Blood & Honey

“Why one tent?”

Shrugging, Nicholina wafted backward, away from us. We had no choice but to follow. The blood witches’ gazes fell hard upon me as we passed, but all bared their throats to Coco in a gesture identical to Nicholina’s earlier one. I’d seen this submission only once before tonight—when La Voisin had caught Coco and me playing together on the shore of L’Eau Mélancolique. She’d been furious, nearly dislocating Coco’s shoulder in her haste to drag her away from me. Coco had showed her throat quicker than an omega showed its belly.

It’d unsettled me then, and it unsettled me now.

Echoing my thoughts, Ansel whispered, “Why do they do that?”

“It’s a sign of respect and submission.” We trailed several paces behind Coco and Nicholina. “Sort of like how you bow to royalty. When they bare their throats, they’re offering Coco their blood.”

“But . . . submission?”

After Coco had passed, the witches resumed glaring at our backs. I couldn’t say I blamed them. I was a Dame Blanche, and Ansel had trained to be a Chasseur. Though La Voisin had allowed us to enter her camp, we were no more welcome than Reid had been.

“If Coco drank your blood right now,” I explained, “she’d be able to control you. Temporarily, of course. But the Dames Rouges offer it to her and La Voisin freely. They’re royalty here.”

“Right.” Ansel swallowed hard. “Royalty.”

“La princesse.” Winking, I pinched his arm. “But still Coco.”

He didn’t look convinced.

“Why one tent, Nicholina?” Coco’s hands curled into fists when Nicholina continued to hum under her breath. Apparently, her position as La Voisin’s personal attendant afforded her more defiance. “Tell me.”

“You left us, princesse. Left us to rot. Now there’s not enough food or blankets or cots. We die by the hour from cold or hunger. ’Tis a pity you couldn’t have stayed away longer.”

At Nicholina’s chilling smile, Coco missed a step, but I steadied her with a hand on her back. When she pulled me to her side, lacing her fingers through mine, relief flooded through me. “Why does my aunt need to see us right now?” she asked, her frown deepening. “What can’t wait?”

Nicholina cackled. “The son disappeared with the sun, went to rest below the rock. But he didn’t come home, his body is gone, and vultures have started to flock.”

“We don’t speak wraith,” I said flatly.

Coco—who possessed patience vastly superior to my own—didn’t ask for clarification. Instead, her face twisted. “Who is it?”

“Who was it,” Nicholina corrected her, her mouth still contorted in that disturbing smile. It was too large, too fixed, too—bloody. “He’s dead, he’s dead, my mice have said. Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead.”

Well. I supposed that explained the weeping woman.

Nicholina drifted to a halt outside a small, threadbare tent at the edge of camp, separate from the rest. It overlooked the cliff’s edge. In daylight, the sun’s rays would warm this place, bathing the snow in a golden glow. With the uninhibited view of the mountains behind, the scene could’ve been beautiful, even in darkness.

Except for the vultures circling above.

We watched them dip lower and lower in ominous silence—until Coco tore her hand from mine and planted it on her hip. “You said he’s missing,” she said fiercely. “Missing, not dead. We’ll speak with my aunt now. If she’s organizing search parties, we’ll join them. He might still be out there somewhere.”

Nicholina nodded with glee. “Freezing to death slowly. Sloooowly.”

“Right.” Coco tossed her bag into our tent without looking inside. “Who is it, Nicholina? How long has he been missing?” Without warning, her bag came sailing back at her, knocking into the side of her head. She spun and swore violently. “What the—?”

From our tent stepped Babette Dubuisson.

Virtually unrecognizable without her thick makeup—and with her golden hair piled atop her head—she’d lost weight since we’d last seen her in Cesarine. Her scars shone silver against her ivory skin. Though fondness warmed her expression as she gazed at Coco, she did not smile. “We have known him as Etienne Gilly after his darling mother, Ismay Gilly.”

Coco stepped forward, her relief palpable as they embraced. “Babette. You’re here.”

