Torches lined the earthen passages, casting the faces of passersby in shadow. Fortunately, few wandered this part, and those who did walked purposefully toward something—La Mascarade des Cranes, if their jewel-toned masks were any indication. They took the left-hand tunnels. On a whim, I took the right. The floors sloped gradually at first—the stone below smooth and slippery from the tread of many feet—before dipping unexpectedly. I stumbled, and a man lurched from the shadows, knocking into me and clutching my shoulders. I let out an undignified squeak.
“Where’s your mask, pretty lady?” he slurred, his breath nearly burning the hair from my nose. His own mask covered the upper part of his face, jutting out in a cruel black beak. A crow. In the center of his forehead, a third eye stared down at me. It couldn’t have been coincidence.
And I swore it just blinked.
Scowling—face hot with embarrassment, shoulders tense with unease—I pushed him away. “I’m already wearing one. Can’t you tell?” I resisted the urge to flick my wrist, to lengthen my nails into razor-edged knives and score the porcelain at his cheek. Though the magic to lock Reid out physically had also locked him out emotionally—temporarily, until I lifted the pattern—I still heard his voice within my mind, if not my heart. I needn’t harm this man. I needn’t harm myself. Forcing a wicked grin instead, I whispered, “It’s the skin of my enemies. Shall I add yours?”
He yelped and scrambled away.
Exhaling hard, I continued.
The tunnels wound in a labyrinth of stone. I wandered them in silence for several more minutes, my heart pounding a wild beat in my chest. It grew louder with each step. I walked faster, the hair on my neck lifting. Someone watched me. I could feel it. “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” I breathed, hoping to bolster myself.
At my words, however, a strange wind rose in the tunnel, blowing out the torches and plunging me into darkness. Familiar laughter echoed from everywhere at once. Cursing, I grappled for my knife and tried to find a wall, tried to anchor myself in this insidious darkness— When my fingertips brushed stone, the torchlight sprang back to life.
A flash of white hair disappeared around the bend.
I tore after it like a fool, unwilling to be caught alone in that darkness again, but it was gone. I kept running. When I burst into a long, shadowed room lined with coffins, I stopped short, panting and examining the nearest one in relief. “Father Lionnel Clément,” I said, reading the faded name scratched into the stone. A yellow skull sat on a ledge above it. I glanced at the next name. Father Jacques Fontaine. “Clergymen.”
I crept forward, pausing every so often to listen.
“Célie?” Though soft, my voice echoed unnaturally in the tomb. Unlike the absolute silence of the tunnels, this silence seemed to live and breathe, whispering against my neck, urging me to flee, flee, flee. I grew increasingly jumpy as the moments wore on, as the rooms grew in size. I didn’t know what to look for—didn’t know where even to start. Célie could’ve been in any one of these caskets, unconscious or worse, and I never would’ve known. Still . . . I couldn’t shake the feeling Morgane wanted me to find Célie. There was less fun in a game I had no chance of winning. Morgane wouldn’t have liked that. She wouldn’t have just chosen an arbitrary grave, either. Her games were methodical, every move striking hard and true. Her notes had led me this far, each phrase a riddle, a clue, leading me deeper into her game.
Forlorn within her pall . . . alone but not alone.
Trapped within a mirrored grave, she wears a mask of bone.
It all pointed to here, now, this place. Only her use of the word mirrored made me pause.
Lost in thought—certain I’d missed something—I nearly didn’t notice the dais in the next room, where hundreds of candles illuminated a gilded coffin. Winged angels and horned demons flickered in shadow on the lid, locked in an eternal embrace, while roses and skulls wove together in macabre beauty on each side. It was a masterpiece. A work of art.
Unbidden, I stepped closer, trailing my fingers along the cruel face of an angel. The petals of a rose. The letters of his name.
