More images flashed. Broken pieces, fragmented horror. A swollen jaw. Irrepressible hunger. Empty syringes, the burning pain of infection. A chilling laugh and stale bread. And through it all, an acute, unbearable panic.
Where is he where is he where is he where is he
Wolves howling.
Eucalyptus.
Moonbeam hair.
Moonbeam hair.
I blinked rapidly, my vision clearing with Lou’s. With a shrill battle cry, she rushed forward, knife raised. I caught her around the waist, spinning her away from the cauchemar. It still waved its hands frenetically, as if—as if trying to tell me something. My stomach churned violently. “Hold. I think—I think it’s—”
In a clumsy, disjointed movement, the cauchemar pulled back its hood.
I stared at it.
Contrary to Célie’s description, the cauchemar didn’t have shadow-cloaked skin or sharp teeth. Its hair was matted, yes, but its swollen eyes inspired more fear than its namesake. Its broken jaw evoked more rage. My vision tunneled to its lacerated thigh, to the angry red streaks of disease on its russet skin. To the blood crusting its tattered pants. This cauchemar had been beaten. Badly.
It also wasn’t a cauchemar at all.
It was Thierry St. Martin.
Lou twisted from my grasp and sprinted toward him once more. Incredulous, I caught her wrist. “Lou, stop. Stop. This is—”
“Let me go,” she seethed, still struggling viciously. Frantic. Distraught. “Let me kill it—”
Anger flared hot and sudden. Tightening my grip, I dragged her back to my side and kept her there. “Stand down. I won’t ask again. This is Thierry. Remember? Thierry St. Martin.”
At his name, Thierry sagged with relief against the stone basin. I felt his presence in my mind—saw a picture of my own face—before he slurred a single word.
Reeeiddd.
I resisted the urge to go to him, to sling an arm around his shoulders for support. He looked likely to collapse. Lowering my voice, trying to soothe, I murmured, “I’m here. Everything will be all right. Lou recognizes you now. Isn’t that right, Lou?”
She finally, finally stopped struggling, and I relinquished my hold on her. “Yes.” Voice soft, she looked between Thierry and me for a long moment. I stood perfectly still, wary of the odd gleam in her eyes—savage and bright, like that of a cornered animal. “Yes, I recognize him.”
Then she turned and fled.
Barreling into the others, knocking them aside, Lou didn’t slow as she reached the door. Célie pinwheeled backward on impact, but Coco caught her elbow before she free-fell down the stairs. Swearing viciously in response, Beau hurled insults after Lou, but she didn’t stop. The shadows closed around her as she raced out of sight.
Thierry lifted a weak hand. Two of his fingers appeared broken. Voice hitched with urgency, slow with concentration, he said, Caaatch . . . her.
I didn’t stop to think. To hesitate. To consider the resolve hardening in my chest. This sensation—this fiery sense of justice, of righteousness—it felt familiar. Unsettlingly so.
She darted down the stairs below me with unnatural swiftness, already near the ground floor. In seconds, she’d be out the door. “Lou!” My shout reverberated with unexpected fury. I didn’t understand why my hands shook or my teeth clenched. I didn’t understand why I needed to catch her. But I did. I needed to catch her like I needed to breathe. Beau had been right—something was wrong here. Terribly, terribly wrong. It went beyond her magic. It went beyond Ansel’s death. Beyond mourning.
Like fruit left in the sun to rot, Lou had split open, and something foul had grown inside.
Perhaps it’d happened during La Mascarade des Crânes. Perhaps before, perhaps after. It didn’t matter. It had happened, and though my instincts had tried to warn me, I’d ignored them. Now they propelled my feet forward faster. Faster still. They told me if Lou reached the door—if she disappeared into the cliffs beyond—I’d never see her again. That could not happen. If I could just catch her, talk to her, I could make things right. I could make her right. It didn’t make any sense, but there it was. This chase had suddenly become the most important of my life. And I wouldn’t ignore my instincts any longer.
When she cleared the last stair, I took a deep breath.
Then I gripped the spiral railing and vaulted over it.
