“Stop giving me your body heat,” I snapped, tugging his shirt down his abdomen viciously. “You’re killing yourself.”
“I—” Dazed, he blinked several times, taking in the bloody scene around us. The color he’d regained in his skin vanished at the sight of his dead brethren.
I turned his face toward mine, cupping his cheeks and forcing him to hold my gaze. “Focus on me, Reid. Not them. You need to break the pattern.”
His eyes widened as he stared at me. “I—I don’t know how.”
“Just relax,” I coaxed, pushing his hair off his forehead. “Visualize the cord linking us in your mind, and let it go.”
“Let it go.” He laughed, but the sound was strangled. It held no mirth. “Right.”
Shaking his head, he closed his eyes in concentration. After a long moment, the heat pulsing between us ceased, replaced by the bitter bite of cold, wintry air. “Good,” I said, feeling that cold deep down in my bones. “Now tell me what happened.”
His eyes snapped open, and in that brief second, I saw a flash of raw, unadulterated pain. It made my breath catch in my throat. “They wouldn’t stop.” He swallowed hard and averted his gaze. “You were dying. I had to get you to the surface. But they recognized us, and they wouldn’t listen—” Just as quickly as it’d come, the pain in his eyes vanished, snuffed out as the flame of a candle. An unsettling emptiness replaced it. “I didn’t have a choice,” he finished in a voice as hollow as his eyes. “It was you or them.”
Silence descended as realization clubbed me over the head.
This wasn’t the first time he’d been forced to choose between me and another. This wasn’t the first time he’d stained his hands with his family’s blood to save mine. Oh god.
“Of course.” I nodded too quickly, my voice horribly light. My smile horribly bright. “It’s fine. This is fine.” I pushed to my feet, offering him a hand. He eyed it for a second, hesitating, and my stomach dropped to somewhere around my ankles. I smiled harder. Of course he would hesitate to touch me. To touch anyone. He’d just undergone a traumatic experience. He’d cast his first magic since Modraniht, and he’d used it to harm his brethren. Of course he felt conflicted. Of course he didn’t want me—
I flung the unbidden thought aside, cringing away as if it’d bitten me. But it was too late. The poison had already set in. Doubt oozed from the punctures of its fangs, and I watched—disconnected—as my hand fell back to my side. He caught it at the last second, gripping it firmly. “Don’t,” he said.
“Don’t what?”
“Whatever you’re thinking. Don’t.”
I gave a harsh laugh, casting about for a witty reply but finding none. I helped him to his feet instead. “Let’s get back to camp. I’d hate to disappoint your mother. At this point, she’s probably salivating to roast us both on a spit. I might welcome it, actually. It’s freezing out here.”
He nodded, still frighteningly impassive, and tugged on his boots in silence. We’d just started back for the Hollow when a small movement in my periphery made me pause.
His gaze cut around us. “What is it?”
“Nothing. Why don’t you go on ahead?”
“You aren’t serious.”
Another movement, this one more pronounced. My smile—still too bright, too cheerful—vanished. “I need to take a piss,” I said flatly. “Would you like to watch?”
Reid’s cheeks flamed, and he coughed, ducking his head. “Er—no. I’ll wait right—right over there.” He fled behind the thick foliage of a fir tree without a backward glance. I watched him go, craning my neck to ensure he was out of sight, before turning to study the source of movement.
At the edge of the pool, not quite dead, the last of the Chasseurs watched me with pleading eyes. He still clutched his Balisarda. I knelt beside him, nausea churning as I pried it from his stiff, frozen fingers. Of course Reid hadn’t taken it from him—from any of them. It would’ve been a violation. It didn’t matter that witches would likely happen upon these bodies and steal the enchanted blades for themselves. To Reid, robbing his brethren of their identities in their final moments would’ve been an unthinkable betrayal, worse even than killing them.
The Chasseur’s pale lips moved, but no sound came out. Gently, I rolled him onto his stomach. Morgane had once taught me how to kill a man instantly. “At the base of the head,” she’d instructed, touching the tip of her knife to my own neck, “where the spine meets the skull. Sever the two, and there can be no resuscitation.”
