A decanter of cognac stood on the table nearby him. Playing cards and a pile of gold coins were next to it.
Staying in her raven form, in case she had to quickly escape, she’d clasped a corner of the map in her beak, then carefully tugged it out from under Chance, inch by inch, until it was free. Chance had grumbled and twitched in his sleep, but he hadn’t woken. After rolling the map with her beak, Losca had grasped it in her talons and had flown back out of the window. Landing in the tomato patch hadn’t been her intention but flying for miles with the map had made her so ravenous, she’d felt faint.
“Rest, Losca, and eat your fill,” Fate said. “This fine work of yours deserves a special reward. We shall go walking in the woods tonight to see if we can find a dead thing crawling with nice, juicy maggots.”
Losca smiled and went back to snatching caterpillars.
Fate hurried to her room and spread the map out on her table. With a bent, shriveled finger, she traced Isabelle’s path. Relief washed over her face as she saw that though Isabelle had forged detours, the main path of her life was unchanged and so was its ending. Chance had not managed to alter them. The wax skull was the blue-black of a crow’s wing. In four days, five at the most, Fate estimated, it would turn as black as the grave.
Yet Fate knew that now was not the time for complacency. What if the girl actually managed to get an audience with her stepsister? What if Ella forgave her and invited her to live in the palace?
“Perhaps it’s time to hurry things along a bit,” Fate mused aloud. “Perhaps I can shorten four or five days to one.”
She sat down at her table, picked up a quill, and dipped it into an ink bottle. With sure, practiced movements, she hatched in new contours to the existing landscape. When she finished, she highlighted the hills in Doom, a murky gray, and shaded the hollows with Defeat, a purple as dark and mottled as a bruise.
As she worked on the map, Losca walked into the room. She had recovered from her exertions. Her eyes had regained their bright beadiness, her cheeks their usual pallor.
“Ah, Losca! I’m glad you’re here,” Fate said.
She explained to her that Isabelle was riding to Paris tomorrow, and that she wanted her to fly out early in the morning and lay a little groundwork for the girl’s trip. When she finished speaking, she returned to Isabelle’s map, but instead of rolling it up and putting it away, she scowled. Something was still missing.
She reached for another ink, bright red Destruction, and stippled it liberally over Isabelle’s path.
“Yes,” she said with a satisfied smile. “That should get the job done. Perhaps instead of trying to stop the girl from changing her fate, it’s time to send her rushing headlong toward it.”
The fox ran ahead of Isabelle.
Then she stopped and sat on a tree stump at the side of the road, as Isabelle, riding Nero, caught up to her.
“It was you, wasn’t it, Tanaquill?” she said, stopping Nero a few feet from the stump. Unlike Martin, he was not afraid of foxes.
The fox blinked her emerald eyes.
“You chased Martin past the slaughter yard so that he’d see his old friend. You gave Nero back to me. Thank you. He’s one of the pieces, I know he is.”
The fox lifted her snout and yipped.
Isabelle nodded. “I guess I’ve been wrong all along. About the pieces being goodness, kindness, and charity. You said my heart had been cut away piece by piece by piece, but things can’t be cut away if they weren’t there to begin with.”
The fox licked her paw.
“I’m on my way to Paris now. To see Ella. I think she’s a piece, too,” Isabelle ventured, waiting for the fox’s reaction. But if the fox agreed, she gave no sign.
“Nero made me a better person. He gave me courage,” Isabelle continued. “And Ella? If I was ever good, even a little bit, it’s because of her.”
The fox flicked her tail.
“Tavi thinks Felix is a piece, too. But he’s not. I know he’s not. Can you tell me what it is? Give me a hint? A nudge? Anything, Your Grace?”
The fox turned her head and gazed down the road intently, as if she saw something, or heard something there. Isabelle followed her gaze but could see nothing. When she turned back to the fox, the creature was gone.
