Chapter 41 Isabeau
forty-one
Isabeau
Brigida fussed over me like I was a porcelain doll someone had dropped and hastily glued back together. Her weathered hands smoothed the golden fabric of the borrowed gown over my hips, tugging at seams that weren’t quite meant to contain the curves my body had reclaimed with alarming speed.
Magic, it turned out, was good for more than drawing poison from dying men.
It had rebuilt me from the inside out, flesh filling in hollows that had marked me as death’s neighbor just weeks ago.
The woman in the mirror was a stranger with flushed cheeks, bright eyes, and light tan skin that glowed as if lit from within.
I hardly recognized myself without desperation etched into every line.
“Hold still, miss,” Brigida muttered, pins clenched between her teeth as she made final adjustments to the bodice. “This gown was meant for someone taller and thinner. Your...” She gestured vaguely at my chest, “...assets are making my job difficult.”
I bit back a smile. “I apologize for my inconvenient recovery.”
She huffed but I caught the affection beneath her gruff exterior.
Since the night I’d confessed Gaspard’s name to her, she’d appointed herself my guardian in this gilded cage.
More than a maid, less than a friend, but fiercely protective in ways I hadn’t experienced since my mother died and what scraps Margaret could throw me in Gaspard’s home.
“The prince will be here any moment,” she said, stepping back to assess her work. “And their Majesties don’t like to be kept waiting.”
My stomach twisted at the reminder. Dinner with the royal family.
The very people whose ancestors had hunted and executed those with magic in their veins.
The irony wasn’t lost on me, They’d unwittingly invited a witch to break bread at their table, dressed her in their finery, and were about to toast her healing abilities.
If they knew what I truly was, they’d be preparing a pyre instead of a feast.
“Are you certain this choker has to stay?” she asked.
I swallowed hard. “Yes. It feels like an extra layer of protection. Even though Gaspard was the one to put it on me to mask the bruises he left, it was gentler than what else he did. It hid the harm from my own eyes.”
The choker was pretty with a gothic flare, fingers brushing the intricacy of the threads with the gems encircling my throat.
Brigida nodded, her eyes softening in understanding before believing the same of my other mark. “The neckline sits low, so I’m sorry it shows your scar. As long as you don’t tilt your head back too far, no one will see how large it is.”
My reflection stared back at me, amber eyes too bright, too inhuman to truly pass for normal. At least in this light, with carefully arranged cosmetics, they might be mistaken for a rare but natural shade.
The rest of me looked almost... royal. The yellow-gold of the gown brought warmth to my skin, and Brigida had woven tiny white flowers into the front sections of my hair, which she’d braided back while letting the rest fall in waves down my back.
I looked like a woman worthy of sitting at a prince’s table. Like someone who belonged in this castle of white stone and ancient bloodlines. The deception was perfect, and perfectly false.
A knock at the door sent my heart racing. Brigida gave me a final once-over before hurrying to answer it.
“Good evening, Your Highness,” she said, dropping into a deep curtsy. “The lady is ready.”
And there he was, Prince Alain Legrand, second son of Durand, looking like he’d stepped out of the heroic tales he’d read to me during my fever.
His dark hair was neatly styled away from his forehead, accentuating the sharp angles of his cheekbones and jaw.
The deep blue of his formal attire made his eyes look like chips of ice, startling against his olive skin.
Those eyes widened when they landed on me, his lips parting slightly in an expression I couldn’t quite interpret. For a moment, neither of us spoke. Something electric passed between us, a current of recognition or possibility that made my skin prickle with awareness.
“Isabeau,” he said finally, my name emerging rough at the edges as if he’d had to force it past some obstruction. “You look...”
He didn’t finish, but the heat in his gaze completed the thought for him.
I felt myself flush under the intensity of his stare, hating how my body responded to his appreciation.
The claiming mark throbbed along my shoulder, a sharp reminder of where my loyalties should lie.
Of who I belonged to, who I needed to return to.
Yet I couldn’t deny the flutter in my chest when he looked at me like that. Like I was the moon finally emerging after a long, dark night.
“Thank you,” I said, filling the silence when it became clear he wouldn’t. “Brigida worked miracles with what she had.”
