Gods & Monsters

by Shelby Mahurin

  Footsteps again, quicker this time. We flung ourselves down, feigning unconsciousness, just as the door burst open. “What is it?” a voice asked, unfamiliar and deep.

  “I thought I heard someone.”

  Discomfort seeped into the first’s voice. “Should we dose them again?”

  The other cleared their throat. “They still look incapacitated.”

  “Philippe will skin us if they die on our watch.”

  “The hemlock is merely a precaution. The bars will keep them in here.” A pause. “Philippe said the wood is . . . special. They harvested it from La Fôret des Yeux.”

  After another few seconds of anxious silence, they closed the door once more. “Keep your voice down next time,” I hissed, poking Reid in the ribs.

  His face snapped toward mine in outrage. “I wasn’t—”

  “I’m joking, Chass.”

  “Oh.” He frowned when I snorted. “Is this really the time to joke?”

  “It’s never the time to joke with us. If we waited until we were out of life-or-death situations, we could only laugh in our graves.” Hoisting myself to my feet, I inspected the bars closer. Though clearly wooden, they still felt . . . unnatural. Both made and unmade. The torchlight caught veins of silver in the wood. The hemlock is merely a precaution. The bars will keep them in here. I leaned in to sniff them as Reid rose behind.

  “What are they?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. The tree smells like alder, but the timber is . . . metallic? I can’t recall any metallic trees in La Fôret des Yeux. Can you?”

  “A metallic tree,” he echoed slowly.

  Our eyes snapped together in dawning horror. “It couldn’t be—?”

  “It’s not—?”

  “Oh my god,” I breathed, recoiling. The bars felt abruptly cold beneath my touch. Oppressive. “They cut it down. Your Balisarda.”

  Beside me, Reid closed his eyes in acknowledgment, in defeat, pressing his forehead against the wood. Voice strained, he asked, “How did they even find it?”

  “It was along the road. Bas and his cronies called for the Chasseurs when they found us.” On a hunch, I pressed a finger to one of the bars. The white patterns dimmed almost instantly in response. No. No, no, no. “They would’ve seen it straightaway—a great tree with silver bark and black fruit and lethal thorns.”

  “Can you magic us out?”

  I released the bar again, returning to the middle of the cage, equal distance from all sides. Though the white patterns flared once more, they floated untethered when they reached the bars, unable to touch them or move past them. Not a promising sign. Closing my eyes, focusing my energy, I sought the lock on the bars—simpler than the one on the treasury door of Chateau le Blanc, made of iron, yet strategically placed outside the magic wood. The harder I tried to reach it, the more the pattern frayed until it disintegrated completely. “Fuck.”

  To his credit, Reid didn’t even flinch. Instead he gripped the bars in earnest, testing their weight. “I can break them.”

  “You have a broken finger.”

  That didn’t stop him from trying to snap the wood for the next ten minutes. Knuckles bloody, arms shaking, he finally punched the bar with all his might, succeeding in only breaking another finger. When he cocked his fist to strike again, furious, I rolled my eyes and dragged him back to the center of the cage. “Yes, thank you. That was helpful.”

  “What are we going to do?” He tore a frustrated hand through his hair. I caught it before he could damage it further. His broken fingers had swelled to twice their normal size, and blood welled dark and purple beneath the skin. He turned away. “This brilliant plan of yours has a few holes.”

  I repressed a scowl, wrapping another pattern around his hand. “I can’t control every variable, Reid. At least this one didn’t involve mustaches and crutches. Now shut it, or I’ll give you a real hole to complain about.” An empty threat. The Chasseurs had disarmed both of us before throwing us in here.

  “Is that supposed to be innuendo? I can never tell with you.”

  I jerked at the pattern, and it snapped his fingers back into place, shattering my irritation in the process. He winced and wrenched his hand—now completely healed—out of mine. “Thank you,” he muttered after another moment. “And . . . sorry.” The word sounded pained.

  I almost chuckled. Almost. Unfortunately, without irritation to distract me, panic crept back in. I couldn’t magic us out of here, and Reid couldn’t break the bars physically. Perhaps I could shield us within the cage somehow, like I’d done on the bridge. If they couldn’t see us, they couldn’t march us to the stake. Even as the thought formed, I knew it was no real solution. We couldn’t hide here indefinitely, invisible. Perhaps if they opened the cage to investigate, however . . . “The others will come for us.” Whether I spoke to him or myself, I didn’t know.

