Serpent & Dove

I woke to Manon stroking my hair. “Hello, Louise.”

Though I tried to jerk away, my body didn’t so much as twitch. Worse—stars dotted my vision, and the world spun around me. Forcing myself to breathe deeply, I focused on a golden leaf directly above my head. It was one of the many metallic blooms that crept across my ceiling and rustled in the breeze. Despite the open window, the room remained balmy and warm, each flake of snow swirling into silver glitter as it crossed the sill.

I’d once called it moondust. Morgane had gifted it to me on a particularly cold Samhain.

“Careful.” Manon pressed a cool cloth against my forehead. “Your body is still weak. Morgane said you haven’t eaten properly in days.”

Her words spiked through my pounding head, accompanied by another dizzying wave of nausea. I would’ve gladly never eaten again for her to shut up. Scowling, I fixated on the golden light inching steadily across the room. It was morning, then. Two days left.

“Something wrong?” Manon asked.

“If I could move, I’d puke all over your lap.”

She clucked sympathetically. “Morgane said you might have an adverse reaction to the medicine. It’s not meant for such prolonged use.”

“Is that what you call it? Medicine? That’s an interesting word for poison.”

She didn’t answer, but the next moment, she waved a blueberry oatmeal muffin under my nose. I closed my eyes and resisted the urge to gag. “Go away.”

“You need to eat, Lou.” Ignoring my protests, she sank onto the edge of the bed and offered me a tentative smile. “I even made a chocolate hazelnut spread—with sugar this time, not the beastly kind I used to make with salt.”

When we were children, Manon and I had loved nothing more than playing tricks, usually involving food. Cookies with salt instead of sugar. Caramel onions instead of apples. Mint paste instead of icing.

I didn’t return her smile.

She sighed and touched a hand to my forehead in response. Though I strained to jerk away, the effort was in vain, and my head swam sickeningly. I focused on the leaf again, on breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth. Just like Reid had done when he needed to regain control.

Reid.

I closed my eyes miserably. Without Angelica’s Ring, I couldn’t protect anyone. The Lyons would die. The Church would fall. The witches would crush the kingdom. I could only hope Reid and Ansel escaped the fallout. Perhaps Coco could help them—they could sail far away from Belterra, across the sea to Amaris or Lustere . . .

But I would still die. I’d made an odd sort of peace with my fate last night while the castle slept. Even if Morgane hadn’t poisoned me—even if she hadn’t ordered guards outside my door—I had no doubt she’d keep her promise if I somehow managed to escape. Bile rose to my throat at the thought of tasting Reid’s blood. Of choking on his heart. I closed my eyes and willed back the sense of calm I’d conjured last night.

I was tired of running. Tired of hiding. I was just . . . tired.

As if sensing my growing distress, Manon lifted her hands in invitation. “I might be able to help with the pain.”

Stomach rolling, I glared at her for only a moment before conceding. She set to examining my various injuries with gentle fingers, and I closed my eyes. After a moment, she asked, “Where did you go? After you fled the Chateau?”

I opened my eyes reluctantly. “Cesarine.”

With a wave of her fingers, the pounding in my head and gnawing ache in my stomach eased infinitesimally.

“And how did you stay hidden? From the Chasseurs . . . from us?”

“I sold my soul.”

She gasped, lifting a hand to her mouth in horror. “What?”

I rolled my eyes and clarified. “I became a thief, Manon. I squatted in dirty theaters and stole food from innocent bakers. I did bad things to good people. I killed. I lied and cheated and smoked and drank and even slept with a prostitute once. So it amounts to the same thing. I’ll burn in hell either way.”

At her stunned expression, anger flared hot and insistent in my chest. Damn her and her judgment. Damn her and her questions.

I didn’t want to talk about this. I didn’t want to remember. That life—the things I’d done to survive, the people I’d loved and lost in the process—it was gone. Just like my life at the Chateau. Burned to nothing but black ash and blacker memory.

“Anything else?” I asked bitterly. “By all means, let’s continue catching up. We’re such great friends, after all. Are you still bedding Madeleine? How’s your sister? I assume she’s still prettier than you?”

