Nothing worth having is easy.

Right.

Heart lodged in my throat, I glanced instinctively at Reid’s back across camp. As if sensing me, he stilled, and our eyes met over his shoulder. I looked away hastily, looping my arm through Ansel’s and squeezing tight, ignoring the cold fist of dread in my chest. “Come on, Ansel. Let’s end this wretched day with a drink.”

..................................................................

Claud Deveraux

Reid

“I’m not drinking that.”

I eyed the tumbler of liquid Lou offered me. The glass was dirty, the liquid brown. Murky. It suited the oily barkeep, the disheveled patrons who laughed, danced, and spilled beer down their shirts. A troupe had performed this evening as it passed through Saint-Loire, and the actors had congregated at the local tavern afterward. A crowd had soon followed.

“Oh, come on.” She wafted the whiskey under my nose. It smelled foul. “You need to loosen up. We all do.”

I pushed the whiskey away, still furious with myself. I’d been so hell-bent on convincing the others to gather allies, to confront Morgane—so blinded by my pathetic emotions—I hadn’t considered the specifics.

“We aren’t here to drink, Lucida.”

The thought of leaving her filled me with visceral panic.

“Excuse me, Raoul, but you are the one who insisted we reconnoiter at a tavern. Not that I’m complaining.”

It was the kind of panic that consumed everything, required every bit of my focus to contain. I wanted to scream. I wanted to rage. But I couldn’t breathe.

It felt a lot like drowning.

“It’s the best place to gather information.” With a twitch in my jaw, I glanced across the room to where Madame Labelle, Coco, and Beau sat amidst the raucous traveling troupe. Like Lou and me, Beau had hidden his face within the deep hood of his cloak. No one paid us any notice. Our ensembles were nothing compared to those of the performers. “We can’t—” I shook my head, unable to collect my thoughts. The closer we drew to midnight, the wilder they ran. The more riotous. My eyes sought anything but Lou. When I looked at her, the panic sharpened, knifed through my chest and threatened to cut me in two. I tried again, mumbling to my fingertips. “We can’t continue with Madame Labelle’s plan until we assess the situation outside camp. Alcohol loosens lips.”

“Does it, now?” She leaned forward as if to kiss me, and I recoiled, panic rising like bile. Thank God I couldn’t see her face properly, or I might’ve done something stupid—like carry her into the back room, bar the door, and kiss her so long she forgot her inane plan to leave me. As it was, I kept my muscles locked, clenched, to prevent me from doing it anyway. She slumped back in her seat with disappointment.

“Right. I forgot you’re still being an ass.”

Now I wanted to kiss her for a different reason.

Night had fully fallen outside. Only the fire in the grate illuminated the grubby room. Though we sat as far away from it as possible, masked in the deepest shadows, its dim light hadn’t hidden the wanted posters tacked to the door. Two of them. One with a sketch of my face, one with a sketch of Lou’s. Duplicates of the ones littering the village streets.

Louise le Blanc, under suspicion of witchcraft, her sign had said. Wanted dead or alive. Reward.

Lou had laughed, but we’d all heard it for what it was. Forced. And under my picture—

Reid Diggory, under suspicion of murder and conspiracy. Wanted alive. Reward.

Wanted alive. It still didn’t make sense in light of my crimes.

“See? All hope isn’t lost.” Lou had elbowed me halfheartedly upon seeing my indictment. In a moment of weakness, I’d suggested fleeing for the nearest seaport, leaving this all behind. She hadn’t laughed then. “No. My magic lives here.”

“You lived without magic for years.”

“That wasn’t living. That was surviving. Besides, without . . . all of this”—she gestured around us—“who am I?”

The urge to seize her had been overwhelming. Instead, I’d leaned low—until we were eye to eye and nose to nose—and said fiercely, “You are everything.”

“Even if witches weren’t watching the ports, even if we somehow managed to escape, who knows what Morgane would do to those left behind. We’d live, yes, but we couldn’t leave everyone else to such a fate. Could we?”

Phrased like that, the answer had sunk like dead weight in my stomach. Of course we couldn’t leave them. But she’d still searched my eyes hopefully, as if awaiting a different answer. It’d made me pause, a hard knot twisting in my stomach. If I’d maintained we should leave, would she have agreed? Would she have subjected an entire kingdom to Morgane’s wrath, just so we might live?

A small voice in my head had answered. An unwelcome one.

She’s already done that.

I’d pushed it away viciously.

Now—with her body angling toward mine, her hood slipping—my hands trembled, and I resisted the urge to continue our argument. Too soon, she would leave for the blood camp. Though she wouldn’t be alone, she would be without me. It was unacceptable. It couldn’t happen. Not with both Morgane and Auguste after her head.

She can look after herself, the voice said.

Yes. But I can look after her too.

Sighing, she slumped back in her chair, and regret cleaved my panic. She thought I’d rejected her. I hadn’t missed the way her eyes had tightened by the pool, then again in camp. But I wasn’t rejecting her. I was protecting her.

I made stupid decisions when she touched me.

“How about you, Antoine?” Lou thrust the tumbler toward Ansel instead. “You wouldn’t let a lady drink alone, would you?”

“Of course I wouldn’t.” He looked solemnly to the left and right. “But I don’t see a lady here. Do you?”

Lou mustered a cackle and dumped the amber liquid over his head.

“Stop it,” I growled, tugging her hood back in place. For just a moment, her hair had been visible to the pub. Though she’d sheared it, the color remained startling white. Distinct. It wasn’t a common color, but it was a notorious one. An iconic one. None would recognize it on Lou, but they might mistake her for someone altogether worse. Even Lou had to see the similarities between her and her mother’s features now.

Snatching my hand away before I could caress her cheek, I mopped up the whiskey with my cloak. “This is exactly why Madame Labelle didn’t want you out in public. You draw too much attention.”

“You’ve known your mother for approximately three and a half seconds, and already she’s the authority. I can’t tell you how exciting this is for me.”

I rolled my eyes. Before I could correct her, a group of men seated themselves at the table next to us. Dirty. Disheveled. Desperate for a drink. “Fifi, love,” the loudest and dirtiest of them called, “bring us a pint and keep ’em comin’. That’s my girl.”

The barmaid—equally filthy, missing her two front teeth—bustled off to comply.

Across the bar, Beau mouthed something to Lou, tapping his own teeth, and she snickered. Jealousy radiated through me. I moved closer instinctively, stopped, and scooted back once more. Forced myself to sweep the perimeter of the room instead.