The Saint Nicolas Festival bustled around me and Reid as we left Pan’s the next morning. He’d bought me yet another new cloak—red this time instead of white. Appropriate. But I refused to let the events at the smithy poison my good mood today. Grinning, I glanced up at him and remembered the feel of snow on my bare skin. Of icy wind in my hair.
The rest of the evening had proved just as memorable. At my request, he’d agreed to stay with me in the attic, and I’d made the most of my last night there. I wouldn’t be returning to Soleil et Lune again.
I’d found a new home.
And the way he was currently licking the icing off his fingers . . . My stomach contracted deliciously.
His eyes cut to mine, the corner of his mouth quirking. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
Crooking an eyebrow, I brought his pointer finger to my mouth and licked the rest of the icing off with slow, deliberate strokes. I’d expected his eyes to boggle and dart around us, his cheeks to flush and his jaw to clench, but again, he remained unfazed. This time he actually had the gall to chuckle.
“You are insatiable, Madame Diggory.”
Delighted, I stood on tiptoe to press a kiss to his nose—then flicked it for good measure. “You don’t know the half of it. I still have lots to teach you, Chass.”
He grinned at the endearment, pressing my fingers to his lips before tucking my arm firmly beneath his. “You really are a heathen.”
“A what?”
His cheeks flamed, and he looked away sheepishly. “I used to call you that. In my head.”
I laughed out loud, oblivious to passersby. “Why does that not surprise me? Of course you wouldn’t have called me by, you know, my name—”
“You didn’t call me by my name!”
“That’s because you’re a prig!” The breeze kicked up a muddy Ye Olde Sisters flyer before sending it spiraling back to the snow. I stomped it beneath my boot, still laughing. “Come on. We need to hurry if we want to catch the Archbishop’s special performan—” His eyes sharpened on something behind me, and the word died in my throat. Turning, I followed his gaze and saw Madame Labelle striding purposefully toward us.
“Shit.”
He shot me an aggrieved look. “Don’t.”
“I sincerely doubt curse words will offend her. She’s a madam. Believe me, she’s seen and heard much worse.”
She wore another gown that set off the magnificent blue of her eyes, and her fiery red hair had been swept back with a pearl comb. A small, nagging sensation buzzed at the back of my skull at the sight of her. Like an itch I couldn’t scratch.
“Louise, darling! How marvelous it is to see you again.” She clasped my free hand in both of her own. “I had hoped we might run into one another—”
She stopped short, eyes falling on the mother-of-pearl ring on my finger. I tightened my grip on Reid’s arm. The movement didn’t go unnoticed.
She stared at the ring—then between the two of us—her eyes widening and mouth parting as she took in Reid’s face. He shifted under her scrutiny, clearly uncomfortable. “May we help you, madame?”
“Captain Reid Diggory.” She said the words slowly, as if tasting them for the first time. Her blue eyes were still alight with astonishment. “I don’t believe we’ve been formally introduced. My name is Madame Helene Labelle.”
He scowled at her. “I remember you, madame. You attempted to purchase my wife for your brothel.”
She stared at him raptly, not seeming to notice his hostility. “Your surname means ‘lost one,’ yes?”
I glanced between them, the buzzing at the back of my head growing louder. More insistent. It was an odd, unexpected question. Reid didn’t seem sure how to answer it.
“I believe so,” he finally muttered.
“What do you want, madame?” I asked suspiciously. Everything I knew about this woman warned me she wasn’t here for polite conversation.
Her eyes grew almost desperate as they bored into mine—and held a startlingly familiar intensity. “Is he a good man, Lou? A kind one?”
Reid stiffened at the offensively personal question, but the buzzing in my head began to take shape. I looked between the two of them again, noting the identical shade of their blue eyes.
Holy hell.
My heart sank to somewhere below my ankles. I’d stared into Reid’s eyes long enough now to recognize them in another’s face.
Madame Labelle was Reid’s mother.
“He is.” My whisper was barely audible over the chatter of the market—over my own thumping heart.
She expelled a breath, and her telltale blue eyes fluttered shut in relief. Then they snapped open again, suddenly and alarmingly sharp. “But does he know you, Lou? Truly know you?”
My blood turned to ice. If Madame Labelle wasn’t careful, the two of us would soon be having a very different conversation. I carefully maintained her gaze, articulating an unspoken warning. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I see.”
Unable to help it, I glanced at Reid. His face had quickly transformed from puzzled to irritated. Based on the taut line of his jaw, he didn’t appreciate us talking about him as if he wasn’t there. He opened his mouth—probably to ask what the hell was going on—but I cut him off.
“Let’s go, Reid.” I shot Madame Labelle one last, disparaging look before turning away, but her hand snaked out and grabbed my own—the one bearing Angelica’s Ring.