I mimicked Morgane’s movement against the Chasseur’s neck. His fingers twitched in agitation. In fear. But it was too late for him now, and even if it weren’t, he’d seen our faces. Perhaps he’d seen Reid use magic as well. This was the only gift I could give either of them.
Taking a deep, steadying breath, I plunged the Balisarda into the base of the Chasseur’s skull. His fingers stopped twitching abruptly. After a moment’s hesitation, I rolled him back over, clasped his hands across his chest, and replaced his Balisarda between them.
As predicted, Madame Labelle waited for us on the edge of the Hollow, her cheeks flushed and her eyes bright with anger. Fire practically spewed from her nostrils. “Where have you—” She stopped short, eyes widening as she took in our rumpled hair and state of undress. Reid still hadn’t laced his trousers. He hastened to do so now. “Imbeciles!” Madame Labelle cried, her voice so loud—so shrill and unpleasant—that a couple of turtle doves fled into the sky. “Cretins! Stupid, asinine children. Are you capable of thinking with the northernmost regions of your bodies, or are you ruled entirely by sex?”
“It’s a toss-up on any given day.” Marching to my bedroll, pulling Reid along in tow, I threw my blanket over his shoulders. His skin was still too ashen for my taste, his breathing too shallow. He pulled me under his shoulder, thanking me with a brush of his lips to my ear. “Though I am surprised to hear a madam being so prudish.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Sitting up in his bedroll, Beau dragged a hand through his rumpled hair. Sleep still clung to his face. “Just this once, I might call it prudence instead. And that’s saying something from me.” He arched a brow in my direction. “Was it good, at least? Wait—scratch that. If it was with anyone other than my brother, maybe—”
“Shut up, Beau, and stoke the fire while you’re at it,” Coco snapped, her eyes raking every inch of my skin. She frowned at whatever she saw there. “Is that blood? Are you hurt?”
Beau cocked his head to study me before nodding in agreement. He made no move to stoke the fire. “Not your best look, sister mine.”
“She’s not your sister,” Reid snarled.
“And she looks better than you on her worst day,” Coco added.
He chuckled and shook his head. “I suppose you’re both entitled to your wrong opinions—”
“Enough!” Madame Labelle threw her hands in the air, wearisome in her exasperation, and glared between all of us. “What happened?”
With a glance up at Reid—he’d tensed as if Madame Labelle had stuck him with a fire poker—I quickly recounted the events at the pool. Though I skimmed the intimate parts, Beau groaned and fell backward anyway, pulling a blanket over his face. Madame Labelle’s expression grew stonier with each word. “I was trying to maintain four patterns all at once,” I said, prickling with defensiveness at her narrowed eyes, at the spots of color rising to her cheeks. “Two patterns to help us breathe and two patterns to help us hear. It was too much to control the temperature of the water too. I’d hoped I could last long enough for the Chasseurs to leave.” I looked reluctantly at Reid, who stared determinedly at his feet. Though he’d returned his Balisarda to his bandolier, he still gripped its handle with his free hand. His knuckles were white around it. “I’m sorry I couldn’t.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” he mumbled.
Madame Labelle plowed onward, heedless of any and all emotional cues. “What happened to the Chasseurs?”
Again, I glanced at Reid, pr
epared to lie if necessary.
He answered for me, his voice hollow. “I killed them. They’re dead.”
Finally, finally, Madame Labelle’s face softened.
“Then he gave me his body heat on the bank.” I hurried to continue the story, suddenly anxious to end this conversation, to pull Reid aside and comfort him somehow. He looked so—so wooden. Like one of the trees growing around us, strange and unfamiliar and hard. I loathed it. “It was a clever bit of magic, but he almost died from the cold himself. I had to leech warmth from a memory to revive—”
“You what?” Madame Labelle drew herself up to her full height and stared down her nose at me, fists clenched in a gesture so familiar that I paused, staring. “You foolish girl—”
I lifted my chin defiantly. “Would you have preferred I let him die?”
“Of course not! Still, such recklessness must be checked, Louise. You know good and well how dangerous it is to tamper with memory—”
“I’m aware,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Why is it dangerous?” Reid asked quietly.
