Surrender, it croons, and forget. Feel no pain.

For a moment or a thousand moments, I hesitate, considering. To surrender and forget appeals more than to resist and remember. I am weak, and I do not like pain. The voice is so beautiful, so tempting, so strong, that I nearly let it consume me. And yet . . . I cannot. If I let go, I will lose something important. Someone important. I cannot remember who it is.

I cannot remember who I am.

You are the darkness. The shadows press closer, and I fold myself tighter. A grain of sand below infinite black waves. This darkness is yours.

Still I hold on.

Coco’s Flame

Reid

Coco leaned against the headstone beside me. A weatherworn statue of Saint Magdaleine towered over us, her bronze face shadowed in the gray twilight. Though she had long closed her eyes, Coco didn’t sleep. She didn’t speak either. She merely rubbed a scar on her palm with her opposite thumb, over and over until the skin chafed. I doubted she noticed it. I doubted she noticed anything.

She’d followed me into the cemetery after Lou had ransacked the scullery for red meat, unsatisfied with the fish Father Achille had prepared for supper. There’d been nothing inherently wrong with the way Lou had attacked the beef, even if the cut hadn’t been fully cooked. We’d been famished for days. Our breakfast of stew and lunch of hard bread and cheese hadn’t assuaged our hunger. And yet . . .

My stomach contracted without explanation.

“Is she pregnant?” Coco asked after a long moment. Her eyes flicked open, and she rolled her head to face me. Voice flat. “Tell me you’ve been careful. Tell me we don’t have another problem.”

“She bled two weeks ago, and since then, we haven’t—” I cleared my throat.

Coco nodded and tipped her chin skyward once more, closing her eyes on a heavy exhale. “Good.”

I stared at her. Though she hadn’t cried since La Mascarade des Crânes, her lids remained swollen. Traces of kohl still flecked her cheeks. Tear tracks. “Are you . . .” The words caught in my throat. Coughing to clear it, I tried again. “I saw a tub inside if you need to bathe.”

Her fingers clamped around her thumb in response, as if she could still feel Ansel’s blood on her hands. She’d scrubbed them raw in the Doleur that night. Burned her garments in Léviathan, the inn where so much had gone wrong. “I’m too tired,” she finally murmured.

The familiar ache of grief burned up my throat. Too familiar. “If you need to talk about it . . .”

She didn’t open her eyes. “We aren’t friends.”

“Yes, we are.”

When she didn’t answer, I turned away, fighting a scowl. Fine. She didn’t want to have this conversation. I wanted to have it even less. Crossing my arms against the chill, I’d just settled in for a long night of silence when Ansel’s fierce expression rose behind my lids. His fierce conviction. Lou is my friend, he’d once told me. He’d been willing to follow her to Chateau le Blanc before I had. He’d kept her secrets. Shouldered her burdens.

Guilt tore through me. Jagged and sharp.

Like it or not, Coco and I were friends.

Feeling stupid, I forced myself to speak. “All I’m saying is that after the Archbishop passed, it helped me to talk about it. About him. So . . .” I shrugged stiffly, neck hot. Eyes burning. “If you need to . . . to talk about it . . . you can talk to me.”

Now she did open her eyes. “The Archbishop was a sick fuck, Reid. Comparing him to Ansel is despicable.”

“Yeah, well”—I stared at her pointedly—“you can’t help who you love.”

She dropped her gaze swiftly. To my shame, her lip quivered. “I know that.”

“Do you?”

“Of course I do,” she said with a hint of her old bite. Fire lit her features. “I know it’s not my fault. Ansel loved me, and—and just because I didn’t love him the same way doesn’t mean I loved him any less. I certainly loved him more than you.” Despite her heated assurance, her voice cracked on the last. “So you can take your advice and your condescension and your pity, and you can shove them up your ass.” I kept my face impassive, refusing to rise. She could lash out. I could take it. Lurching to her feet, she pointed a finger at me. “And I won’t sit here and let you judge me for—for—” Her chest heaved on a ragged breath, and a single tear tracked down her cheek. When it fell between us, sizzling against the snow, her entire body slumped. “For something I couldn’t help,” she finished, so soft I almost didn’t hear.

Slowly, awkwardly, I rose to stand beside her. “I’m not judging you, Coco. I don’t pity you either.” When she scoffed, I shook my head. “I don’t. Ansel was my friend too. His death wasn’t your fault.”

“Ansel isn’t the only one who died that night.”

Together, we looked to the thin plume rising from her teardrop.

Then we looked to the sky.

Smoke obscured the setting sun, dark and ominous above us. Heavy. It should’ve been impossible. We’d been traveling for days. The skies here, miles and miles from Cesarine—where smoke still billowed from tunnel entrances, from the cathedral, the catacombs, the castle, from cemeteries and inns and alleyways—should’ve been clear. But the flame beneath the capital wasn’t simple fire. It was black fire, unnatural and unending, as if birthed from the bowels of Hell itself.

It was Coco’s fire.

A fire with smoke to envelop an entire kingdom.

It burned hotter than regular flame, ravaging both the tunnels and the poor souls trapped within them. Worse, according to the fisherman who’d accosted us—a fisherman whose brother happened to be an initiate of the Chasseurs—no one could extinguish the blaze. King Auguste contained it only by posting a huntsman at each entrance. Their Balisardas prevented the blight from spreading.

It seemed La Voisin had spoken truth. When I’d pulled her aside in Léviathan, before she’d fled to the forest with her surviving Dames Rouges, her warning had been clear: The fire rages with her grief. It will not stop until she does.

Toulouse, Thierry, Liana, and Terrance were trapped in those tunnels.

“It still isn’t your fault, Coco.”

Her face twisted as she stared at the statue of Saint Magdaleine. “My tears started the fire.” Sitting heavily, she folded her knees to her chest. Wrapped her arms around her shins. “They’re all dead because of me.”