“Wear it always, Lou, but don’t let her see.” I moved to pull away, alarmed, but the woman’s grip was like iron. “She’s here, in the city.”
Reid stepped forward, fists clenched. “Let go, madame.”
She only clutched me tighter. Faster than she could react, Reid pried away her fingers forcibly. She flinched in pain, but continued on, undeterred, as Reid pulled me down the street. “Don’t take it off!” The panic in her eyes shone clear even from afar, even as her voice began to fade. “Whatever you do, don’t let her see!”
“What,” Reid snarled, his grip on my arm tighter than strictly necessary, “the hell was that about?”
I didn’t answer him. Couldn’t. My mind still reeled from Madame Labelle’s onslaught, but a sudden burst of clarity sliced through the haze of my thoughts. Madame Labelle was a witch. She had to be. Her interest in Angelica’s Ring, her knowledge of its powers, of my mother, of me—there was no other explanation.
But the revelation brought more questions than answers. I couldn’t focus on them—couldn’t focus on anything but the raw, debilitating fear that clawed up my throat, the clammy sweat that seeped across my skin. My gaze darted around us, and an involuntary shiver swept through me. Reid was saying something, but I didn’t hear him. A dull roar had started in my ears.
My mother was in the city.
The Saint Nicolas Festival lost its charm on our return to Chasseur Tower. The evergreens stood less beautiful. The bonfire burned less bright. Even the food lost its allure, the overpowering smell of fish returning to choke me.
Reid assaulted me with questions the whole way. When he realized I had no answers to give, he fell silent. I couldn’t bring myself to apologize. It was all I could do to hide my trembling fingers, but I knew he saw them anyway.
She hasn’t found you.
She won’t find you.
I repeated the mantra over and over, but it did little to convince me.
Saint-Cécile soon rose up before us, and I breathed a sigh of relief. The sigh instantly turned to a shriek when something moved unexpectedly in the alley beside us.
Reid jerked me to him, but his face relaxed the next second. He expelled an exasperated breath. “It’s fine. Just a beggar.”
But it wasn’t just a beggar. Numbness crept through my limbs as I looked closer . . . and recognized the face that turned, the milky eyes that stared at me from the shadows.
Monsieur Bernard.
He crouched over a trash bin with bits of what looked like dead animal dangling from his mouth. His skin—once wet with his own blood—had deepened to pitch black, the lines of his body hazy somehow. Blurred. As if he’d become a living, breathing shadow.
“Oh my god,” I breathed.
Reid’s eyes widened. He pushed me behind him, drawing his Balisarda from the bandolier beneath his coat. “Stay back—”
“No!” I ducked under his arm and threw myself in front of his knife. “Leave him alone! He’s not hurting anyone!”
“Look at him, Lou—”
“He’s harmless!” I grappled with his arm. “Don’t touch him!”
“We can’t just leave him here—”
“Let me talk to him,” I pleaded. “Maybe he’ll come back to the Tower with me. I—I always visited him in the infirmary. Maybe he’ll listen to me.”
Reid looked between the two of us anxiously. After a long second, his face hardened. “Stay close. If he moves to harm you, get behind me. Do you understand?”
I would’ve rolled my eyes had I not been so terrified. “I can handle myself, Reid.”
He grabbed my hand and crushed it to his chest. “I have a blade that cuts through magic. Do you understand?”
I swallowed hard and nodded.
Bernie watched us approach with utterly empty eyes. “Bernie?” I smiled encouragingly, keenly aware of Andre’s knife in my boot. “Bernie, do you remember me?”
Nothing.
I reached out to him, and something flickered behind his vacant eyes when my fingers brushed his skin. Without warning, he lunged over the trash bin toward me. I yelped and stumbled backward, but he held my hand in a vise-like grip. A terrifying leer split his face. “I’m coming for you, darling.”
Pure, unadulterated fear snaked down my spine. Paralyzing me.
I’m coming for you, darling . . . darling . . . darling . . .
Reid pulled me backward with a snarl, twisting Bernie’s wrist with brutal force. His blackened fingers splayed, and I managed to snatch my hand away. As soon as our contact ceased, Bernie fell limp once more—like a marionette with cut strings.
Reid stabbed him anyway.
When the Balisarda pierced his chest, the shadows enveloping his skin melted away into nothingness, revealing the true Monsieur Bernard for the first time.
Bile rose in my throat as I took in his paper-thin skin, the white of his hair, the laugh lines around his mouth. Only his milky eyes remained the same. Blind. He gasped and spluttered as blood—red this time, clean and untainted—bloomed from his chest. I fell to my knees beside him, taking his hands in my own. Tears ran freely down my face. “I’m so sorry, Bernie.”
His eyes turned to me one last time. Then closed.
The covered wagons of Ye Olde Sisters gathered outside the church, but I hardly saw them. Moving as if in another’s body, I floated silently above the crowd.
