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Chapter Thirty

Confessional

“See anything?” a hoarse voice asks. I imagine a gnarled old man lifting a torch or lantern, its golden light sweeping over the rows upon rows of caskets.

His companion sounds disgusted. And much younger. “Coffins. This has to be bad luck.”

“Don’t know what he thinks we’ll find with these searches.” The first man’s footsteps grow closer, and I tense, my eyes clenching shut when he raps his knuckles atop our coffin. The witchlight flickers and spins against the dark of my eyelids, and it’s harder to swallow now than it was before. Michal’s hand creeps over my back. “Notice he isn’t out here in the middle of the night, freezing his balls off with the rest of us.”

“Better him than the one upstairs,” the second says bitterly, “wearing that blue coat and acting like a king on high. If he calls me boy one more time, I swear I’ll take that silver stick of his and shove it straight up his ass. You just watch. I’ll do it.” A pause. “Should we search the coffins?”

Another sharp rap on the lid. “No. The only thing we’ll find in here is a stiff, and I won’t be the one to tell Toussaint his little fiancée has kicked it.”

“You think she has?”

He scoffs. “I think he does too, deep down. Women who disappear rarely turn up again, do they? Not alive, anyway. Just look at her sister. I heard the witches got ahold of her, cursed her to age until her heart gave out. It’s only a matter of time before we find this one dead too.”

Cold, gentle fingers touch my hair now, sliding through the heavy mass to my nape. It takes several seconds for me to realize why—to notice that my entire body has started to tremble, that my hands clamp bone white around the lapels of Michal’s coat. I didn’t know I held him. I didn’t think I could move at all. “I don’t know,” the younger man mutters. “She already disappeared once. No one knows where she went then either. My dad thinks she ran away. He thinks she left him—Toussaint. She wasn’t wearing his ring when she fled the Tower. My mom says Toussaint deserves someone better for a wife.” He chuckles grimly. “She volunteered my sister.”

The buzzing in my ears pitches higher with each word. Sharp and painful now.

Before they can continue debating the faults of my character, however, the ballroom door opens once more, and a third pair of footsteps joins them. “Gentlemen.”

A violent shudder wracks my body at the word, and I abandon all pretense, burying my face in Michal’s cloak. Because this voice I recognize. It’s a voice I would give every couronne of my father’s reward to never hear again.

“Frederic,” the first man grumbles. It sounds as if he pushes from our coffin, straightening reluctantly. The younger man says nothing. “She isn’t down here.”

“You’ve checked every casket.”

It isn’t a question, and the two men—unsure how to answer—hesitate briefly before the second clears his throat and lies with relish. “Of course.”

“Good.” The word drips with disdain, and I can picture Frederic strolling down the aisle now, trailing his hand along the ornate boxes. Perhaps inspecting his fingers for dust. “The sooner we find her body, the sooner Toussaint resigns.”

“You think he’ll resign, monsieur?” the first asks dubiously.

Frederic laughs—a short, humorless sound that makes my stomach twist. “How can he not? A captain who fails to protect not only his subordinate but also his fiancée? It’s humiliating.”

“It’s hardly his fault the girl ran out on him,” the second mutters.

“And that, boy,” Frederic says, his voice sharpening, “is exactly where you’re wrong. It is his fault. This entire fucking mess is his fault. He brought a woman into a brotherhood of men. He gave her a Balisarda and an engagement ring.” He scoffs bitterly. “You aren’t a Chasseur, so you wouldn’t understand.”

The second man, the boy , only takes further offense. “Oh yeah? Try me.”

Another mirthless chuckle. Another pause. “Fine. I’ll try you. Do you remember the bloodshed in December and January? After that redheaded Chasseur allied himself with a witch ?” He snarls the word like a curse, and to Frederic, it is. “The kingdom lost all faith in our brotherhood when he killed the Archbishop on Christmas Eve, then again when his mother-in-law slaughtered our king in the New Year. Toussaint was his friend. Toussaint sided with Diggory and his witch in the Battle of Cesarine, and the kingdom suffered.”

A tendril of anger cracks open in my stomach, churning with the absinthe. It rises up my throat, but I choke it back down, my breathing growing louder. Harsher. How dare Frederic criticize Jean Luc and Reid? How dare he hold any opinion on the Battle of Cesarine—a battle in which hundreds of innocent people lost their lives, a battle in which he didn’t even participate ? Michal’s fingers tighten on my nape in warning. He breathes something in my ear, but I can’t hear anything beyond that wretched humming, can’t see anything beyond Frederic’s hateful face in the training yard.

This scrap of wood won’t debilitate a witch.

Basile’s leering grin.

Only two scraps of wood will do that! A stake and a match!

My brethren’s laughter—all of their cruel laughter—as I struggled to lift a longsword.

“You don’t have to tell us about Reid Diggory,” the second man snaps. “My brother lost several fingers in that battle.”