Dank air roared in my ears as I plunged to the ground. Eyes widening over her shoulder, Lou bolted for the door. “Fu—” Her expletive ended in a shriek as I landed on top of her. Twisting onto her back, she clawed at my face, my eyes, but I seized her wrists and pinned them to the floor. When she continued to buck and thrash, I straddled her waist, broken glass tearing into my knees as we grappled. My weight kept her restrained, however. Immobilized. She smashed her head into my jaw instead. Grinding my teeth, I pushed my forehead against hers. Hard. “Stop it,” I snarled, flattening myself against her. The others descended the stairs in a cacophony of shouts. “What is wrong with you? Why are you running?”
“The cauchemar.” She struggled harder, panting feverishly. “It—it transformed into—into Thierry—” But the lie crumbled in her mouth as Thierry limped forward. In the shards of mirrors, his very real hatred refracted from every angle. His very real injuries. Coco followed, dropping to the floor beside us. She thrust her bloody forearm to the air above Lou’s mouth, the unspoken threat clear. “Don’t make me do it, Lou.”
Lou’s chest rose and fell rapidly beneath mine. Sensing the battle lost, she bared her teeth in a saccharine smile. “Is this how you treat a friend, Cosette? A sister?”
“Why did you run?” Coco repeated. No warmth lingered in her expression as she gazed at her friend. Her sister. Instead, Coco’s eyes glittered with frigid, impenetrable cold. The two could’ve been perfect strangers. No—enemies. “Why did you attack him?”
Lou sneered. “We all attacked him.”
“Not after we’d seen his face.”
“He startled me. Look at the state of him—”
At this, Thierry’s hands curled into fists. Beau winced at his purple fingers. “Perhaps we should return to the chapel, procure supplies,” he suggested. “You need medical attention—”
Herrrr, Thierry interrupted, the word strained, breathless inside our minds.
Célie gasped at the mental intrusion, her eyes flicking wildly between Thierry and me.
“Her, who?” I asked. “What happened to you?” My voice echoed too loud in the dilapidated room, my flushed cheeks and corded neck reflecting back at me in the broken mirrors. I looked unbalanced. Out of control. “Where have you been?”
But it seemed he couldn’t answer. Pictures flickered wildly again, each more incoherent than the last. When his black gaze fixed pointedly on Lou, my stomach plummeted. My hands turned to ice. Sick with trepidation, with regret, I spoke through gritted teeth. “Tell me, Thierry. Please.”
He moaned and slumped against the balustrade. Her.
Célie shook her head as if trying to dislodge an irksome fly. She couldn’t shake his voice from her mind, however. Couldn’t impede his magic. Dazed, she stammered, “But—but what does Louise have to do with”—she gaped at his various injuries before hastily looking away—“w-with your misfortunes?”
“He can’t answer you. Not yet.” Coco’s fierce gaze never wavered from Lou. “He’s exhausted and injured, and the magic required for speech is too much.”
“Was he—do you think he was tortured?”
“Yes.”
“But why?” Célie asked, clearly horrified. “By whom?”
Coco’s eyes narrowed. “He answered the last for us.”
As one, we all looked to Lou, but her attention remained fixed on Coco. They studied each other for what felt like an eternity—neither blinking, neither revealing a flicker of emotion—before a slow, uncanny grin split Lou’s face. “Two princesses fair, one gold and one red,” she sang, her voice familiar yet not. “They slipped into darkness. Now t
he gold one is dead.”
A chill snaked down my spine at the odd words. At her smile. And her eyes—something shifted in them as she stared back at us. Something . . . sinister. They flickered almost silver, like—
Like—
My mind viciously rejected the possibility.
Lou cackled.
Recoiling, Coco exhaled a breathless curse. “No.” She repeated the word like a mantra, her hand flying to her collar, tearing her mother’s necklace from her throat. “No, no, no, no, no—” When she slid the locket along her bloody forearm, it glowed briefly scarlet before clicking open. She thrust it toward me. “Lift her up. Lift her up now.”
I hastened to comply, but Lou struck with the speed of an adder, her teeth sinking deep into the soft flesh of my cheek. I reared backward with a roar. Lifting her knee with alarming force, she connected with my groin. I folded instantly at the spike of white-hot pain. Stars dotted my vision, and waves of nausea wracked my frame. Vaguely, I heard Lou spring to her feet. But I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.
