by Jodi Lamm
Marcus shook his head. “He won’t have risked bringing his golem with him if it’s a Titan he’s hoping to find. He isn’t that worried. He thinks he can control my sister through the Titan, and he doesn’t know about me.”
“What doesn’t he know about you?” Will looked puzzled.
“There isn’t time to explain.” Marcus pushed past him. “We’ve got to stop this nonsense before it escalates. The new golem mustn’t be introduced to chaos.” He dragged Maddy after him again—this time, at an unbelievable pace—and muttered, “I won’t let it claim my sister’s soul.”
***
Layers of horror greeted Maddy as she and Marcus approached their mother’s house. A row of soldiers waited, their backs to the house in organized watchfulness like identical, toy figurines. Maddy noticed not one of them had a musket in his hands, which could only mean the queen had not approved this seizure. Instead, the six soldiers closest to Eli, who stood beside Lotte with a calm familiarity that made Maddy want to tear his face off, carried bows they had commandeered from her brother’s hunting supplies. All six pulled their bowstrings taut as Marcus and Maddy approached.
Eli’s voice boomed over the wind. “Marcus Lavoie, you are in possession of an illegal and highly destructive weapon. You are advised to hand the weapon over to us by giving us the location of its master. Your immediate obedience will be taken into account at your trial.”
Marcus did not reply, but walked toward the soldiers, his shoulders back, a wicked smile on his face. The wind grew fiercer with every step he took.
“If you do not comply, we will be forced to release your own weapons upon you.”
Marcus just laughed and continued to advance.
Good, Maddy thought. Lotte hadn’t told them about Simon’s boy. But that moment’s comfort was quashed when Maddy realized that for her sake, Marcus intended to reveal his identity to the duke—to everyone.
“Don’t be reckless, boy,” Eli said.
“Marcus,” Maddy began, but Marcus wasn’t listening to either of them. A furious gale bore the weight of him and drove him forward. He gnashed his teeth in a perfectly devilish display. For a moment, even Maddy was afraid of him.
“Boy,” Eli said, taking Charlotte by her arms and holding her in front of him, “think of your mother.”
At that moment, Maddy made her final, horrifying discovery. Six bows pointed their arrows at Marcus’ body. Six. But Maddy knew her brother only ever had five. “One of them is mine,” she muttered. Then she shouted, “One of them is mine!” She stumbled forward to stop Marcus from provoking them. But to the soldiers, she was the greater threat. As soon as they saw her move, they let their arrows fly.
And one was set upon the duke’s heart.
Five arrows embedded themselves in the earth, impotent against Marcus’ powerful wind. But one, driven by something more than momentum, spun back and flew toward the duke, who still held Lotte in front of himself. Maddy did not have time to scream before she saw the hellbird hit its mark.
For a moment, Charlotte didn’t seem to notice. Her children watched her, open-mouthed, as she looked down to see Father Androcles’ arrow stuck in her own chest.
The wind died. Marcus covered the distance between himself and his mother before she hit the ground. He caught her in his arms and pressed his lips to the base of her throat. “Lotte.” He used her familiar name like an old lover.
When Lotte opened her mouth, all that came out was a long, low hiss. Then she died.
“Oh, Lotte.” Marcus lifted his head and tore the arrow from between her ribs. “Look what they’ve done to you.” He lowered her body to the ground as though the slightest bump or jolt would break her. Then he stood and brushed the dust from his trousers with the same terrible calm Maddy once loved in him. He tapped his finger to his temple in an almost comical gesture, pointed to the first soldier, and said, “One.”
The soldier pulled his bowstring taut. His arrow pointed at Marcus, but he couldn’t hold it steady.
Marcus smiled and moved on to the next. “Two.”
The second soldier held his breath.
“Three. Four. Five.”
Each of the soldiers stepped away from Marcus as he counted them. They couldn’t have known why he frightened them. But his stoicism in spite of his mother’s waiting body turned their knees to pudding.
