Chapter Twenty-Five
Anais’s advice proved sound. The drawing room was on Fortblanche’s ground floor, making it simple to drop from the stone sill of the window we’d selected to the earth. Once both Noé and I had managed the feat, we crept along the exterior wall of the estate, debating a way back in.
From this side of the building, the reason for the closed drapes was evident.
Though I’d been too distracted to notice it when we’d returned from our drive, Bastian had thrown every window in Fortblanche wide open, carving dozens of paths for intruders hoping to make their way inside.
Truly, his mind was dastardly; even as his enemy, I couldn’t help but admire it.
He’d turned his very house into a weapon against me.
Eventually, I decided to take a risk. Rising up on my toes, I reached through the window directly in front of me and caught hold of the drapes, nudging them gently aside to reveal a sliver of hallway.
We’d rounded the side of the house and were standing at the end of a gallery corridor, windows on one wall, a line of doors along the other.
I flinched as, without warning, a form sprinted by: dark-haired and slender, a familiar white mouse at her heels. As she ran past my window, Good Sister paused, lifting her nose into the air and emitting a single plaintive peep.
My heart stopped when Nathalie turned my way. Our gazes met—hers startled, no doubt by the sight of me peering in through the curtains, mine panicked. For a moment, I could not breathe; then the other silkwitch jerked into motion again.
Slowly, deliberately, she nodded into the gloom ahead of her. Her lips parted, mouthing a single word: trap.
I drew in a relieved inhale. Her message delivered, Nathalie took off again, Good Sister scrambling after her. Only once they’d both vanished did I drop the curtain I held, twisting to look at Noé behind me.
“I’m going to try something,” I said. “Don’t distract me.”
He just furrowed his brow. Lifting the window drapes again, I parsed the interior gloom, picking out the nearest door from the line which ran along the opposite corridor wall, then steadied my nerves and summoned my Wit.
My magic lurched behind my ribs. I hadn’t accessed an extrapolation since Manon had pushed me from the balcony, but now that I had, I found that the process came easier.
I could feel the boundaries I’d put up around my gift—walls formed from years of certainty that my magic was limited, that I was limited.
That I was a mere witch, not a sorcerer.
With a great breath, I aimed my focus at the door across the corridor and pulled.
The doorknob rattled. When I tried a second time, the door sprang open, as surely as if I’d been there to turn the handle myself.
Victory sparked through me. A second later, the entrance slammed shut again. The bang of its closing was loud, echoing through the corridor; I held back a smile as, soon afterward, I heard footsteps approaching from farther up the hall.
Mireille Laurent, the silkwitch who’d been eyeing me during Bastian’s bridal tea reception, hurried toward the door I’d just opened. She had something in her hand—it looked like a paperweight. After Delphine’s knife, the weapon was relatively unimpressive.
I drew a deep breath as I watched her reach for the knob. Now came the hard part.
From my post outside the window, I threw my Wit toward the entrance again. This time, rather than pulling the door toward me, I latched on to it, tugging myself in its direction like I’d unconsciously done after Manon’s attack.
There was a sudden blossoming ache in my lower abdomen. My vision blurred; when it cleared again, I was no longer outside, but rather standing in the threshold of the entrance I’d been targeting, facing down Mireille.
She flinched. Before she could process my sudden manifestation, I grabbed her, covering her mouth and kicking her swiftly in the shins.
Noé was watching me from outside the house, looking half alarmed, half impressed.
Meeting his eyes through the open window, I hissed to him. “Do you have a handkerchief?”
As if in a daze, he drew one out of his pocket. Hoisting himself inelegantly over the windowsill, he tossed it to me, then landed with both feet on the hallway floor.
I caught it. Yanking Mireille’s arms behind her, I jabbed the backs of her knees with my own, forcing her to the ground. Noé caught up to me as I was tying her wrists together, the paperweight she’d been carrying now clattered to the corridor rug.