As soon as the words left my mouth, I knew they’d been the wrong things to say. Her expression hardened, and she dropped her hands, inhaling sharply as if I’d stabbed her. Guilt trickled through me despite my anger. Damn it. Damn it.

“Don’t get me wrong,” I added grudgingly, “she’s prettier than me too—”

“She’s dead.”

My anger froze into something dark and premonitory at her words. Something cold.

“The Chasseurs found her last year.” Manon picked at a spot on my bedspread, pain shimmering hard and bright in her eyes. “The Archbishop was visiting Amandine. Fleur knew to be careful, but . . . her friend in the village had broken his arm. She healed him. It didn’t take long for the Chasseurs to notice the smell. Fleur panicked and ran.”

I couldn’t breathe.

“They burned her. Eleven years old.” She shook her head, closing her eyes as if fighting against an onslaught of images. “I couldn’t reach her in time, nor could our mother. We wept as the wind carried her ashes away.”

Eleven. Burned alive.

She gripped my hand suddenly, eyes shining with fierce, unshed tears. “You have a chance to right the wrongs of this world, Lou. How could you turn away from such an opportunity?”

“So you’d still have me die.” The words left me without heat, as empty and emotionless as the chasm in my chest.

“I would die a thousand deaths to get my sister back,” Manon said harshly. Relinquishing my hand, she loosed an uneven breath, and when she spoke again, her voice was much softer. “I would take your place if I could, ma sœur—any of us would. But we can’t. It has to be you.”

The tears spilled down her cheeks now. “I know it’s too much to ask. I know I have no right—but please, Lou. Please don’t flee again. You’re the only one who can end this. You’re the only one who can save us. Promise me you won’t try to escape.”

I watched her tears as if from another’s body. A heaviness settled through me that had nothing to do with injections. It pressed against my chest, my nose, my mouth—suffocating me, pulling me under, tempting me with oblivion. With surrender. With rest.

God, I was tired.

The words left my lips of their own volition. “I promise.”

“You—you do?”

“I do.” Despite the gentle pressure, the coaxing darkness, I forced myself to meet her eyes. They shone with a hope so clear and sharp it might’ve cut me. “I’m sorry, Manon. I never meant for anyone to die. When it—after it happens—I—I promise to look for Fleur in the afterlife—wherever it is. And if I find her, I’ll tell her how much you miss her. How much you love her.”

Her tears fell faster now, and she clasped my hands between her own, squeezing tight. “Thank you, Lou. Thank you. I’ll never forget what you’ve done for me. For us. All of this pain will be over soon.”

All of this pain will be over soon.

I longed to sleep.

I had little to do over the next two days but drift into darkness.

I’d been buffed and polished to perfection, every mark and memory of the past two years erased from my body. A perfect corpse. My nursemaids arrived each morning at dawn to help Manon bathe and dress me, but with each sunrise, they spoke less.

“She’s dying right before our eyes,” one had finally muttered, unable to ignore the increasing hollowness of my eyes, the sickly pallor of my skin. Manon had shooed her from the room.

I supposed it was true. I felt more connected with Estelle and Fleur than I did with Manon and my nursemaids. Already, I had one foot in the afterlife. Even the pain in my head and stomach had dulled—still there, still inhibiting, but somehow . . . removed. As if I existed apart from it.

“It’s time to get dressed, Lou.” Manon stroked my hair, her dark eyes deeply troubled. I didn’t attempt to move away from her touch. I didn’t even blink. I only continued my unending stare at the ceiling. “Tonight is the night.”

She lifted my nightgown over my head and bathed me quickly, but she avoided truly looking at me. A fortnight of inadequate eating on the road had forced my bones to protrude. I was gaunt. A living skeleton.

The silence stretched on as she stuffed my limbs into the white ceremonial gown of Morgane’s choosing. An identical match to the gown I’d worn on my sixteenth birthday.

“I’ve always wondered”—Manon swallowed hard, glancing at my throat—“how you managed to escape last time.”

“I gave up my life.”

There was a pause. “But . . . you didn’t. You lived.”

“I gave up my life,” I repeated, voice slow and lethargic. “I had no intention of returning to this place.” I blinked at her before returning my gaze to the moondust on the sill. “Of seeing you or my mother or anyone here ever again.”

