Grim Lovelies

by Megan Shepherd

  “Beau!” Her cry was hoarse. But just as Countess Quine’s next bolt hurtled across the garden, Tenpenny heard Anouk’s call and spun around to see what was happening. In a few long strides, he got to the shed and shoved Beau out of the way. Beau landed against the stone wall, his shoulder connecting hard enough to make Anouk bristle.

  The bolt of magic clipped Tenpenny in the hip. Anouk cried out. It spread from his hip with alarming speed, immobilizing his legs and his chest, swallowing his neck and head, finally reaching the hand that was still outstretched to protect Beau. In only seconds, he was transformed from the leader of the exiled Goblins into a mass of colorless granite.

  Anouk gasped.

  One of the wooden soldiers wrapped its rootlike fingers around Tenpenny’s stone body and, with one swift motion, lifted the statue off the ground and slammed it against the wall.

  It shattered into dust and pieces.

  Anouk had to steady herself on the windowsill. Her lungs felt robbed of air, like she’d forgotten how to breathe. A statue could be whispered back to life, but there was no returning from rubble and dust. Tenpenny was gone. She clutched the ledge hard enough to leave imprints.

  “No!”

  Below, Countess Quine aimed at Beau again. He was leaning against the stone wall, looking dazed from the fall. He could never get up and run in time.

  She’s going to turn him to stone too.

  In that moment, reason disappeared. She’d never let Beau become a pile of rubble.

  She raised her hands toward the window. Luc called out a warning before Rennar could silence him, but she barely heard him. Hot anger was slick between her ears. It deafened her. Controlled her. She channeled every ounce of Viggo’s blood, every bit of her love for Beau, no longer needing Rennar’s belief in her because she believed in herself.

  “Bomba ak ignis bleu,” she whispered grimly.

  It was quiet. That was the thing about magic. It was best done with whispers, not shouts. And her one whisper, bolstered with the strength of six pints of life-blood, sent a shock wave over the gardens. The lavender in the fields rippled as though a hurricane had passed through; buds, stripped from the plants, rose in the air like a dusky purple cloud. The Goblins fell to their knees from the tremor.

  Each of the wooden soldiers, one by one, burst into blue flames. The smell of wood smoke mixed with the lavender as hot flames turned their wooden bones to ash. A hideous scream pierced the air as Countess Quine sizzled along with them.

  Just like that, the battle outside was over.

  Won.

  Rennar and Mada Zola were caught in a stunned silence. Luc too. Zola ran to a window and leaned out over her charred fields and her ashen soldiers, her garden overrun by the surviving Goblins. Her fingers curled into claws on the windowsill as she let out a furious cry.

  Rennar, though, didn’t seem angered by Countess Quine’s death. Instead, he regarded Anouk with something like amazement, and that felt somehow far more dangerous. Goose bumps sprang up from her head to her eight toes.

  It crashed down on her then: a mistake.

  That impulsive burst of anger had saved Beau and won the battle, but it had cost her every drop of Viggo’s life-essence.

  It felt as though the bones in her legs momentarily vanished, and she had to catch herself on a low wooden beam. A wave of lightheadedness made her see stars. She licked her lips, forcing herself to stand straight. She couldn’t let them see how weak it had made her. They had to believe she was still strong enough to carry through with the contra-beastie spell, even though in her hands and her lips, she felt an awful numbness. Her magic was all but gone. And there were no flowers in the bell tower, no butterflies, not even a spider to swallow down.

  Zola raked her nails through her hair as she spun away from the window. “Vittora didn’t kill your kind soon enough! I won’t make that mistake.”

  Anouk took a shaky step backward. Glanced at the door. Could she make it in time? What about Luc? She couldn’t leave him, wrists bound, at the prince’s mercy.

  Zola raised her hands toward Anouk, but then paused. She saw how Anouk was throwing worried looks at Luc and smiled grimly. She turned toward Luc instead.

  Fresh panic thrummed in Anouk’s body. Not Luc! She bolted around the edge of the bell tower to stop the witch, but she was too weak, too slow. Zola whispered low, and a dark cloud began to surround Luc, crackling and sparking just as it had for Cricket.