Bernie was dead. Worse—he’d been enchanted by my mother.
I’m coming for you, darling.
The words echoed in my thoughts. Over and over and over again. Unmistakable.
I shivered, recalling the way Bernie had reanimated at my touch. The way he’d watched me so closely in the infirmary. I’d foolishly thought he’d wanted to end his pain when he’d tried to jump from the infirmary window. But his escape . . . Madame Labelle’s warning . . .
The timing couldn’t have been coincidence. He’d been trying to go to my mother.
Reid said nothing as we walked to our room. Bernie’s death seemed to have similarly shaken him. His golden skin had turned ashen, and his hands shook slightly as he pushed open our bedroom door. Death. It followed wherever I went, touching everyone and everything dear to me. It seemed I couldn’t outrun it. Couldn’t hide. This nightmare would never end.
When he closed the door firmly behind us, I tore off my new cloak and bloody dress, flinging Andre’s knife into the desk. Desperate to scrub away all memory of blood on my skin. The knife wouldn’t protect me, anyway. Not from her. Pulling a fresh dress over my head, I tried and failed to hide my trembling fingers. Reid’s mouth pressed into a thin line as he watched me, and I knew from the tense silence stretching between us that he’d give me no respite.
“What?” I sank onto the bed, weariness beating out all vestiges of pride.
His gaze didn’t soften. Not this time. “You’re hiding something from me.”
But I didn’t have the strength for this conversation now. Not after Madame Labelle and Bernie. Not after the crippling realization my mother knew where I was.
I fell back against my pillow, eyelids heavy. “Of course I am. I told you as much in Soleil et Lune’s attic.”
“What did Madame Labelle mean when she asked if I knew the true you?”
“Who could know?” I sat up, offering him a weak grin. “She’s stark raving mad.”
His eyes narrowed, and he gestured to Angelica’s Ring on my finger. “She was talking about your ring. Did she give it to you?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered.
He tore a hand through his hair, clearly growing more agitated by the second. “Who is coming for you?”
“Reid, please—”
“Are you in danger?”
“I don’t want to talk abou—”
He pounded the desk with his fist, and one of the legs splintered. “Tell me, Lou!”
I flinched away from him instinctively. His fury fractured at the small movement, and he dropped to his knees before me, eyes burning with unspoken emotion—with fear. He caught at my hands like they were a lifeline.
“I can’t protect you if you won’t let me,” he pleaded. “Whatever it is, whatever has you so frightened, you can tell me. Is it your mother? Is she looking for you?”
I couldn’t stop fresh tears from spilling down my cheeks. A greater fear than any I’d ever known gripped me as I stared at him. I had to tell him the truth. Here. Now.
It was time.
If my mother knew where I was, Reid was in danger too. Morgane wouldn’t hesitate to kill a Chasseur, especially if he stood between her and her prize. He couldn’t be blindsided. He had to be prepared.
Slowly . . . I nodded.
His face darkened at the confession. He cupped my cheeks, brushing aside my tears with a tenderness at odds with the ferocity of his gaze. “I won’t let her hurt you again, Lou. I’ll protect you. Everything will be all right.”
I shook my head. The tears fell faster now. “I need to tell you something.” My throat constricted, as if my very body rebelled against what I was about to do. As if it knew the fate that awaited it if the words escaped. I swallowed hard, forcing them out before I could change my mind. “The truth is—”
The door burst open, and to my shock, the Archbishop strode in.
Reid rose and bowed at once, his face registering the same surprise—and wariness. “Sir?”
The Archbishop’s eyes cut between us, fierce and determined. “We just received word from the royal guard, Reid. Dozens of women have collected outside the castle, and King Auguste is nervous. Make haste to disband them. Secure every Chasseur you can.”
Reid hesitated. “Has someone confirmed magic, sir?”
The Archbishop’s nostrils flared. “Would you suggest we wait to find out?”
Reid glanced back at me, torn, but I swallowed hard and nodded. The words I hadn’t spoken congealed at the back of my throat, choking me. “Go.”
He bent to give my hand a quick squeeze. “I’m sorry. I’ll send Ansel to you until I get back—”
“No need,” the Archbishop said curtly. “I’ll stay with her myself.”
We turned as one to gape at him. “You—you, sir?”
“I have an urgent matter to discuss with her.”
Reid’s hand lingered on my trembling knee. “Sir, if I might ask—could you postpone this conversation? She’s had a very difficult day, and she’s still recovering from—”
The Archbishop skewered him with a glare. “No, I cannot. And while you kneel there arguing with me, people could be dying. Your king could be dying.”
Reid’s expression hardened. “Yes, sir.” Jaw taut, he released my hand and brushed a kiss against my forehead. “We will talk later. I promise.”
With a sense of foreboding, I watched him walk toward the door. He paused at the threshold and turned back to me. “I love you, Lou.”
Then he was gone.