HIS EMINENCE, FLORIN CARDINAL CLéMENT, ARCHBISHOP OF BELTERRA Verily I say unto thee, today shalt thou be with me in Paradise Florin Clément. I’d laughed at the name once, not knowing it belonged to me. In a different world, I might’ve been Louise Clément, daughter of Florin and Morgane. Perhaps they would’ve loved each other, adored each other, filling our home in East End with sticky buns and potted eucalyptus—and children. Lots and lots of children. An entire house of them, little brothers and sisters with freckles and blue-green eyes. Just like me. I could’ve taught them how to climb trees and braid hair, how to sing off pitch outside our parents’ room at dawn. We could’ve been happy. We could’ve been a family.
Now that—that—would’ve been Paradise.
With a wistful sigh, I lowered my hand and turned away.
It did little good to imagine such a life for myself. My wine had been drawn long ago, and it was not a bouquet of hearth and home, nor friends and family. No, mine smelled of death. Of secrets. Of rot. “Are you in there with him, Célie?” I asked bitterly, mostly to distract myself from such wallowing thoughts. “Seems like the sort of thing Morgane would—” Gasping, I whirled around, eyes wide. “Mirrored grave,” I whispered. An entire house of them, little brothers and sisters with freckles and blue-green eyes. Just like me.
Holy hell.
I knew where she was.
A Necessary Evil
Reid
The others’ disappearances became a presence of its own. It hung over us like a rope, tightening with each small noise. When Beau kicked a pebble, Jean Luc tensed. When Coco inhaled too sharply, Blaise growled. He’d half shifted, eyes glowing luminous in the semidarkness, to better scent Lou—and to better fight whatever roamed these tunnels.
“This doesn’t end with Célie and Lou,” Coco had said fiercely when he’d tried to leave, to search for his missing children. Curiously, he hadn’t been able to smell where they’d gone. Where any of them had gone. They’d just . . . vanished. “It ends with Morgane. This has her clawed hands all over it. Wherever she is, Liana and Terrance will be too. Trust me.”
No one voiced what that meant. Everyone knew.
Even a moment spent under Morgane’s mercy was too long. Too late.
“Are her hands clawed?” Beau had muttered a few moments later.
Coco had raised her brows at him. “You were at Modraniht. You saw them.”
“They weren’t clawed.”
“They should’ve been. She should have a wart and a hunchback too, the hackneyed bitch.”
Even Jean Luc cracked a grin. His Balisarda weighed heavy against my chest. At last—when I could stand it no more—I unsheathed it, handing it to him. “Here. Take it.”
His smile slipped, and he missed a step. “Why—why would you give this back to me?”
I curled his fingers around the hilt. “It’s yours. Mine is gone.” When I shrugged, the movement didn’t feel forced. It felt . . . right. Light. A weight lifted from my shoulders. “Perhaps it’s for the best. I’m not a huntsman anymore.”
He stared at me. Then the dam broke. “You’re a witch. You killed the Archbishop with . . . magic.” His voice dripped with accusation. With betrayal. But there, in his eye, was a sliver of hope. He wanted me to deny it. He wanted to blame someone else—anyone else—for what had happened to our forefather. In that sliver, I recognized my old friend. He was still in there. Despite everything, he still wanted to trust me. The thought should’ve warmed me, but it didn’t.
That sliver was a lie.
“Yes.” I watched as his hope shriveled, as he physically recoiled from me. Blaise’s gaze touched my cheek, curious—studying—but I ignored him. “I won’t deny it, and I won’t explain myself. I am a witch, and I killed our forefather. The Archbishop didn’t deserve it, but he also wasn’t the man we thought he was.”
Visibly deflating, he scrubbed a hand down his face.
“Mother of God.” When he looked up again, he met my gaze with not camaraderie, exactly, but a sense of resignation. “Have you known all this time?”
“No.”
“Did you enchant him to receive your position?”
“Of course not.”
“And does it . . . feel different?” At this, he swallowed visibly, but he did not look away. In that small act of defiance, I remembered the boy who’d befriended me, cared for me, the one who’d always pulled me up when I fell. The one who’d punched Julien for calling me trash boy. Before the greed had hardened us to each other. Before the envy.