“Six.” Marcus stopped before the soldier who had chosen Maddy’s bow, a boy no older than sixteen. He was braver than the rest, determined, though his eyes betrayed his horror as he realized that Marcus Lavoie, hungry for revenge, had chosen him. “Tsk-tsk,” Marcus said. “How unfortunate.” And the boy dropped to his knees, clutched his throat, and gasped.
Maddy didn’t remember arriving at her mother’s body. She didn’t remember covering the distance or the soldiers shooting at her as she did. She felt as though she’d been standing beside Marcus all along, staring at the fading blush in her mother’s cheeks and the dark stain spreading across her already burgundy dress. “Mother.” The woman who knew her, named her, and loved her when no one else could was dead. And why? She saw Marcus torturing the young soldier, his eyes narrowed in mad concentration. “He didn’t know,” she said. Then louder, “Marcus, he didn’t know!”
But Marcus wouldn’t hear her. So she completed her body with the ground and wrapped enormous vines of earth around his legs and arms. Marcus turned to look at her as though she’d just betrayed him. “He didn’t know,” she said again. And the soldier choked on the air Simon’s boy sent back into his lungs.
Marcus didn’t bother to shake the vines from his body. He just stared at his mother without weeping, without trembling or looking away. A doll. A puppet. The soldier on the ground wept and threw up and tried to hold himself together with his own arms. We should be so horrified, Maddy thought, but all she could do was watch. She watched Marcus and the soldier. She watched her mother and she watched Eli Mahler, who stared back at her, waiting. Maddy wondered what he waited for, until she remembered the day he took over her body to restore the Titan, and how he’d chosen an arrow…
“The soldier didn’t know,” Maddy said, her eyes locked on the duke, “but you did.” Her whole body shook as she stared into his fish-scale eyes, and the earth shook with her. Every soldier dropped to the ground. The vines around Marcus crumbled away. Each window in Lotte’s house shattered as the world shifted back and forth in the screaming vibration that was Maddy’s own anger. “You knew!”
Eli braced himself against the doorframe, shaking his head.
A few soldiers managed to right themselves and shot at Maddy. She ignored the arrows. One flew into her throat. She pulled it out and tossed it aside. “You knew,” she growled as the earth twined itself around Eli’s legs.
Eli screamed and tried to pull free.
“I’ll break every one of your bones.” Maddy couldn’t believe the words that had come from her mouth, but she didn’t take them back either. She worked the vines of earth up Eli’s body, taking him the way he once took her—one limb at a time—until he was powerless, immobile. Then she smiled like her brother.
The sound of a trumpet distracted Maddy from her prey before she had the chance to damage him. When she whirled around, she saw some forty men on horseback, all with muskets pointed at her. And at the center of the first row she saw two figures, both bound, and one held at knifepoint. Jas. She stilled the earth.
One soldier rode ahead of the others and shouted, “Golem! We have your Titan! Do not move or you will both be executed!”
“Maddy.” Marcus put a hand on the small of her back and whispered, “I can take them before they know what’s happening.”
“No,” she hissed. “Jas.”
“I won’t let them hurt him.”
But before she could agree, Eli shouted from behind them both, “Knock the Titan out, man! It’s too dangerous to negotiate!”
For a moment, Maddy thought Marcus had won. The soldiers around Jas began dropping to the ground as Marc
us pulled the air from their lungs. But the queen’s guard acted fast. Through Jas, the butt of a musket sent Maddy to her knees, and Marcus cried out beside her as a second hit blackened the sky.
24: The Queen of Silence
Before she even opened her eyes, Maddy knew she’d been stripped bare. She wore clothes, but she was scrubbed clean and that made her weak. The surface she lay on felt smooth like glass. She moved her hands over it and found that it, too, had been cleared of every particle of dust. Her head throbbed. When she finally opened her eyes, she saw stars. Hundreds of stars. Bright, dancing stars. As her eyes adjusted, she saw people among them. Some stood with the tops of their heads facing her, others lay on their backs. Such handsome, fine people. Then Maddy realized, as she watched, that some of them were Marcus and herself. She rubbed her eyes and looked again. She and Marcus lay on their backs, facing a domed ceiling made entirely of mirrors.
