Aconite meant caution.
I grabbed Reid’s sleeve and forced him to sit, sinking into my own chair without further argument. Opposite me, Coco did the same, and Angelica stood in the center of our macabre little circle. She pivoted slowly to look each of us directly in the eyes. “This is your story—all of yours—so listen now and listen well. In the beginning, magic lived within all witches. Yes, you heard me correctly, Louise,” she added when I tried to interrupt. “Though you call us Dames Rouges now, your ancestors’ magic was closer to ours than to yours. It coursed through their blood, hummed in their veins. They lived in harmony with nature, never taking more than they gave and never defying the natural way. They lived. They died. They thrived.” She bowed her head. “I was one of these original witches, as was my twin sister, Josephine.”
“What happened?” Coco whispered.
Angelica sighed. “What always happens? In time, some among us desired more—more power, more freedom, more life. When a sect of my kin began experimenting with death, a great rift rose between us.” Angelica knelt before Coco now, clasping her hands once more. “Your aunt was among them. I pleaded with Josephine to turn back, to forget this obsession with immortality, but when I caught her eating an infant’s heart, I could ignore her sickness no longer. I had to act.” A new vine crept up Coco’s chair from Angelica’s tears. Like the aconite, its petals bloomed purple, but this wasn’t aconite at all. It was deadly nightshade. “I forbade my sister from returning to Chateau le Blanc.”
“You lived there?” I asked in astonishment.
“We all did. That is what I’m trying to tell you, Louise—this is the great rift between Dame Blanche and Dame Rouge. Though I forbade Josephine from returning, she did not heed my warning, instead gathering the like-minded and organizing a rebellion.” Shuddering, she pushed to her feet, and the belladonna vine slithered higher, curling around the back of Coco’s chair. “I’ve never seen such blood.”
I stared at her, heart pounding, as another memory resurfaced: blood running as a river from the temple, soaking the hair and hems of fallen witches in its path. The Rift. And suddenly, it made sense—I hadn’t seen Coco within this memory at all. I’d seen Angelica. Angelica had been the faceless woman.
She closed her eyes now. “They killed them. Our kin. Our mothers and sisters and aunts and nieces—all gone within a single night, butchered like animals. Despite everything, however, Josephine couldn’t kill me. Not after our blood oath.”
“She couldn’t torture you,” I said in dawning realization.
“No, but she could banish me, and she did so without hesitation. We would not meet again for many years.” Her hands shifted to her elbows, and she seemed to bow into herself. “I watched from afar as her Dames Rouges reaped their just rewards, as they realized the steep cost of their victory—all witchlings born after the massacre held no magic within them. Whether their slain sisters or the Goddess herself had cursed them, I do not know. Forced to draw their magic from the land—and follow the natural order—their daughters, the first Dames Blanches, soon outnumbered their foremothers. My sister’s influence dwindled as her experiments continued, growing darker and darker in nature. The Dames Blanches grew suspicious of her, and when the time was right, I capitalized on their hatred, on their fear, returning to the Chateau and driving Josephine from the throne.”
Shooting to my feet, I began to pace, my thoughts sporadic and incomplete. “But I didn’t know you were a blood witch.”
“No one ever knew. I guarded the secret jealously for fear of persecution, concealing the truth of my magic with painstaking effort. I was a coward—I always have been—but in the end, it mattered not. When I leapt to my doom in L’Eau Mélancolique, Isla saved me—or rather, she saved my ring.” She rubbed her thumb along the band. “My magic. Without it, I am not whole, and without me, neither is L’Eau Mélancolique. For this reason, Isla wishes me to avoid involvement in your war. She does not understand that it is my war as well.”
Voice raw with unshed emotion, Coco whispered, “If Josephine dies, you will too.”
Her words sank like bricks in my stomach.
Abruptly, Angelica turned, her knife a blur as she slashed the nightshade from coiling around Coco’s neck. I gasped, Reid startled, and Coco leapt to her feet with a small shriek. None of us had noticed its creeping tendrils, the fruits of Angelica’s grief and anger. When she spoke, her voice was soft. “We must all play our parts.”
