At my mother’s name, Reid stiffened. I glanced at him, watching as he finally placed Manon’s face.

Head thrashing, she wept harder. “No. No, stop. Please. I can’t.”

“You can, Manon. We can. Together.”

“She gave me orders, Gilles. If—if I don’t do this, she will.”

“Manon, please—”

“This wasn’t supposed to happen.” Her hands shook around the blade. “None of this was supposed to happen. I—I was supposed to find you and kill you. I wasn’t supposed to—to—” A strangled sound tore from her throat as she stepped closer. “They killed my sister, Gilles. They killed her. I—I swore on her pyre I’d avenge her death. I swore to end this. I—I—” Her face crumpled, and she lifted the blade to his throat. “I love you.”

To his credit, Gilles didn’t flinch. He merely dropped his hands, eyes tracing her face as if trying to memorize it, and brushed his lips to her forehead. “I love you too.”

They stared at each other. “Turn around,” Manon whispered.

“I have to stop her.” Tension radiated from every muscle in Reid’s body. Unsheathing Jean Luc’s Balisarda, he rose to charge forward, but I leapt in front of him—tears streaming down my own cheeks—and pressed my hands against his chest. Manon couldn’t know he was here. I had to hide him. I had to make sure she never saw. “What are you doing?” he asked, incredulity twisting his face, but I only shoved him backward.

“Move, Reid.” Panic stole the heat from my voice, made it breathless, desperate. I pushed him harder. “Please. You have to move. You have to go—”

“No.” His hands pried my wrists away. “I have to help—”

Behind us, something thudded to the ground. It was a horrible, final sound.

Too late—locked in our own sick embrace—we turned as one to see Gilles lying facedown on the cobblestones. Manon’s knife protruded from the base of his skull.

My breath left me in a painful rush, and suddenly, only Reid’s hands kept me upright. Blood roared in my ears. “Oh my god.”

Manon sank to her knees, pulling him into her lap and closing her eyes. His blood soaked her dress. Her hands. She cradled him to her neck anyway. Though her tears had finally stopped, she gasped as she rocked him, as she slid the knife free of his flesh and dropped it to the ground. It landed in the pool of Gilles’s blood. “This isn’t God, Louise.” Her voice was wooden. Hollow. “This isn’t Goddess, either. No divinity smiles upon us now.”

I stepped toward her despite myself, but Reid held me back. “Manon—”

“Morgane says sacrifice is necessary.” She clutched Gilles tighter, shoulders shaking and fresh tears spilling down her cheeks. “She says we must give before we receive, but my sister is still dead.”

Acid coated my tongue. I said the words anyway. “Did killing him bring her back?”

Her eyes snapped to mine. Instead of fury, they filled with a hopelessness so deep I could’ve drowned in it. I wanted to drown in it—to sink beneath its depths and never resurface, to leave this hell behind. But I couldn’t, and neither could she. Reaching slowly for the knife, her fingers swam instead through her lover’s blood. “Run, Louise. Run far and run fast, so we never find you.”

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

Madame Sauvage’s Cabinet of Curiosities

Lou

Heart still racing from Manon’s warning, I dragged Reid down the nearest alleyway—through a narrow, shadowed arch—and into the first shop I saw. If Manon had followed us, we couldn’t risk staying on the street. A bell tinkled at our entrance, and the sign above the door swayed.

MADAME SAUVAGE’S CABINET OF CURIOSITIES

I skidded to a halt, regarding the little shop warily. Stuffed rats danced in the window display, alongside glass beetles and dusty books with gold-painted edges. The shelves nearest us—teetering between black-and-white floors and starry ceilings—had been crammed with a motley assortment of animal skulls, gemstones, pointed teeth, and amber bottles. Pinned along the far wall, barely visible beneath all the clutter, were cerulean-blue butterfly wings.

Reid’s silence cracked at the queerness of the place. “What . . . what is this?”

“It’s an emporium.” My voice came out a whisper, yet it still seemed to echo all around us. The hair on my neck rose. If we left now, Manon might see us—or worse, follow us to Léviathan. Grabbing a brown wig from a particularly hideous marionette, I tossed it to him. “Put this on. The Chasseurs recognized you earlier. You need a new disguise.”

He crumpled the wig in his fist. “Your disguises don’t work, Lou. They never have.”

I paused in rifling through a basket of woven fabrics. “Would you prefer we use magic instead? I noticed you used it earlier to get yourself out of that little bind with the Chasseurs. How does that work? You’re allowed to use it when you deem necessary, but I’m not?”

He clenched his jaw, refusing to look at me. “I used it responsibly.”

They were the simplest words—perhaps spoken innocently—yet anger cracked open in my stomach all the same, like a rotten egg that’d been waiting to hatch. I felt it rising to my cheeks, enflaming me. I didn’t care that we were standing in a house of horrors. I didn’t care that the clerk was probably listening out of sight, that Manon was likely closing in at this very moment.

Slowly, I removed my spectacles and placed them on the shelf. “Say what you need to say, Reid, and say it now.”

He didn’t hesitate. “Who was the man, Lou? Why didn’t you let me save him?”

My heart dropped like a stone. Though I’d expected the question—though I’d known this conversation to be inevitable after what we’d witnessed—I was less prepared to address it now than I’d been in Beauchêne. I swallowed hard, tugging on my cravat, trying and failing to articulate the situation without causing irreparable damage. I didn’t want to lie. I certainly didn’t want to tell the truth. “We’ve been fighting for days, Reid,” I deflected. “Those aren’t the right questions.”

“Answer them anyway.”

I opened my mouth to do exactly that—unsure what words would spill out—but an elderly woman with deep, leathery skin hobbled toward us, swathed in a burgundy cloak three times her size. Golden rings glinted on her every finger, and a maroon scarf enveloped her hair. She smiled at us, brown eyes crinkling at the corners. “Hello, dearies. Welcome to my cabinet of curiosities. How may I serve you today?”

I willed the old woman to go away with every fiber of my being. “We’re just browsing.”

She laughed, the sound throaty and rich, and began rifling through the shelf nearest her. This one held a collection of buttons and pins, with the occasional shrunken head. “Are you quite sure? I couldn’t help but overhear terse words.” She plucked two dried flowers from a bin. “Might I interest you in calla lilies? They’re said to symbolize humility and devotion. The perfect blooms to end any lovers’ quarrel.”