Marcus was clean and dressed in a military uniform. Will and Eli waited to the left of them, both flanked by soldiers and wrapped in chains. They had all been stripped and given uniforms to wear. All except Maddy, who wore a gown in her mother’s color: wine red. She turned to Marcus, who lay beside her. He took her hand as she looked back at the ceiling and saw, in the midst of that garden of burgundy and grey, a lily. The queen on her throne. Maddy sat up.
“Welcome, honored guests.” The queen’s voice was strong and husky, her hair peppered with silver, her skin creased at the corners of her eyes. Maddy saw so many years of laughter and suffering in that body. Somehow, the Queen of Silence was the most elegant, beautiful person in the world. This was the woman Eli adored, the love he sacrificed everything to restore. Maddy understood at once.
The queen rose and glided toward them, her white gown slipping down the steps after her like a brook bubbling over smooth stones. “We regret the need to remind you both that your Titan is under our control. Any violence you attempt will end his life and yours.” She smiled. “This is a safety precaution only. Please understand.”
Maddy glanced behind her. Jas was strung by his arms to a tree made of silver and gold at the forefront of a forest of identical trees. His chest had been bared for the muskets of too many soldiers to count, all poised to fire. Maddy felt Jas’ nausea and the pain in his head. Her hands were numb as though she, too, were strung up beside him. She saw Marcus rub his wrists and try to hide the marks the cords binding Jas left on his skin.
As the queen approached, her reflection on the mirrored staircase became a colorful substitute for her shadow. “Do you like our forest?” she said. “Your mother inspired it, long ago. She was a dear…” When she paused, Maddy thought the queen might burst into tears. Instead, she repeated, “She was a dear friend.”
At second glance, Maddy realized the forest was not a forest at all, but a few rows of silver trees with gold leaves, planted in the mirrored floor and reaching high to the mirrored dome, with its gas-lamp stars and shining people. All the reflections in the walls around them created a dream-forest that reminded Maddy of the world the dancing princesses escaped to every night.
“Marcus Lavoie.” The queen nodded to Marcus, who still sat like a fool on the floor, holding his wrists behind his back. “It’s been so long.”
Marcus rose to his knees and managed a half-bow. “Your Majesty.”
The queen touched her palm to his cheek. “I still remember the day your father brought you back from Persia. I was not at all surprised when he adopted you. He was such a tender-hearted man.” She had dropped her royal tone and gazed down at Marcus with pride and regret in her expression. “I knew there was something odd about the way you never seemed to age.” She touched his shoulder, just over the place where the mark that gave him life waited under his uniform. “I never would have believed it, had I not seen it with my own eyes.”
Marcus dropped his arms to his sides. He had no secret to hide, after all.
The queen rose and addressed everyone in the room. “Because he had a generous spirit and no children, our general adopted an enemy’s slave as his son. Soeren Lavoie was not suited to a military life, poor man. We suspect his widow kept this girl and treated her as a daughter for the same reason. Marcus Lavoie hid his identity out of self-preservation. Self-preservation is not treason. Any member of the Lavoie family might have acted against us at any time. They might have destroyed everything we built, but they did not. This is the kind of loyalty we could only hope for in the hearts of the rest of our citizens.” She turned to face Will and Eli, who stood chained together. “You, on the other hand…” The venom in her voice made Maddy shiver. Will’s knees buckled, but the queen wasn’t talking to him. Her gaze drifted right past him and settled on the horrified face of her Right Hand and former lover. “We have questioned your guard, Eli Mahler. We know you conspired to create these two weapons.” She gestured to Maddy and to the small boy who stepped out from behind her throne.
Kaspar. Maddy took Marcus by the hand.
“You manipulated a Titan into creating both of them. A Titan, Eli.” She narrowed her eyes. “You knew about the existence of a Titan, and rather than report it, you adopted the boy and coerced him into creating two fiercely powerful weapons. Then,” she bowed her head, “as if that weren’t enough, you murdered my dearest… my only friend.”