  “Philippe won’t let Jean Luc within fifty feet of this room.”

  “It’s fortunate, then, that Jean Luc isn’t our only ally. Coco will know where we are. She’ll bring Claud or Zenna or Blaise, and they’ll break us out.”

  He leveled me with a frank stare. “I don’t think you grasp the number of huntsmen living in this tower, Lou.”

  Leaning forward, I rested my elbows on my knees. “I don’t think you grasp that I lived here too.”

  “You did?” Surprise colored his tone. “How?”

  “I was your wife. The Archbishop couldn’t have separated us, even if he wanted to—which he didn’t. He arranged the whole marriage.”

  “Why?” Now he leaned forward too, his eyes trained on mine. Hungry for information. His earlier words echoed back to me: Tell me how to remember. If we were going to die at sunset, Coco’s argument hardly applied anymore, did it? Another mad idea formed on the heels of that realization. If Reid remembered, Morgane would too. If the others didn’t come for me, she would. She’d tear this tower apart brick by brick if she learned the Chasseurs intended to burn me.

  Of course, Reid still had a point. She’d never been able to tear it apart before. Stripped of her title, she’d hardly be able to do it now.

  “You know why.” I shrugged, the thoughts tangling into a helpless knot of confusion. My foot tapped restlessly. “I’m his daughter. He wanted you to protect me.”

  He scoffed again, an angry sound, and gestured around us. “I’ve done an excellent job.”

  “Our friends will come for us, Reid. We have to trust them.”

  “Where are they, then? Why aren’t they here?”

  “Hopefully they’re out rescuing your mother and brother. That was the whole point of the endeavor, if you remember.”

  His face flushed, and he looked away. “Of course I remember.”

  The guards flung the door open unexpectedly this time. In the split second it took for the knob to unlatch, a third idea formed, and impulsively, I transformed into the Maiden as two Chasseurs stepped through. Their eyes flew wide when they saw me. “Oh, please, messieurs!” I wrung my hands with a cry, pacing before the bars without touching them. “The witch—she tricked me. I’m a scullery maid upstairs, but while I was washing the linens, I heard a voice singing the most beautiful song.” I spoke quicker now, disliking the calculated gleam in the older one’s eyes. “I just had to follow it, messieurs—like some outside force compelled me to do it, like I was in a trance—and I didn’t wake until I’d unlocked the door and let her go. Please, please, let me out while the other still sleeps.” Gesturing to Reid on the floor, I allowed my lip to quiver and tears to spill down my cheeks. It was easier to feign distress than I’d anticipated. “I’m so sorry. You can dock my pay, you can relieve me of service, you can lash me, but please don’t let him hurt me.”

  Though the younger looked likely to leap to my rescue, the older stilled him with a smile. It wasn’t a compassionate one. “Are you finished?”

  I sniffed loudly. “Will you not help me?”

  In two strides, he crossed the room to the circular table,
rifling through the papers there. He pulled one from beneath a crucifix paperweight and held it to the light. Though sketched with rudimentary lines, the drawing portrayed my face—the Maiden’s face—well enough. My distraught expression fell flat as I leaned against the bars. My form reverted once more. “Good for you.”

  “Yes,” he mused, examining me curiously. “It rather is. It seems you’ve inherited your mother’s gifts. His Majesty will be pleased to know it.”

  “That—that’s La Dame des Sorcières’s daughter?”

  “It appears she is La Dame des Sorcières now.”

  The younger’s concern vanished instantly, replaced by what looked like awe. Perhaps a touch of fear. Of hunger. “We caught her?”

  “You didn’t catch anyone.” My own fear sharpened my voice. I pushed it down. The others would come. They would. “May I inquire as to the time?”

  The older replaced the picture before approaching the cage. Though he kept his posture casual, sweat had collected along his upper lip. I made him nervous. Good. “You can ask. I won’t answer, though. Better to watch you squirm.” When I thrust my face at the bars, swift and sudden, he stumbled backward. To his credit, he didn’t curse, instead clutching his chest with a low chuckle.

