Chapter Thirty-Three #2
His expression was perfectly calm. It was as if I were watching him through a window—through a memory, like he existed in another time.
He seemed so impossibly cool. Unable to help myself, I returned his stare.
His eyes were intent; looking into them, I was struck by the sudden, deeply strange conviction that beneath his composure, he had accepted that he was about to die, and decided the last sight he wished to look upon before he passed was that of my face.
He said—more breathed—my name. “Lovett…”
My pulse slowed to a complete halt. A coldness swept over me.
And at last, I found it—the solution I’d been waiting on.
Behind me, there was a sharp clack, the skip of a pebble off the cobblestones. I stiffened as I sensed a presence approaching to my back.
Lowering Noé to the ground, I tugged on my Wit, and the carriage door whipped open. It narrowly missed the top of my scalp, swinging over me to collide directly with a body.
As soon as I heard her squeal, I turned.
Mireille’s veil was gone—I assumed she’d stowed it upon exiting Dorian’s establishment—so that I could see the blood dripping down her face clearly.
The carriage door had struck her in the nose; red poured from her nostrils like a faucet, weeping through the gaps in her fingers, which she was clutching over her injury.
At her feet, the top half of a broken wine bottle glinted, a crack running down its side where she’d dropped it to the cobblestones.
I guessed she’d lifted the item from the bar before coming to find me, no doubt intending to use it as a murder weapon.
We both jumped for it in the same instant. I felt a curl of triumph as my hand closed over the bottle’s neck, Mireille letting out another shriek from above me. Before she could step back, I swiped the object’s jagged end at her calf, fighting back a swell of nausea as it tore into her flesh.
She fell to her knees, blood spreading through the white fabric of her dress. I was behind her in a second. Her eyes widened as I placed the bottle at her throat, her injured nose dripping crimson onto the glass.
Her tone was desperate. “I didn’t—”
I had no time for her denials. “Your Wit,” I interrupted. “You can fix mistakes—am I correct?”
Mireille blinked, her brow creasing in befuddlement. I released an exhale as, a moment later, she gathered herself and nodded.
“Can you heal?” I asked sharply.
She hesitated. “I don’t—that’s far beyond—”
“You’re capable of more than you believe,” I assured her. Grabbing her by the elbow, I directed her to rise and—my bottle still at her neck—edged us closer to the carriage. “Something’s happened to him,” I said. “Fix it.”
I felt her panic vibrate through me as she took in Noé, prostrated across the ground.
His eyes were fully closed now, his mouth gapped partially open.
His breathing—if he was still breathing—had gone so shallow that it was impossible to detect from this distance.
Without touching him, I had no way of confirming whether he was still alive.
He is alive. I had decided it—and I refused to be mistaken.
Tenderly, so as to avoid ripping her neck on my bottle, Mireille shifted to look at me. “Are you insane?”
I met her gaze. “If he dies, your chance at marrying him dies, too,” I growled. When I saw her readying another rebuttal, I took my chances and shoved her to the ground. “Do it now!”
The tactic worked. Mireille shot me a final glare, then laid her hands on Noé’s chest. He barely stirred at her touch. His chin lolled to the side, a half-sighed word slipping from his lips. It sounded like “Tamer…”
I could see the moment her Wit took over. Mireille’s anxiety faded away, her movements becoming less frantic, more exploratory. Muttering to herself, she cupped a palm over his heart, then laid her other one atop it.
She glanced back at me. “It’s—it’s an enchantment of sorts.”
Adrenaline pulsed through me. “A silkwitch did this?” One of Dorian’s?
Mireille didn’t answer me. Her expression was perplexed; she frowned down at her hands as if she’d trapped an unusual bug between them and was attempting to identify it.
“I’m trying to dislodge it,” she said. “It doesn’t want to go—it’s wrapped around his heart like a vise.
One moment…” She bit down on her bottom lip, yanking her arms back. “There!”
Noé’s eyes flew open, and I resisted the urge to scream.
His irises were flooded with a pale, whitish light. Gone was their usual gray; instead, they glowed, sickly and ethereal like bone beneath the moon. The color was bleeding into his pupils and the whites of his eyes, veins of brilliant ivory crawling along his blood vessels.
It looked as though he’d been infected with magesilk. I didn’t know what to think. I’d never heard of a silkwitch’s Wit so violent in nature. If this was what we could do…
I almost understood why the public was afraid.
Mireille gave another tug, and Noé jolted upright, retching. Through the dimness, I thought I glimpsed something fall from his lips—a foggy wisp, almost like a strand of thread—but it dissipated before I could be certain. His eyes cleared, the gray in them returning.
For a moment, none of us spoke, the gentle pant of his breathing filling the alleyway. Then, Noé lifted his head.
“Darling,” he said. His attention dropped to the bottle, still clutched in my hand. “You found a weapon.”
It was as far as he got before his eyes rolled upward and he collapsed once more to the ground.