Coco stared at her.
I crossed the circle to squeeze Coco’s hand. “Does this mean Isla won’t join us?”
Angelica’s hand closed around her ring. “Isla is many things.” Brushing past us, she glided toward the waters. Her chairs of vine withered as Reid joined us, and her aconite flowers blackened to wisps of ash. “But she is not a liar. You returned my ring, and you bested Morgane. You have proven yourself a worthy ally, Louise. Though she cannot directly intervene in the events to come, she allows her melusines to choose for themselves whether to walk by your side in Cesarine. She allows me to choose.”
“Will they?” I asked.
“Will you?” Coco asked at the same time.
She inclined her head. “I will lead the willing to Cesarine myself in three days’ time.”
“What’s in three days?” Reid said, his voice strained.
Angelica merely continued toward the waters, which remained calm and still. At their edge, she drew to a graceful halt, clasping her hands at her waist. “The Oracle offers a final gift.” When three iron chalices materialized before us, dread bloomed in my belly. Reid’s brows dipped low, and he knelt swiftly to examine one. “Drink of the waters,” Angelica said, “and you shall see.”
Holy Men
Reid
The iron chalice felt familiar in my hand as I lifted it to my lips. Too familiar. Like I’d descended a flight of stairs but missed the bottom step. The second the ice water touched my tongue, an invisible force sucked me forward, and I tipped straight over the horizon.
The next second, I resurfaced in the cathedral’s formal courtroom. The hard benches and wood-paneled walls I recognized immediately. The honeyed notes in the air. Beeswax candles. They cast the room in flickering light, as curtains had been drawn over its pointed stained-glass windows. I’d guarded those vaulted doors—behind the podium, behind the Archbishop—at least a dozen times while the guilty had awaited verdict. We hadn’t committed many inside these halls. King Auguste and his guard had dealt with common criminals, while witches themselves hadn’t been afforded trial at all. No, those who testified here had been charged with the crimes in between: conspiracy, aiding and abetting the occult, even attempted witchcraft. In my years with the Chasseurs, only a rare few had openly sympathized with witches. Some had been tempted by power. Others beguiled by beauty. Still others had sought magic for themselves.
To the last man and woman, all had burned.
I swallowed hard as Lou and Coco landed beside me.
Stumbling slightly, Coco knocked into the silver-haired man beside us. He didn’t acknowledge her. Indeed, when her shoulder passed through his arm, incorporeal, I frowned. They couldn’t see us, then. “Pardon her, sir,” I murmured, testing another theory. He didn’t respond.
“They can’t hear us either.” Contrary to her words, Lou spoke in a whisper. Her eyes fixed on something in the center of the chamber. I turned. Blanched. Scowling and fierce, Philippe—once a comrade in arms—dragged my mother to the podium. She’d been gagged and bound. Blood, both crusted black and fresh scarlet, stained the entirety of her gown, and her body hung limp. Drugged. Her eyes fluttered between sleep and wakefulness.
“Oh my god.” Coco lifted a hand to her mouth in horror. “Oh my god.”
Philippe didn’t bother to unbind her hands. He simply nailed her ear to the podium. Shrieking, she lurched awake, but the movement only exacerbated her position, tearing the cartilage. Her screams soon morphed to sobs at Philippe’s laughter. Under the drug’s infl
uence, she couldn’t support herself, and when she sank to the floor, her ear tore free completely.
Red washed over my vision. I started forward before I could stop myself, halting only when another man rose across the chamber. As with the iron chalice, I recognized his face—grizzled beard, gaunt cheeks, stormy eyes—though it took me several seconds to place him.
“Was that necessary, huntsman?” His hard voice cut sharp through the din of the room. At once, every other voice fell silent. Every eye turned to him. His attention didn’t waver from Philippe, however. “If I’m not mistaken, this woman has been incapacitated with hemlock, per healers’ guidance. She poses no threat in her current condition. Surely such additional measures are cruel and unusual?” Though he posed the last as a question, no one mistook it as such. The censure in his tone rang clear.
And that was when I placed him—standing between pews, holding a pot of stew in his gnarled hands. Most in the Church wouldn’t welcome their own mother if she was a sinner.
