flicked her hand, and Beau, Célie, and Coco all crumpled in identical movements—like toys crushed underfoot. Beau and Célie lost consciousness completely, and Coco bit her lip around a scream. Morgane’s emerald eyes filled with spite. “Perhaps you’re right, little blood witch. Perhaps I’ll kill all of you instead.”
“Do not be foolish,” La Voisin snapped. “Accept the terms. The prince and girl mean nothing. They will die soon enough.”
Morgane whirled to face her. “You dare command me—?”
Faintly, I heard their voices escalate, but my entire world had narrowed to Lou’s face. To the golden pattern. It vied for my attention, nearly blinding now, pointing straight and true at its target. Connecting us. Demanding to be seen. Hope and despair warred deep in my chest. Neither existed without the other.
I would find my way back to her. I’d done it once. I could do it again.
And she’d finally be safe.
“I’ll find you again, Lou,” I whispered, and her brows puckered in confusion. I kissed them smooth. “I promise.”
Before she could answer, I clenched my fist in her hair.
The pattern burst in a shower of gold.
I saw no more.
Part III
C’est l’exception qui confirme la règle.
It’s the exception that proves the rule.
—French proverb
Doubt Creeps in
Nicholina
The pain fades without a body, as does all sense of touch, of smell, of taste. There is no blood as we spiral from sea to sky. There is no magic. No death. Here we are . . . free. We are a gust of wind. We are the winter cold. We are a flurry of snow on the mountainside—swirling, twirling, whirling—nipping the noses of witches below. Our mistress walks among them. She calls them by name.
She does not call ours.
Anxious now, we sweep onward, up, up, up the mountain as snowflakes flit to and fro around us, within us. It isn’t here, they flutter, they mutter. We cannot find it.
Our body, our body, our body.
Our mistress will not have forgotten us.
We move faster now, searching, gusting through the trees. The castle. She will have brought our body to the castle. But there is no castle, only snow and mountain and pine. There is no bridge. There is no one to welcome us, no one to grant us entry. If she would’ve stayed—the one with the nasty words, the one with the golden patterns—if her spirit would’ve fragmented, we would have found the castle. We would have found our body.
But she did not fragment. She did not stay.
Now she is alone.
You’ve failed, Nicholina.
Nasty words.
Your mistress needs her more than she needs you.
Our mistress has not forgotten us.
Perhaps your body won’t be there at all. Perhaps you will die.
We spiral again in agitation, in fear, and streak the mountainside. Already, we feel ourselves spreading, drifting, losing purpose. We cannot linger long without a body, or we will become something else. Something helpless and small. A cat or a fox or a rat. There are many ways to become a matagot, oh yes, but we will not become one. Not us. We are not forgotten.
Something scurries through the foliage, and we dive, eliciting a shriek of fear from the creature. It matters not. We need a body until our mistress returns. Until her mistress shows us the way. Nasty woman, like her daughter. Nasty witch.
We crouch inside the mink’s body and wait. Time passes differently to animals. We track shadows instead, quivering within the roots of a tree. Hiding from eagles. From foxes. We smell our mistress before we see her, and we hear her sharp, impatient words. She argues with Morgane. She speaks of Morgane’s daughter.
We leave the mink and follow behind as towers and turrets take shape. A bridge. Fire has ravaged each structure. All around, white ladies knit and weave their invisible patterns into stone. Into wood. Into windows and arches and shingles. We do not care about castle reparations. We sweep for the entrance, hiding from their prying eyes, curling through the smoke. We feel the pull of our body now. We feel it here.
Our mistress hasn’t forgotten us after all.
Up the stairwell, down the hall, into the small, sparse bedroom. Our body isn’t on the bed, however. It isn’t on the pillow. The bed is empty, we cry in dismay. The bed is bare. We draw short, quivering, as we search. As we follow our body’s pull. As we find it on the hard stone floo
r. But the bed is empty. Confusion swirls. The bed is bare.
Our body looks as a corpse in the shadows of the corner. Sickly and pale. Scarred. We hover above it, regret wafting through us now. A tendril of hurt. No fire warms the chamber. No candlelight. But it matters not. We feel no cold, no, and our mistress knows this. She knows. She knows pain is fleeting. She will relish our greeting.
You’ve failed, Nicholina.
It matters not.
Your mistress needs her more than she needs you.
Pain is fleeting.