Célie nudged my ribs with her boot. “Get up,” she said, voice low and panicked. Glass crunched and bodies thudded somewhere beyond me. She kicked my side again. “She’s getting away. Get up!”
Groaning, I forced myself to my feet. Though my entire lower half ached, I leapt to join Beau and Thierry near the door, where they struggled to contain Lou. She hissed and spat as Coco tried to force blood to her lips. With one man holding her on each side, I stepped behind, wrapping an arm around her waist and seizing her hair in my fist. I forced her head backward. The movement bared her face to Coco, who acted quickly, smearing blood across Lou’s mouth.
Lou screamed and seized instantly. Blisters formed where the blood touched her lips.
“What is it?” I asked wildly. My stomach rioted with fear, with regret, with treacherous, treasonous resolve. I did not let go. “What’ve you done?”
“I thought your blood would just subdue her—” Beau’s frantic voice echoed my own. He watched in horror as Lou’s back bowed, as she finally slumped in our arms.
Coco stepped back, eyes blazing with satisfaction. “The blood of an enemy poisons.”
The blood of an enemy poisons.
Nonsensical words. Ludicrous ones. And yet . . .
Realization began to take shape in my gut, even as my mind still protested.
Beau shook Lou with rising hysteria, his breath labored. His face red. “What the fuck does that mean?” He shook her harder. “Is she—have we just—?” But Coco only grasped Lou’s chin in answer, forcing open one fluttering eyelid. She isn’t dead. I repeated the words, trying to calm the thunderous beat of my heart. To ignore my mounting apprehension. She isn’t dead. She isn’t dead. She isn’t dead. She’s just—
“You said something was clearly wrong with her.” Coco retrieved her locket from where it’d fallen to the ground. Lou twitched in response. “You said it went beyond grief.”
“That doesn’t mean we poison her,” Beau said incredulously. “She’s still Lou. She’s still my sister.”
“No.” Coco shook her head with vehemence. “She isn’t.”
Lifting the mirror in the locket to Lou, she revealed the stark truth at last: I held long black hair in my hand, not white. The waist I clasped wasn’t right either. Though I couldn’t feel her bones beneath my fingers, I could see each rib in her reflection. Her skin appeared sickly. Alabaster pale. Not the smooth and freckled gold I loved. And scarred—so very scarred.
My pulse slowed to a dull, steady rhythm as I took in the truth. A poison all its own. I felt its cold touch in my chest, felt it crystallize around my heart. When it crept down my spine, my legs—debilitating me—my knees gave out, and I crumpled, dragging Lou’s body down with me. I stared at her slack face in my lap. Those dark circles beneath her eyes had deepened since yesterday. Her cheeks had grown sharper. She’d been fighting an altogether different poison. A disease.
Nicholina le Clair.
Fire burst through the ice like lava, melting everything in its path. My hands shook. My chest heaved. “Get her out,” I snarled.
No Rose Without a Thorn
Reid
Coco crossed to the door swiftly in answer, throwing it open, allowing sun to stream into the dilapidated room. But the sun—it did little to banish the shadows now. Instead, it refracted rainbows of light across broken mirrors, and those broken mirrors . . . they didn’t work right either. They reflected Lou back to me.
This wasn’t Lou.
“Get her out,” I repeated, engulfing the would-be Lou in my arms. My shoulders—my back—rounded to shield her from her own reflection. She didn’t stir at the contact. Beneath my fingers, her pulse felt thready and weak. Her skin even colder than usual. “Get her out now.”
“We need to move.” Coco hurried back to my side, looping an arm under mine. She tried to hoist me to my feet as angry voices echoed toward us from the cliffs beyond. The villagers. The mob. “They’ll be here any moment.” To Thierry, she added, “Is there a back entrance?”
He nodded with supreme effort. He still couldn’t speak, however, instead pointing to the bed. Beau rushed to shift it. Below, a heap of ropes and rusted pots hid a trapdoor. Kicking them aside, he struggled to lift the iron handle. “Thank God you have a carriage, Célie.”
“I don’t—well, actually, I”—she wrung her hands frantically before finishing in a rush—“the wheel shaft snapped on the rocks.”
Beau whipped around to stare at her. “It what?”
“The whole mechanism is completely busted. We can’t use it.”
“You said you had a carriage!” Beau heaved at the door with renewed purpose. “That implies a functional one.”
