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Chapter Nineteen

Rough Day

My dream is cold.

Ice seems to cling to my lashes, my lips, as I rise from my bed and peer around the strange room. It looks familiar—like a place I should recognize—yet it isn’t the nursery. It isn’t Requiem either. A neat coat and skirt—both brilliant blue—hang within the armoire, and a fireplace crackles merrily from across the room, wafting chill instead of heat and casting strange fey light upon the walls. I lift my hand to watch it dance between my fingers. As with the air, this light feels sharp to the touch, like plunging your hand into snow.

Chasseur Tower.

The thought comes instantly, effortlessly, and on the wings of one realization comes another: I am not alone in this room.

My head turns as though suspended in a substance lighter and thinner than air, yet I have no difficulty breathing. Beside me on the bed, two young women sit with their faces drawn and anxious. They stare at a third woman—this one older, her long black hair beginning to gray at the temples—who rifles through a small desk near the door. “There must be something ,” the woman mutters bitterly, more to herself than the others. “You cannot have looked properly.”

The young women exchange a forlorn glance.

“Perhaps you’re right, Madame Tremblay,” the first says, twisting the moonstone ring around her finger.

The second clasps scarred hands in her lap. “We probably did miss something.”

Lou and Coco.

Again, the knowledge simply crystallizes, as does the fact that I know these women. I call them friends. Anticipation gusts to life inside me at the realization, and I shoot to my feet, darting around the bed to face them. As if she can sense my presence, Lou stiffens with a slight frown, but she doesn’t look at me. None of them do. I’m not certain if this should upset me. Indeed, I’m not certain if I should feel anything at all, so I sit meekly instead.

At the foot of the bed, a wrinkled green quilt spills over the edge. No one folds it. No one even touches it.

I must have left it like that , I realize suddenly. But why wouldn’t they fix it?

Madame Tremblay—no, Maman —straightens with familiar pursed lips. They promise a slew of criticisms if Lou or Coco dares put a single toe out of line. Fortunately, the girls remain quiet, watching as Maman piles books and jewelry and two golden lockpicks atop the desk. “The Chasseurs should expect zero donations from us this coming year. The entire lot of them are useless.” Maman yanks out the drawer too fast and hisses when blood wells on her index finger, a splinter of wood sticking out of her skin like a white flag of surrender.

“Madame Tremblay,” Lou murmurs quietly, “please allow one of us to heal you—”

“Absolutely not.” Maman straightens, brushing her hair aside, and blood paints the gray ones scarlet. “Pardon my honesty, but magic is... well, it is vile . Indeed, it is why we’re in this mess in the first place. A week ,” she seethes. “My daughter has been missing for a week , and what progress have you made in returning her?”

“I promise we have more eyes searching Belterra than you could fit in that magnificent handbag.” Lou offers a weak smile—a strained one—and squeezes her moonstone ring so tightly that it begins to melt her flesh. Coco reaches out and snatches her hand. Lou’s skin soothes instantly, and the ring returns to its previous impeccable shape.

They don’t release each other’s hands, however.

The sight of their clasped fingers fills me with a sense of both comfort and longing.

Maman shoves the drawer back in place, and the desk rattles as books— my books—wobble dangerously on the shelf above it. Almost magically, however, they shift an inch backward, away from the ledge.

Maman still notices, straightening her shoulders and lifting her chin indignantly. “I do not approve. Whatever you and your... your Dames Blanches are doing, I do not approve .”

“You don’t need to approve,” Coco says. Anyone else would’ve delivered the retort under their breath—probably served with an eye roll—but she meets Maman’s gaze directly. “We want to find Célie just as much as you, Madame Tremblay, and we’re going to do whatever is necessary until we do. Including use magic. There is no other option.”

Find Célie.

Find Célie?

Confusion dances around my head like a flurry of fresh snowflakes. I can’t imagine why they would need to find me when I’m right here. I drift closer to my friends, resting my hand on theirs. Lou straightens, glancing at Coco with narrowed eyes.

Perhaps I’m not the only one confused. “I’m right here,” I whisper to her.

My words ricochet off the walls, met with an echo of deafening silence. I sit in it, certain I’m meant to be doing something too. Searching for something? No, perhaps that isn’t right. Perhaps I’m meant to be sad . But why? Why can’t I remember?

“On that , we can agree.” Maman nods once, terse but apparently satisfied. “I want my daughter back. No matter the cost.”

Coco releases Lou, rising to her feet. She stands taller than Maman, and the latter must look up to meet Coco’s gaze. “We will find her, madame.”

