No more.

I found Reid’s gaze last, holding it longer than the others. When I shook my head slowly, determinedly, he drew to a swift halt, chest heaving. We stared at each other for the span of a single heartbeat.

Then he nodded.

I love you, I told him.

As I love you.

Morgane sneered, lowering the hood of Auguste’s lion-skin cloak as she advanced. She’d stolen it from his corpse at the cathedral. Though charred black in places, she wore it as a trophy now. Its teeth glinted around her throat in a gruesome smile, and its mane spread proudly across her shoulders. “No more running, Louise. No more hiding.” She jabbed a finger across the chasm, where Blaise and the remains of his pack had gathered. Where Elvire and her melusines still attempted to cross, where Claud had fallen to fate unknown. “Your god has fallen, your dragon has perished, and your precious allies cannot reach you here. I must admit . . . you are far cleverer than I ever gave you credit. How cunning it was to hide behind those more powerful than yourself. How cruel. We are more alike than you realize, darling, but the time has come at last. You are alone.”

But I wasn’t alone. Not truly. In life or in death, I’d have someone to meet me. Someone to love me. My stomach curdled at Nicholina’s congealed throat. At Josephine’s empty expression. Though the former might’ve found peace with her son, could the latter say the same? Could Morgane? She stepped over their corpses without acknowledgment. Already, they meant less to her than the mire beneath her boots. “Your generals are dead,” I said quietly. “I think you are the one alone.”

The blood witches stiffened as Morgane paused, turning to kick Josephine’s vacant face. “Good riddance.”

With a crippling sense of sorrow, I stared at her as my white patterns undulated weakly. I couldn’t kill her with them. Not outright. Death was natural, yes, but murder was not. It hardly mattered now either way. When I’d clasped two sides of the very world, trying to save Claud—a god, a friend—from his own magic, I’d nearly rent myself apart. My patterns had distended past the point of reparation. Some had snapped altogether. Those remaining had grown dim with weariness.

Morgane didn’t know that.

I searched each carefully now, seeking a distraction, something to allow me near. Something to debilitate her long enough for me to strike. Gently, I fed the patterns outward. “Have you loved anyone in this world, maman?”

She scoffed and lifted her hands. “Love. I curse the word.”

“Has anyone loved you?”

Her eyes narrowed on mine. Her mouth twisted in question. “It’s true,” I admitted, quieter still. “I did love you once. Part of me still does, despite everything.” I twitched my finger, and the water of the Doleur trickled steadily, silently, through the grass beneath our feet. It melted the snow. It cleansed the blood. If Morgane noticed, she didn’t react. Though her features remained riddled with spite, she studied me as if enthralled. As if she’d never heard me say it, though I’d told her a thousand times. A single tear slid down my cheek in response, and the pattern dissipated. A tear for a river. Both held endless depths.

“You gave me life,” I continued, stronger now, the words spilling faster than I’d intended. Cathartic. “Of course I loved you. Why do you think I allowed them to chain me to an altar? At sixteen years old, I was willing to die for you. My mother.” Another tear fell, and the water flowed faster. It touched her hem now. “You never should’ve asked me. I’m your daughter.”

“You were never my daughter.”

“You gave me life.”

“I gave you purpose. What should I have done, darling? Cradled you in my arms while others’ daughters perished? While they burned? Should I have valued your life more than theirs?”

“Yes!” The confession burst from me in a shock of cold regret, and I capitalized on it, clenching my fist. The water around Morgane’s feet froze to solid ice. It trapped her. “You should have valued me—you should’ve protected me—because I am the only person in this world who still loves you!”

“You are a fool,” she snarled, fire lashing from her fingertips. “And a predictable one at that.”

With the slash of her hand, the ice melted, and the ground itself desiccated in a fiery path toward me. It didn’t burn my skin, however, instead passing through it—straight to my organs. My body temperature spiked as my blood literally began to boil, as my muscles cramped and my vision spun. Crying out, Célie attempted to leap to my aid, but the blood witches held her back, recoiling from Morgane. In fear. In hatred.

With seconds to react, I seized another pattern, and the Brindelle tree nearest me withered and blackened to ash.

The lion of Auguste’s cloak began to reanimate.

I fell to my knees, smoke curling from my mouth, as its teeth sank deep into Morgane’s neck. Screaming, she whirled, pulling a knife from her sleeve, but the half-formed lion clung to her back. Tendon and muscle continued to regenerate with gruesome speed. Where sleeves had been, mighty paws rose to grip her shoulders. Its hind legs kicked at her back.

Morgane’s fiery hold dissipated as she struggled, and I fought to rise. To breathe.

When she buried her blade in the beast’s chest, it gave a final snarl before falling limp. She heaved its carcass between us. Blood poured from wounds on her neck, her shoulders, her legs, but she ignored them, clenching another fist. “Is that the best you can do?” Beneath my armor, against my skin, arose an alarming tickle. The skitter of legs. “You may call yourself La Dame des Sorcières—you may kill trees and steal rivers—but you will never know this magic as I have known it. You will never conquer its power as I once did. Just look at yourself. Already, it has weakened your feeble spirit.” She advanced in earnest now, a lethal gleam in her eyes. “The Goddess has chosen wrong, but I do not need her blessing to conquer you.”

Scrambling backward—hardly hearing her words—I pulled hastily at my armor.

Hundreds of spiders burst from the woven fabric. From their own silk. They scuttled over my body in a wave of legs, piercing my skin with their fangs. Each bite brought a prick of pain, a tingle of numbness. Shrieking instinctively, heart palpitating, I crushed all within reach, sweeping their wriggling corpses from my arms, legs, chest—

“You were born to be immortal, Louise.” Morgane lifted her hands, pouring her rage, her frustration, her guilt into another bout of fire. I rolled to avoid it—squashing the last of the spiders—and seized the lion’s skin as a shield. “Though destined to die, your name would have lived forever. We could have written history together, the two of us. You may scorn me now, you may hate me always, but I gave everything—I sacrificed everything—for you. For love.”