Achille Altier.
Gone was the stooped, cantankerous old man from the graveyard parish, however. He’d combed and oiled his beard. Trimmed it neatly. His robes, too, shone resplendent even in the semidarkness. More so, he held himself differently—straighter, taller—and commanded the room with an ease I envied.
Philippe bristled, squaring his shoulders. Glancing around at the conclave’s hard, impassive faces. “It’s a witch, Father. Surely no precaution is too great.”
“Are you saying you know better than the priests in our infirmary?”
Philippe’s face paled. “I—”
“Now, now.” The man beside us rose to his feet as well, standing nearly as tall and broad as me. Despite his silver hair—thick and shining as a younger man’s—he radiated youth and vitality. Golden skin. Classic features. Some might’ve even considered him handsome. In his pale blue eyes, however, malice glittered. God had created him as Achille’s opposite in every way. “Let us not rush to condemn Chasseur Brisbois for protecting us against the Devil’s mistress, whose very power lay within her deceit.” He arched a thick brow. “Though I must rebuke the blood he spilled upon our podium.”
Philippe hastily bent his head. “My apologies, Father Gaspard.”
Father Gaspard. My mind quickly filled the gap. Father Gaspard Fosse. I recognized the name from my time spent north in Amandine. There, he’d cultivated the largest parish in the kingdom outside of Cesarine, creating a name for himself in the process. The Archbishop hadn’t cared for his ambition, his guile. His clever tongue. I’d adopted the Archbishop’s opinion at the time. I’d disliked Father Gaspard on principle. But now—having met the man myself—I realized the Archbishop had spoken truth. At least in this instance.
Father Gaspard wasn’t a holy man.
I frowned at my own abrupt conclusion. What had I seen to form such an assumption? He’d defended a Chasseur from open criticism. He’d grown his parish. Both should’ve been admirable behaviors, biblical ones, but they weren’t. They weren’t, and I didn’t understand—not him, not the Church, not this growing heat in my chest or this pricking sensation along my skin. Like it’d grown several sizes too small.
“You are forgiven, child,” he said, despite Philippe’s gray-streaked beard. “All is forgiven in pursuit of our noble cause. The Father knows your heart. In violence against these creatures, he compels your hand.”
Gaspard ambled down the steps toward Philippe. Slowly. Almost leisurely. Sleek and proud and superior. Father Achille might’ve rolled his eyes. Regardless, he hobbled down his own stairs, following Gaspard’s lead across the chamber. The two met on either side of the podium. Of my mother.
Achille stepped in front of her. His robes shielded her comatose body. “He never compels our hands to violence.”
“Stand down, old man.” Though murmured, Gaspard’s voice still reverberated through the quiet room. One could’ve heard a pin drop. “We are here to burn the witch, not coddle it.”
My cheeks flushed with anger, with inexplicable hurt. But I shouldn’t have been agitated, I shouldn’t have been hurt, and I definitely shouldn’t have felt concern for the witch below. As with Célie and Gaspard, however, I couldn’t explain my own decisions.
I didn’t love her anymore.
I didn’t like Father Gaspard.
And I didn’t want my mother—a witch—to suffer. I didn’t want her to burn.
Sick shame washed through me at the last, and I sank onto the nearest bench. Desperate to regain my composure. When Lou followed, touching a hand to my back, I forced myself to count to three, to five, to ten. Anything to focus my turbulent thoughts. I knew what I should do. I pictured it clearly—unsheathing my knife to lop off her hand. To plunge it into her heart.
Equally clear, I pulled her close and buried my nose in her neck. I tasted her scar. I spread her legs across my lap, and I touched her gently, touched her not gently, touched her any way she wanted. When her lips parted, I stole my name from them, and I kept it forever—not a scream of pain, but a cry of longing.
This is how you touch a woman. This is how you touch me.
Pain cleaved my skull in two at the stark imagery, and I pitched forward, seizing my head. Expelling the hateful words. The hateful voice. As they scattered and drifted, the pain receded, but my shame fanned hotter than before. Intolerable. I moved to fling her hand away from me. I stopped at the last moment.
