“Help him!” Coco lurched to her feet and took Claud by the coat. Tears streamed down her face, burning everything they touched, sparking tendrils of flame at our feet. And still they fell. She was breathless now, no longer shaking him, but clutching his shoulders. Keening. Drowning. “Please, please, bring him back—”
Claud removed her hands gently with a shake of his head. “I am sorry. I cannot interfere. He is . . . gone.”
Gone.
Ansel was gone.
Gone gone gone. The word swirled around me, through me, whispering with finality. Ansel is gone.
Coco sank to the ground, and her tears fell thicker, faster. Fire curled around her like molten petals. I relished the heat. The pain. This place would burn for what it’d taken. I hoped the witches were still here. I hoped the red-faced devil and his friends had not yet escaped. Blowing each shimmering pattern, I fanned the flames higher, hotter. They would all die with Ansel. Each one of them would die.
Laughter echoed from the darkness of the tunnel.
With a guttural roar, I tore after it. Jean Luc said I’d rotted, but that wasn’t true. Magic didn’t rot. It cracked, like a splintering mirror. With each brush of magic, those cracks in the glass deepened. The slightest touch might shatter it. I hadn’t corrected him at the time. I hadn’t wanted to acknowledge what was happening to me—what we’d all known. But now—
“Did you love him, Louise?” Morgane’s voice echoed in the darkness. “Did you watch as the light left those pretty brown eyes?”
Now I shattered.
Light exploded from my skin in every direction, illuminating the entire tunnel. The walls shook, the ceiling cracking and raining stones, collapsing beneath my wrath. I pushed harder, wrenching patterns blindly. I would bring the tunnel down on her head. I would break the world and tear down the sky to punish her for what she’d done. For what I had done. At a gap in the passage, Morgane stood frozen, mouth parted in surprise—in delight. “You are magnificent,” she breathed. “Finally. We can have some fun.”
Closing my eyes, I tipped my head back, holding all of their lives in my fingers. Reid. Coco. Claud. Beau. Célie. Jean Luc. Manon. I tested the weights of each one, searching for a thread to match Morgane’s. She had to die. Whatever the cost.
And if another must die in return? the voice whispered.
So be it.
Before I could pluck the thread, however, a body slammed into me. Blood soaked his shirt. I tasted it in my mouth as he trapped me against the wall, as he lifted my hands above my head. “Stop, Lou. Don’t do this.”
“Let me go!” Half screaming, half sobbing, I fought Reid with all my strength. I spat out Ansel’s blood. “It’s my fault. I killed him. I told him he was worthless—he was nothing—”
At the mouth of the tunnel, Claud, Beau, and Jean Luc struggled to contain Coco. She must’ve followed me in. By her feral expression, she’d planned a similar fate for my mother. Fire roared behind her.
When I turned back to Morgane, she’d disappeared.
“Let her go,” Reid pleaded. Tears and soot streaked his face. “You’ll get another chance. We have to move, or this whole place will come down on top of us.”
I slumped in his arms, defeated, and he exhaled hard, pressing me into his chest. “You don’t get to leave me. Do you understand?” Cupping my face, he wrenched me backward and kissed me hard. His voice was fierce. His eyes were fiercer. They burned into mine, angry and anguished and afraid. “You don’t get to do this alone. If you retreat into your mind—into your magic—I’ll follow you, Lou.” He shook me slightly, tears glistening in those frightened eyes. “I’ll follow you into that darkness, and I’ll bring you back. Do you hear me? Where you go, I will go.”
I looked back to the auditorium. The flames burned too high now for us to retrieve Ansel’s body. He would burn here. This dirty, deplorable place would be his pyre. I closed my eyes, expecting the pain to come, but there was only emptiness. I was hollow. Vacant. No matter what Reid claimed . . . this time, he wouldn’t be able to bring me back.
Something dark and ancient slithered out of that pit.
Old Magic
Lou
Late afternoon sunlight shone through the dusty window, illuminating the warm woods and thick carpets of Léviathan’s dining room. La Voisin and Nicholina stared at me from across the table. They looked out of place in this ordinary, mundane room. With their scarred skin and haunting eyes, they were two creatures of a horror story who’d escaped their pages.