You’ve chosen the wrong side, Nicholina. But it isn’t too late. You could ally with us before they betray you. Because they will betray you. It’s only a matter of time.
Our mistress would never betray us.
Slowly, we sink into ourselves, first a finger, a toe, then a leg and an arm and a chest until our entire body settles in on itself with a heavy breath. Heavy. So heavy. So weary. Images of lavender and wraiths and sickly, corpselike little boys flicker. Memories of family. The word tastes different now than it did then. Once, it tasted of comfort, of love, of warmth. We do not remember what warm feels like now. We do not remember love. Within her we’d felt it—a brief flicker in the shadows, in the dark. She’d felt it so strongly. We hold on to it now, that memory. We hold on to that warmth we’d felt when she looked upon her huntsman, her family.
Our own eyes do not open as we lie upon this hard, cold stone. We do not move to the bed. Our mistress did not want us there.
Sometimes we think our mistress does not want us at all.
Angelica
Lou
Without warning, Reid collapsed face-first into the water, and that—
That is when I lost my shit completely.
Fresh shouts erupted from shore as I dove toward him, slinging an arm across his shoulders and spinning him to his back, looping his elbow through mine and cradling his head against my shoulder. The sharp, potent scent of magic clung to him. Though his chest still rose and fell, the movement seemed shallow, harsh, as if he was in terrible pain. “Reid!” I shook him desperately, struggling to stay afloat. We both went under. Water burned my throat, my eyes. Choking on it, I kicked harder, propelling us above the surface for a few precious seconds. I could swim, yes, but towing a limp two-hundred-and-something-pound man was something else entirely. “Reid!”
The shouts around us escalated, and I glanced to shore. My heart lodged in my ravaged throat.
Morgane had lost consciousness with Reid.
Whatever magic he’d done, it’d affected her too, and absolute chaos reigned. The Dames Blanches nearest her shrieked and rushed forward, pulling her away from Josephine, from Coco, from us. “Do not be foolish!” Josephine’s vehement shouts cut through the mist, which had descended with a vengeance once more. “This is our chance! Get the girl!”
But even the blood witches wouldn’t step foot in the waters again—not when they continued to ripple.
Not when Coco rose, her binds having vanished after Morgane’s collapse.
Not when she stepped back into the waters, nor when she lifted her hands. Her dark eyes fell first to Constantin, then to Beau and Célie—still blood-soaked and unconscious—and they burned with retribution. “You should’ve known better than to follow us here, tante. I was born in these waters. Their magic is my own.”
I foundered beneath the waves, surging up in time to see Josephine clench her fists.
“Their magic is hers,” she spat. “Not yours. Never yours.”
“I am part of her.”
“You are mine.” The last shred of Josephine’s control seemed to snap, and she swept a long, crooked dagger from her cloak. Her hands shook. “She abandoned you. She abandoned me. She—”
“—is on her way,” Coco finished grimly, eyes flicking to her own uplifted hand. A fresh wound I hadn’t noticed sliced her palm. Blood dripped from it into the waters, and with a start, I realized Coco’s steps hadn’t woken L’Eau Mélancolique at all.
Her blood had.
And the waters weren’t merely rippling now.
They were moving, parting down the center as if the heavens had drawn a line from Coco to the horizon. They swelled on either side of that line, growing and growing and growing—like twin tidal waves—until a footpath along the rocky seafloor appeared. Small enough for a single person to walk unhindered. I clung to Reid as the waves battered us, the currents dragging us under before thrusting us upward once more. When I shouted Coco’s name, coughing and spluttering and desperately kicking for shore, she turned to look at us. Her eyes widened with panic before we went under again.
When we reemerged, another current swept us up between one breath and the next. This one, however, seemed determined not to drown us, but to deliver us to Coco. I didn’t fight or question it, focusing all my attention on keeping Reid’s head above water. My arms shook with the effort. My legs seized. “Come on, Chass.” I pressed the back of his head into the crook of my neck once more. “We’re almost there. Stay with me. Come on, come on—”
The current dropped suddenly, and we plummeted with it, straight through the icy water to the seafloor path. When we landed, stunned and shivering, Coco sprinted out to meet us, pulling at my arms, my hands, pushing Reid’s soaking hair out of his face, checking his pulse. She ignored Josephine and the blood witches completely. They still didn’t dare enter L’Eau Mélancolique, even on the path. “Are you hurt?” Coco demanded, checking every inch of me in harried, clumsy movements. “Are you—?”
