Serpent & Dove

The wooden floor beneath me pitched abruptly, and I fell into someone’s lap. Soft arms enveloped me, along with the cool, crisp scent of eucalyptus. I froze. The smell had haunted my nightmares for the past two years.

My eyes burst open as I attempted to jerk away, but—to my horror—my body didn’t respond. Paralyzed, I had no choice but to stare into my mother’s vivid green eyes. She smiled and brushed a kiss against my forehead. My skin crawled.

“I’ve missed you, darling.”

“What have you done to me?”

She paused, laughing softly. “Extraordinary, those little injections. When Monsieur Bernard brought one to me, I perfected the medicine. I like to think my version is more humane. Only your body is affected, not your mind.” Her smile widened. “I thought you’d enjoy a little taste of your friends’ medicine. They worked so hard to create it for you.”

The floor lurched again, and I glanced around, finally registering my surroundings. The covered troupe wagon. No light filtered through the thick canvas, so I couldn’t discern how long we’d been traveling. I strained my ears, but the steady clip-clops of horse hooves were the only sounds. We’d left the city.

It didn’t matter. No help would be coming. Reid had made that much clear.

Grief swept through me in a debilitating wave as I remembered his parting words. Though I tried to hide it, a solitary tear still escaped down my cheek. Morgane’s finger wiped it away, bringing it to her mouth to taste it. “My beautiful, darling girl. I’ll never allow him to hurt you again. It would be fitting to watch him burn for what he’s done to you, yes? Perhaps I can arrange for you to light his pyre yourself. Would that make you happy?”

The blood drained from my face. “Don’t touch him.”

She arched a white brow. “You have forgotten he is your enemy, Louise. But fret not . . . all will be forgiven at Modraniht. We’ll arrange your husband’s burning before our little celebration.” She paused, giving me the chance to bite and snap at the mention of Reid. I refused. I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.

“You remember the holiday, don’t you? I thought we would make it special this year.”

A tendril of fear crept through me. Yes, I remembered Modraniht.

Mothers’ Night. Dames Blanches from all over Belterra would gather at the Chateau to feast and honor their female ancestors with sacrifices. I had little doubt what my role would be this year.

As if reading my thoughts, she touched my throat affectionately. I gasped, remembering the burst of pain in my scar before I’d collapsed. She chuckled. “Do not worry yourself. I’ve healed your wound. I couldn’t waste any of that precious blood before we reached the Chateau.” Her hair tickled my face as she leaned closer, right next to my ear. “It was a clever bit of magic, and difficult to deconstruct, but even it won’t save you this time. We’re almost home.”

“That place is not my home.”

“You’ve always been so dramatic.” Still chuckling, she reached forward to flick my nose, and my heart stopped at the sight of the golden ring on her finger. She followed my gaze with a knowing smile. “Ah, yes. And naughty, too.”

“How did you—” Choking on the words, I struggled against the injection binding me, but my limbs remained cruelly unresponsive.

Morgane couldn’t have Angelica’s Ring. She couldn’t. I needed it to dispel her enchantment. If I wore it when she drained my blood, the blood would be useless. The magic would be broken. I would die, yes, but the Lyons would live. Those innocent children would live.

I struggled harder, the veins in my throat nearly bursting from the strain. But the more I fought, the more difficult it became to speak—to breathe—around the heaviness of my body. My limbs felt as if they would soon fall through the wagon floor. Panicked, I focused on bringing a pattern forth—any pattern—but the gold winked in and out of focus, blurred and disjointed from the drug.

I cursed bitterly, my resolve quickly crumbling into hopelessness.

“Did you really think I wouldn’t recognize my own ring?” Morgane smiled tenderly and brushed a lock of hair behind my ear. “You must tell me, though, however did you find it? Or was it you who stole it in the first place?” When I didn’t answer, she sighed heavily. “How you disappoint me, darling. The running, the hiding, the ring—surely you realize it’s all folly.”

Her smile vanished as she lifted my chin, and her eyes burned into mine with sudden, predatory focus. “For every seed you’ve scattered, Louise, I’ve scattered a thousand more. You are my daughter. I know you better than you know yourself. You cannot outsmart me, you cannot escape me, and you cannot hope to triumph against me.”

She paused as if waiting for a reply, but I didn’t indulge her. With every ounce of my concentration, I focused on moving my hand, on shifting my wrist, on lifting even a finger. Darkness swam in my vision from the effort. She watched me struggle for several minutes—the intensity in her eyes dulling to a strange sort of wistfulness—before she resumed stroking my hair. “We must all die eventually, Louise. I urge you to make peace with it. On Modraniht, your life will fulfill its purpose at last, and your death will liberate our people. You should be proud. Not many receive such a glorious fate.”

With one last, desperate heave, I attempted to lash out at her—to strike her, to hurt her, to tear the ring from her finger somehow—but my body remained cold and lifeless.