“Out early again. It seems to be a pattern with you, doesn’t it, Mireille?” I murmured in her ear. Before she could reply, I tore my caul from my scalp—I was desperate and had nothing else—and stuffed it into her mouth.
She gagged against the thin metal links. Still maintaining my grip of her wrists, I went to snatch up her dropped paperweight—only to pause when I glimpsed another item lying beside it.
It was a monocle: gold and weighty, a typically masculine style. The metal glinted up at me from where it rested on the corridor floor. I assumed the object had fallen from the pocket of Mireille’s dress; still, what in the world was she doing with it?
Through her makeshift gag, the other silkwitch made a muffled sound. Meeting her eyes, I smiled, then picked the monocle up and slipped it back into the folds of her frock. “You dropped this.”
She spat out the caul. “Here!”
My pulse stuttered. From the far end of the corridor—the same direction from which Mireille had come—two additional pairs of footsteps rang out. One tread was heavier than the other; though there was no earthly logic to justify why, I recognized it immediately.
My thoughts stilled along with my body, as if the two were joined.
Rounding the corner of the hall, melting from the dimness like a ghost, was Eliot.
His expression was alert, his head turned to face us.
Clio was just behind him. She was clutching her skirts in one hand, her stare fierce with concentration.
For a minute no one moved. In the silence, Eliot’s eyes darted to mine. As soon as our gazes locked, I felt every emotion within me push urgently forward as if they were shadowed faces in a cave, revealed beneath the sweep of a lantern.
I could not speak. My tongue was dry bone, my emotions hot wax, burning within my chest. He is here. He’d come.
And he was hunting me.
Evidently noticing my paralysis, Noé broke the quiet. “Eliot,” he said. “And Miss Lavoie. Always a pleasure.” Clearing his throat, he exchanged glances with me. “I’m afraid we must be going.”
His prompting broke me free of my trance. Nodding to him, I hoisted up Mireille and shoved her through the entryway I’d appeared in, slamming the door closed after her. Then the two of us ran.
I clutched at my ivy garland to keep it from flying off my head. Though I didn’t dare look behind me, I could hear the pounding of Eliot’s and Clio’s footfalls as they started after us, chasing us through the estate. “Which way to the terrace?” I called to Noé.
“There.” He jerked his chin, and we swerved to the right. “We aren’t far.” He glanced over at me. “Are you—”
“As you yourself told me earlier,” I spat, cutting him off, “not now.”
The footsteps behind us grew closer. Clio and Eliot were gaining on us, despite Noé’s familiarity with the house. My chest grew tight—my muscles tensing in preparation for the moment I’d feel the bite of Clio’s nails digging into me, pulling me down to the ground—
I pushed the images from my mind. We needed to change strategy.
Without slowing—Clio was near enough that I could make out the pant of her breathing now, Eliot not far behind her—I reached over and grabbed Noé’s hand. “Can you trust me?”
He faltered at my touch, then lifted his gaze toward mine. I almost stumbled at the look in his eyes. The wariness I’d anticipated was absent; his jaw was set, his features firm as though his mind was already made up. “Yes,” he breathed.
I squeezed his fingers harder. Facing straight forward again, I yanked on my Wit, throwing it out through the estate. It scuttled forward eagerly, like a creature on a leash, latching on to the nearest door.
With effort, I shoved it farther. Past the hall we were in, out into the maze of the house, to doors I could not see but only knew from my previous encounters with them…
When I found the one I was looking for, I paused, then pulled as hard as I was able.
My muscles screamed as my Wit bit down. The world vanished. When it reappeared, Noé and I were lingering, half crouched, in the shadow of the open library doors, several corridors away from where we’d been moments prior.
I bit back a grin. I’d done it. I’d reached for the entrance in the same manner I’d done with Mireille minutes prior, and it had responded, plucking me and Noé up from where we’d been and ushering us across its threshold. And even better—
Clio and Eliot were nowhere to be seen.