Maman blinks, and I wait for her lips to loosen, to fling sharp words like knives. Instead—to my utter shock—her eyes shine overbright, and a tear slips down her cheek. She wipes it away quickly, but my friends still notice. A sapphire handkerchief drifts across the room on a phantom breeze and lands like a butterfly on Maman’s shoulder. She plucks it up and drops it atop the desk.

Though Lou shrugs at the silent rebuke, nonchalant, I know her well enough to spot the concern darkening her blue-green eyes. “There isn’t anything I’ve lost that I haven’t soon found, Madame Tremblay. Your daughter won’t be any different. One way or another, we will find her.”

“Thank you.” Maman glances away from the desk and moves toward the door as a knock sounds upon it. Once, twice. Then three, four, five times.

I smile in spite of myself.

I’ve heard this knock a dozen times before. Possibly a hundred. Jean Luc said we needed it, a way of knowing who was at my door, of knowing whether or not they were safe. Of course, he was the only one who ever used it. And he was only ever safe.

Wasn’t he?

Emotion burns like acid up my throat, but I can’t discern what, exactly, I am feeling. It hurts too much to contemplate, like an infected wound left to fester. I cannot touch it. That would only make it worse.

The door opens with a flick of Lou’s wrist, and—

There he is.

Jean Luc.

Cloaked in blue and silver—a sparkling Balisarda at his side—his eyes widen when he takes in my mother. “M-Madame Tremblay!” He bows instantly. “I had no idea you were visiting the Tower today. You... you should have an escort. Let me find Frederic. He can assist you—”

“No need.” Maman lifts her chin, and though she stands much shorter than Jean Luc, she manages to glare down at him all the same. “And this was not a social call. Your investigations are failing, Captain. The time has come for me to conduct one of my own.”

His expression falls. “Please, Madame Tremblay, we’re doing what we can.”

“Oh, I believe they are.” Maman points grudgingly to Lou and Coco. “But last I saw, your huntsmen were pecking through farmland and bushes like a flock of useless chickens.”

He flinches and looks away swiftly. “They’ve been ordered to search every inch of Belterra. That includes farmland.”

“My daughter has not been stashed inside a bushel of blueberries .” Her voice cracks, and three more tears leak over her cheeks. Still standing in the threshold, Jean Luc risks a quick glance up at her. His mouth parts when he sees her tears.

Lou attempts to fill the silence with a quiet, “It’s true.” Then— “Célie would never have risked staining her clothes—uniform, gown, or otherwise.”

“Nothing would have made her more violent,” Coco agrees.

Jean Luc rolls his eyes at them, ceasing only when Maman jabs a finger in his direction. “I do not care what title you call yourself. I do not care if it is captain or fiancé. If you don’t find my daughter, I won’t rest until this tower has been dismantled and used as kindling.”

She pushes past him with an elegance I could never emulate, her anger honed to a knifepoint. Lifting her skirts as she moves into the hallway, she straightens again, her posture impeccable and her spine ramrod stiff. A portrait-perfect stance. She arches her brow at him. “Well?”

“Yes, Madame Tremblay.” Jean Luc bows again, lifting his right hand over his heart in a silent promise. “Would you care for an escort back to your carriage?”

“No, I would not.”

With that, Maman leaves without another word, and—when she disappears around the bend—Jean Luc slumps against the doorjamb. His forehead, slick with sweat, rests against his arm.

“Rough day?” Coco asks sweetly.

Too sweetly. The words dissolve like candy floss on my tongue.

Jean Luc doesn’t bother to look up. “Don’t start.”

“Ah, what a shame.” She clicks her tongue gently before she smiles, baring all of her pearly white teeth in a row. “You see, we’ve devoted the day to convincing birds to search the borders for suspicious vessels, enchanting pigs to recognize Célie’s scent like she’s a damned truffle, and—oh, what else?” She taps her chin. “ That’s right. We spent the last hour trapped in this room with Célie’s grieving mother, who just showed up while we looked for a personal item with which to scry!”

“Stop it.” Jean Luc moves a hand to his Balisarda, as if clutching it for strength. “Don’t act like I’ve done nothing. I haven’t been able to eat, drink, or sleep for the past week . My entire existence revolves around finding my fiancée.”

Coco throws her head back with a dry, humorless laugh. “ You’ve been suffering? You do realize she only fled because of you and your secrets?” She moves forward then, lithe as a serpent, while Lou rises from the bed with another frown. It looks strange on her freckled face. “None of this would’ve happened if you’d just told her the fucking truth. What were you trying to prove?”

Jean Luc’s hand clenches upon the Balisarda’s hilt. “In case you haven’t realized, she didn’t flee. She was kidnapped , which means I had every right to try to protect—”

“No, you didn’t, Jean,” Lou says. “None of us did. We were wrong.”

