She only gripped my chin harder, leaning down next to my ear. “You are weak, Louise, but do not fear. I will not falter. I will not hesitate. I will make them suffer as we have suffered.”

Releasing me, she straightened with a deep breath, and I toppled to the wagon floor. “The Lyons will rue the day they stole this land. Their people will writhe and thrash on the stake, and the king and his children will choke on your blood. Your husband will choke on your blood.”

Confusion flared briefly before hideous despair consumed me, obliterating all rational thought. This was my mother—my mother—and these were her people. That was my husband, and those were his. Each side despicable—a twisted perversion of what should’ve been. Each side suffering. Each side capable of great evil.

And then there was me.

The salt of my tears mingled with the jasmine in my hair, two sides of the same wretched coin. “And what of me, Maman? Did you ever love me?”

She frowned, her eyes more black than green in the darkness. “It matters not.”

“It matters to me!”

“Then you are a fool,” she said coldly. “Love is a nothing but a disease. This desperation you have to be loved—it is a sickness. I can see in your eyes how it consumes you, weakens you. Already it has corrupted your spirit. You long for his love as you long for mine, but you will have neither. You’ve chosen your path.” Her lip curled. “Of course I do not love you, Louise. You are the daughter of my enemy. You were conceived for a higher purpose, and I will not poison that purpose with love. With your birth, I struck the Church. With your death, I strike the crown. Both will soon fall.”

“Maman—”

“Enough.” The word was quiet, deadly. A warning. “We will reach the Chateau soon.”

Unable to endure the cruel indifference on my mother’s face, I closed my eyes in defeat. I soon wished I hadn’t. Another face lingered behind my eyelids, taunting me.

You are not my wife.

If this agony was love, perhaps Morgane was right. Perhaps I was better off without it.

Chateau le Blanc stood atop a cliff overlooking the sea. True to its name, the castle had been built of white stone that shone in the moonlight like a beacon. I gazed at it longingly, eyes tracing the narrow, tapering towers that mingled with the stars. There—on the tallest western turret, overlooking the rocky beach below—was my childhood room. My heart lurched into my mouth.

When the wagon creaked to the gatehouse, I lowered my gaze. The le Blanc family signet had been carved into the ancient doors: a crow with three eyes. One for the Maiden, one for the Mother, and one for the Crone.

I’d always hated that dirty old bird.

Dread crept through me as the doors closed behind us with ringing finality. Silence cloaked the snowy courtyard, but I knew witches lingered just out of sight. I could feel their eyes on me—probing, assessing. The very air tingled with their presence.

“Manon will accompany you day and night until Modraniht. Should you attempt to flee,” Morgane warned, eyes cold and cruel, “I will butcher your huntsman and feed you his heart. Do you understand?”

Fear froze the scathing reply on my tongue.

She nodded with a sleek smile. “Your silence is golden, darling. I cherish it in our conversations.” Turning her attention to an alcove out of my sight, she shouted something. Within seconds, two hunched women I vaguely recognized emerged. My old nursemaids. “Accompany her to her room, please, and assist Manon while she sees to her wounds.”

They both nodded fervently. One stepped forward and cupped my face in her withered palms. “At last you have returned, ma?tresse. We have waited so long.”

“Only three days remain,” the other crooned, kissing my hand, “until you may join the Goddess in the Summerland.”

“Three?” I glanced to Morgane in alarm.

“Yes, darling. Three. Soon, you will fulfill your destiny. Our sisters will feast and dance in your honor forevermore.”

Destiny. Honor.

It sounded so lovely, phrased like that, as if I were receiving a fabulous prize with a shiny red bow. A hysterical giggle burst from my lips. The blood would be red, at least.

One of the nursemaids tilted her head in concern. “Are you quite all right?”

I had just enough self-awareness left to know I was most certainly not all right.

Three days. That was all I had left. I laughed harder.

“Louise.” Morgane snapped her fingers in front of my nose. “Is something funny?”

I blinked, my laughter dying as abruptly as it’d started. In three days, I’d be dead. Dead. The steady pounding of my heartbeat, the cold night air on my face—it would all cease to exist. I would cease to exist—at least, in the way I was now. With freckled skin and blue-green eyes and this terrible ache in my belly.

“No.” My eyes rose to the clear night sky above us, where the stars stretched on for eternity. To think, I’d once thought this view better than Soleil et Lune’s. “Nothing is funny.”

I’d never laugh with Coco again. Or tease Ansel. Or eat sticky buns at Pan’s or scale Soleil et Lune to watch the sunrise. Were there sunrises in the afterlife? Would I have eyes to see them if there were?

I didn’t know, and it frightened me. I tore my gaze from the stars, tears clinging to my lashes.

In three days, I would be parted from Reid forever. The moment my soul left my body, we would be permanently separated . . . for where I was going, I was certain Reid couldn’t follow. This was what frightened me most.

Where you go, I will go. Where you stay, I will stay.

But there was no place for a huntsman in the Summerland, and there was no place for a witch in Heaven. If either place even existed.

Would my soul remember him? A small part of me prayed I wouldn’t, but the rest knew better. I loved him. Deeply. Such a love was not something of just the heart and mind. It wasn’t something to be felt and eventually forgotten, to be touched without it in return touching you. No . . . this love was something else. Something irrevocable. It was something of the soul.

I knew I would remember him. I would feel his absence even after death, would ache for him to be near me in a way he could never be again. This was my destiny—eternal torment. As much as it hurt to think of him, I would bear the pain gladly to keep even a small part of him with me. The pain meant we’d been real.