Alain cleared his throat, extending his arm to me. “Shall we? My mother has been quite insistent about meeting you properly.”
I placed my hand on his forearm, feeling the solid strength beneath the fine fabric of his sleeve.
He’d carried me when I was too weak to walk, held my hair back when poison wracked my body, read to me when consciousness wavered like a flame in the wind.
This man who had every reason to fear what I was had shown me nothing but kindness, and it terrified me more than hatred would have.
Kindness made it harder to leave. Harder to remember that I didn’t belong here, that my princes were suffering while I dined with royalty. Their agony pressed against the edges of my awareness, a constant reminder of my failure to return to them.
“You’re frowning,” Alain observed as we walked through corridors I’d only glimpsed during my brief outings to the infirmary and our hallway walk yesterday. “Are you still feeling unwell?”
“No,” I lied, forcing a smile that felt brittle around the edges. “Just nervous. I’ve never dined with a king and queen before.”
His laugh was warm, genuine in a way that few things in this castle were. “My father puts his pants on one leg at a time, just like every other man. Besides, after saving Thibaut’s life, you could probably demand the royal treasury and he’d consider it.”
I doubted that very much, but kept the thought to myself. Instead, I focused on our surroundings, trying to memorize the path we took through the castle’s winding corridors. Knowledge was power, and when I needed to escape, every detail would matter.
We turned a corner into a hallway lined with portraits, each one grander than the last. Generations of Legrands stared down at us with varying degrees of severity, all bearing Alain’s distinctive features. Those ice-blue eyes, the strong jaw, the aristocratic nose that made me weak in the knees.
And then I saw her.
I stopped so abruptly that Alain nearly stumbled, my hand tightening on his arm as if I needed the support.
The portrait before us was smaller than the others, featuring a young woman with blonde hair and a secretive smile.
But it was her eyes that arrested me—amber, just like mine, burning with an inner light that no artist’s pigment could truly capture.
“Odette,” I whispered, the name emerging unbidden from some place I couldn’t identify.
Alain’s body went rigid beneath my touch. “Yes,” he said cautiously. “My sister. You... recognize her?”
I stared into those painted eyes, searching for why they seemed to call to me across time and canvas.
Something about her was familiar in a way that defied explanation.
Not just the shared eye color—plenty of people had unusual eyes—but something deeper.
A connection that hummed like a plucked string.
“I don’t know,” I admitted, unable to look away. “I feel like I should know her. Like she’s someone I’ve met in a dream.”
“She disappeared eleven years ago, you would’ve been seven,” Alain said quietly, studying my face. “No trace was ever found. My mother has never given up hope, especially after...”
He trailed off, but I knew what he wasn’t saying. After finding me, with the same amber eyes, emerging from the same forest that had swallowed his sister. The coincidence was too perfect to be accident, yet I had no memory of Odette Legrand beyond the strange certainty that I should know her.
“I’m sorry,” I said, finally tearing my gaze from the portrait. “I wish I had answers for you.”
His expression softened, a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes curving his lips. “Perhaps they’ll come with time. For now, we should proceed before my mother sends out a search party.”
We continued down the hall, but I could feel Odette’s painted eyes following us, asking questions I couldn’t answer.
The sense of wrongness—of pieces failing to align properly—lingered as we approached the grand dining hall, its doors thrown open to reveal a room that sparkled with candlelight and silver.
Three figures awaited us inside, their conversation halting as we crossed the threshold.
The king and queen I recognized immediately.
He with the same bearing as his son but grayer, sterner.
She with the silver-streaked blonde hair and sharp gaze I’d encountered outside the infirmary.
But the third figure was new to me, a man who could only be Alain’s older brother.
Luckily, Brigida informed me of the first child. Alain didn’t talk about him much.
Prince Theron was taller than Alain, broader through the shoulders, with the same dark hair and blue eyes that marked all Legrand men. But where Alain’s gaze held warmth when he looked at me, Theron’s eyes swept over my body with the calculating assessment of a man pricing livestock.
I stiffened involuntarily, an old, ugly memory surfacing of another man who had looked at me that way, more than the others. Gaspard, standing in my father’s doorstep the day after the sacrifice, informing me that he’d be taking me in now that I was alone in the world.