“Tamerlane!” Noé caught me as I sagged against him, a wave of exhaustion washing over me. My very organs felt sore from the use of my Wit, my tendons pounded flat. “We’re nearly there,” he murmured, holding me up. “Just—follow me.”
I did, slowly. Step by step, we inched our way through the darkened house. The area we were in was silent and still, no witches appearing to race down the murky corridor toward us. Nearly there. I repeated the words in my head until they lost meaning. We’d nearly won—
“Dammit.” I swore as, from around the bend in the hall ahead of us, Clio and Eliot appeared, breathing hard.
The dark-haired silkwitch lifted her head as she spotted me, triumphant.
Perfect tracking. Clio’s Wit—she must have used it to tail us, monitoring our location even after we’d relocated and determining how to cut us off.
It was the same method she’d applied against me in the tunnels of Fortblanche during the Vainglory’s final trial.
Then I’d bested her. I had a worrying suspicion my luck wouldn’t hold today.
Clio lunged for me in the same second that Noé lurched toward her. Moving swiftly, Eliot interceded, tackling his former friend and pinning him to the wall.
He growled out a command. “Keep your hands off my fiancée.”
“Eliot.” Noé panted the name, his eyes on me. I’d dodged Clio’s initial assault, but barely; now the two of us scrabbled on the ground, each trying to best the other. “Let me go.”
At the desperation in his voice, Eliot hesitated. Despite everything, I felt my chest squeeze as he glanced in my direction, then back toward Noé again.
“She’s playing a game,” he said. His tone was confused. “Allow her to play it.”
I almost laughed as the realization struck. He thinks this is all in jest. Eliot had broken off our relationship before I’d ever had the chance to tell him about the deal Bastian had offered my bridesmaids. The target he’d placed on my back.
Clio was going to kill me, and Eliot would allow it to happen, simply because he didn’t know any better.
As if the same thought was occurring to him, Noé grabbed Eliot by his lapels. “You have no idea what she is doing.”
Meanwhile, in our match, Clio had gotten the upper hand. I gasped as she flipped me onto my back, my arms wedged painfully beneath me. “How sweet,” she purred, with a nod toward Noé. “Protective, is he?” She smiled. “Mine is, too.”
With a great heave, she lifted me up by my shoulders. Our gazes locked, my throat sealing over, as I understood what she meant to do. “Don’t—”
That was all I managed before she slammed my head hard into the ground.
A whining, metallic ringing sounded in my ears. My vision fogged over. Through the haze, I heard Noé call, “Cecilia!”
Bile rose in my throat. Clio’s blow, along with my earlier use of my magic, had taken all the fight out of me; I went limp as I felt her grip tighten around my shoulders again.
A voice broke through the quiet. “Enough.”
Clio paused. Noé’s voice was like ice. I felt a swell of relief as his footsteps started toward me. He reached down, grasping for something on the floor.
I did not recognize it as my ivy garland until he dropped it unceremoniously on Clio’s head.
“You win, all right?” he spat. “You win. I’m yours for the evening. This game is finished.”
He made a definitive, knifing motion with his left hand.
“Miss Lovett needs a physician,” he went on to Eliot. “Go find a servant and send them to fetch one. Miss Lavoie, with me. Let’s present my father with his victors.”
Obediently, Clio stood. My blood ran cold when, upon passing Eliot, Noé paused.
His chin dipped toward me, then jerked hurriedly away again, the motion so swift, I couldn’t tell whether it was something in my face which had disturbed him—or if he was attempting to prevent me from glimpsing an emotion on his.
He clasped Eliot’s shoulder. “Do you make her fight every battle herself?”
His reprimand was hushed, enough so that I knew he had not intended me to overhear it. Beside him, Clio halted; Noé held on to Eliot for a moment longer, some wordless communication passing between them, then—at once—let him go.
With that, he and Clio departed, leaving the pair of us alone.