Page 126 of Blood and Moonlight

CHAPTER 51

It’s muffled at first. Distant.

Simon breaks from our kiss and looks up, still holding me against him, and stares at the ceiling as though he can see through it. A door upstairs bangs open, and the screaming becomes louder.

“Is it Juliane?” I ask. “Did she wake?”

Simon shakes his head, eyes wide. “No, that’s Madame Denise.”

Juliane’s governess pounds on other doors above, her shrieks echoing down to us.

“She’s dead! Lady Juliane is dead!”

Simon releases me and staggers back, his gaze going to the teapot on the shelf. “Holy Light, what have I done?”

I take a step forward. “Simon—”

“Cat, you have to leave, now.” Simon spins me around by my shoulders and pushes me to the door. “No one can know you were here.” Throwing the door open, he sweeps me outside. “Go! Now! Get somewhere safe!”

“Simon!”

The door slams shut. I stand on the stoop for a moment, dazed.

Juliane is dead? I step back and my boot lands in a puddle.The pungent scent of valerian root rises from the splashed liquid. The tea Simon poured out.

He thinks he killed her.

I’m not leaving. Even tired, bandaged, and wearing a skirt, I’m able to scale the wall into the garden behind the house. I tiptoe past a window until I’m under Juliane’s room. Digging into my pocket, I find the moonstone and clench it in my unwrapped hand. Magick illuminates the world around me, and I close my eyes to listen.

The effect isn’t very strong, but I’m too tired to concentrate beyond the mild distractions. I’m forced to switch the stone to my other hand and dip my left into the side of the pouch with the voidstone. Once I’ve clumsily pushed everything but what I hear into the pitch-black stone, I release it.

“Juliane! Wake up, please!” The bed creaks as Oudin collapses either on or against it, sobbing. “It was theskonia. We killed her.”

“It was no more than we’ve given her before,” insists Simon.

“Father will blame you, though,” says Lambert. His heavy footsteps move around the room. It sounds like he’s barefoot.

“Maybe he should,” says Simon dully. I can barely hear their voices over Oudin’s weeping—something I didn’t expect from him.

“No,” says Lambert firmly, then pauses. “Where’s Father? Wasn’t he in his bed?”

“He went to the Palace of Justice around midnight, remember?” says Simon.

“I thought I heard him come back a couple of hours ago.” Lambert ends it like a question.

“That must have been me.” Madame Denise’s voice is muffled, like she’s holding her apron over her face. “I went downstairs for a few minutes.”

“What?” Lambert yelps. “You left her alone?”

The woman starts to cry. “She was asleep. I just needed to use the privy and stretch my legs. I was gone less than a quarter hour,” she wails. “When I returned, it was a while before I realized how still she was. She must have passed while I was gone.”

“Someone needs to fetch Father.” Oudin sniffles.

I can’t warn them he’s already here, at the front door. A manservant is telling him what happened. Barely seconds pass before the comte pounds up the stairs and crashes into the room, shouting, “Where is she?”

There’s silence as he takes in the scene. Then, “You killed her, you Prezian bastard.”

“Father, no!” Lambert grunts like he’s restraining him. “You saw what she was like tonight. We all tried to calm her down. He did no more than any of us.”