  Prince Rennar grabbed Anouk’s arm and pulled her away from the magic cloud. “Anouk, don’t.” His voice was quiet in her ear. “Get too close and you’ll be caught in the same spell.”

  But his words felt distant. What did it matter if she sprouted fur or feathers when so many of her friends had already turned?

  “Luc!” she cried.

  But it was too late. The change had already started. The cloud of sparking light obscured him, but she could make out his limbs shrinking, the twine binding his wrists dropping to the floor. Fine gray fur clouded like smoke around him—​the smallest pelt from the oubliette, transported here by magic—​and began to weave itself onto his bare arms. She fought against Prince Rennar’s grasp, trying to muster enough magic to save Luc, but she was spent. The whispers on her lips had no life behind them.

  As soon as the spell was done, Zola cried out, clutching her side. A slash of pain twisted her face. Something had soured in her, just as it had when Lady Metham pushed herself to do the same spell. Maybe her lungs. Maybe her bowels. But not her heart—​her heart had turned to stone long ago.

  The dark cloud surrounding Luc began to dissipate. Where her friend had been, all six feet of him, there was simply . . . nothing. Confused, she dropped her eyes to the bell-tower floor, and she stifled a cry.

  A mouse was left in his place.

  First Cricket.

  Then Hunter Black.

  Now Luc.

  And outside, Tenpenny was gone, dozens of Goblins were dead, and Beau—​

  Anouk glanced out the window, almost afraid to see what might have happened to Beau. Smoke was rising from the smote topiaries. But there. Beau was on his hands and knees but moving. Alive. He crawled slowly toward the château, one arm streaked with blood.

  Despite the pain twisting her features, Zola lurched forward to catch the mouse and stuff it into one of the wire crow cages. “What, no more magic?” She coughed. “Can’t you save your friend with all that life-blood you’ve been bragging about?”

  Anouk’s gaze fell to the caged mouse. In hours, would she herself be the same? A dog, she thought dimly, or an owl. There would be no more Anouk. It didn’t matter that she’d proven herself to be more than a maid. And her promise to help the Goblins retake London? Worthless. She sank to the floor, her legs like wobbly jam. She felt as weak as Viggo had looked when he was almost drained of blood.

  Mada Zola unhooked another of the wire crow cages. “Do you want to do the honors, Rennar, or shall I?” she asked.

  Rennar’s eyes were flashing again. They held no mercy. A girl in tatters on his floor stirred no pity in him, and yet she wasn’t just some helpless girl. He still wore that odd look of curiosity he’d had when she’d cast the spell to stop the battle. Beau’s words came back to her: He’s fascinated by you. You have something he lost long ago—​youth. Wonder.

  “Yes, I’ll handle this,” he said simply.

  He raised a hand, a gesture as simple as waving away a fly, and cast a spell with a flick of his first two fingers.

  Only it wasn’t directed at Anouk.

  The time she had cast the sleeping spell on Beau, she’d been struck by how instantly it took effect. There had been no yawning, no heavy eyelids, no graceful slump into a chair. No sooner had the whisper left her lips than Beau’s head had connected to the floor with an audible crack.

  The Mada fell the same way. One moment she was standing, and the next she was lying on her back on the turret floor. No scream. No moan. Just small wisps of dust rising in the air and the vibration fr
om her collapse still traveling through Anouk’s ankles. The thunk had been heavy enough to cause the crows perched outside to take wing.

  The witch’s eyes were open. Empty. Her chest did not rise and fall.

  Not a sleeping spell this time.

  It was the second time in three days Anouk had seen a dead witch. She’d thought of them as invincible. Next to witches, she had always felt like a fluttery little gnat beside ancient willows—​an inconsequential, ephemeral thing. And yet she had outlived both Mada Vittora and Mada Zola. She had mourned the death of the first; the death of the second brought her only a feeling of increasing dread, a tightening hollowness where her pulse should have been, because the crown prince of the Shadow Royals did not take a witch’s life and spare hers without a reason.

  “Now that it’s just the two of us,” Prince Rennar said, rolling up his shirtsleeves over sinewy forearms, “I really think you should reconsider my offer.”

