The first drops of rain signaled the start of the burial procession. The droplets stung my hand. Icy. Sharp. Like tiny knives. Lou had flung open our room’s window to watch as the crowd thickened. A sea of black. Of tears. Few bothered with umbrellas, even as the rain fell harder. Faster.

Constabulary lined the street in somber uniforms, their faces and weapons drawn. Chasseurs swathed in black stood rigid among them. Some I recognized. Others I didn’t.

Somewhere down there, the Dames Blanches and loup garou lay in wait for any sign of Morgane. Toulouse and Thierry hadn’t joined them. My fault. My own stubborn pride. Deveraux, however, had insisted on helping. He’d also insisted Lou and I remain out of sight. Though he claimed our absence might dissuade her from foolish action, I knew better. He’d gifted us privacy—me privacy—to watch the procession. To . . . mourn.

“Therewithal,” he’d said, matter-of-fact, “we can’t very well allow the king or Chasseurs to spot you in the crowd. Chaos would ensue, and our dear Lady thrives in chaos.”

In the room beside us, water gurgled through the pipes. I assumed it was for Coco’s bath. Like us, Deveraux had banished her, Beau, and Ansel to their rooms, asserting, “Your faces are known.” It felt silly, after everything, to hide away while the others endangered themselves. This hadn’t been part of the plan.

I couldn’t bring myself to protest.

Ansel probably watched the procession from his window. I hoped he did. He wasn’t a Chasseur, but he might have been, once. He might’ve grown to love the Archbishop. If not loved . . . he certainly would’ve respected him. Feared him.

I wondered if anyone below had truly loved our patriarch.

He’d had no siblings, no parents. No wife. At least, not in the legal sense. In the biblical, however, his had been a woman who’d tricked him into bed, into conceiving a child destined to destroy him—

No. I stopped the thought before it could form. Morgane was to blame, yes, but so was he. She hadn’t forced him. He’d made a decision. He wasn’t perfect.

As if reading my thoughts, Lou squeezed my hand. “Sometimes it hurts to remember the dead as who they were, rather than who we wanted them to be.”

I returned the pressure but said nothing. Though I knew she longed for a bath—for a change of clothes—the tub remained empty. The fresh clothing Deveraux had procured for her remained folded on the bed. Untouched. Instead, she stood beside me, with me, staring down at the street below. Listening to the rain, to the faint chants of liturgy from Saint-Cécile. Waiting for the procession to pass through East End to the cemetery beyond.

I couldn’t imagine what she felt. Did she too mourn him? Did she too feel the keen loss of a father?

Will there be a funeral?

Yes.

But . . . he was my father. I remembered her wide eyes back in the Hollow. Her hesitance. Her guilt. Yes, she’d felt something. Not grief, exactly, but perhaps . . . regret.

He slept with La Dame des Sorcières. A witch.

I couldn’t blame her. I couldn’t hate her for what had happened. I’d made a choice, same as the Archbishop. Lou might’ve lied. She might’ve deceived me. But when I’d followed her to the Chateau, I’d chosen my fate, and I’d done it with my eyes wide open. I’d chosen this life. This love. And with my fingers trembling in hers, with her heart beating alongside mine, I still chose it.

I still chose her.

The king can’t possibly honor him.

Once, I would’ve agreed with her. A man tainted by witchcraft deserved no honor. He deserved only judgment—only hatred. But now . . . now I tired of hating that man. Of hating myself. That hatred could crush a person. Even now, it weighed heavily, a millstone around my neck. Strangling me. I couldn’t hold it much longer. I didn’t want to.

Perhaps . . . perhaps Lou had been right. Perhaps a small part of me did resent her magic. My magic. The small part of me still connected to the man below. After seeing what I’d seen, it’d be easy to disparage magic. I couldn’t deny its effects on Lou. And yet . . . Lou had proven time and time again she wasn’t evil. Despite those changes, despite the hurt between us, she was still here—holding my hand, comforting me—as I mourned the father she’d never know. The father I’d taken from her.

Magic was just one part of her.

It was part of me.

And we would find a way forward together.

