Chapter 36 #2
“But you don’t know how.” Nik took the chemical equation from his pocket. “Elara said you took this from Lafontaine.”
“Yes. What is it?”
“It’s complicated. Lafontaine was testing it on Gaetan the night he killed him.”
“How do you know that?” Fernand asked darkly.
“I watched him.” Nik held up his palms. “Before you rearrange my face again, I’ll tell you the same thing I told Elara: I tried to save him, but I couldn’t.”
Chantal tapped the paper, urging the conversation away from another brawl. “What does it do?”
“It’s a medicine or a poison. Something that kills at high doses.”
“What about low doses?” Nicolette asked.
“No idea.”
She tossed a knife, catching it by the handle only to toss it again. “Useless.”
“Seems Fernand did just as well figuring it out.” Nik motioned to the pocks on his arms, where he’d obviously been experimenting on himself like a fool.
“I’m not the Souverain’s anointed apprentice,” he sneered.
“Son,” Nik corrected him. “Son.”
Fernand blinked once before he moved to throttle Nik again. Chantal kept him in check with the end of her cane against his chest.
“Care to help me out here?” she snapped at Blai, who had their feet up on the table.
“Nah,” they replied. “Besides, I’m taking a bet.”
“On?” Nicolette asked.
“Who won’t make it out of here alive. My soms are on Nik.”
“Blai!” Chantal snapped.
“Fine. Fine.” They sat up straight. “We know the serum kills at high doses, and Nik said Lafontaine seemed pretty pissed off about it, which means he wants it to do something else. But what?”
Nik thought of the questions, the papers on the clipboard, his father’s frustration.
“No idea.”
“Wait.” Chantal took Plouffe’s flyer from the wall. “Why the Souverain of Arts Culinaires? What did she know that Lafontaine didn’t want out?”
Fernand tapped the chemical equation. “She said Lafontaine wanted her to vote him into a new position as Grand Souverain.”
“A position the Counseil would never agree to,” Nik added.
“Because it would diminish their power,” Blai said. “Even so, refusing him isn’t enough reason to kill her.”
“She said he had a plan for her,” Fernand said. “She was terrified of it.”
Nik frowned. “She didn’t say what it was?”
“No. Just that I could find proof in his chateau, a paper. This paper.”
Chantal laid out the flyer with the formula. Nik had the puzzle pieces he needed, but he still had no clue what the picture was.
“He was going to have Plouffe use this poison,” Nicolette said. “On herself? On someone else? Who would they be targeting?”
“And why?” Fernand asked.
If Chantal stared at him any harder, his skin would catch fire.
But she was right. The truth needed to come out if they were to stop his father and save Elara.
“Congratulations,” Nik said to Blai. “You’re about to win your bet.”
He laid the final puzzle piece on the table: the part of Gaetan’s photograph he’d torn away. His mother smiled back at him, arms slung around the rebels she’d called friends. The ones she’d betrayed to save the monster who hadn’t deserved her love.
“Haydee Cadieux was my mother,” he said. “And she loved my father enough to botch the rebellion.”
Fernand exploded.
The table went flying; Nik toppled from his seat.
It was Nicolette who saved him this time, her knife at Fernand’s cheek.
“Your hot head is going to give us away,” she hissed. “Keep it down.”
Slowly, he lowered into the chair, but he never turned his murderous gaze away.
“I swear.” Chantal rubbed her temples. “You all are more dramatic than a fleet of chorus girls. Where were we?”
“He’ll target the Restes.” Fernand’s leg bounced anxiously. “Now we have to figure out when and where.”
The room went quiet. Outside, the thud of boots passed by, followed by another as the police patrolled. Even after they passed, no one spoke.
Where would his father have an opportunity to mass inject the Restes? It would be too obvious. Even if he offered a surprise health clinic, people would figure him out when the bodies started to drop.
“Hello, my dears!” Lisette Plouffe’s cheerful screech made them all jump.
Despite the ash and dust, she smiled back at them as she recited, “The grand finale of the Objet d’Art is just around the corner.
The three finalists will present a magnificent feast as their final bid to become your new Souverain of Arts Culinaires.
Will up-and-coming Berina Savi tantalize us with her bold Taravol cuisine?
Or perhaps Hector Vidal, an Anespérerian treasure, will prove the classics are to be treasured?
And we can’t count out the scrappy Restes orphan, Elara Rousseau—”
Nik knew it was coming, but her name still sent a bolt of electricity through him.
“—who will prove you can forge your own path? We’ll find out tomorrow evening in the Restes Market, where you will determine who is worthy to sit on your Counseil.”
Plouffe went still, frozen with her fake smile.
And Nik knew exactly what his father had planned.
“The ingredients,” Nik breathed.
Elara said it every day. Food didn’t need to be expensive to be delicious. Any chef could take humble produce and magie them into something wonderful.
“Lafontaine must’ve asked Plouffe to add it into her food,” he continued.
“But when he wouldn’t tell her what it was—” Blai added.
“She came to me.” Fernand folded his arms.
“And he killed her.” Nicolette stabbed her knife in the plastered image of Plouffe’s face.
“They’re letting the people feast tomorrow,” Chantal said. “He’s going to poison them.”
“But you said he didn’t want this shit to kill Gaetan,” Nicolette argued. “So what does he want?”
Nik studied the letters and numbers. This was the prize his father had dangled above his head for so long. He’d wrapped it in false promises to end the fighting and bring the Restes to peace. Now he knew that his father didn’t give two shits about the Restes.
Not even for Haydee’s sake.
If he couldn’t kill an entire quarter, then what—
Nik bolted up.
Nicolette drew her knife. Fernand cocked his pistol.
“What?” Chantal asked.
“I knew I’d seen these components somewhere.
I knew they didn’t belong. I just remembered.
” He paced, forcing his mind to go back to the exact page in the first item his father had ever gifted him: the Arts Humains primer.
A textbook for children. Nik had devoured every fucking page to make him happy.
Had copied every word enough times to make his fingers bleed.
“Scorpion root.” He snapped his fingers.
“The stuff Elara used in the competition?” Blai asked.
“Exactly. My father had no idea how to control it … until Elara showed him in the first round. But it shouldn’t be mixed with this compound.” He pressed his fingers against a group of letters and numbers. “Somnique. It dulls the senses, almost to a catatonic state.”
“So, he wants to heighten people’s powers and put them in a coma?” Nicolette asked.
No. He had to be missing something.
What did his father really want from the Restes? What did he think they deserved?
We make them feel equal, Nikolas! That doesn’t mean they are!
We treated the symptom, not the disease.
We’ll be able to end the violence, hunger, and turmoil … for good.
The truth had been there all along.
“It destroys magie.”
And Elara was going to help him do it.