  “Shall we inject it?” The younger drew fresh syringes from his coat. “Teach it a lesson?”

  “No.” The older shook his head and backed from the room. “No, I think we’re inflicting just the right amount of torment, don’t you?”

  The two closed the door behind them with a resounding click.

  Now Reid pulled me away from the bars. “The others will come,” he said.

  Some time later, a scuffle broke out in the corridor to prove his words. Voices rose to shouts, and the sound of steel against steel rang out in the sweetest harmony. We both launched to our feet, staring at the door and waiting. “This is it.” My fingers wrapped around the bars in anticipation. “They’re here.”

  Reid frowned at the high-pitched, feminine voices. Unfamiliar, they didn’t belong to Coco or Célie or Zenna or even Seraphine. They sounded like the voices of . . . children. “Leave us alone!” one cried, indignant. “Let us go!”

  “I don’t think so,” a Chasseur snarled. “Not this time.”

  “Your father won’t be pleased, Victoire.”

  “My father can swallow an egg!”

  “This isn’t right,” another child cried. “Remove your hands at once. That’s our brother in there, and he hasn’t done anything wrong—”

  Their voices faded as the Chasseurs dragged them away.

  “Violette and Victoire.” Reid stared at the door as if sheer will alone might open it. At the intensity of his gaze, I might’ve believed it too. “They sprang us from the dungeon before La Mascarade les Crânes.”

  “Follow the memory,” I said desperately. If even the king’s daughters couldn’t enter Chasseur Tower unimpeded, the chances of others doing so had just vanished in a puff of smoke.

  “What?”

  “You want to remember. This is how.” Unable to escape this hideous prison, ignorant of the time, of our friends, of our very lives, this suddenly became the most important thing in the world. The most urgent one. He had to remember. If we were going to die at sunset, he had to remember me. The wager, the seduction, the plan—it all fell away in light of this one critical moment. “Follow it forward or backward until you hit a wall. Then push.”

  His mouth twisted grimly. “I—I’ve tried. These past few days—I’ve done nothing but try to piece it back together.”

  “Try again. Try harder.”

  “Lou—”

  I crushed his hands in my own. “What if they don’t come?”

  He clutched mine with equal fervor, his voice low and ferocious as he pulled me closer. “They will.”

  “What if they can’t? What if they fail to sneak inside undetected? What if they have to fight? What if Claud can’t intervene, or they were captured at the castle, or—” My eyes widened in alarm. “What if they’re already dead?”

  “Stop, stop.” He seized my face, bending low to look me directly in the eye. “Breathe. Tell me what to do.”

  It took a moment to collect myself, to calm my racing heart. He waited patiently, his thumbs kneading my temples. The intimacy of the gesture both agitated and soothed me. At last, I pulled away and said, “After Violette and Victoire rescued you from the dungeons, you returned to Léviathan. Do you remember that?”

  He shadowed my footsteps. “Yes. I took a bath.”

  “And then?”

  “And then I”—his face contorted—“I spoke with Claud. I told him about my mother’s capture.”

  Lacing my fingers through his, I shook my head. “You didn’t. ‘They took her, Lou. They took my mother, and she’s not coming back.’ That’s what you told me.”

  He stared at me, nonplussed. “What happened next?”

  “You tell me.” When he said nothing, only stared, I reached up to kiss his cheek. His arms wrapped around my waist. “After I took Bas’s memories,” I whispered against his skin, “I didn’t realize what I’d done until I saw him again. There were these—these gaps in my thoughts. I didn’t scrub him away completely, only the romantic moments, but he didn’t recognize me at all. I had to find a trigger to help me remember—one memory to spark the rest.”

  He pulled back to look at me. “But that could be anything.”

  “For me, it was the moment I met Bas in Soleil et Lune.”

  “Where did I meet you?”

  “Outside of Pan’s patisserie.” I spun him toward the lock hastily. “Imagine a door. You were blocking the whole thing like a giant asshole, watching Beau’s homecoming parade in the street.” He turned to scowl at me over his shoulder. “What? You were. It was completely discourteous. I tried to move past you”—I imitated the movement—“but there wasn’t room for both of us. You ended up turning and nearly breaking my nose with your elbow.” When he pivoted to face me in real time, I lifted his elbow and snapped my head back, pantomiming the injury. “Does any of this ring a bell?”

