Chapter Fifty-Five #2
Clio chuckled. “There is a reason Bastian wanted me to win,” she said slyly.
“Initially, I didn’t understand the meaning of the message—until, days later, I happened upon Eliot examining a coin identical to the one I’d glimpsed in my vision.
He slipped it into his pocket when he saw me watching him, but still, it was enough to prompt a realization: If he had one, someone else must have the other.
” She paused briefly, then went on. “I wanted to find out who it was,” Clio continued.
“On the night of the Midway Ball—the night Sybil died—I asked my Wit to lead me to the person who had Eliot’s second coin. ”
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I could see where this was going now. “But there were two of us,” I breathed.
Clio lifted a brow in confirmation. “Exactly,” she agreed.
“The trail my Wit gave me was snarled, hard to follow. Eventually, though, I tracked it through a hidden entrance in Fortblanche’s walls, down into a tunnel.
” She swallowed, my blade bobbing where it rested against her skin.
“I found Sybil’s corpse at the end of it.
She was splayed out on a stone bridge over some kind of underground lake—I could make out her hair from the cavern entrance, like a tongue of flame over the water.
I searched her body for a coin like the one my Wit had shown me, but I found nothing. Nothing except a key.”
Her gaze snapped my way. “Bastian’s key,” I said, holding her stare. So that’s where it is. Not with the veiled lady, as I assumed, but with Clio. “But why didn’t you give it back to him when Dorian tasked you with finding it afterward? He would have crowned you his winner on the spot.”
“Because,” Clio replied bitterly, “I dropped it. There was a noise in the tunnel I’d come through—I thought I saw something, a kind of…
veiled woman…lurking just past the cavern entrance.
I startled. The key slipped from my hand and fell into the waters of the underground lake.
” Again she drifted off; beneath her covers, I felt her fingers flex.
“I pretended like my Wit couldn’t trace its location when Dorian asked.
I thought if I drew out the hunt long enough, Bastian might be forced to grant me victory, just so I’d be able to keep working for him following the Vainglory’s conclusion.
” She rolled her eyes. “Clearly, that hope was unfounded.”
I didn’t grace her comment with a response. Eventually, she dropped her glare, her attention returning to the place where my fingers grasped the hilt of the knife.
“The key is gone,” Clio finished. “Wit or no Wit, no one could pull it from the waters of that lake.”
She fell silent. In the quiet, I considered her tale. It made sense—in fact, it fit rather well with the narrative I’d put together in the time since I’d been attacked by the glove thief in the turret. But did that make it true?
“A neat story,” I admitted. “Here’s another version.
Sybil was still alive when you found her on the bridge over the lake.
You tussled, and the key fell from her pocket into the water as you fought.
” I angled my blade harder against her throat.
“You killed her, then ran. The person who claimed responsibility for her murder only took credit for your work.”
Clio cocked her head. Her eyes were dark, inscrutable; it was like peering into the flat gaze of an oil painting.
After a minute, her lips split in a grin. “You’ll never know.”
A shudder passed through me. Unable to restrain myself, I hissed, low and hateful, “What are you?”
Clio laughed. “Isn’t it obvious?” she answered. “I’m you, reversed.”
She leapt for me then. I sensed her preparing to jump and whipped my knife away from her throat before she could steal it from me. Swearing, she locked her elbow around my neck instead; we rolled, the mattress sinking beneath us, then came up on the edge of the bed.
With all the strength I could muster, I grasped her wrists and pinned them to the headboard, my knife falling to the sheets. She howled, the untamed cry of an animal, as I sat on her stomach, holding her in place.
“But why seek out the coin at all?” I asked. My words were coming quickly now—I was running out of time. “What did it matter to you who had it? You couldn’t have known its purpose; it could have been nothing, a mere token of affection.”
Clio’s lips pressed together. In her silence, I found my answer.
“You care for him,” I murmured disbelievingly. “Since when? The Vainglory?” A twitch of her wrist. I honed in on the motion, shocked. “Before that?”
The other silkwitch tensed. “You do not know me,” she muttered spitefully.
“You took one look at me at the start of the Vainglory and decided I would be your enemy.” Her hips bucked beneath mine; when she failed to throw me off her, she sighed and gave in.
“Before I came into my Wit, I was a chambermaid in Arnaud Moreau’s household,” Clio admitted.
“Eliot would come by often to visit with his sons. The Moreau boys were cruel—to everyone, but particularly to those whom they held power over. Eliot…He did me a kindness I will never forget.” Her eyes flashed.
“From the moment my gifts manifested, I knew—if I were to marry a Weaver, it would be him.”
“And yet you entered a competition to marry his best friend,” I countered. “You attempted to kill me twice—both times so that you might take Bastian up on his offer to wed Noé, despite the fact that you and Eliot were already engaged.”
Clio huffed. “I joined the Vainglory in the hopes that it would allow me to be close to Eliot,” she replied.
“I was not born into society—the contest offered me a chance to claw my way into its ranks. As for Bastian’s offer…
” She shrugged, her shoulders held awkwardly up against the headboard.
“It was obvious that Eliot didn’t love me,” she stated.
“Had the two of you reconciled, he would have left me for you in a second. I value my heart, but I value my future more.”
She smirked, a transitory flutter of her lips, there and gone.
“Tell Bastian of my involvement if you’d like,” she continued in a more pointed tone. “The papers have already settled on you as Sybil’s murderer, and I have the Lears at my side. No one will believe your story.”
Her accusation focused me. “What makes you think I wish to tell Bastian anything?” I bent closer to her. “There is another charge we have yet to address.”
She thrashed again, one wrist breaking free of my grasp. I caught it and slammed it against the wood, holding it in place with my forearm this time. With my free hand, I picked up the knife.
Her eyes widened as I placed it once more at her throat. “He lived, so you will live,” I spat while she panted beneath me. “You should thank the Sisters your bullet spared him. It is all that is preserving your life right now.”
Keeping the blade where it was, I leaned even closer to her.
“You know me, Clio,” I whispered. “I have no boundaries. I have no rules. If you touch him again, I will kill you where you stand. Do we comprehend one another?”
A hesitation—then Clio nodded.
I tsked. “I’d like to hear you say it.”
Her expression was murderous. “Yes.” She seethed a moment later. “We do.”
I smiled. “Good.”
In a single swift motion, I released the pressure on her right wrist, bearing down more heavily on her left one. Reactively, her fingers splayed out; I focused on the one next to her thumb as again I brought down my knife.
This time, I did not hold back. Clio’s cries were wild, loud enough that I knew they’d wake the entire household, but I did not care. Blood spilled over my forearm in a swift crimson river, my blade oil-slick. On the pillow beneath me, something fell.
It was her second finger. “Insurance,” I said, releasing her. “Perfect aim is not quite so effective if you lack the ability to pull the trigger, is it?”
Clio glared at me, cradling her wounded hand. By the expression on her face, I knew she was in deep pain—yet somehow she summoned the will to mutter, “Witch.”
The insult amused me. Wiping my blade on her sheets, I reached up to grasp her chin. “Look at me, darling,” I commanded, jerking her head down. “I am more than a witch. I am a devil. And I am only ever a door away.”
Our eyes met.
“I have one final question,” I said, gazing at her. “Answer it, and you may keep the rest of your hand. Now tell me: Where is the Weaver King?”