When she leaned over my shoulder, her hair tickled my cheek. “Reid?”
“No decision has been made,” Achille growled.
Gaspard smiled. A cat with a juicy secret. “Of course it has. I cannot blame you for this ignorance, of course, as your idealism has hardened many against you. They dare not speak freely in your presence for fear of censure.” When Achille didn’t give him the satisfaction of a reply—not a frown, not even a blink—he continued, “By all means, however, let us wait for His Majesty to tally the vote. He arrives at any moment.” He leaned forward to whisper something in Achille’s ear then. A real whisper, this time. Not a feigned one. Stiffening, Achille muttered something back. As if given permission, the conclave broke into low conversation of their own, all waiting for my father to arrive.
Lou sat beside me. “They won’t really burn her. Don’t worry.”
Her thigh pressed into my own. I forced myself to scoot away. “They will.”
Coco grimaced and slid beside Lou, bouncing her own leg in agitation. “Unfortunately, I think he’s right. Auguste will probably burn her with the Hellfire out of spite.”
Lou glanced at me in alarm, eyes wide. “What do we do?”
“Nothing.” When she arched a brow, unimpressed, I scowled and added, “There’s nothing we can do. Even if I wanted to help her—which I don’t—there isn’t time. My mother is a witch, and she’ll burn for her sins.”
“You are a witch,” Lou snapped. “And even if you weren’t, you’ve conspired with us plenty.” She ticked off my crimes on her fingers, each a knife coated in poison. “You’ve married a witch”—I didn’t remember—“slept with a witch”—I wished I did—“hidden and protected a witch, multiple times”—I closed my eyes, innards clenching—“and best yet: you’ve murdered for a witch. Four of us, to be precise.” My eyes snapped open as she rotated a finger between the three of us. Then jabbed it toward the chamber floor. “And the most important of those is bleeding out on the carpet right now. Because of you, might I add. She sacrificed herself for you. Her son. Whom she loves.”
Most in the Church wouldn’t welcome their own mother if she was a sinner.
But I wasn’t a holy man either.
I clenched my fists and looked away. “I can’t do magic.”
“You can.” Voice conversational, Coco examined a scar on her wrist. “And many times, you practiced when Lou wasn’t directly involved, which means you’re choosing to forget.” When I opened my mouth to answer, to snarl, she merely flicked a finger at me. “Shut up. I’m not interested in excuses. Isla gi
fted us this vision, so we need to pay attention. We’re here for a reason.”
I glared at her as she glared at me. Crossing her arms, Lou exhaled hard through her nose. Still angry. We had that in common too, apparently. After a moment, she asked, “What does Madame Labelle have to do with electing a new Archbishop?”
“They’re using her indictment as their own sort of tribunal.” I shouldn’t have explained anything to her. I couldn’t stop. Jerking my chin toward Achille and Gaspard, I added, “Those two are positioning themselves for the title.”
Coco grimaced and scanned the chamber. Presumably for whatever Isla had wanted us to find. “Achille had better win.”
Lou glanced between us. “Do you know him?”
“He was the priest in Fée Tombe. He recognized us from the wanted posters, yet he still sheltered us for the night, even fed us his breakfast. He didn’t like Beau much,” Coco added, as if this were another mark in the man’s favor. “He’ll make the first decent Archbishop that Belterra has ever seen.”
“He won’t.” To prove my point, I gestured to the men clustered directly below us. They’d pressed their heads together to whisper. Necks tense. Voices strained. Lou and Coco exchanged a glance before leaning toward them to listen.
“. . . not doing himself any favors,” the balding one hissed. “Not with his history.”
“What history?” his younger, equally bald companion asked.
The third—also bald, but with a long beard—shook his head. “I suppose you wouldn’t know, would you, Emile? It happened before you were born.”
“This isn’t his first campaign.” The balding one sneered down at Achille with unaccountable hostility. “Achille lobbied alongside Florin for support during the last conclave, but he rescinded his candidacy at the last moment.”
“Never gave an explanation,” the bearded one added. “Just relegated himself to that dismal little parish up north.”
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