Page 22

The scent of magic strikes me first. It has an unfamiliar edge to it—the earthen scent of decay. I bring a candelabra closer and peer inside.

Within lies a journal, bound in red leather, its pages seeming uneven, loose, either from poor binding or frequent use. The whole is encased in a cage-like contraption of golden filigree.

My pulse surges. I reach for the little book eagerly, too excited to be cautious.

Some of the crisp pages bend under my fingers, but I don’t pay any attention as I lay the book out in front of me.

I trace the golden casing and feel a faint, barely-there hum—it’s old magic, but not so old that it’s reverted back into its raw form.

A tug on the spell within reveals old, faded spell-threads in an incoherent cobweb.

I drift a hand over them quickly and find a tangle of hide and conceal and lock and turn , and more and more and more until I pull away again, blinking.

I don’t dare to try and undo this spell, not here.

Not after how disastrously it went with Marie.

I press on the cage with my thumb and realize that the pattern can move—it’s broken into thousands of tiny pieces, each one capable of rotating. When I turn one, it makes a strange click, and another piece on the opposite side of the journal turns beneath my fingers.

“Ah, merde ,” I groan. “Morgane, you must hate me.”

The journal’s cage is a puzzle.

I shove the journal into the pockets of my dress and squirrel it back to my rooms. I spend the rest of the day wrestling with the strange cage, flicking pieces left and right until I want to throw it out the window in irritation.

When the time for dinner comes, I excuse myself, claiming a headache, and have food brought to my room.

I remain in my chambers to curse and fidget with the journal.

By nightfall, I have accomplished nothing.

I throw the journal onto my bed. “Fine, then,” I say to it. “If you’re going to be so stubborn, then I’m taking you to my father.”

Vibrating with frustration, I throw on my cloak and head for the balcony, clambering quickly down to the ground.

Following the day’s discoveries, the Chateau grounds have taken on an eerie quality.

The usual restless mist lies over the garden, turning the rose hedges into no more than snarled, crawling silhouettes.

Something creaks in the distance. A light swings over to my left and I jump, only to see the shape of a masked servant heading into the palace.

He vanishes into the fog like a specter.

I exhale through the pounding of my heart and pick up the pace determinedly.

I take off the owl-face pendant once I am in the shelter of the trees, trying not to jump at every scrape of pine needles against my skirts. I wish I had brought a lantern—the moon is not bright enough tonight to light the way.

And anything could be in these trees. I shudder at the thought.

Wind whistles. I curse, nearly tripping over a log.

I am not far from the little dock where I last met Marie, and I stop to catch my breath, surprised to feel a pang of longing.

The noble girl might be infuriating, but there’s something about her restrained energy, her calculating eyes, that sends a thrill through me when I think of her.

She’s a challenge—I want to tear her walls down, one brick at a time, and expose all the little secrets cowering behind them.

It’s that curiosity that has me gravitating back toward the dock by the lakeside. I wonder if she is here tonight as a swan. I wonder what she will do if she sees me.

I step through the trees and pause in shock.

There is a girl sitting on the end of the dock, a wraithlike figure against a midnight lake, her pale skirts pooling around slender ankles and cloak discarded beside her. She has taken off her shoes. Her toes are dipped into the water, eddying the surface.

“Marie?” I can’t help my exclamation at seeing her human again.

She doesn’t even startle. She cants her face up toward me, and for reasons I hate to examine, the sight of her steals the breath from my throat.

“Sorciere,” she greets me with mild distaste. “I wondered if I would see you again. It appears you kept half your bargain, at least. Did you mean for this to happen? For me to become human again when the sun set?”

“Of course I did,” I say too fast, and wince internally. “It’s all part of my nefarious plot. I’ve trapped you to become human only when it is convenient to me.”

But I can tell that there’s no fooling her. “I see.” There’s an edge of amusement to it. “How very conniving of you.”

Mothers, she’s annoying . “You make a better swan,” I growl, unable to think of a better retort. “Perhaps I’ll turn you back into one.”

“Will you now? Magic seemed to go swimmingly for you last night, if I recall.”

Her eyes are twinkling, and it sends a hot spike of anger through me.

“What are you doing?”

“Taunting you,” she says innocently. “It’s easier than I expected.”