I would bring their horror story to life.
The innkeeper had assured me that we wouldn’t be disturbed here.
“Where were you?”
“The tunnels separated us.” La Voisin met my gaze impassively. We still hadn’t found the others. Though Blaise and Claud searched relentlessly, Liana, Terrance, Toulouse, and Thierry remained lost. I assumed Morgane had killed them. I couldn’t bring myself to care. “When we reached the Skull Masquerade, Cosette had already set it on fire. I instructed my kin to flee.”
“Sea of tears and lake of fire.” Nicholina rocked back and forth on her chair. Her silver eyes never left mine. “To drown our foes on their pyres.”
“My niece tells me you’ve had a change of heart.” La Voisin glanced toward the door, where the others waited in the tavern. All except one. “She says you wish to march on Chateau le Blanc.”
I met Nicholina’s unflinching stare with one of my own. “I don’t want to march on Chateau le Blanc. I want to burn it to the ground.”
La Voisin lifted her brows. “You must see how that upsets my agenda. Without the Chateau, my people remain homeless.”
“Build a new home. Build it on my sisters’ ashes.”
A peculiar glint entered La Voisin’s eyes. A smile touched her lips. “If we agree . . . if we burn your mother and sisters inside their ancestral home . . . it does not solve the larger problem. Though your mother’s methods have grown erratic, we are still hunted. The royal family will not rest until every one of us is dead. Even now, Helene Labelle remains captive.”
“So we kill them too.” My voice sounded hollow to my own ears. “We kill them all.”
La Voisin and Nicholina exchanged a glance, and La Voisin’s smile grew. Nodding—as if I’d passed some sort of unspoken test—she drew her grimoire from her cloak and placed it on the table. “How . . . cruel.”
Nicholina licked her teeth.
“They want death,” I said simply. “I’ll give them death.”
La Voisin rested her hand atop her grimoire. “I appreciate your commitment, Louise, but such a feat is easier said than done. The king has numbers in his Chasseurs, and the Chasseurs have strength in their Balisardas. Morgane is omniscient. She has . . . powerful pieces on her board.”
It seems you have powerful pieces in our game, but do not forgot I have mine. I frowned at the turn of phrase.
“Did you never wonder how she found you in Cesarine?” La Voisin stood, and Nicholina followed. I rose with them, unease prickling my neck. The door behind them remained shut. Locked. “How she slipped a note into my own camp? How she knew you traveled with Troupe de Fortune? How she followed you to this very inn?”
“She has spies everywhere,” I whispered.
“Yes.” La Voisin nodded, moving around the table. I fought to remain still. I would not flee. I would not cower. “Yes, she does.” When she stood only a hair’s breadth from my shoulder, she stopped, staring down at me. “I warned Coco against her friendship with you. She knew I disliked you. She was always so careful to protect you from me, never revealing even a scrap of information about your whereabouts.” Tilting her head, she considered me with predatory focus. “When she heard of your marriage to the Chasseur, she panicked. It made her careless. Reckless. We followed her trail back to Cesarine, and lo and behold—there you were. After two years of searching, we had found you.”
I swallowed hard. “We?”
“Yes, Louise. We.”
I bolted then, but Nicholina flashed in front of the door. In a sickeningly familiar movement, she pushed me into the wall, yanking my hands above my head with inhuman strength. When I smashed my forehead into her nose, she simply leaned closer, inhaling against the skin of my neck. Her blood sizzled against my skin, and I screamed. “Reid! REID! COCO!”
“They can’t hear you.” La Voisin flipped through the pages of her grimoire. “We’ve enchanted the door.”
I watched, horrified, as Nicholina’s nose shifted back into place. “It’s the mice,” she breathed, grinning like a fiend. “The mice, the mice, the mice. They keep us young, keep us strong.”
“What the hell are you always talking about? Do you eat mice?”
“Don’t be silly.” She giggled and brushed her nose against mine. Her blood continued to boil my face. I thrashed away from her—from the pain—but she held strong. “We eat hearts.”