“You found a loophole.” She exhaled softly on a chuckle. “Brilliant. Your symbolic life for your physical one.”

“Don’t worry.” I forced the words from my lips with extreme effort. They rolled—thick and heavy and poisonous—off my tongue, leaving me exhausted. She laid me back against my pillow, and I closed my eyes. “It won’t work again.”

“Why not?”

I peeked an eye open. “I can’t give him up.”

Her gaze dropped to my mother-of-pearl ring in an unspoken question, but I said nothing, closing my eyes once more. I was vaguely aware of someone knocking, but the sound was far away.

Footsteps. A door opening. Shutting.

“Louise?” Manon asked tentatively. My eyes fluttered open . . . whether seconds or hours later, I did not know. “Our Lady has requested your presence in her chambers.”

When I didn’t respond, she lifted my arm over her shoulder and hoisted me from the bed.

“I can only escort you to her antechamber,” she whispered. My sisters drew back—surprised—as we walked through the corridors. The younger ones craned their necks to get a good look at me. “You have a visitor, apparently.”

A visitor? My mind immediately conjured up hazy images of Reid bound and gagged. The horror in my chest felt deadened, however. Not nearly as painful as it would’ve once been. I was too far gone.

Or so I’d thought.

For as Manon left me slumped in Morgane’s antechamber—as the door to the inner rooms swung open—my heart started beating again at what I saw there.

At who I saw there.

It wasn’t Reid bound and gagged on my mother’s settee.

It was the Archbishop.

The door slammed shut behind me.

“Hello, darling.” Morgane sat next to him, trailing a finger down his cheek. “How are you feeling this afternoon?”

I stared at him, unable to hear anything beyond my wildly pounding heart. His eyes—blue like mine, but darker—were wide and frantic. Blood from a cut on his cheek dripped sickeningly onto his gag and soaked the fabric.

I looked closer. The gag had been torn from the sleeve of his choral robes. Morgane had literally silenced him with his holy vestment.

In another time, in another life, I might’ve laughed at the unfortunate situation the Archbishop had landed himself in. I might’ve laughed and laughed until my chest ached and my head spun. But that was before. Now, my head spun for a different reason. There was nothing funny here. I doubted anything would ever be funny again.

“Come, Louise.” Morgane stood and gathered me in her arms, carrying me farther into the room. “You look dead on your feet. Sit and warm yourself by the fire.”

She deposited me next to the Archbishop on the faded settee, wedging herself on my other side. The seat wasn’t big enough for all three of us, however, and our legs pressed together with horrible intimacy. Heedless of my discomfort, she wrapped an arm around my shoulders and pulled my face to the crook of her neck. Eucalyptus choked my senses. “Manon tells me you won’t eat. That’s very naughty.”

I couldn’t force my head back up. “I won’t starve before nightfall.”

“No, I suppose you’re right. I do hate to see you so uncomfortable though, darling. We all do.”

I said nothing. Though I frantically tried retreating back into that welcome darkness, the Archbishop’s leg was too heavy against mine. Too real. An anchor holding me here.

“We discovered this despicable man early this morning.” Morgane eyed him with unabashed glee. “He was wandering around La Forêt des Yeux. He’s lucky he didn’t drown in L’Eau Mélancolique. I must admit I’m a bit disappointed.”

“I . . . don’t understand.”

“Really? I should’ve thought it obvious. He was searching for you, of course. But he wandered a bit too far from his motley band of huntsmen.” Though I hardly dared to hope, my heart leapt at the revelation. She smiled cruelly. “Yours wasn’t among them, Louise. It seems he’s washed his hands of you.”

It hurt less than I anticipated—perhaps because I had anticipated it. Of course Reid hadn’t accompanied them. He, Coco, and Ansel were hopefully safe at sea—somewhere far, far away from the death that loomed here.

Morgane watched my reaction closely. Unsatisfied with my blank expression, she gestured to the Archbishop. “Should I kill him? Would that make you happy?”

The Archbishop’s eyes swiveled to meet mine, but otherwise, his body remained still. Waiting.

I stared at him. I’d once wished this man every version of a fiery and painful death. For all the witches he’d burned, he deserved it. For Fleur. For Vivienne. For Rosemund and Sacha and Viera and Genevieve.