I frowned, feeling a bit as if I’d missed the bottom step on a staircase. Though Roy and his friends had confirmed our suspicions, muttering about curfews and suspicious womenfolk in Cesarine, I hadn’t spared a thought for Babette or her safety. But Coco obviously had. My frown deepened. I considered Babette a friend—albeit in the loosest definition of the word—and I cared about what happened to her.

Didn’t I?

“Bonjour, mon amour.” Babette kissed Coco’s cheek before resting her forehead against hers. “I have missed you.” When they parted, Babette eyed the fresh slash at my throat. I hadn’t been able to salvage my ribbon. “And bonjour to you too, Louise. Your hair is répugnant, but I am happy to see you alive and well.”

I offered her a wary smile, Reid’s words returning with frightful clarity. You haven’t been yourself. “Alive, indeed,” I mused, smile fading. “But perhaps not well.”

“Nonsense. In times such as these, if you are alive, you are well.” Returning her attention to Coco, she sighed deeply. The sound lacked her signature melodrama. No, this sober, bare-faced woman—with her tattered clothing and tangled hair—was not the Babette I’d always known. “But perhaps more than we can say of poor Etienne. You believe he still lives, mon amour, but I fear for his life—and not from the cold. Though we have known him by his mother, to the rest of the kingdom, Etienne Gilly would be known as Etienne Lyon. He is the king’s bastard son, and he never returned from the morning hunt.”

Larger than the others, La Voisin’s tent had been pitched in the center of the clearing. Several wooden cages circled the ground around it, and glowing eyes reflected back at us. A fox lunged at the bars as we passed, snarling, and Ansel leapt into me with a squeak. When Babette snickered, Ansel blushed to the roots of his hair.

“Are these . . . pets?” he asked weakly.

“They’re for blood,” Coco said shortly. “And divination.”

Nicholina glowered at Coco’s explanation—probably a betrayal in her mind—before parting the bundles of dried sage hanging from the tent entrance. Babette pecked each of Coco’s cheeks.

“I will find you after, mon amour. We have much to discuss.”

Coco held her a second longer than necessary before they parted.

Inside, La Voisin stood behind a makeshift table, a smudge stick smoldering gently before her. Nicholina drifted to her side, picking up a rabbit’s skin in one hand and a bloody knife in the other. The poor creature’s various organs had been spread across most of the table. I tried to ignore her licking its blood from her fingers.

La Voisin looked up from the book she’d been studying and fixed me with a cold stare. I blinked, startled at the smoothness of her face. She hadn’t aged a day since I’d last seen her. Though she must’ve been thrice our age, no lines marred her brow or lips, and her hair—pinned back in a severe chignon—remained as black as the moonless night sky.

My scalp prickled as I remembered the wicked rumors about her at Chateau le Blanc: how she ate the hearts of babies to stay young, how she journeyed to L’Eau Mélancolique each year to drink the blood of a melusine—no, to bathe in it.

A long moment of silence passed as she studied Coco and me, her dark eyes glittering in the candlelight. Just as Nicholina’s had done, her gaze lingered on me, tracing the contours of my face, the scar at my throat. I stared resolutely back at her.

She didn’t acknowledge Ansel.

Coco finally cleared her throat. “Bonjour, tante.”

“Cosette.” La Voisin closed the book with a snap. “You deign to visit at last. I see the circumstances finally suit you.”

I watched in disbelief as Coco stared at her feet, immediately contrite. “Je suis désolée. I would’ve come sooner, but I . . . I couldn’t leave my friends.”

La Voisin strode around the table, parting the smudge smoke in waves. She halted in front of Coco, grasping her chin and tilting her face toward the candlelight. Coco met her gaze reluctantly, and La Voisin frowned at whatever she saw there. “Your kin have been dying while you cavorted with your friends.”

“Babette told me of Etienne. We can—”

“I do not speak of Etienne.”

“Then who . . . ?”

“Sickness took Delphine and Marie. Only last week, Denys passed from exposure. His mother left him to forage for food. He tried to follow.” Her eyes hardened to glittering chips of obsidian. She dropped Coco’s chin. “Do you remember him? He was not yet two years old.”