Eli shrank from her. “Désirée…”
The queen slapped him hard, but Eli’s tears were clearly not from the sting of her hand. “Never address me that way again.” She gripped the folds of her skirts as her composure slipped away. “Never speak to me again. You liar! You traitor!” Then she calmed herself and brought Kaspar to stand before the duke. “You thought you could deceive us. You took the image of our son,” she held Kaspar up by his wrists until his feet no longer touched the ground, “and you turned it into a monster.” She dropped the child, who landed on his feet without making a sound in protest. “Did you think I would mistake this for my son?”
Maddy watched the child who was supposed to be Kaspar. His face never betrayed any emotion, though even Maddy cringed at the things the queen said. He was empty. And somewhere, deep down, Maddy knew she had been just the same until Jas created the chaos in her.
“Your Majesty,” Eli closed his eyes against the look his queen gave him, “he will learn to be human in time. He will become like the other two, like Charlotte’s children. He can—”
“No.” The queen turned her back to Eli and marched to her throne, dragging Kaspar along with her. “He will never become the son I lost, nor will he replace him. You’re sick.” She sat rigid at the edge of her throne while Kaspar stood to her right like another little soldier. “And this day… is killing me.” She passed a hand over her face as though replacing a mask she had lost. “Eli Mahler, for your treason and the murder of Charlotte Lavoie, you are hereby stripped of your title and sentenced to immediate death.” Then her guise faded one last time. “It’s over, Eli. It’s finally over.”
The soldiers around Eli began unlocking his chains, separating him from a sickly-pale Will. Eli dropped to the floor and cowered. He clung to the chains. He wept and perspired, and no one dried his face.
Maddy saw the years of love lost between the queen and the Duke of Silence scrawled across Eli’s entire body. She saw their tentative first kiss, saw the secret nights they shared. She saw the child they bore and raised together, the loss of that boy and the crushing pain. She saw how it tore them apart, how the mother had to face her people as though nothing had ever happened, how the father sank into the shadows, unwilling to accept. Maddy clung with both hands to Marcus’ arm as she watched the former duke drown in his own pathetic fear.
The guards were still dragging an exhausted Eli from the throne room, when Marcus called after them. “Wait! Wait, Your Majesty, please. Forgive me.” He rose to his feet and pulled Maddy after him. Then he bowed low. “I beg you to spare his life.”
The queen, who had buried her face in her hands, now lifted her eyes. “Marcus Lavoie, this man killed yo
ur mother.”
“I know.”
“With that knowledge…”
“I know, Your Majesty.”
“Why do you plead for his life?”
Marcus cleared his throat. “I could pretend mercy, Your Majesty, but I won’t. Charlotte was the only mother I ever had. And as a creature such as myself is prone to take on certain,” he paused, “certain feelings from its master, I loved her deeply while I belonged to her husband.” He lowered his voice and gave the queen a look that would not allow her to mistake his meaning. “Deeply, Your Majesty.”
The queen raised an eyebrow.
“Forgive me, but I want him alive in order to take my own revenge.”
Maddy didn’t dare open her mouth. She sensed a game between the queen and Marcus, a tug-of-war she wouldn’t know how to play if she tried.
The queen seemed to sense it, too. “You want us to leave him in your custody?”
“I’m far stronger than the soldiers holding him now.”
The queen massaged her forehead and groaned. “We cannot allow torture, you understand?”
“Can’t you?”
The queen didn’t answer.
“Oh, just not citizens of your own country. I see.”
“Lavoie…”
“Forgive me.” Marcus bowed, and Maddy could see his insincerity. “But what do you want from my sister and I, Your Majesty? Why haven’t you destroyed us? Why have you brought us here? What can I offer you for this man’s life?” The game was over. Marcus had ended it without so much as a nod to his own win.
Maddy’s stomach tightened. She turned back to see Jas, still strung in that tree and waiting to see whether he would die. Maddy wanted to tell him she would protect him, that he needn’t fear anything, but she didn’t know what she could do. Any move she made would be the death of him. So she sat perfectly still and watched Marcus toy with the queen like a kitten, batting her between soft paws, his needle-sharp claws temporarily tucked away.