Chapter 30
NIK
“Lafontaine’s expecting me,” Nik told the guards at his father’s front door.
A lie.
While security had increased in Belleplace, it was crawling all over Lafontaine’s chateau. The police stationed at the gates had only let Nik in because of his direct apprenticeship to Lafontaine—and the mild threat that Lafontaine would be upset if they held up his “guest” any further.
One guard said flatly, “He’s out.”
“I have urgent news. Of the Restes.”
His voice trembled, and the words barely tumbled from his lips. Acting was more difficult than he’d given Chantal and Blai credit for.
But it worked. The guards stepped aside and admitted him into his father’s foyer. To be fair, it wasn’t uncommon for Nik to be summoned and made to wait like a dog.
He sprinted up the stairs and to Lafontaine’s office.
Nik had navigated these halls hundreds of times in the last four years, yet they felt strange tonight. Different. The white walls he once thought rich felt sterile. The red accents along the floor and ceiling like blood-soaked omens.
No. The chateau hadn’t changed.
Nik had.
Sneaking into a Souverain’s study? Digging up information? Using it to release a rebel? These weren’t the actions of a diligent son, and it went way beyond a little bit of teenage fury.
It was treason.
But it was the only way he could prevent Lafontaine from doing something rash. Something that would spark a war they’d worked so hard to avoid.
Once he reached his father’s office, his hand hovered at the door.
He’d been angry at him before, and he’d acted out as all children do. But Nik wasn’t a child anymore, and this wasn’t a simple disagreement.
The paper tucked safely in his pocket reminded him of that. Everything his father had done, from Plouffe’s murder and framing Gaetan, had made things worse. Nik had to know how the formula fit into all of this. How he fit into all of this.
The door opened with a click.
“Souverain?” he called.
No answer.
The desk was empty and clean, the cascading crimson lights above illuminated in a dull red, but it didn’t account for the smoldering orange light spreading across the white carpet.
“No.” He approached the window on leaden feet.
Anespérer was on fire.
The Restes was burning.
Elara’s home was burning.
His home was burning.
Smokestacks from one of the factories collapsed in a gnarled gulf of flame. Black smoke plumed into the sky. Sparks of light shattered outward, hungrily searching for the next dry tinder to devour. On and on it would continue until it consumed everything.
Unless he found a way to stop it.
Nik ran to the shelves.
The answers had to be somewhere. His father had hidden so much from him, secret rooms and dangerous serums. All of it here, beneath his nose. There must be more, something to help him.
He tore through the shelves and drawers. Dead ends. Everywhere. A simple thief had been able to uncover the truth—why not Nik?
He slammed his fist against the wall with a growl, rattling his mother’s painting.
She chose his father, and the loop started again.
Nik knew every detail from staring at it during his father’s lectures.
The star in the top left twinkled twice; the choppy waves crashed on the concrete in an infinite puddle that would never dry; and his mother never smiled.
Not once. Not even when she’d made up her mind to follow love to her doom.
“You’d know what to say to him.”
He touched her face.
The painting rippled, like a pond disturbed by a stone. When he pulled his fingers back, they were clean and dry. Not a drop of water or paint.
An illusion. One he tested again by pushing his entire hand through, only to find a smooth and cold surface beyond.
With a deep breath, he pressed his face into the canvas. It felt as if the paint itself were stroking his skin as he sank through to the other side, where a familiar, blinding-white room came into focus.
The operating room. The one his father had hidden from him.
It had always been there, behind his mother’s portrait—like a secret.
The door to the right opened, and two guards wrestled a hulking figure into the examination chair. When they stepped back, Nik cursed.
Gaetan was far worse than when he’d been dragged from the interview.
Fresh blood coursed from his nose and mouth, and the bruises had darkened every inch of visible skin, making it impossible to see the man beneath.
He didn’t resist as they strapped him down because he couldn’t. He was barely conscious.
They were supposed to have taken him to the prison.
Why the hell was he here?
Nik reached out, finding his fingers pressed against cold glass. A two-way mirror. He could see in, but they couldn’t see out.
Before Nik could even think to break into the room and free Gaetan, Lafontaine was already beside him. His jaw moved and flexed, speaking words Nik couldn’t hear.
Gaetan responded by spitting.
Lafontaine regarded the crimson splotch near his boots. He took a syringe from the operating table. It was filled with purple liquid, which he flicked to remove the air bubbles.
Shit.
This had to be the formula. His big secret.
Gaetan rolled his eyes, mouthing something in response.
Stubborn. Fearless. Like Elara.
“Stop,” Nik muttered as his father approached. “Don’t! Stop!”
Even if his father could’ve heard him, he wouldn’t have listened. He always did as he pleased.
Nik watched in horror as he sank the needle deep into Gaetan’s neck.
The massive man stiffened as if struck by lightning.
Lips coiled back like a rabid dog as his teeth mashed together hard enough to make the veins protrude along his throat and forehead.
He pushed against the restraints, muscles taut with pain.
Then he slumped for what seemed like ages.
Nik’s throat turned sour.
Gaetan awoke with a gasp, and Nik finally allowed himself to breathe.
Lafontaine scribbled notes onto a pad, flipping pages as he spoke. He managed to coax a diminished response from Gaetan, who was trapped in a trance. They volleyed back and forth, answers his father recorded. Given the sharp scratch of his pen, he wasn’t pleased.
As if it pained him to do so, his father took up another syringe.
“Stop,” Nik croaked.
His father approached.
“Stop!” he shouted, stronger.
The syringe sank into the same spot. A familiar spot.
There was no way to get in. Lafontaine’s security system only answered to him. Nik could only beat against the glass until his hands ached, until he felt as if he might break through the wall, until his ears rang with his useless shouts. But he beat on, desperate to stop this.
On the other side, mere feet away and entirely unreachable, Gaetan surged against the straps again. This time, his body left the chair, and blood oozed between his teeth.
Lafontaine studied him with perverse eagerness.
Gaetan collapsed once more.
His father waited, pen in hand.
He waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Then he tossed the paper, snatched a different syringe, and jammed it straight into Gaetan’s heart. Adrenaline. It was a drastic measure to bring someone back, but it could work.
When Gaetan woke, Nik would find a way to save him from this hell.
He would hide and wait for Lafontaine to leave. As the door closed, Nik would sneak in, unhook Gaetan, and steal him away through the servant passages he and Elara had taken weeks ago.
As soon as he woke up.
Any second now.
Except seconds turned into minutes, and Gaetan remained motionless.
Lafontaine pressed his fingers to his throat, then turned away. He tossed his clipboard with a silent curse. Furious red splotches climbed up his throat as he tipped the table and threw the empty syringes against the wall, the glass shattering in violent explosions.
Nik tried to accept what had happened. Another rebel dead. The city should be safer.
But all he saw now was a man, a good man, murdered in the name of his father’s vengeance.