Already dead.

My days passed in torment. Though the drug paralyzed my body, it did nothing to dull the ache in my bones. My face and wrist continued to throb from the witch’s attack, and a hard knot had formed at my throat from being stabbed by so many quills.

To think, Andre and Grue had once been the worst of my problems.

Morgane’s pale fingers traced the knot, circling to the finger-shaped bruises beneath my ear. “Friends of yours, darling?”

I scowled and focused on the burning sensation in my hands and feet—the first indicator of the drug waning. If I were quick, I could snatch Angelica’s Ring and roll from the wagon, disappearing before Morgane reacted. “Once.”

“And now?”

I tried to wiggle my fingers. They remained limp. “Dead.”

As if sensing my thoughts, Morgane withdrew the familiar steel syringe from her bag. I closed my eyes, trying and failing to prevent my chin from quivering. “Your sisters will heal your body when we reach the Chateau. These ghastly bruises must be gone before Modraniht. You will be wholesome and pure again.” She massaged the knot on my throat, preparing it for the quill. “Fair as the Maiden.”

My eyes snapped open. “I’m hardly a maiden.”

Her saccharine smile faltered. “You didn’t actually lie with that filthy huntsman?” Sniffing delicately, she wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Oh, Louise. How disappointing. I can smell him all over you.” Her eyes flicked to my abdomen, and she cocked her head, inhaling deeper. “I do hope you took precautions, darling. The Mother is alluring, but her path is not yours.”

My fingers twitched in agitation. “Don’t pretend you’re above slaughtering a grandchild.”

She sank the quill deep into my throat in response. I bit my cheek to keep from screaming as my fingers grew heavy once more.

“Thy blood is the price.” She caressed my throat longingly. “Your womb is empty, Louise. You are the last of my line. It’s almost a shame . . .” She bent down, brushing her lips against my scar. Déjà vu swooped sickeningly through my stomach as I remembered Reid kissing the same spot only days ago. “I think I would’ve enjoyed killing the huntsman’s baby.”

“Wake up, darling.”

I blinked awake to Morgane’s whisper in my ear. Though I had no way of knowing how much time had passed—whether minutes, hours, or days—the wagon’s cover had finally been discarded, and night had fallen. I didn’t bother trying to sit up.

Morgane pointed to something in the distance anyway. “We’re almost home.”

I could see only the stars above me, but the familiar, crashing sound of waves on rock told me enough. The very air here told me enough. It was different than the fishy air I’d suffered in Cesarine: crisp and sharp, infused with pine needles and salt and earth . . . and just a hint of magic. I inhaled deeply, closing my eyes. Despite everything, my stomach still flipped at being this close. At finally returning home.

Within minutes, the wheels of the wagon clicked against the wooden slats of a bridge.

The bridge.

The legendary entrance to Chateau le Blanc.

I listened harder. Soft, nearly indiscernible laughter soon echoed around us, and the wind picked up, swirling snow into the cold night air. It would’ve been eerie had I not known it was all an elaborate production. Morgane had a flair for the dramatic.

She needn’t have bothered. Only a witch could find the Chateau. An ancient and powerful magic surrounded the castle—a magic to which each Dame des Sorcières had contributed for thousands of years. I would’ve been expected to strengthen the enchantment myself someday if things had been different.

I glanced up at Morgane, who smiled and waved to the white-clad women now running barefoot alongside the wagon. They left no footprints in the snow. Silent specters.

“Sisters,” she greeted warmly.

I scowled. These were the infamous guardians of the bridge. Actors in Morgane’s production—though they did enjoy luring the occasional man to the bridge at night.

And drowning him in the murky waters below.

“Darling, look.” Morgane propped me up in her arms. “It’s Manon. You remember her, don’t you? You were inseparable as witchlings.”

My cheeks burned as my head lolled onto my shoulder. Worse, Manon was indeed there to witness my humiliation, her dark eyes bright with excitement as she ran. As she smiled joyously and showered the wagon with winter jasmine.

Jasmine. A symbol of love.

Tears burned behind my eyes. I wanted to cry—to cry and rage and burn the Chateau and all its inhabitants to the ground. They’d claimed to love me, once. But then . . . so had Reid.

Love.

I cursed the word.

Manon reached for the wagon and pulled herself up. A garland of holly rested atop her head; the red berries looked like drops of blood against her black hair and skin. “Louise! You’ve finally returned!” She threw her arms around my neck, and my limp body fell against hers. “I feared I’d never see you again.”

“Manon has volunteered to accompany you at the Chateau,” Morgane said. “Isn’t that lovely? You’ll have such fun together.”

“I sincerely doubt that,” I muttered.

Manon’s ebony face fell. “Did you not miss me? We were sisters once.”

