“You almost didn’t have a choice.” Turning on my heel, I strode toward the amber wagon. Lou moved behind, but I couldn’t look at her. Couldn’t trust myself to speak.

“Reid—”

Without a word, I shut the door in her face.

The door couldn’t keep Coco away.

She wasted no time in following me, in accosting me with honey. With jerky movements, she pulled the jar of amber liquid from her bag and tossed it to me. “You’re bleeding.”

My eyes dropped to my stomach, where my wound had pulled open. I hadn’t noticed it. Even now—as fresh blood seeped through my shirt—a bone-deep weariness settled within me. Lou’s and my mother’s voices rose outside. Still arguing. I closed my eyes.

This will always be your life with her—running, hiding, fighting.

No. My eyes snapped open, and I pushed the thought away.

Coco crossed the wagon to kneel at my side. Dipping a bloody finger into the jar of honey, she rubbed the mixture over my wound. The flesh drew together almost instantly.

“Why did your blood burn that man?” I asked, voice hollow.

“A Dame Rouge’s blood is poison to her enemies.”

“Oh.” I nodded mechanically. As if it made sense. “Right.”

Finished, she rose to her feet, staring at me as if deliberating. After several awkward seconds, she pressed a fresh vial of blood and honey into my palm. “What happened out there wasn’t fair to anyone, least of all you.” She closed my fingers around the vial. It was still warm. “Take it. I think you’ll need it before all of this is over.”

I glanced back at my stomach in confusion. The wound had already healed.

She gave me a grim smile. “It isn’t for your flesh. It’s for your heart.”

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

Dagger of Bone

Lou

Deveraux insisted we keep moving. With bodies piled up outside of Beauchêne, it would only be a matter of time before someone alerted the local authorities. We needed to be far, far away before that happened. Fortunately, Deveraux didn’t seem to sleep like a normal person, so he harnessed the horses immediately.

Unfortunately, he suggested I join him.

The wagon rocked beneath us as he eased the horses into motion.

One of the twins drove the wagon behind us. The amber wagon, Claud had called it. I didn’t care about its name. I only cared that Reid was currently inside it, and I was not.

Reid and Coco. I should’ve been grateful they were getting along.

I wasn’t.

Burrowing deeper in my blanket, I glared up at the stars. Claud chuckled. “Couronne for your thoughts, little one?”

“Do you have a family, Monsieur Deveraux?” The words popped out of their own volition, and I resisted the urge to clap a hand over my mouth.

With a knowing look—as if he’d been expecting such a question—he coaxed the horses into a trot. “As a matter of fact, I do. Two elder sisters. Terrifying creatures, to be sure.”

“And . . . parents?” I asked, curious despite myself.

“If I ever did, I no longer recall them.”

“How old are you?”

He chuckled, his eyes cutting to mine. “What an impolite question.”

“What a frustratingly vague answer.” When his chuckle deepened to a laugh, I switched tactics, narrowing my eyes. “Why are you so interested in me, Deveraux? You know I’m married, right?”

He wiped a tear from his eye. “Dear child, a pervert I am not—”

“What is it, then? Why are you helping us?”

Pursing his lips, he considered. “Perhaps because the world needs a whit less hate and a trifle more love. Does that answer suffice?”

“No.” I rolled my eyes, crossing my arms and feeling petulant. A second later, my eyes drifted back to him of their own accord. “Have you ever been in love?”

“Ah.” He shook his head, eyes turning inward. “Love. The most elusive of mistresses. In all my years, I must confess to finding her only twice. The first was a headstrong young shepherd much like your Reid, and the second . . . well, that wound is not quite healed. It would be foolish to reopen it.”

In all my years. It was an odd turn of phrase for someone who appeared to be in his forties.

“How old are you?” I asked again, louder this time.

“Very old.”

Odd, indeed. I stared at him. “What are you?”

He chuckled, his eyes cutting to mine. “I simply . . . am.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Of course it is. Why must I bind myself to fit your expectations?”

The rest of the conversation—indeed, the rest of the night—passed in a similarly frustrating fashion. When the sky had lightened from pitch black to dusky gray to dazzling pink, I was no closer to figuring out the mystery of Claud Deveraux.

“We near Cesarine, little one.” He nudged my shoulder and motioned to the east, where wisps of chimney smoke curled into the golden light of dawn. Pulling gently on the reins, he slowed the horses. “I dare venture no closer. Wake your companions. Though her own lodgings have burned, I believe Madame Labelle has contacts within the city. Together, we shall procure a safe place for your return, but we must say adieu for now.”

For now.

I studied his placid face in bemusement. It made no sense, him helping us. None at all. The suspicious side of my nature cried foul—surely he had hidden motives—but the practical side told it to shut the hell up and thank him.

So I did.

He merely clasped my hand in both of his own, staring me directly in the eye. “Be safe, my darling, while we part. Be safe until we meet again.”

I knocked softly on the wagon door.

“Reid?” When he didn’t answer, I heaved a sigh, resting my forehead against the wood. “It’s time to go.”

No response.

Despair threatened to swallow me whole.

Once, when I was a child, my mother took an influential lover—a man from la noblesse. When she tired of him, she banished him from the Chateau, but he didn’t leave easily. No, this was a man unaccustomed to rejection, with nearly infinite funds and power at his disposal. He soon hired men to haunt the forest, capturing our sisters and torturing them to reveal the Chateau’s location. My mother’s location.

He was an idiot. I hadn’t been sorry when she’d killed him.

I had been sorry when she’d cut open his chest and filled him with rocks, dumping his corpse into L’Eau Mélancolique. I’d watched him sink out of sight with a sense of shame. His wife would never know what had happened to him. Or his children.

“Fret not, darling,” Morgane had whispered, her bloody fingers squeezing mine in reassurance. “Though a secret is a lie in pretty clothing, some secrets must be kept.”

But I hadn’t been reassured. I’d been sick.

This silence between Reid and me felt something like that—like leaping into the sea with rocks in my chest, helpless to stop sinking. To stop bleeding. Only it wasn’t my mother who had cut me open this time.

It was me.

I knocked harder. “Reid. I know you’re there. Can I come in? Please?”