  He looked thoroughly miserable. “No.”

  Fuck. “Maybe this isn’t your trigger.” I fought to keep my voice even. “It could be something else—like when you chased me in Soleil et Lune, or when we married on the bank of the Doleur, or—or when we had sex for the first time on the rooftop.”

  His eyes narrowed. “We consummated our relationship on a rooftop?”

  I nodded swiftly. Too swiftly. “Soleil et Lune again. It was so cold—try to imagine it. The wind on your bare skin.”

  When fresh guards popped in to check on us, we ignored them, and after a taunt or two, they left. The clock ticked onward. Every second, it brought us closer to sunset. No other shouts rose from the corridor. No second rescue attempt. Where were they? Reid shook his head, scrubbing a hand over his face as he paced. “I don’t remember any of this.”

  “But you—I’ve seen you as you’ve started to remember. I’ve seen the pain in your expression. It hurts.”

  He threw his arms in the air, growing more and more frustrated. Or perhaps flustered. Perhaps both. “Those times have been few and far between, and even then, when I try to push through—to follow the memory—it’s like I’m jumping into a void. There’s nothing there. No wall to break. No door to open or lock to pick or window to smash. The memories are just gone.”

  Wretched tears gathered in my eyes. “The pattern can be reversed.”

  “What pattern?” His voice rose to almost a shout as he whirled to face me, jaw clenched and cheeks flushed. “The entire world seems to think I’m a witch—and I’m about to burn at the stake, so it must be true—but I can’t—I don’t—I’ve never seen a pattern, Lou. Not a single speck of gold or white or fucking indigo. It’s like this person you know—he doesn’t exist. I’m not him. I don’t know if I’ll ever be him again.”

  When the tears fell freely down my cheeks, he groaned and wiped them away, moisture glis
tening in his own eyes. “Please, don’t cry. I can’t stand your tears. They make me—they make me want to rend the world apart to stop them, and I can’t—” He kissed me again, fierce with abandon. “Tell me again. Tell me all of it. I’ll remember this time.”

  Within the hard shield of his arms, I repeated everything. I told him the story of us: the slashed arm and spattered sheet, the book called La Vie Éphémère, the trip to the theater and the market, the temple, the troupe, the shop of curiosities. I told him of Modraniht and La Mascarade des Crânes and every moment spent together in between. Every momentous shift in our relationship. The bathtub. The attic. The funeral.

  I told him of magic.

  He remembered nothing.

  Yes, his face twisted occasionally, but upon embracing the pain, chasing the memories, he’d find only smoke and mirrors.

  We gradually realized the guards rotated in two-hour shifts—Reid could remember that—checking in every half hour. When the last set appeared, I wept openly as Reid cradled me in his lap. “Not long now,” one of them had jeered. The other hadn’t wanted to linger, however, pulling his companion from the room with a discomfited expression.

  Still no one came for us.

  I hoped they’d survived. I hoped they’d rescued Madame Labelle and Beau, and I hoped they’d fled the city. I couldn’t bear the thought of them watching us burn. Though it wouldn’t be their fault, they’d never forgive themselves, and Coco—she’d suffered enough. She’d lost enough, as had Madame Labelle and Beau and Célie and even Jean Luc. Perhaps we’d been stupid to dream of something more. Something better. I still hoped they’d found it.

  If anyone deserved peace, it was them.

  Reid rested his cheek against my hair. “I’m so sorry, Lou.” Silence stretched between us, tautly strung like a bow. I waited for it to snap. “I wish—”

  “Don’t.” Slowly, I lifted my head to look at him. My heart contracted at the anguish on his familiar face. I traced the shape of his brows, his nose, his lips, staring at each feature in turn. Deep down, I’d known how this would end all along. I’d sensed it from the moment we’d first met, from the time I’d first glimpsed the Balisarda in his bandolier—two star-crossed lovers brought together by fate or providence. By life and by death. By gods, or perhaps monsters.