“Do you often try to murder your sisters?” I snapped.

Manon had the decency to flinch, but Morgane only pinched my cheek. “Louise, stop being naughty. It’s dreadfully dull.” She lifted her hand to Manon, who hesitated, glancing at me, before hurrying to kiss it. “Now run along, child, and prepare a bath in Louise’s room. We must rid her of this blood and stench.”

“Of course, my Lady.” Manon kissed my limp hands, transferred me back to Morgane’s lap, and leapt from the wagon. I waited until she’d melted into the night before speaking.

“Drop the pretense. I don’t want company—her or anyone else. Just post guards at my door, and be done with it.”

Morgane picked the jasmine blooms from the wagon floor and wove them through my hair. “How incredibly rude. She’s your sister, Louise, and desires to spend time with you. What a poor way to repay her love.”

There was that word again.

“So, according to you, love made her watch as I was chained to an altar?”

“You resent her. How interesting.” Her fingers raked through my tangled hair, braiding it away from my face. “Perhaps if it had instead been the stake, you would’ve married her.”

My stomach twisted. “Reid never hurt me.”

For all his faults, for all his prejudice, he hadn’t lifted a finger against me after the witch attacked. He could’ve, but he hadn’t. I wondered now what might’ve happened if I’d stayed. Would he have tied me to the stake? Perhaps he would’ve been kinder and driven a blade through my heart instead.

But he’d already done that.

“Love makes fools of us all, darling.”

Though I knew she was goading me, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. “What do you know about love? Have you ever loved anyone but yourself?”

“Careful,” she said silkily, fingers stilling in my hair. “Do not forget to whom you are speaking.”

But I wasn’t feeling careful. No, as the great white silhouette of the Chateau took shape above me—and Angelica’s Ring glinted on her finger—I was feeling precisely the opposite of careful.

“I’m your daughter,” I said angrily, recklessly. “And you would sacrifice me like some prized cow—”

She wrenched my head back. “A very loud, disrespectful cow.”

“I know you think this is the only way.” My voice grew desperate now, choked with emotions I didn’t care to examine. Emotions I’d locked away tight when I’d grown old enough to realize my mother’s plan for me. “But it’s not. I’ve lived with the Chasseurs. They’re capable of change—of tolerance. I’ve seen it. We can show them another way. We can show them we aren’t what they believe us to be—”

“You have been corrupted, daughter.” She enunciated the last word with a sharp tug to my hair. Pain radiated across my scalp, but I didn’t care. Morgane had to see. She had to understand. “I feared this would happen. They’ve poisoned your mind as they’ve poisoned our homeland.” She jerked my chin up. “Look at them, Louise—look at your people.”

I had no choice but to gaze at the witches still dancing around us. Some faces I recognized. Others I didn’t. All regarded me with unadulterated joy. Morgane pointed to a set of sisters with brown skin and braided hair. “Rosemund and Sacha—their mother burned after delivering an aristocrat’s breech baby. They were six and four.”

She pointed to a small, olive-skinned woman with silver marks disfiguring half her face. “Viera Beauchêne escaped after they tried to burn her and her wife—acid this time instead of flame. An experiment.” She gestured to another. “Genevieve left our homeland with her three daughters to marry a clergyman, severing their connection to our ancestors. Her middle daughter soon sickened. When she begged her husband to return here to heal her, he refused. Her daughter died. Her eldest and youngest despise her now.”

Her fingers gripped my chin hard enough to bruise. “Tell me again about their tolerance, Louise. Tell me again about the monsters you call friends. Tell me about your time with them—about how you spit on your sisters’ suffering.”

“Maman, please.” Tears leaked down my face. “I know they’ve wronged us—and I know you hate them—and I understand. But you cannot do this. We can’t change the past, but we can move forward and heal—together. We can share this land. No one else needs to die.”

She only gripped my chin harder, leaning down next to my ear. “You are weak, Louise, but do not fear. I will not falter. I will not hesitate. I will make them suffer as we have suffered.”

Releasing me, she straightened with a deep breath, and I toppled to the wagon floor. “The Lyons will rue the day they stole this land. Their people will writhe and thrash on the stake, and the king and his children will choke on your blood. Your husband will choke on your blood.”

Confusion flared briefly before hideous despair consumed me, obliterating all rational thought. This was my mother—my mother—and these were her people. That was my husband, and those were his. Each side despicable—a twisted perversion of what should’ve been. Each side suffering. Each side capable of great evil.

And then there was me.

The salt of my tears mingled with the jasmine in my hair, two sides of the same wretched coin. “And what of me, Maman? Did you ever love me?”

She frowned, her eyes more black than green in the darkness. “It matters not.”

“It matters to me!”