“I’m talking to foxes now. That’s almost as bad as talking to cabbages,” she said, then she and Nero continued on their way. They’d put a good six miles of the twenty-mile trip behind them, and the whole way, Isabelle had been wondering if she was crazy.
Everyone thought that going to see Ella was a terrible idea. Tantine said the guards would never let her through. Tavi said Ella wouldn’t want to see her. Madame said she’d probably be robbed and murdered and left in a ditch before she got halfway there.
Only Maman thought the trip was a good idea. She’d told Isabelle to find a duke to marry while she was there. And, of course, the marquis wanted her to go.
Her resolve wavered for a moment, but then she pictured the marquis as he’d looked as he stood on top of his speeding carriage, the wind snatching at his braids and billowing his jacket out behind him.
Most would have been screaming in terror; he’d been laughing, his head back, his arms outstretched to the sky.
She remembered his sparkling amber eyes, and how, when he trained them on her, he made her feel as if luck itself was on her side, as if anything was possible.
And then she clucked her tongue and urged Nero on.
They’d been cantering for a mile or so, when they saw a man walking along the side of the road ahead of them. It was a quiet Sunday, and they’d barely seen anyone else, just a few wagons and a carriage.
Isabelle didn’t think anything of the man, until they got closer to him and she realized that she knew the slope of his shoulders and his easy, loping gait. She recognized the satchel slung over his back and the battered straw hat on his head.
It was Felix.
Isabelle’s stomach knotted. She didn’t want to see him. Whenever they were together for more than two minutes, bad things happened. They argued. Shouted. He kissed her, then walked away. He could be incredibly kind, and carelessly cruel.
Isabelle decided to gallop straight past him, pretending she didn’t realize who he was, but then he suddenly turned around, having heard a rider come up behind him, and her chance was lost.
“Isabelle,” he said flatly, as he realized it was her. It appeared he wasn’t eager to see her, either.
“Hello, Felix,” she said coolly. “I’m on my way to Paris. I’m afraid I can’t stop.”
“That’s a shame.”
The baiting note in his voice irritated Isabelle. She scowled, but Felix didn’t see her reaction. He wasn’t looking at her anymore; his eyes were on Nero.
The horse’s ears pricked up at the sound of Felix’s voice. He trotted up to him, sniffed him, then gave a gusty snort.
“Thanks, boy,” Felix said, laughing as he wiped horse breath off his face.
His harsh expression had melted. Isabelle knew Felix loved Nero and Nero returned the love. He lowered his head, inviting Felix to scratch his ears. Prickly Nero, who shied from anyone’s touch but Isabelle’s, who was far more likely to bite or kick than behave.
Turncoat, Isabelle said silently.
“Why are you going to Paris?” Felix asked.
“To see Ella.”
Felix glanced up at her from under the brim of his hat. “An audience with the queen. That doesn’t happen every day. When did she summon you?”
Isabelle hesitated. “She didn’t, exactly. Summon me, that is.”
“So you’re just dropping in on the queen of France?”
The skeptical tone of his voice shook Isabelle’s confidence, and irritated her even more. It made her wonder, yet again, if the marquis’s idea wasn’t, perhaps, a little bit insane. And if she wasn’t, too.
“I’m going to try to see her,” she corrected. “I need to. There’s … there’s something I need to say to her.
”
“Isabelle?”
“What?”
“Whatever you have to say to Ella … say it, don’t yell it. There are guards in the palace. Lots of them. With swords and rifles. Don’t throw things, either. Not eggs. Not walnuts.”
“Where are you going?” Isabelle asked huffily, keen to change the subject. Obviously, Felix had heard about the orphan incident, too.
“Also to Paris,” Felix said, running his hand over Nero’s neck and down to his shoulder. “I’m delivering a face,” he continued. “Well, half a one.”
“Another war injury?” Isabelle asked, her pique forgotten for the moment.
Felix nodded. “Shrapnel took the left cheek of a captain. His eye, too. He can’t go out. People stare. They turn away from him. I made a half mask to cover the injury. I hope it helps.”
