Scene XX The Lake #2
It doesn’t matter to them. If the boy bleeds gold, they will kill him.
Run, something inside me screams, trembling and feral. Run!
The man presses the knife deeper.
“Stop!” Marie shouts suddenly. The Swan Princess brushes past me, striding toward the group of men. “Unhand him right now! That’s my brother!”
Four pairs of beady eyes turn to her, four cruel mouths curling into wicked grins. My heart slams into my throat, beating too fast. Run run run run run.
Marie ignores the danger. She shakes out her beautiful coils of pale gold hair and lifts her chin high. “What do any of you think you’re doing anyway, threatening a little boy?”
Scar Face sneers, lowering his knife a fraction. “This little boy was cheatin’ us from coin.”
“Playing games, as little boys do.” Marie may wear simple clothing, but the nobility in her bearing, in her voice, is undeniable.
She drifts across the square like a deity, like she has been woven from dreams and supplications.
“Now, release him. Unless you want to answer to my brother, the Duke of Auvigny.”
“The Duke of—” Red Beard’s eyes widen. “Wait. That’s the future Dauphine.”
Scar Face hesitates. “If that’s the Dauphine, why is she dressed like a peasant?”
There’s a beat of silence, every figure in the square unmoving.
Then the little boy gives a shrill cry and kicks Scar Face between the legs.
He snatches a small bag off the stones and takes off down an alleyway, vanishing into the gloom. Marie freezes, suddenly aware she is too close to the press of furious, drunkenly irrational men. Feeling danger, I begin to move just as Scar Face blinks dumbly.
“The bastard took our coins,” he says.
It all happens very quickly after that. Red Beard gives a bellow and turns on Marie. I dart forward and catch her by the wrist, pulling her away just as Red Beard’s knife arcs toward her.
“You lying bitch!” Red Beard shouts.
“Run!” I manage, and we take off back the way we came, away from the apothecary’s shop and its promise of answers.
“Odile!” Marie shouts, but I shake my head, pulling her along behind me. A carriage comes rattling toward us, and we narrowly avoid its wheels. Marie trips, going down with a yelp, and I seize her by the waist, pushing her onto her feet.
“Keep moving,” I pant, hearing the roars of the men behind us. “Come on!”
We gallop down the street, window lights and streetlamps blurring around us. The voices of the men begin to fade, but I don’t let her go, don’t stop running.
“Odile!” Marie calls again, but I ignore her, adrenaline screaming through me.
Run run run run run.
“Odile, they’re gone!”
They’re gone, but we’re not safe, we’re never safe, we need to run—
Suddenly the Théatre du Roi is rearing up in front of us, its maw yawning open eagerly, flashing columns white as teeth. The statues of famous playwrights lining the roof seem to jeer down at us.
I pull Marie through the gate, across the courtyard and around the Théatre, until we’re back at the lake’s edge, the overgrown garden engulfing us.
Only then do I release Marie’s hand, turning on her. “Mothers, what were you thinking?” I say between wheezing breaths. “You could have gotten us killed!”
“He needed help!” She wipes sweat from her eyes. “I—I couldn’t just stand there and let him get hurt!” Like you would have. She doesn’t say the words—she’s too tactful for that—but the accusation is sharp in her eyes.
I grit my teeth. “You think you’re so much better than everyone else, don’t you? You think all you have to do is say ‘please’ and ‘thank you,’ and the world will bow to your wishes. The Swan Princess,” I sneer. “You’ll learn eventually, as I did. You can’t save everyone.”
Marie recoils, hurt flashing across her face, as surprised by my outburst as I am. But I can’t stop. Frustration, fear, panic—it all pours out of me. “And that boy? He would have been fine on his own, I promise you that. He would have figured out how to get away.”
She shakes her head. “You can’t possibly know that.”
“I do!”
“How?”
“Because I used to be just like him!”
Marie stares at me, her brows curled up in concern. “What?”
“That’s what becomes of us!” I’m still shouting, still fueled by remnants of panic.
“Of sorcier children. If you’re lucky, you’re born to a sorcier parent who understands , who knows how to protect you, but sometimes magic skips a generation.
Sometimes both your parents have red blood, and your older brother has red blood, but then you’re born gold-blooded and your father makes your mother choose: get rid of you and stay with him, or leave along with her newborn sorcier child.