“Then you are a fool,” she said coldly. “Love is a nothing but a disease. This desperation you have to be loved—it is a sickness. I can see in your eyes how it consumes you, weakens you. Already it has corrupted your spirit. You long for his love as you long for mine, but you will have neither. You’ve chosen your path.” Her lip curled. “Of course I do not love you, Louise. You are the daughter of my enemy. You were conceived for a higher purpose, and I will not poison that purpose with love. With your birth, I struck the Church. With your death, I strike the crown. Both will soon fall.”

“Maman—”

“Enough.” The word was quiet, deadly. A warning. “We will reach the Chateau soon.”

Unable to endure the cruel indifference on my mother’s face, I closed my eyes in defeat. I soon wished I hadn’t. Another face lingered behind my eyelids, taunting me.

You are not my wife.

If this agony was love, perhaps Morgane was right. Perhaps I was better off without it.

Chateau le Blanc stood atop a cliff overlooking the sea. True to its name, the castle had been built of white stone that shone in the moonlight like a beacon. I gazed at it longingly, eyes tracing the narrow, tapering towers that mingled with the stars. There—on the tallest western turret, overlooking the rocky beach below—was my childhood room. My heart lurched into my mouth.

When the wagon creaked to the gatehouse, I lowered my gaze. The le Blanc family signet had been carved into the ancient doors: a crow with three eyes. One for the Maiden, one for the Mother, and one for the Crone.

I’d always hated that dirty old bird.

Dread crept through me as the doors closed behind us with ringing finality. Silence cloaked the snowy courtyard, but I knew witches lingered just out of sight. I could feel their eyes on me—probing, assessing. The very air tingled with their presence.

“Manon will accompany you day and night until Modraniht. Should you attempt to flee,” Morgane warned, eyes cold and cruel, “I will butcher your huntsman and feed you his heart. Do you understand?”

Fear froze the scathing reply on my tongue.

She nodded with a sleek smile. “Your silence is golden, darling. I cherish it in our conversations.” Turning her attention to an alcove out of my sight, she shouted something. Within seconds, two hunched women I vaguely recognized emerged. My old nursemaids. “Accompany her to her room, please, and assist Manon while she sees to her wounds.”

They both nodded fervently. One stepped forward and cupped my face in her withered palms. “At last you have returned, maîtresse. We have waited so long.”

“Only three days remain,” the other crooned, kissing my hand, “until you may join the Goddess in the Summerland.”

“Three?” I glanced to Morgane in alarm.

“Yes, darling. Three. Soon, you will fulfill your destiny. Our sisters will feast and dance in your honor forevermore.”

Destiny. Honor.

It sounded so lovely, phrased like that, as if I were receiving a fabulous prize with a shiny red bow. A hysterical giggle burst from my lips. The blood would be red, at least.

One of the nursemaids tilted her head in concern. “Are you quite all right?”

I had just enough self-awareness left to know I was most certainly not all right.

Three days. That was all I had left. I laughed harder.

“Louise.” Morgane snapped her fingers in front of my nose. “Is something funny?”

I blinked, my laughter dying as abruptly as it’d started. In three days, I’d be dead. Dead. The steady pounding of my heartbeat, the cold night air on my face—it would all cease to exist. I would cease to exist—at least, in the way I was now. With freckled skin and blue-green eyes and this terrible ache in my belly.

“No.” My eyes rose to the clear night sky above us, where the stars stretched on for eternity. To think, I’d once thought this view better than Soleil et Lune’s. “Nothing is funny.”

I’d never laugh with Coco again. Or tease Ansel. Or eat sticky buns at Pan’s or scale Soleil et Lune to watch the sunrise. Were there sunrises in the afterlife? Would I have eyes to see them if there were?

I didn’t know, and it frightened me. I tore my gaze from the stars, tears clinging to my lashes.

In three days, I would be parted from Reid forever. The moment my soul left my body, we would be permanently separated . . . for where I was going, I was certain Reid couldn’t follow. This was what frightened me most.

Where you go, I will go. Where you stay, I will stay.

But there was no place for a huntsman in the Summerland, and there was no place for a witch in Heaven. If either place even existed.

Would my soul remember him? A small part of me prayed I wouldn’t, but the rest knew better. I loved him. Deeply. Such a love was not something of just the heart and mind. It wasn’t something to be felt and eventually forgotten, to be touched without it in return touching you. No . . . this love was something else. Something irrevocable. It was something of the soul.

I knew I would remember him. I would feel his absence even after death, would ache for him to be near me in a way he could never be again. This was my destiny—eternal torment. As much as it hurt to think of him, I would bear the pain gladly to keep even a small part of him with me. The pain meant we’d been real.

Death couldn’t take him away from me. He was me. Our souls were bound. Even if he didn’t want me, even if I cursed his name, we were one.

I became vaguely aware of two sets of arms around me, carrying me away. Where they took me, I didn’t care. Reid wouldn’t be there.

And yet . . . he would be.