Oh, I could strangle her. I open my mouth, close it again, and then hiss in frustration. Half of me wants to stomp my feet like a child throwing a tantrum.

Smiling faintly, Marie tilts her head back, her silken hair falling around her shoulders.

The fog presses affectionately against the curve of her spine, and I grit my teeth, hating the way the movement fascinates me.

She looks like a fairy tale in this strange light, a mystery given flesh, spun from tall tales told by moonlight.

“It is a good thing I stayed by the lake,” she remarks. “If I had been flying when the change happened, especially somewhere populated like Verroux, I fear I would have caused quite the stir. A maiden unexpectedly falling from the sky.”

“You’ve been here all day?”

“I’d rather assumed I was forever condemned to be a swan.”

“You don’t seem terribly distressed by the idea.”

A flicker of conflict passes over Marie’s face. “I like having wings,” she says at last, softly.

She doesn’t say anything more, but the silence stretches out before me like an open hand, inviting. For reasons I can’t explain, I find myself walking toward her, plopping down beside her on the dock. “The Dauphin and I went to see the King’s body today.”

“Oh?”

And suddenly I’m telling her everything.

From the visit to the chapel to the search in the library and my discovery of the locked journal.

She makes small sounds of affirmation, makes the occasional offhanded comment.

Finally I realize what she is doing—leaving spaces for me to fill, drawing information out of me.

Her mere presence is a siren song, and I’ve let myself get caught in its thrall.

I cut off abruptly. “You’re clever, aren’t you?”

She looks at me with confusion that I almost believe is genuine. “What do you mean?”

“Listening like this. Waiting until I give you information you can use against me.”

She blinks. “Is that what you think I’m doing?”

“Well, it’s not like you’re actually going to help me,” I say acidly.

She considers me, her bottom lip jutting in the smallest pout. I wonder what it would feel like to catch it between my teeth. Or… No. I stop myself quickly, unsure where the thought has come from, annoyed by its potency. In the same moment, Marie flutters a dainty, long-fingered hand toward me.

“Let me see the journal.”

I draw away from her, barking out a laugh. “Please, do you think I’m an idiot?”

“Odile.” She says it like a scolding parent. “You said it’s a puzzle.”

“It is,” I confirm testily.

“Exactly.” She stretches her arm out further. “That’s my specialty.”

Desperation wins me over. I withdraw the journal from under my cloak and hand it to her tensely, watching for any first sign of betrayal to leap forward and snatch it back.

To my relief, Marie places the journal gingerly on her lap, drawing her feet up out of the water and curling them under her, fog eddying gently around her form.

She frowns at the journal, tracing her index finger over the strange filigree casing.

She tests one side, then the other, observing the rotations of the pieces.

Then she gets to work.

It is like watching a master artist conjure a perfect portrait.

She sets her brows low and pokes her tongue out from between her teeth, abandoning her perfect posture to hunch over the journal like a crone.

There’s genuine delight in her movements, and her face opens up in a way I haven’t seen since we were girls.

When I try to interrupt, she waves me off like I’m a pesky gnat.

I can’t help the surprised chuckle it draws out of me, the bloom of warmth at our old familiarity.

There was a time when I had liked her. When I had nearly, nearly trusted her.

Then she’d ruined it all.

When I was twelve, nearly thirteen years old, my father assigned me the most challenging of my missions.

“I have a new task for you,” Regnault had hummed in my ear, his cold fingers brushing down the back of my neck. I was doing my makeup for the night’s performance—my face stared back at me from the mirror, caked in powder and paint.

“It’s about time.” I grinned at him, tracing dark paint over my eyelids. “I was starting to think you’d forgotten about me. What is it?”

“I want you to infiltrate the Chateau Front-du-Lac as a servant and observe the noblesse. Learn as much as you can: how they speak and act, their likes and dislikes. You will be there for one month, and during your time there, I want you to steal something precious from one of them and bring it back to me.”

My stomach had twisted nervously. This was my most difficult task yet.

But I had never refused Regnault, and I was not about to start now.

I set down my paint brush and put my hands behind my head, tipping back in my chair to look at my father upside-down.

“How shiny do you want this ‘something precious’ to be?”

He ruffled my hair, chuckling. “I leave that to your expertise.”