  Chapter 38

  Seven and a Half Hours of (New) Enchantment Remain

  The witch’s body blocked Anouk’s path to the door. There would be no escape; in the time it took for her to move one step, Rennar could send her tumbling to the floor with lifeless eyes just like Mada Zola. A gust of wind blew through the turret windows, carrying notes of lavender and ash.

  To be a crow, she thought with a stab of longing. Able to take wing and fly away.

  But that was impossible too. Even the crows were under Rennar’s control.

  Rennar clutched at his right leg, wincing. Anouk frowned. She hadn’t seen any injury; there had been no bullets or falling objects. But his fingers pressed against his thigh as though something inside were fighting to tear through, and a memory came to her. Once, in a fit of anger, Mada Vittora had used magic to kill a Pretty who’d knocked her over in the street. Almost at once, the vitae echo had doubled back on her, crumpling her body like cardboard, and she’d clutched her side in that same grasping way. Later, Anouk had overheard Luc researching herbs that might reverse a liver turned to clay.

  Sweat dripped from Rennar’s brow. His breath was coming fast. Slowly, he let go of his leg and straightened, but there was something unnatural to the way he stood now, as though the leg weren’t a leg anymore but something heavy and stiff, like stone.

  “The vitae echo,” she said, realizing what had happened. “Because you took a life.”

  His only answer was a grimace.

  “Why?”

  He knelt next to the fallen witch. With a touch of powder on his lips and a whisper, the golden bracelet around Mada Zola’s wrist fell to the floor. He picked it up, pooled it in his palm. “Because she isn’t the princess I need.”

  His eyes met hers, and she felt a jolt of dangerous exhilaration.

  “You are, Anouk.”

  She nudged the witch’s body with her toe and spat, “No, merci, I’ve seen what you do to your brides.”

  His lips curved. “Fair enough, but remember that your raw magic is far more powerful than mine. You could kill me ten times over before I’d even get out the first syllable of a whisper. Once you’re trained, that is.”

  Behind him, the caged mouse who had been Luc twitched its whiskers anxiously, its big black eyes fearful. Rennar didn’t spare it a glance. Her anger solidified once more. He didn’t care about Luc or anyone else but himself.

  “Your time is over,” she said firmly.

  His eyes flashed their dark sheen. “So young you are. The world must seem so clear to you, like black-and-white drawings in a book. I envy that certainty. Don’t you think I have asked myself countless times if our time has passed? Each surge of Pretty development, I have watched their ingenuity with respect and thought that, perhaps, at long last, they were ready to stand on their own. And yet each time, I’ve also been witness to the catastrophic results. Do you know what coincides with each of their advancements?”

  She didn’t answer, nor did he seem to expect her to.

  “War. Pretty wars that have nothing to do with us. War between Pretties who have and those who haven’t, between those who believe in gods and those who don’t, between those who live on the sides of a border they invented. Those wars led to massive deaths, poverty, and inequality that we have been trying to rebalance ever since. But every time we shape a better world for the Pretties, their instinct is to drive it into chaos again. That’s their nature. They are like children governed by primal emotions—​jealousy, fear, greed. If we didn’t control them, they would destroy themselves.”

  He poured the golden bracelet from palm to palm in a way that made a soft, musical jangle that she found oddly hypnotic—​until reason snapped her back to herself.

  “The Haute is no better,” she spat. “The Goblins live like paupers.”

  “The witches oversee the Goblins, not I.”

  “But you command the witches. If you’d ever bother to step out of your penthouse palace, you’d see how unfairly all your lesser creatures are treated. But you care only about maintaining your power.”

  Abruptly, he stopped toying with the bracelet. “You’re right.”

  It was the last thing she’d expected to hear, and her thoughts hung mid-breath; she sensed that there was a catch.

  “As formidable a princess as you’d make, you would also be compassionate, and that is what this world needs. And in return, I’ll be whatever you want me to be. The prince from the fairy tales that Pretties tell each other. The prince from those playbills you have pasted to your bedroom walls. I know what you are: a dreamer. I can be a dreamer too.” He paused, eyes flashing. “I’m offering you anything you can imagine and more.”

