She does not call ours.

Anxious now, we sweep onward, up, up, up the mountain as snowflakes flit to and fro around us, within us. It isn’t here, they flutter, they mutter. We cannot find it.

Our body, our body, our body.

Our mistress will not have forgotten us.

We move faster now, searching, gusting through the trees. The castle. She will have brought our body to the castle. But there is no castle, only snow and mountain and pine. There is no bridge. There is no one to welcome us, no one to grant us entry. If she would’ve stayed—the one with the nasty words, the one with the golden patterns—if her spirit would’ve fragmented, we would have found the castle. We would have found our body.

But she did not fragment. She did not stay.

Now she is alone.

You’ve failed, Nicholina.

Nasty words.

Your mistress needs her more than she needs you.

Our mistress has not forgotten us.

Perhaps your body won’t be there at all. Perhaps you will die.

We spiral again in agitation, in fear, and streak the mountainside. Already, we feel ourselves spreading, drifting, losing purpose. We cannot linger long without a body, or we will become something else. Something helpless and small. A cat or a fox or a rat. There are many ways to become a matagot, oh yes, but we will not become one. Not us. We are not forgotten.

Something scurries through the foliage, and we dive, eliciting a shriek of fear from the creature. It matters not. We need a body until our mistress returns. Until her mistress shows us the way. Nasty woman, like her daughter. Nasty witch.

We crouch inside the mink’s body and wait. Time passes differently to animals. We track shadows instead, quivering within the roots of a tree. Hiding from eagles. From foxes. We smell our mistress before we see her, and we hear her sharp, impatient words. She argues with Morgane. She speaks of Morgane’s daughter.

We leave the mink and follow behind as towers and turrets take shape. A bridge. Fire has ravaged each structure. All around, white ladies knit and weave their invisible patterns into stone. Into wood. Into windows and arches and shingles. We do not care about castle reparations. We sweep for the entrance, hiding from their prying eyes, curling through the smoke. We feel the pull of our body now. We feel it here.

Our mistress hasn’t forgotten us after all.

Up the stairwell, down the hall, into the small, sparse bedroom. Our body isn’t on the bed, however. It isn’t on the pillow. The bed is empty, we cry in dismay. The bed is bare. We draw short, quivering, as we search. As we follow our body’s pull. As we find it on the hard stone floor. But the bed is empty. Confusion swirls. The bed is bare.

Our body looks as a corpse in the shadows of the corner. Sickly and pale. Scarred. We hover above it, regret wafting through us now. A tendril of hurt. No fire warms the chamber. No candlelight. But it matters not. We feel no cold, no, and our mistress knows this. She knows. She knows pain is fleeting. She will relish our greeting.

You’ve failed, Nicholina.

It matters not.

Your mistress needs her more than she needs you.

Pain is fleeting.

You’ve chosen the wrong side, Nicholina. But it isn’t too late. You could ally with us before they betray you. Because they will betray you. It’s only a matter of time.

Our mistress would never betray us.

Slowly, we sink into ourselves, first a finger, a toe, then a leg and an arm and a chest until our entire body settles in on itself with a heavy breath. Heavy. So heavy. So weary. Images of lavender and wraiths and sickly, corpselike little boys flicker. Memories of family. The word tastes different now than it did then. Once, it tasted of comfort, of love, of warmth. We do not remember what warm feels like now. We do not remember love. Within her we’d felt it—a brief flicker in the shadows, in the dark. She’d felt it so strongly. We hold on to it now, that memory. We hold on to that warmth we’d felt when she looked upon her huntsman, her family.

Our own eyes do not open as we lie upon this hard, cold stone. We do not move to the bed. Our mistress did not want us there.

Sometimes we think our mistress does not want us at all.

Angelica

Lou

Without warning, Reid collapsed face-first into the water, and that—

That is when I lost my shit completely.

Fresh shouts erupted from shore as I dove toward him, slinging an arm across his shoulders and spinning him to his back, looping his elbow through mine and cradling his head against my shoulder. The sharp, potent scent of magic clung to him. Though his chest still rose and fell, the movement seemed shallow, harsh, as if he was in terrible pain. “Reid!” I shook him desperately, struggling to stay afloat. We both went under. Water burned my throat, my eyes. Choking on it, I kicked harder, propelling us above the surface for a few precious seconds. I could swim, yes, but towing a limp two-hundred-and-something-pound man was something else entirely. “Reid!”

The shouts around us escalated, and I glanced to shore. My heart lodged in my ravaged throat.

Morgane had lost consciousness with Reid.

Whatever magic he’d done, it’d affected her too, and absolute chaos reigned. The Dames Blanches nearest her shrieked and rushed forward, pulling her away from Josephine, from Coco, from us. “Do not be foolish!” Josephine’s vehement shouts cut through the mist, which had descended with a vengeance once more. “This is our chance! Get the girl!”

But even the blood witches wouldn’t step foot in the waters again—not when they continued to ripple.

Not when Coco rose, her binds having vanished after Morgane’s collapse.

Not when she stepped back into the waters, nor when she lifted her hands. Her dark eyes fell first to Constantin, then to Beau and Célie—still blood-soaked and unconscious—and they burned with retribution. “You should’ve known better than to follow us here, tante. I was born in these waters. Their magic is my own.”

I foundered beneath the waves, surging up in time to see Josephine clench her fists.

“Their magic is hers,” she spat. “Not yours. Never yours.”

“I am part of her.”

“You are mine.” The last shred of Josephine’s control seemed to snap, and she swept a long, crooked dagger from her cloak. Her hands shook. “She abandoned you. She abandoned me. She—”

“—is on her way,” Coco finished grimly, eyes flicking to her own uplifted hand. A fresh wound I hadn’t noticed sliced her palm. Blood dripped from it into the waters, and with a start, I realized Coco’s steps hadn’t woken L’Eau Mélancolique at all.