Now, Morgane handed it to me, but . . .

“No.”

The Archbishop’s eyes widened, and a slow, malevolent smile broke across Morgane’s face. As if she’d expected my answer. As if she were a cat examining a particularly juicy mouse. “How interesting. You spoke of tolerance earlier, Louise. Please . . . show me.” With a flourish, she removed the gag from his mouth, and he gasped. She looked between us with fervent eyes. “Ask him anything.”

Ask him anything.

When I said nothing, she patted my knee in encouragement. “Go on. You have questions, don’t you? You’d be a fool if you didn’t. Now is your chance. You won’t get another. Though I’ll honor your request not to kill him, others won’t. He’ll be the first to burn when we reclaim Belterra.”

Her smile finished what her words did not. But you’ll already be dead.

Slowly, I turned to look at him.

We’d never sat this close. I’d never before seen the green flecks in his eyes, the nearly indiscernible freckles on his nose. My eyes. My freckles. Hundreds of questions flooded my thoughts. Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you kill me? How could you have done those terrible things—how could you have murdered innocent children? Mothers and sisters and daughters? But I already knew the answers to those questions, and another rose to my lips instead, unbidden.

“Do you hate me?”

Morgane cackled, clasping her hands together in delight. “Oh, Louise! You aren’t ready to hear the answer to that question, darling. But hear it you shall.” She jabbed her finger into the cut on the Archbishop’s cheek. He cringed away. “Answer her.”

Close enough to watch each emotion flit across his face, I waited for him to speak. I told myself I didn’t care either way, and perhaps I didn’t—for the war raging behind his eyes was also my own. I hated him. I needed him to atone for his heinous crimes—for his hatred, for his evil—yet a small, innate part of me couldn’t wish him harm.

His mouth began to move, but no sound came out. I leaned closer against my better judgment, and his voice rose to a whisper, the cadence of his voice changing as if he was reciting something. A verse. My heart sank.

“‘When thou art come into the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee,’” he breathed, “‘thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a . . . or a witch.’”

His eyes rose to mine, shame and regret burning bright behind them. “‘For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord, and because of these abominations, the Lord thy God doth drive them out before thee.’”

A lump lodged in my throat. I swallowed it down, vaguely aware of Morgane cackling again.

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.

Abomination. The Lord thy God doth drive you out before me.

You are not my wife.

“‘But,’” the Archbishop continued, his voice hardening with resolve, “‘if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.’”

A tear escaped down my cheek. Upon seeing it, Morgane laughed louder. “How touching. It seems the whole lot of them are infidels, doesn’t it, Louise? First your husband, now your father. Neither have provided you anything but heartache. Where is this tolerance of which you spoke?”

She paused, clearly waiting for one of us to respond. When we didn’t, she rose to her feet, smile slipping in disappointment. “I’m surprised at you, Louise. I expected more of a fight.”

“I will not beg for his affection, nor his life.”

She scoffed. “Not his—I meant your precious huntsman’s.”

I frowned at her. Something vaguely urgent knocked at the back of my skull. Something I was missing. Some crucial bit of information I couldn’t quite remember. “I . . . I didn’t expect him to come after me, if that’s what you mean.”

Her eyes gleamed wickedly. “It’s not.”

The vague something knocked harder, insistent. “Then what—?”

The blood drained from my face. Reid.

Morgane’s forgotten words drifted back to me through the heavy fog of my mind. Amidst my heartache—amidst my rage and hopelessness and despair—I hadn’t stopped to consider their meaning.

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.

But that meant—

“I know I promised you the chance to light his pyre.” Morgane’s croon scattered the thread of my thoughts. “But I’m afraid you won’t get the chance, after all. The king’s blood runs in your huntsman’s veins.”

No. I closed my eyes, focusing on my breathing, but quickly reopened them as the darkness beyond my lids began spinning. Through sheer willpower—no, through sheer desperation—I forced my useless limbs into action. They twitched and spasmed in protest as I toppled, falling toward Morgane’s outstretched hands, toward the promise of Angelica’s Ring—

She caught me against her chest in a sick embrace. “Fret not, darling. You’ll see him again soon.”

At a wave of her hand, everything went dark.