” I break off in a gasp—I can’t seem to catch my breath.
“And sometimes you’re lucky and your mother chooses you, but the world is hard for a woman on her own, and she works as a maid and barely scrapes together enough to keep a roof over your heads until she catches the pox, and suddenly she’s dying . ”
I know I’m being irrational, I’m ranting, but all I can see is the knife pressed against the boy’s cheek, all I can think of is the nobleman throwing me onto the cobblestones and my knees cracking open, all I can hear is my father reminding me that they must never see you bleed.
“Sometimes,” I pant, “the doctor comes to treat your mother, but he realizes one of her children is golden-blooded, so he refuses to help because he’s afraid, and the next thing you know, there’s a rumor and the city wants to drive you out, so your mother tells your brother, Take your sister and go . ”
“Odile—” Marie tries, but I grip my elbows, unable to look at her.
“So you escape, and you wander the streets for a year, nearly freezing in the winter, nearly starving every moment. Then luck smiles on you: You’re found by the director of the Théatre du Roi, who has blood just like yours, who names you his daughter.
And he tells you that none of this would have happened if the Mothers hadn’t left, if you still had magic.
He tells you there’s a way to bring it back, to become so powerful, no one can ever hurt you again.
All you need to do is steal the Couronne du Roi. ”
I hear Marie’s sharp intake of breath. “That’s what this is about,” she says.
I slump down on the grass, burying my head in my hands. There’s a lump in my throat, but I refuse to cry. “That’s what this is about,” I grit out.
And suddenly I’m telling her everything.
About Regnault’s training, about the first time I failed him, about Damien leaving, about how I ended up working at the palace.
I even tell her about the journal. I tell her, even though I should hate her.
I tell her, even though she was meant to be a means to an end.
I bleed myself dry in front of her, rivulets of my history pooling between us, knowing that I am weakening myself with every word, giving her a weapon to turn against me.
And yet, somehow, it feels good. It feels like relief .
The only thing I omit—because I can’t bring myself to shatter this fragile thing of hoarfrost that has barely begun to gather between us—is the truth about the diamond necklace. That, I leave buried in the depths of me, because I need her trust; I need her.
I break off at last, the sweat soaking through my clothes growing cold, the night’s frost pulling billowing clouds from my lips with every breath.
Marie turns to look at me, her expression open, contemplative.
Then she puts her arm around my shoulders and eases me against herself.
It draws a sound of surprise out of me. “What are you doing?” I demand, but I don’t pull away, because there’s something regrettably comforting about the weight of her arm over my shoulders, no matter how strange it all feels.
“It’s called affection ,” Marie says with faint amusement. “It’s meant to make you feel better.”
“Hmm” is all I can say to that. Because she’s right—it does. I let my head fall onto her shoulder, loose coils of her hair tickling my cheek. She smells warm yet wild, like honey and spices and young summer midnights.
“I’m sorry,” I mutter. “For what I said earlier. It was unfair of me.”
She hums in acknowledgment. “I understand it now. I understand more than you know. Our lives have not been similar, but I know what it’s like to feel alone.”
“I wasn’t really alone,” I say defensively. “I had Regnault.”
Marie makes another sound in her throat, not quite agreement. “And yet you have been fighting on your own for so long. You don’t have to anymore. Tell Aimé all you’ve told me. Let us help you.”
It’s tempting. Oh, it’s tempting. But then the doubt begins needling into me, as it always does.
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “I can’t trust an Augier, Marie, I can’t.”
“You trusted me.”
“A lapse of judgment,” I say woefully. “Besides, it’s too much of a risk.
If I reveal myself to be a sorcier now, Aimé could think I’m the one who killed his father and lock me up in Damien’s stead.
I need to find the true killer first. The Step-Queen seems the most likely suspect, but now I’ve made her suspicious of me.
She had guards tracking me all evening. Which”—I pull away at last, shifting farther back and ignoring the sharp stab of longing I feel at the loss of Marie’s touch—“brings me to the true reason I came to see you tonight.”
Marie arches an eyebrow. “Oh? It wasn’t because you simply missed me?”
“I would never admit to such a thing,” I say, feigning offense. Then I take a steadying breath, reality sinking its talons into me again. “Marie… look. I have a plan to find out the Step-Queen’s true intentions. But it could be dangerous. And I’m going to need your help.”