I blinked at him. Of all the things I’d been expecting, that wasn’t one. “What?”

“You’re the best parts of her, of course. The vitality. The cleverness. The charm. But you are not her, Louise.”

“How do you know her?”

“I don’t know her. Not anymore.” The wistfulness in his gaze faded, replaced by something akin to sorrow. “In a different time—a thousand years ago, it seems—I loved her with a passion unequal to any I’ve ever known. I thought she loved me too.”

“Holy hell.” I lifted a hand to my brow and closed my eyes. It made sense now, his strange and unsettling fascination with me. The white hair probably hadn’t helped. “Look, Claud, if you’re about to tell me you—you empathize with her, or you still love her, or you’ve been secretly plotting with her all along, can you wait? I’ve had the shittiest of all days, and I don’t think I can handle a betrayal right now.”

His chuckle did little to reassure me. “Dear girl, do you really think I’d admit such a connection if I were in league with her? No, no, no. I knew Morgane before she . . . changed.”

“Oh.” There was that word again. It plagued me, full of unspoken pain and unacknowledged truths. “No offense, but you’re hardly my mother’s type.”

He laughed then, louder and more genuine than before. “Appearances can be deceiving, child.”

I fixed him with a pointed look and repeated my earlier question. It seemed important now. “What are you, Claud?”

He didn’t hesitate. His brown eyes—warm, concerned—might’ve pierced my soul. “What are you, Louise?”

I stared at my hands, deliberating. I’d been called many impolite things in my life. Most didn’t bear repeating, but one had stuck with me, slipping beneath my skin and moldering my flesh. He’d called me a liar. He’d called me—

“A snake,” I replied, breath hitching. “I suppose . . . I’m a snake. A liar. A deceiver. Cursed to crawl on my belly and eat dust all the days of my life.”

“Ah.” To my surprise, Claud’s face didn’t twist in disgust or revulsion. He nodded instead, a knowing smile playing on his lips. “Yes, I would agree with that assessment.”

Humiliation hung my head. “Right. Thanks.”

“Louise.” A single finger lifted my chin, forcing me to look at him. Those eyes, once warm, now blazed with intensity, with conviction. “What you are now is not what you’ve always been, nor is it what you always will be. You are a snake. Shed your skin if it no longer serves you. Transform into something different. Something better.”

He tapped my nose before rising and offering me his hand. “Both blood witch and werewolf will stay until after the funeral. Cosette spoke rather passionately to the former on your behalf, and with Reid’s return, the latter are eager to repay their blood debt. However, I wouldn’t expect a bouquet of roses from either party in the foreseeable future, and—well, I might also avoid La Ventre for the entirety of my life if I were you.”

I accepted his hand, rising heavily. “Reid.”

“Ah, yes. Reid. I’m afraid I might have omitted the teensiest, tiniest of details in his regard.”

“What? What do you—”

He pressed a kiss to my forehead. Though the gesture should’ve been jarring in its intimacy, it felt . . . comforting. Like a kiss my father might’ve given if . . . well, if things had been different. “He asked for you. Quite insistently, in fact, but our stalwart Cosette insisted he bathe before seeing you. He was covered in vomit, of all things.”

“Vomit?” Each rapid blink only heightened my confusion. “But—”

The door to the stairwell burst open, and there—filling up every inch of the frame—stood Reid.

“Lou.” His face crumpled when he looked at me, and he crossed the rooftop in two strides, crushing me into his arms. I buried my face in his coat, fresh tears dampening the fabric, and held him tighter still. His frame trembled. “They took her, Lou. They took my mother, and she’s not coming back.”

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

The Funeral

Reid

The first drops of rain signaled the start of the burial procession. The droplets stung my hand. Icy. Sharp. Like tiny knives. Lou had flung open our room’s window to watch as the crowd thickened. A sea of black. Of tears. Few bothered with umbrellas, even as the rain fell harder. Faster.

Constabulary lined the street in somber uniforms, their faces and weapons drawn. Chasseurs swathed in black stood rigid among them. Some I recognized. Others I didn’t.

Somewhere down there, the Dames Blanches and loup garou lay in wait for any sign of Morgane. Toulouse and Thierry hadn’t joined them. My fault. My own stubborn pride. Deveraux, however, had insisted on helping. He’d also insisted Lou and I remain out of sight. Though he claimed our absence might dissuade her from foolish action, I knew better. He’d gifted us privacy—me privacy—to watch the procession. To . . . mourn.

“Therewithal,” he’d said, matter-of-fact, “we can’t very well allow the king or Chasseurs to spot you in the crowd. Chaos would ensue, and our dear Lady thrives in chaos.”

In the room beside us, water gurgled through the pipes. I assumed it was for Coco’s bath. Like us, Deveraux had banished her, Beau, and Ansel to their rooms, asserting, “Your faces are known.” It felt silly, after everything, to hide away while the others endangered themselves. This hadn’t been part of the plan.

I couldn’t bring myself to protest.

Ansel probably watched the procession from his window. I hoped he did. He wasn’t a Chasseur, but he might have been, once. He might’ve grown to love the Archbishop. If not loved . . . he certainly would’ve respected him. Feared him.

I wondered if anyone below had truly loved our patriarch.

He’d had no siblings, no parents. No wife. At least, not in the legal sense. In the biblical, however, his had been a woman who’d tricked him into bed, into conceiving a child destined to destroy him—

No. I stopped the thought before it could form. Morgane was to blame, yes, but so was he. She hadn’t forced him. He’d made a decision. He wasn’t perfect.

As if reading my thoughts, Lou squeezed my hand. “Sometimes it hurts to remember the dead as who they were, rather than who we wanted them to be.”

I returned the pressure but said nothing. Though I knew she longed for a bath—for a change of clothes—the tub remained empty. The fresh clothing Deveraux had procured for her remained folded on the bed. Untouched. Instead, she stood beside me, with me, staring down at the street below. Listening to the rain, to the faint chants of liturgy from Saint-Cécile. Waiting for the procession to pass through East End to the cemetery beyond.

I couldn’t imagine what she felt. Did she too mourn him? Did she too feel the keen loss of a father?

Will there be a funeral?

Yes.

But . . . he was my father. I remembered her wide eyes back in the Hollow. Her hesitance. Her guilt. Yes, she’d felt something. Not grief, exactly, but perhaps . . . regret.