Célie stamped her foot, her eyes wide on the door. “Yes, well, no one would have let me come along otherwise!”
“Explain.” Ignoring them both, I spoke through numb lips. My voice shook as I looked up at Coco. “Please.”
She knelt beside us, face softening infinitesimally as she reached out to brush Lou’s forehead. “La Petite Larme reflects the truth. It cannot lie.”
“How?”
“I told you. Its mirror came from a drop of L’Eau Mélancolique. The waters have magical properties. Sometimes they heal, sometimes they harm.” She glanced back at the open door, craning her neck to see beyond it. The sun had fully risen now. We’d run out of time. “But they always tell the truth.”
I shook my head in a slow, disoriented movement, even as the villagers’ voices grew louder. They’d round the bend at any second. “No. I mean how is she—how is she inside of—” But I couldn’t finish the question. My throat closed up around the words. I dropped my gaze back to Lou. To the blisters on her lips. Self-loathing churned in my stomach. I hadn’t noticed. How could I not have noticed?
“There’s a spell in my aunt’s grimoire,” Coco explained quickly. Individual voices could be heard now. Individual words. She renewed her efforts to pull me to my feet. “A spell of possession. Old magic.” Possession. I closed my eyes as Coco’s voice darkened. “My aunt betrayed us.”
“But why? We promised her the Chateau—”
“Perhaps Morgane did too.”
“A little help here?” Beau panted. My eyes snapped open as Célie darted to join him.
“But it makes no sense,” I insisted, voice hardening. “Why would she ally with the witch who’s abused your coven at every turn?”
Hinges shrieked as Beau and Célie finally managed to open the trapdoor. The voices outside grew louder in response. Purposeful. Agitated. When neither Coco nor I moved, Beau waved animatedly toward the earthen tunnel. “Shall we?”
Coco hesitated only a second more before nodding. Célie hesitated longer.
“Are we sure this is safe?” She peered into the dark hole with palpable panic. Twin circles of white surrounded her irises. “The last time—”
But Coco caught her elbow as she passed, and the two vanished into the tunnel together.
Beau abandoned the trapdoor—it fell open fully with a thunderous crack of wood on wood—to help Thierry navigate the room. The latter’s entire chest heaved with each breath. Each step. His body was failing. That much was clear. After passing him to Coco, Beau finally turned to me. “Time to go.”
“But Lou—”
“Will die if we stay here. The villagers are going to raze this place to the ground.” He extended a hand. “Come on, little brother. We can’t help her if we’re dead.”
He had a point. I gathered Lou in my arms and followed.
Beau slipped in behind us, clumsily maneuvering an arm through the gap between door and floor to wrench the bed back in place. He cursed, low and vicious, when the door slammed shut on his fingers. Footsteps thundered overhead not a second later. We didn’t linger, racing after the others without another word.
The tunnel let out about a mile down the cliff’s face, where a rocky path led to the beach. Black sand glittered in the early morning light, and the rocks of Fée Tombe leered down at us, macabre and unnatural. Like sentient beings. I shuddered and laid Lou’s body across the sand, careful to remain in the shadow of the cliffs. If any villager thought to glance below for their cauchemar, they wouldn’t see us here. Wouldn’t descend with their torches and pitchforks.
I whirled to face Coco, who’d extracted a vial of honey from her pack. She fed it to Thierry carefully before lifting her forearm to his lips. He swallowed once, twice, and the contusions on his face immediately began to fade. With a shuddering sigh, he collapsed back against the rocks. Lost consciousness within seconds.
But he would be fine. He would heal.
Lou would too.
“Fix her.” My word brooked no argument. “You have to fix her.”
Coco glanced at Lou before bending to rifle in her pack, her face a mask of calm. Her eyes remained tight, however. Her jaw taut. “There is no fixing her. She’s possessed, Reid. Nicholina has—”
“So cast Nicholina out!” I roared, my own mask exploding in a wave of fury. Of helplessness. When Coco jerked upright, glaring at me in silent rebuke, I clenched my head in my hands. Fisted my hair, pulled it, tore it, anything to combat the fierce ache in my chest. Shame colored my cheeks. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry. Just—please. Cast Nicholina out. Please.”
Gods & Monsters Page 7