Isabelle was about to say that she was certain it would, but he spoke before she could.
“Nero’s sweaty,” he said, frowning. “You should get down and walk for a bit. Give him a rest. You’ve got miles to go before you reach Paris.”
“Are you telling me how to take care of my own horse?” Isabelle asked. But she leaned forward and felt Nero’s shoulder, too.
“Yes.”
Isabelle, simmering, didn’t budge.
“Afraid?” Felix asked her, a taunt in his voice.
“Of what?”
“That I’ll kiss you again.”
Isabelle glared at him, but she jumped down because he was right, damn him; Nero was a little sweaty.
“You’re the one who’s afraid,” she said testily as she pulled the horse’s reins over his head and led him.
“Oh, am I?”
“You must be. Every time you kiss me, you run away.”
Felix scoffed at that. Which was a mistake.
The rude noise, the dismissive look on his face—they brought Isabelle’s simmering anger to a boil. She stopped dead in the middle of the road, hooked an arm around his neck, and pulled him close. The kiss she gave him was not sweet or soft; it was a hot, hard smash, full of fury and wanting.
She kissed him with everything in her, until she couldn’t breathe, and then she let go. Felix stumbled backward. His hat fell off.
“Run. Go,” she said, gesturing to the road. “That’s what you do.”
Pain twisted in his blue eyes. It hurt Isabelle to know that she’d put it there, but she couldn’t rein in the anger she felt toward him. It had been pent up for so long.
“Why, Felix? Just tell me why,” she demanded. “You owe me that. Did you change your mind? Did you find yourself a better girl? A pretty girl?”
Felix looked as if she’d run a sword through his heart. “No, Isabelle, I didn’t,” he said. “I waited. Alone in the woods. Night after night. For someone who swore she would come but never did. I waited until it turned cold and I had to leave the Wildwood, and Saint-Michel, to find work. I thought you’d changed your mind. Found a rich boy. Some nobleman’s son.”
Uncertainty skittered over Isabelle’s heart like mice in a wall.
“That’s not true,” she said slowly, shaking her head. “After Maman found out about us and made you and your family leave, you said you’d come back for me. You promised to leave a message in the linden tree, but you didn’t.”
Felix raked a hand through his hair. He looked up at the sky. “My God,” he said. “All this time … all this time you thought that I …”
“Yes, Felix, I did. I thought you loved me,” Isabelle said bitterly.
“But, Isabelle,” Felix said. “I did leave a note.”
Isabelle shook her head.
She felt as if she’d ventured out onto a pond that wasn’t frozen solid, and now the ice was cracking under her.
“You didn’t,” she insisted. “I checked. Every night.”
“And I waited every night. Right where I’d told you I’d be. Where we saw the deer and her fawns.”
“No, it’s not true,” Isabelle said, but with less conviction.
“It is. I swear it.”
“What happened to it, then?”
“I—I don’t know,” Felix said, throwing his hands up. “I don’t see how anything could have happened to it. I was worried about it blowing away, so I put a stone on top of it to weigh it down.”
It can’t be true. He must be lying, Isabelle thought. None of this makes any sense.
And then it did. The ice broke and a freezing shock of truth pulled Isabelle under.
“Maman,” she said. “She was so watchful. I bet she saw you hide it. I bet she took it and burned it.”
Isabelle felt like she was drowning. The hurt, the sorrow, the bitterness—all the emotions she’d carried for years, emotions that had been so real to her, she now saw were false. But a new one threatened to overwhelm her, to catch her and tangle her, suffocating her in its cold depths—regret.
She saw herself running to the linden night after night, hoping in vain for a note. She saw Felix, waiting for her in the Wildwood. And then both of them giving up. Believing the worst of each other. And of themselves.
“Oh, Felix,” she said, her anguished voice barely a whisper. “If only I’d found the note. What would our lives have been like if I had? We’d be in Rome now, and happy.”