I caught her hands and grinned. “You look like shit, amie. Those eye bags are as big as Beau’s head.”
Coco dropped her forehead to our joined hands, exhaling in relief. “You’re you.”
“I’m me.”
“Thank god.”
“Thank Ansel.”
She chuckled on a weak exhale, lifting her head—then froze. Her stare fixed on something over my shoulder, something farther up the footpath. Its silver reflection, just a speck in the darkness, shone bright in her eyes. Whoever or whatever it was, it approached not from shore, but from the depths of L’Eau Mélancolique. I tensed instinctively. A face drifted in my mind’s eye from Nicholina’s memories, and suspicion lifted the hair at my neck. Gooseflesh rose on my arms.
When Josephine turned ashen, however, I knew. When she stumbled—actually stumbled—back a step, I clutched Reid tighter in my lap, my heartbeat thundering in my ears. Several of the blood witches fled without a word. My gaze remained locked on Coco as the silver speck in her eyes grew larger. Nearer. Too near now to ignore.
I twisted to look over my shoulder at last.
And there she was.
A full-body chill swept through me at the sight of her: tall and statuesque with thick black curls and rich brown skin, nearly identical to Coco in every way. Except for the eyes. At some point between Nicholina’s memory and now, they’d turned a pale, icy shade. Her gown matched the peculiar color—the iridescent fabric swirling between white and green and purple and blue—and rippled in the breeze as she approached. Like a goddamn fairy-tale princess.
She stopped a pace behind me. I might’ve gaped. My mouth might’ve fallen open like a bug-eyed fish. Up close, she appeared even more beautiful than from afar: her face perfectly heart-shaped, her lips perfectly bowed. Silver powder dusted her cheeks and nose, as well as her brow and collarbones, and ornate moonstone jewelry gleamed from her fingers, her wrists, her ears, her throat. She’d braided her hair around a teardrop opal headpiece. The precious stone glittered against her forehead.
Her dress and hair continued to undulate gently, even after the breeze waned.
She smiled down at me.
“Angelica,” I whispered in awe.
“Sister,” Josephine hissed.
But it was Coco’s whispered accusation that changed everything. “Mother.”
With the graceful incline of her head, Angelica nodded. She stood with impeccable posture, unearthly stillness, her shoulders back and her
hands clasped at her waist in a familiar position. How many times had I seen Josephine hold herself that way? How many times had I yearned to wring that long, elegant neck?
It was uncanny how two people with the same features could look so different.
I glanced at Coco.
It was haunting when there was a third.
“Sœur.” With a voice smooth as silk, Angelica spoke with calm assurance. “Fille.” She lifted a hand as if to touch Coco’s cheek before thinking better of it. She let it fall to her side instead. Bereft. “I have missed you.”
Though Coco said nothing, her eyes spoke volumes. They glittered with unshed emotion in the moonlight.
I frowned, my own eyes narrowing, and the glow around Angelica’s face dimmed slightly.
More than slightly.
I might’ve even called her hideous now.
Then again, mothers abandoning their children to cruel relatives might’ve been a sore spot for me. Madame Labelle had left Reid, and he’d ended up with the Archbishop as a father. Morgane had tried to kill me, and somehow, I had too. Though beautiful, Angelica had left Coco in the hands of her aunt. She was no different from them, really. She was rotten inside.
In her case, rot just happened to smell like lilies.
Accepting that her daughter wouldn’t or perhaps couldn’t answer, Angelica returned her gaze to Josephine, who had inched toward Beau and Célie. Those perfect lips pursed. “Do not harm the children, Josie. Your quarrel is with me.”
Josephine glowered as she lifted Célie’s head. Her hands weren’t needlessly cruel, but careful and steady as she held Célie’s neck firm. No. Not careful. Practical. Efficient. She would kill Célie if necessary, just as she’d killed Etienne. “What will you do?” she asked her sister. “You cannot leave the waters.”
Coco and I shared a brief, confused look.
Angelica only flicked a jeweled dagger from her thigh sheath—her thigh sheath—and sighed. “Must we do this, sœur? We both know the damage I can inflict from here.” To illustrate her point, she placed the dagger against her chest and sliced down, directly between her breasts, without hesitation. The blade tore through fabric and skin as butter, leaving a thick line of blood in its wake.
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