“I wasn’t a huntsman then,” Frederic says. “If I had been, your brother might’ve kept his fingers. Regardless, I’ve worked very hard to restore the kingdom’s trust, but Toussaint’s actions have cast doubt upon our brotherhood all over again.” He makes a low, disgusted noise in his throat as his footsteps recede. “Perhaps it’s for the best. Even if Toussaint fails to resign, he’ll have no choice but to rededicate himself to our cause without Mademoiselle Tremblay as a distraction.” He pauses at the foot of the stairs, and for a split second—less, even—I can almost feel his brilliant blue eyes settle on our coffin. Bile rises in my throat, and this time, a violent heave rocks my stomach, my chest. Michal pulls back in alarm. I clamp a hand over my mouth, his face blurring into sickly lines of white and black. My mother was right. Absinthe is the Devil’s drink.

“It really is a shame,” Frederic says with a sigh. “She would’ve been a lovely wife.”

With that, his footsteps retreat above deck, and the ballroom falls into silence.

She would’ve been a lovely wife.

The words pulse with the stabbing pain in my temple like a sickening poem. No. I swallow the bile, and it burns all the way down. Like a prophecy.

A lovely wife.

She would’ve been

lovely

if she’d been his wife.

“I thought you were going to shove that silver stick up his ass,” the first man grunts after a moment, “ boy .” The second curses in response, followed by the dull thud of his fist hitting the other. They chuckle companionably for another moment before trudging after Frederic.

Leaving us alone.

“Célie?” Michal murmurs.

But I can’t seem to speak. Each time I open my mouth, I see Frederic’s face, his blue coat, and my throat constricts. On the third attempt, I manage to whisper, “I hate them.” Dragging my hands from my mouth, I scrub my eyes and cheeks viciously until my face burns. Anything to subdue the poison coursing through my veins. Through my stomach . “I hate all of them, and I hate that I hate them. They just—they’re so—”

Michal’s fingers resume kneading my neck, distracting me. They feel like ice against my overheated skin. “Breathe through the nausea, Célie. In through your nose. Out through your mouth.” Then— “Who is Frederic?”

“A Chasseur .” I spit the word with venom, then cringe, remembering the similar way Frederic spat witch . I take a deep breath. In through my nose and out through my mouth, just like Michal said. It doesn’t help. It doesn’t help because I’m not like Frederic, and I can’t—I won’t —condemn all the huntsmen with him. Jean Luc is kind and good and brave, as are many of the men who reside in Chasseur Tower. And yet...

I force back another surge of bile. Unless we reach land soon, there’s a very real possibility that I’m going to vomit all over Michal.

I can only pray it’ll be his shoes.

“I gathered as much.” His hand moves from my nape to my hair. A small part of my mind wonders at the gesture, wonders why Michal is trying to—to soothe me, but the other, larger part refuses to complain. “Who is Frederic to you?”

Though I cannot close my eyes in defeat—not while the world spins—the fight collapses in my chest without warning, and my shoulders slump against him. Who is Frederic to me? It’s a valid question, one that immediately prompts another: Why should I let him affect me anymore? My voice grows small at the truth. “He’s no one. Truly. He liked to provoke me in Chasseur Tower, but that hardly matters now. I’m never going back.”

Michal’s hand stills in my hair. “You aren’t?”

“No.” The word falls freely, without hesitation, as if it’s always been there waiting for permission. Perhaps it has. And now—hidden in a coffin with a half-sadistic vampire—I finally give it. “No one ever tells you how hard it’ll be to blaze a trail, how lonely it is.” I rest my cheek against his leather-clad chest and concentrate on my breathing. And the words keep coming, more destructive than the liquor in my stomach. “I just wanted to do something good after Filippa. It’s why I told Reid to focus on the Chasseurs at her funeral; it’s why he left me to fall in love with Lou instead. It’s why I followed them to that lighthouse in January, and it’s why I fought against Morgane in the Battle of Cesarine.” Sighing, I trace the collar of his coat for something to do with my hands. Because I can’t look at him. Because I shouldn’t be admitting any of this, especially not to him, yet I can’t seem to stop. “I told myself it’s why I joined the Chasseurs afterward—I wanted to help rebuild the kingdom. Really, though, I think I just wanted to rebuild my life.”

After a brief hesitation, he resumes stroking my hair. It should feel strange. No one has really touched my hair like this since Filippa—not even Jean Luc—but somehow, it doesn’t. “I met Morgane le Blanc once many years ago at a night circus.” As before, he seems reluctant to continue, but this is our game. A question for a question. A truth for a truth. “She’d just turned eighteen, and her mother, Camille le Blanc, had passed the title and powers of La Dame des Sorcières to her freely. She loved her daughter. Morgane had no idea what I was, of course, but even then, her blood smelled... wrong. I watched as she stole a trinket from an elderly peddler. When the woman confronted her, she lit the woman’s cart on fire.”