“Maybe we’d be living by a turquoise sea in Zanzibar. Or high up in a mountain fortress in Tibet.” He laughed mirthlessly. “Or maybe we’d be dead. Of starvation. Exposure. Or sheer stupidity. We didn’t exactly plan the trip out. I had a few coins saved up. You were going to bring some hard-boiled eggs and ginger cake.”
Isabelle desperately wanted to kick free, to surface, to find something hopeful in the dark, roiling water and use it to pull herself out. Could she?
She put a hand on Felix’s chest. Over his heart. And then she kissed him.
“Are you going to walk away again?” she asked afterward, leaning her forehead on his chest. “Don’t. Promise you won’t.”
“I can’t promise that, Isabelle,” he said.
She looked up at him, stricken, and tried to pull away, but he grabbed her hand and held it fast.
“I’m leaving Master Jourdan’s. And Saint-Michel. I’m leaving France,” he said, all in a rush.
“I—I don’t understand …”
“I’m going to Rome, Isabelle. To become a sculptor like I always wanted to.” He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. “Come with me.”
Isabelle and Felix walked down the road in silence, Nero clopping along behind them.
Half an hour had passed since he had asked Isabelle to go with him to Rome.
At first she’d laughed, thinking that he was making an impulsive joke, but she’d soon learned that he was serious.
“I have a place with a master sculptor,” he’d explained. “He wrote me a month ago. I’ll be doing the worst jobs, the ones no one else wants to do, but it’s a start. I’ve given my notice, bought my passage.”
“Felix, when … how …” Isabelle said, dumbfounded.
“I’ve been saving money from every job I’ve had for the past two years,” he’d told her. “From all the feet and hands and eyes and teeth I’ve carved on the side. And from my wooden army. I sold it. A nobleman in Paris bought it. He’s already sent the money. I’ve only three officers left to finish. As soon as I send word, his servant will come to collect it.” He paused, then said, “It’s enough. To buy you a passage, too. To rent an attic room somewhere. Come with me.”
Isabelle wanted to say yes more than she’d ever wanted anything in the entire world, but it was impossible and she knew it.
“I can’t go, Felix. Maman has lost her wits and Tavi’s head is always in the clouds. If I leave, who will take care of them? We’re barely surviving as is. They won’t last a week without me.”
“I can’t get you back just to lose you again,” Felix said now, dispelling the silence. “There must be a way. We’ll find it.”
Isabelle mustered a smile, but she couldn’t imagine what tha
t way might be. “I have to go,” she said. Felix was spending the night in the city, at the home of the captain for whom he’d made the mask, but she needed to get to Paris, and get back to Saint-Michel by evening.
“Stay with me for one more mile. There’s the sign.” Felix nodded at a whitewashed post ahead of them. “We’re nearly halfway there.”
“All right,” Isabelle relented. “One more mile.”
A moment later, they passed the post. On it, a bright, newly painted sign pointed left to Paris. Another pointed right to Malleval. With barely a glance at it, Isabelle and Felix headed left.
Had their emotions not been running so high, had they not been so distracted by talk of Rome, had they not stopped, right in the middle of the road, for another kiss, they might’ve noticed that the white paint on the signs was not just new, but still wet. And that black block letters ghosted through it—Paris under Malleval, Malleval under Paris.
They might’ve seen boot prints around the base of the signpost and freshly disturbed dirt a few feet away from it. Had they cared to dig in that dirt, they would’ve found two empty paint pots and two used brushes—all of it stolen earlier that morning from a nearby farmer’s barn.
But they did not see any of these things, and so continued on their way.
As soon as they were out of earshot, the coal-black raven, who’d been perched out of sight on a leafy branch, flapped her wings noisily and flew off.
There was no need to stay. Her mistress had told her so.
The girl, and the boy with her, would not be coming back.
It was the smoke that first got Isabelle’s attention.
A burnt-hay smell. Sharp and out of place on the summer breeze.
Farmers burned their fields to rid them of weeds and stubble in autumn, when the harvest was in. Not in August.
Stepsister Page 21