I turned my head toward him, lowering my voice to match his. “Memories are sort of . . . sacred. Our experiences in life shape who we are—it’s like nurture over nature—and if we change our memories of those experiences, well . . . we might change who we are too.”
“There’s no telling how that memory she altered has affected her values, her beliefs, her expectations.” Madame Labelle sank in a huff onto her favorite tree stump. Breathing deeply, she straightened her spine and clasped her hands as if trying to focus on something else—anything else—than her anger. “Personality is nuanced. There are some who believe nature—our lineage, our inherited characteristics—influences who we are, regardless of the lives we lead. They believe we become who we are born to be. Many witches, Morgane included, use this philosophy to excuse their heinous behavior. It’s nonsense, of course.”
Every eye and ear in the Hollow fixed solely on her. Even Beau poked his head out in interest.
Reid’s brows furrowed. “So . . . you believe nurture holds greater sway than nature.”
“Of course it does. The slightest changes in memory can have profound and unseen consequences.” Her gaze flicked to me, and those familiar eyes tightened almost infinitesimally. “I’ve seen it happen.”
Ansel gave a tentative smile—an instinctive reaction—in the awkward silence that followed. “I didn’t know witchcraft could be so academic.”
“What you know about witchcraft couldn’t fill a walnut shell,” Madame Labelle said irritably.
Coco snapped something in reply, to which Beau fired back. I didn’t hear any of it, as Reid had lifted his hand to the small of my back. He leaned low to whisper, “You shouldn’t have done that for me.”
“I would do far worse for you.”
He pulled back at my tone, his eyes searching mine. “What do you mean?”
“Nothing. Don’t worry about it.” I stroked his cheek, inordinately relieved when he didn’t pull away. “What’s done is done.”
“Lou.” He grabbed my fingers, squeezing gently before returning them to my side. My heart dropped at the rejection, however polite. “Tell me.”
“No.”
“Tell me.”
“No.”
He exhaled hard through his nose, jaw clenching. “Please.”
I stared at him, deliberating, as Coco and Beau’s bickering escalated. This was a bad idea. A very bad idea, indeed. “You already know some of it,” I said at last. “To gain, you must give. I tampered with a memory to revive you on the shore. I exchanged our sight for enhanced hearing, and I—”
To be perfectly honest, I wanted to lie. Again. I wanted to grin and tell him everything would be all right, but there was little sense in hiding what I’d done. This was the nature of the beast. Magic required sacrifice. Nature demanded balance. Reid would need to learn this sooner rather than later if we were to survive.
“You?” he prompted impatiently.
I met his hard, unflinching gaze head-on. “I traded a few moments from my life for those moments underwater. It was the only way I could think to keep us breathing.”
He recoiled from me then—physically recoiled—but Madame Labelle leapt to her feet, raising her voice to be heard over Coco and Beau. Ansel watched the chaos unfold with palpable anxiety. “I said that’s enough!” The color in her cheeks had deepened, and she trembled visibly. Reid’s temper had obviously been inherited. “By the Crone’s missing eyetooth, you lot—all of you—need to stop behaving like children, or the Dames Blanches will dance atop your ashes.” She cut a sharp look to Reid and me. “You’re sure the Chasseurs are dead? All of them?”
Reid’s silence should’ve been answer enough. When Madame Labelle still glared expectantly, however, waiting for confirmation, I scowled and said the words aloud. “Yes. They’re gone.”
“Good,” she spat.
Reid still said nothing. He didn’t react to her cruel sentiment at all. He was hiding, I realized. Hiding from them, hiding from himself . . . hiding from me. Madame Labelle tore three crumpled pieces of parchment from her bodice and thrust them toward us. I recognized Coco’s handwriting on them, the pleas she’d penned to her aunt. Below the last, an unfamiliar hand had inked a brusque refusal—Your huntsman is unwelcome here. That was it. No other explanations or courtesies. No ifs, ands, or buts.
It seemed La Voisin had finally given her answer.
I crushed the last note in my fist before Reid could read it, blood roaring in my ears.
“Can we all agree it is now time to face the monsters,” Madame Labelle said, “or shall we continue to close our eyes and hope for the best?”