I swallow hard. It takes little imagination to envision the scene in my mind.

She trapped me with fire, too, when she took me—a ring of it around my bed in the nursery. The smell of that smoke still suffocates me at night. The heat of those flames sears my skin. Clearing my throat, I whisper hoarsely, “She—she crept into my room while I was sleeping, and she took me like she took Filippa, except she didn’t really want me. She wanted Lou and Reid.” The words grow thicker in my throat, lodging there and refusing to move, but I need to say them. I want to say them. Michal doesn’t try to fill the silence; he simply waits, the stroke of his hand steady and calm. “She used me as bait, and she locked me in a casket with my dead sister. I stayed there in the dark with her for over t-two weeks before Lou found me.”

The words land heavy and brittle between us.

For several seconds, I don’t think Michal is going to reply. How does one reply to something so horrific, something so wholly and completely evil? Jean Luc, my friends, even my parents—no one ever knows what to say. No one knows how to comfort me. On most days, I don’t even know how to comfort myself, so on most days, I say nothing too.

Pressure burns behind my eyes as the silence grows, and I really do think I’m going to be sick now.

Then Michal slips a finger beneath my chin, tilting my face up to look at him. His eyes no longer appear cool and impassive; they burn with black fire, and the sheer violence in his gaze should send me running. And why wouldn’t I? Frederic and his search party have probably disembarked by now, which means there’s no longer a reason to keep... embracing like this. I pull away halfheartedly at the realization, but Michal refuses to release my chin. “You said you fought against Morgane in the Battle of Cesarine. How did she die?”

I stare at his shoulder. “You know how she died. Everyone knows how she died. Lou slit her throat.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“There’s nothing to tell,” I repeat weakly, glancing at him. I once made the mistake of... overstating my involvement to Jean Luc, and it isn’t one I intend to repeat with Michal. The thought of him sneering, shaking his head—or worse, feeling pity —brings fresh pressure to my eyes. “Lou confronted Morgane, and they fought. It was awful,” I say, quieter still. “I’ve never seen a person so intent on killing another, let alone a mother and her daughter. The magic Morgane used was lethal, and Lou—she—she had no choice but to defend herself.”

“And?”

“And”—I resist the urge to weep, or perhaps hit him—“and nothing. Lou slit her mother’s throat, just like Morgane slit hers on her sixteenth birthday.”

Michal’s eyes narrow, as if he senses the half-truth. “How?”

“How what ?”

“How did Lou slit her mother’s throat? Morgane le Blanc was one of the most formidable creatures to ever walk the earth. How did Lou do it?”

I exhale a bit helplessly, my eyes darting between his. “She— Michal, she’s La Dame des Sorcières. Her magic—it—”

“ How , Célie?”

“I stabbed her!” The words burst from me loudly and unexpectedly, but I can’t take them back. Fresh anger flares in response—because the words are true, because I shouldn’t want to take them back, because it shouldn’t matter what Jean Luc thinks, yet it does. It did. “I stabbed her with an injection of hemlock, and it incapacitated her long enough for Lou to finish the job. I would’ve done that too,” I say bitterly, wiping away furious tears, “if Lou would’ve faltered. I would’ve slid that knife across her mother’s throat, and I wouldn’t have regretted it for a single second.”

Though my tears fall thick and fast upon Michal’s hand, he doesn’t move to wipe them away. Instead, he leans forward until our faces are nearly touching. “Good,” he snarls. Then he thrusts the coffin lid open and propels us both into the ballroom, igniting the lamp and seizing my cloak from the floor before I can blink. “Here. Take it. We’ve docked in Cesarine, and we have approximately seven hours until sunrise. It’ll take at least four for us to reach Amandine.”

The sudden movement, however, sends my vision spiraling. Saliva coats my mouth, and my stomach lurches violently as I seize Michal’s arm to steady myself. Dizzy and disoriented.

Suddenly, it doesn’t matter that Amandine lies across the entire kingdom, that we can’t possibly reach it before sunrise. It doesn’t matter that my cheeks still glisten with tears; indeed, it doesn’t even matter that I just shared entirely too much with my mortal enemy—that he patted my hair .

No. I clap a hand to my mouth. The situation has grown too dire.

If you’re listening, God , I pray fervently, screwing my eyes shut in fierce concentration, please don’t let me vomit in front of Michal. I’ll never drink another drop of alcohol again, just please, please, don’t let me vomit in front of—

“Célie?” Alarmed, Michal tugs on his arm from my grip. “Are you going to—?”

But God isn’t listening, and I am an idiot , and—and—a moan escapes from between my fingers in answer. I never should’ve closed my eyes. I force them open now, but it’s too late: the room tilts, my throat tightens, and my entire body heaves. Before I can stop myself—before I can turn away, or perhaps throw myself in the sea—I spew acid-green vomit all over Michal’s shoes.

Just like he said I would.