And I know I should agree with her. I should open my mouth and defend myself—I should assert my presence somehow—but none of them can hear me. And I don’t have the energy to fight, anyway. Perhaps I never have. That’s it , I realize, momentarily triumphant at the realization. That’s the one.

The singular emotion washing through me as I sit upon this bed. Upon my bed.

Exhaustion.

I feel exhausted.

Now that I’ve acknowledged it, other emotions roll forth like a storm breaking at sea, but for once, I have the ability to stifle them. And it feels like Heaven. I am able to simply watch, entranced, as the three people I care about most in this world argue over me—about where I should or shouldn’t have been that night, what I should or shouldn’t have been doing. Their voices grow angrier with each word, louder, until they resemble not my friends at all but complete and total strangers. I don’t recognize them.

I don’t recognize myself.

One thing, however, is for certain: whatever I was doing, I was doing it wrong.

“I didn’t come here to fight,” Jean Luc says at last, shaking his head and glaring at them. The muscles in his shoulders, his arms, radiate tension as he forces himself to lean against the door. To inhale, to exhale. To disengage from this pointless argument.

“Nor did we.” Lou crosses her arms in response, and one of the buttons instantly pops off Jean Luc’s coat, landing between their feet. “Just know if we were really fighting, Coco and I would win.”

“Sure you would.” Jean Luc picks up his button, pressing it between his fingers as he glances down either side of the hallway. He won’t meet my friends’ eyes now. And he won’t look past them into the room. “The quilt,” he says at last, sighing. “Célie brought it here from her nursery. It should help you scry.”

Lou glances back at it. “Of course. It’s the only thing not in that hideous shade of blue.”

“You should have more respect for the huntsmen. They’ve all volunteered to help with the search. Even the new recruits have joined.”

“Let’s make a deal.” Lou offers him a mocking hand. “I’ll have respect after my friend is found. Does that work for you?”

“I’m trying .” Jean Luc drags his own hand down his face, and the tension in his body deflates abruptly. “I love her, all right? You know how much I love her.”

Retreating to seize the quilt, Coco holds it tightly against her chest. Her eyes still threaten violence. “Well, she isn’t in this room, so feel free to look elsewhere.”

“Yes, I’m not sure the right tactic for a search and rescue is to linger in doorways.” Lou taps her foot against the floor, and it sounds like thunder seconds before another lightning strike. “What do you want , Jean?”

Jean Luc clenches his jaw. His gaze lingers on the quilt in Coco’s hands. Then— “There’s been a new development.”

“What?” Coco jolts forward at the words, stumbling slightly—the first time I’ve ever seen her do so—and knocks into Lou, who steadies her with an anxious hand and wide eyes.

“Where is she?” Lou whispers. “What have you heard?”

Jean Luc peels his own eyes away from my quilt and meets their gazes at last. His brow furrows. “It isn’t about Célie. It’s—” He swallows. “It’s about your family’s grimoire, Cosette. It’s missing. Someone has—they’ve stolen it,” he finishes quietly.

Coco stares at him for several seconds.

Then she curses—loudly and viciously—as Lou blasts a wave of anger through the room. My books fall off the shelf, one by one by one, and crash into a heap on the floor. My lockpicks roll under the bed and out of sight. I leap to my feet, racing to collect them, but—I swipe at them desperately—my fingers pass straight through the metal. I try again. And again. Each time, my hands refuse to find purchase, and tiny needles of cold spike through my skin.

It seems I can’t touch anything here.

Why can’t I touch anything here?

And for that matter—why can’t they hear me? Why can’t they see me? Why can’t I speak to them at all?

My own frustration breaks free at the last, and I kick at the spine of a leather-bound fairy tale. To my surprise, it moves—just a little, just enough to ruffle the pages. Not enough for anyone to notice, however. And I... I feel angry at that. And sad . And—and—

A dozen more emotions converge like a wave crashing inside my chest, powerful enough to break my focus. To snap like a band in my belly, pulling me—somewhere else. Somewhere not here . It blurs my vision until the scene before me—until Lou, Coco, Jean Luc, my room—bleed into a rainbow of black and gray. I grapple for purchase on anything I can reach, reaching for the desk, the bed, even the floor with a desperate cry. Because I can’t leave yet. My friends are looking for me, and I can’t leave .

“Lou! Coco!” I raise my hands to wave at them, but it’s a mistake. The instant I lose purchase with the room, that pulling sensation intensifies, and I can’t find it now. I’m not strong enough. “I’m here. Please, please , I’m right here!” My voice drifts away, quiet to even my own ears, as though I’m screaming underwater.

The last thing I see are Lou’s eyes as they somehow find my face in the dark, and I’m thrust into a deep, dreamless sleep.