My irritation with Madame Labelle veered dangerously close to distaste. I didn’t care that she was Reid’s mother. In that moment, I wished her not death, per se, but—an itch. Yes. An eternal itch in her nether regions that she could never quite scratch. A fitting punishment for one who kept ruining everything.
And yet, despite her cruel insensitivity, I knew deep down she was right. Our stolen moments had passed.
The time had come to move on.
“You said yesterday we need allies.” I stuck my hand into Reid’s, squeezing his fingers tight. It was the only comfort I could offer him here. When he didn’t return the pressure, however, an old fissure opened in my heart. Bitter words spilled forth from it before I could stop them. “Who would we even ask? The blood witches clearly aren’t with us. The people of Belterra certainly won’t be rallying to our cause. We’re witches. We’re evil. We’ve strung up their sisters and brothers and mothers in the street.”
“Morgane has done those things,” Coco argued. “We have done nothing.”
“That’s the point, though, isn’t it? We let it happen.” I paused, exhaling hard. “I let it happen.”
“Stop it,” Coco said fiercely, shaking her head. “The only crime you committed was wanting to live.”
“It matters not.” Madame Labelle returned to her stump with a pensive expression. Though her cheeks were still pink, she’d mercifully lowered her voice. My ears rejoiced. “Where the king leads, the people will follow.”
“You’re mad if you think my father will align with you,” Beau said from his bedroll. “He already has money on Lou’s head.”
Madame Labelle sniffed. “We have a common enemy in Morgane. Your father might be more amenable than you think.”
Beau rolled his eyes. “Look, I know you think he still loves you or whatever, but he—”
“—is not the only ally we’ll be pursuing,” Madame Labelle said curtly. “Obviously, our chances of success are far greater if we persuade King Auguste to join us, as he will undoubtedly command the Chasseurs until the Church appoints new leadership, but there are other equally powerful players in this world. The loup garou, for example, and the melusines. Perhaps even Josephine would be amenable under the right circumstances.”
Coco laughed. “If my aun
t refused to host us with an ex-Chasseur involved, what makes you think she’ll agree to ally with the real things? She isn’t particularly fond of werewolves or mermaids, either.”
Reid blinked, the only outward sign he’d gleaned the content of La Voisin’s note.
“Nonsense.” Madame Labelle shook her head. “We must simply show Josephine that she has more to gain from an alliance than from petty politics.”
“Petty politics?” Coco’s lip curled. “My aunt’s politics are life and death for my people. When the Dames Blanches cast my ancestors from the Chateau, both the loup garou and melusines refused to offer aid. But you didn’t know that, did you? Dames Blanches think only of themselves. Except for you, Lou,” she added.
“No offense taken.” I stalked to the nearest root, hauled myself atop it, and glared down at Madame Labelle. My feet dangled several inches above the ground, however, rather diminishing my menacing pose. “If we’re living in fantasy land, why don’t we add the Woodwose and Tarasque to the list? I’m sure a mythical goat man and dragon would add nice color to this great battle you’re dreaming up.”
“I’m not dreaming up anything, Louise. You know as well as I that your mother hasn’t been idle in her silence. She is planning something, and we must be ready for whatever it is.”
“It won’t be a battle.” I swung my feet in a show of nonchalance, despite the trepidation prickling beneath my skin. “Not in the traditional sense. That’s not her style. My mother is an anarchist, not a soldier. She attacks from the shadows, hides within crowds. It’s how she incites fear—in chaos. She won’t risk uniting her enemies by presenting an outright attack.”
“Even so,” Madame Labelle said coolly, “we number six against scores of Dames Blanches. We need allies.”
“For the sake of your argument, let’s say all parties do form a miraculous alliance.” I swung my feet harder, faster. “The king, Chasseurs, Dames Rouges, loup garou, and melusines all working together like one big happy family. What happens after we defeat Morgane? Do we resume killing each other over her corpse? We’re enemies, Helene. Werewolves and mermaids aren’t going to become bosom buddies on the battlefield. Huntsmen aren’t going to forsake centuries of teaching to befriend witches. The hurt is too long and too great on all sides. You can’t heal a disease with a bandage.”
Blood & Honey Page 4