  He went to the turret window, limping on his right leg, and extended his hand to let the bracelet that had been Zola’s shackle fall. Then he came to her, hands open, a bold look in his eyes.

  “Say yes. For you and for me. For the Pretties and the Haute.”

  In that moment, he was once more the boy in the too-big scarf who had stood on her doorstep. Despite all the centuries he had lived, he didn’t look much older than her. And maybe that hopeful boy was still in there somewhere, someone not so different from her, caught up in a dangerous world of magic and trying to make right what he could. The arrogant mask he so often wore was slipping now, and beneath it she saw a glimpse of vulnerability. He truly needed her, she realized. He couldn’t save his kingdom without her. His eyes were brimming with something that was both soft and wary.

  Prince Rennar wasn’t so cold after all.

  Without warning, a teapot came flying from the direction of the stairs and crashed into the giant bell. She clamped her hands over her ears against the deafeningly loud tolls.

  December emerged from the doorway with her golden teeth bared and her yellow braids whipping like serpents. She pulled a pouch from her vest and poured out a shimmery substance, but instead of swallowing it, she blew it into Rennar’s face. He coughed, waving it away, and scratched at the places on his arms where the shimmering dust clung to his skin.

  “What is this?” he snarled.

  “This is a bold and daring rescue, obviously,” December cried, and then turned and called to someone, “Now! Release it!”

  Two Goblins were in the stairwell—​at December’s signal, they released something gray that tore out from the stairs, snarling.

  Wolf, Anouk thought with a jolt, and then, a half a second later, Hunter Black!

  A broken chain dangled from the wolf’s neck. Anouk felt as though everything was happening too quickly, like time had suddenly sped up. Four strong paws. A snapping jaw. Keen black animal eyes. Tension rippled in the air. The wolf growled low, its hungry gaze going from Anouk to Rennar and back, and she had an awful premonition.

  Hunter Black was an animal now. And she was prey.

  But then the wolf looked at her—​really looked at her.

  Did a glimmer of him remain beneath that fur? It was impossible, she knew, and yet slowly the wolf’s gaze shifted away from Anouk and to the crown prince.


  Its lips drew back in a silent snarl.

  Still clawing at the mysterious powder on his neck and face, Rennar reacted a second too slowly. He reached for his own powder but the wolf’s haunches bunched and it leaped clear across the bell tower. It sank its teeth into Rennar’s arm. The prince didn’t cry out, didn’t flinch. If it weren’t for the paleness spreading up his neck, Anouk wouldn’t even have known he felt the pain. Rennar dug his fingers into the wolf’s neck and tried to wrench it off, but its teeth sank deeper. He couldn’t get to his powder. The wolf whipped its head around like it was thrashing a rabbit in its jaws. Any other day, Rennar might easily have overpowered the wolf, but he wasn’t used to the weight of his stone leg. He tripped and fell back against the wall.

  Anouk felt the urge to run to the wolf, to help. They were a family and that’s what family did. Hunter Black had never been able to fully embrace that fact while human—​he was always the solitary assassin, the lone wolf—​but in the past few days, she’d seen him change.

  December grabbed Anouk’s hand. “The wolf won’t keep him down for long. Hurry. Out the window.”

  “The window?” It was a thirty-foot fall. “No! I can’t leave him and Luc—​the mouse.”

  Footsteps sounded on the spiral stairs. The two other Goblins drew knives, preparing to hold off the lesser counts and duchesses. The wolf suddenly let out a sharp yip of pain. Rennar had slammed it against the wall. Blood trickled from its left eye. With his free hand, Rennar tore open his vial of powder and swallowed it dry.

  “Versik, versik sang . . .”

  Anouk stared in horror as blood appeared at the corners of the wolf’s mouth like thick crimson drool. Rennar continued to whisper in a controlled voice, pinning the wolf against the wall with all his weight. Life drained out of it in messy wine-colored streaks that stained its beautiful thick fur. The wolf whimpered. Its paws scrambled weakly, uselessly. It gave one final whine.

  Anouk couldn’t breathe. No!

  There had to be a trick she could cast . . .