Feeding strength to the fur through another pattern, I crouched lower. The grass beneath her feet ignited instead. She leapt away from it with a hiss. “You cannot imagine the grief of your birth. Even you cannot imagine the bitterness I felt. I should have killed you then. I’d even lifted the knife, prepared to plunge it into your newborn heart, but you—you clasped my finger. With the whole of your fist, you clutched me, blinking those sightless eyes. So peaceful. So content. I couldn’t do it. In a single moment, you softened my heart.” Her flames subsided abruptly. “I failed our people that day. It took sixteen years to harden myself again. Even then, I would have gifted you everything. I would have gifted you greatness.”

“I didn’t want greatness.” Casting my shield aside, I pushed to my feet at last. Her heart might’ve softened for a newborn babe, but she hadn’t ever loved me—not me, not truly, not the person. She’d loved the idea of me. The idea of greatness, of salvation. I’d mistaken her attention for the genuine thing. I hadn’t known what real love looked like then. I glanced across the chasm to Reid, Coco, and Beau, who stood hand in hand at the edge, pale and silent.

I knew what it looked like now—both love and grief. Two sides of the same wretched coin. “I only wanted you.”

When I clenched my fist, exhaling hard, my grief ruptured into a storm wind: grief for the mother she could’ve been, grief for the good moments, for the bad moments, for all the moments in between. Grief for the mother I had lost, truly, long before this one.

The wind blasted her backward, but she twisted midair, and the momentum carried her closer to Célie. Wicked intent flared in Morgane’s eyes. Before I could stop her, she jerked her fingers, and Célie skidded from the blood witches as if pulled by an invisible rope. Morgane caught her. She used her body as a shield, pressing her knife to Célie’s breastbone. “Foolish child. How many times must I tell you? You cannot defeat me. You cannot hope to triumph. Once upon a time, you could’ve been immortal, but now, your name will rot with your corpse—”

She broke off inexplicably, her mouth falling open in a comical O.

Except it wasn’t funny. It wasn’t funny at all.

Stumbling backward, she thrust Célie away with a noise of surprise and—and glanced down. I followed her gaze.

A quill lodged deep in her thigh, its syringe quivering from impact.

An injection.

I stared at it in shock. In relief. In horror. Each emotion flickered through me with wild abandon. A hundred others. Each passed too quickly to name. To feel. I could only stare, numb, as she slid to her knees in a smooth, fluid motion. As her hair rippled down her shoulders, less silver now than bloody scarlet. Eyes still rapt on the syringe, she slipped sideways. She didn’t move.

Cold metal touched my palm, and Célie’s voice drifted from afar. “Do you need me to do it?”

I felt myself shake my head. My fingers curled around the hilt of her dagger. Swallowing hard, I approached my mother’s limp body. When I brushed her hair from her face, her eyes rolled back to look at me. Pleading. I couldn’t help it. I pulled her across my lap. Her throat worked for several seconds before sound came out. “Daugh . . . ter . . .”

I memorized those emerald eyes. “Yes.”

Then I drew Célie’s blade across my mother’s throat.

It Ends in Hope

Lou

The first time I’d slept beside Reid, I’d dreamed of him.

More specifically, I’d dreamed of his book. La Vie Éphémère. He’d gifted it to me that day. His first secret. Later that night, after Madame Labelle had issued her warning—after I’d woken in a fit of tangled sheets and icy panic—I’d crawled next to him on the hard floor. His breathing had lulled me to sleep.

She is coming.

Fear of my mother had literally driven me into his arms.

The dream had crept over me slowly, like the wash of gray before dawn. As in the story, Emilie and Alexandre had lain side by side in her family’s tomb. Their cold fingers had touched forevermore. On the final page, their parents had wept for them, mourning the loss of life so young. They’d promised to set aside their blood feud, their prejudice, in the name of their children. It was of this scene I’d dreamed, except it hadn’t been Emilie’s and Alexandre’s bodies, but mine and Reid’s.

When I’d woken the next morning, unease had plagued me. I’d blamed it on the nightmare. On the memory of my mother.

Now, as I held her in my arms, I couldn’t help but remember that peaceful image of Emilie and Alexandre.

There was nothing peaceful about this.

Nothing easy.

Yet still Reid’s voice drifted back to me as he’d clutched La Vie Éphémère in hand . . .

It doesn’t end in death. It ends in hope.

Pan’s Patisserie

Reid

Lou held her mother for a long time. I waited at the chasm’s edge, even after Coco and a handful of blood witches built a bridge of vines. Even after Célie and her newfound friends—two witches named Corinne and Barnabé—crossed on shaky legs. Jean Luc had enveloped Célie in a desperate hug, while Coco had tentatively greeted the witches. She’d remembered them from childhood. They’d remembered her.

They’d even bared their throats before leaving to find their kin. A sign of submission.

Coco had watched them go, visibly shaken.

Not all had been so courteous. One witch—a sobbing Dame Blanche—had attacked my back as I’d waited. Jean Luc had been forced to inject her. To bind her wrists. He hadn’t killed her, however, not even when Célie had stepped aside to speak with Elvire. Aurélien had fallen. Others too. As the Oracle’s Hand, Elvire had begun to collect their dead, preparing to depart for Le Présage once more.

“We cannot leave our lady waiting,” she’d murmured, bowing low. “Please say you will visit us sometime.”

Beau and Coco hurried to find Zenna and Seraphine.

Though I started to follow, Coco shook her head. Her gaze drifted to Lou, who hadn’t moved from beneath her mother. “She needs you more,” Coco murmured. Nodding, I swallowed hard, and after another moment, I took a hesitant step on the bridge.

Someone shouted behind me.