The voices outside grew louder, rising over the crowd, and an assemblage of clergymen turned down our street. They moved slowly, regally, and incanted the Song of Farewell, their holy vestments soaked through from rain. Behind them, a small army of Chasseurs surrounded the royal carriage. Auguste and Oliana had changed into full mourning regalia. Their faces solemn. False.

Between just the two of us, I’m pleased you killed him.

More carriages rounded the corner, bringing with them notable members of the aristocracy. At the end of the line, the Tremblay carriage appeared. The grief on Pierre’s face seemed genuine, at least. I couldn’t see beyond him to Célie, but her tears would’ve been too. The Archbishop had doted on her.

“Reid.” Lou’s voice lowered to a whisper, and she stared at the last carriage as it appeared around the corner. “It’s him.”

Crafted from gold brighter than even the king’s crown—engraved with angels and skulls and crossbones, his name and reign of service—the Archbishop’s casket remained closed. Of course it did. My chest ached. He’d been unrecognizable, in the end. I didn’t want to imagine him, didn’t want to remember—

My hand slips, and Morgane hisses as blood trickles down her throat. The ebony witch steps closer. “Let her go, or he dies.”

“Manon,” Lou pleads. “Don’t do this. Please—”

“Be quiet, Lou.” Her eyes glow manic and crazed—beyond reason. The Archbishop continues screaming. The veins beneath his skin blacken, as do his nails and tongue. I stare at him in horror.

No. I shook my head, dropping Lou’s hand and reeling backward. He’d once been immortal in my eyes. Strong and unbreakable. A god in himself.

“I know it hurts,” Lou whispered. “But you need to grieve him, Reid, or you’ll never be able to let him go. You need to feel.”

At her words, another memory surfaced, uninvited:

Blood drips from my nose. Father Thomas says I’m a hateful child for brawling with the local street rats. They resent me for my situation in the Church, for the hot food in my belly and the soft bed in my room. Father Thomas says I was found in the trash. He says I should’ve been one of them, should’ve grown up in their hovel of poverty and violence. But I didn’t, and the Church’s hot food made me tall and the Church’s soft bed made me strong.

And I taught them for attacking when my back was turned.

“Come back here!” Father Thomas chases me through the cathedral with a switch. But he’s old and slow, and I outrun him, laughing. He doubles over to catch his breath. “Wicked boy, I shall inform the Archbishop this time, mark my words!”

“Inform me of what?”

That voice makes me stumble, makes me fall. When I look up, the Archbishop looms over me. I’ve only seen him from afar. From the pulpit. After the priests force me to wash my hands and face. After they thrash my backside so I can’t sit during Mass.

I sit anyway.

Father Thomas draws himself up, struggles to breathe. “The boy nearly crippled a child in East End this morning, Your Eminence.”

“I was provoked!” I wipe the blood from my nose, glaring at them. I am not afraid of the switch. I am not afraid of anything. “He and his friends ambushed me.”

The Archbishop raises a brow at my insolence. At my defiance. “And you dealt their punishment?”

“They deserved what they got.”

“Indeed.” He circles me now, assessing. Despite my anger, I am uneasy. I’ve heard of his soldiers. His huntsmen. Perhaps I have grown too tall. Too strong. “‘Let justice roll on like a river, and righteousness like a never-failing stream.’”

I blink at him. “What?”

“What is your name, young man?”

“Reid Diggory.”

He repeats my name. Tastes it. “You have a very bright future ahead of you, Reid Diggory.” To Father Thomas, he nods curtly. “After you’ve finished with the boy, bring him to my study. We begin his training immediately.”

In the street below, Jean Luc marched in my place beside the casket. Beside the Archbishop. Even from afar—even in the rain—I could see his eyes were red. Raw. Hot tears spilled down my own cheeks. I wiped them away furiously. Once, we would’ve comforted each other. We would’ve mourned together. But no longer.

“Again, Reid.”

The Archbishop’s voice cuts through the din of the training yard. I pick up my sword and face my friend. Jean Luc nods encouragingly. “You can do it,” he whispers, lifting his sword again. But I can’t do it. My arm trembles. My fingers ache. Blood runs from a cut on my shoulder.