Chapter 48
NIK
“NO!”
Nik watched Elara collapse into Fernand’s arms. Her body convulsed as Gaetan’s had, her teeth clenched tight enough he feared they’d shatter. Every vein in her neck and face popped as she seized against the drug. Depending on the dosage, it wouldn’t be long until she was gone forever.
“Nik!” Blai grabbed him.
He tried to shake them off only to find them wearing an unusually somber expression.
“We can’t save her now.” Blai shook the flyers they’d gathered. “But we can still help her.”
It was true. There was a chance she could survive. It had taken two doses to kill Gaetan, and Elara was strong. She could make it. She had to make it.
“Fine.” He slapped his stack of flyers on top of a crate. Blai and Chantal added a handful more. “This might not work. I’ve never … I’ve never done anything like this.”
Blai gripped his shoulder. “Powerful intention.”
Chantal offered him a pen. “Powerful emotion.”
Powerful magie.
He took a shaking breath and nodded. “Find that boy.”
They both took off again.
Nik braced, pen hovering just above the pages of Lisette Plouffe’s flyers. She smiled up at him, inked to the paper by some grand magie that could make her speak and move. The artist must’ve had years of practice to accomplish such a thing. How the hell was he supposed to—
Loosen up. Elara’s voice came to him. You look like you’re about to face a firing line.
He laughed. If only she knew …
“You have to start somewhere,” he said quietly.
Then he pressed the ink to the page. With each stroke of the pen, he focused on the pain his father had caused. The beatings, the years of verbal abuse, the empty promises of affection.
But that wasn’t enough.
Somewhere deep inside, he knew it would take more than that to bring this sketch alive.
He pushed through the hurt to find a memory of his mother’s face bathed in morning sunlight as she tended to the lavender on their windowsill in that tiny apartment. That winter, she’d made lavender tea. It had been his first taste of magie, but not his first taste of love.
For her, he would make this right.
For Elara.
For the Restes.
For himself.
When he pulled back, the ink was dry, from the top sheet to the bottom. Either it had soaked through because of his heavy hand or he’d succeeded.
Time would tell.
“Got him!” Blai panted. “Mouthy brat wanted compensation for his work.”
“As he should,” Chantal snapped. “I’ll pay you handsomely when this is over.”
The boy from the river beamed up at her, then turned to Nik. “You need me to make something?”
Nik held out the flyers. “Please.”
The boy delighted in having unfettered access to the flyers, to press and fold them into a few dozen types of birds and butterflies. Together, they took turns releasing them in batches.
“Look!” Someone pointed.
The crowd turned their gazes upward as the papers swarmed into a massive cloud.
“Nice job,” Nik said, patting the boy on the head before he pushed through the crowd.
Chantal and Blai joined him as he climbed atop the cooking station.
“This is what Lafontaine has done.” He pointed toward the massive banner of Lisette Plouffe. She’d died to try and make things right, and Nik would give her another chance.
Nothing happened.
No magie.
He was a fool to think he’d be able to pull something like this off with so little—
The Souverain’s face melted away like watercolors in the rain. As her smile drooped and eyes faded, a series of letters and numbers took over, followed by his father’s swirled signature at the bottom.
All at once, the winged creatures unfolded and floated down to the crowd. Some landed in the bloody streets, but most were caught by bruised fists.
Nik’s heart twisted with pride.
“This,” he said, “is what Lafontaine plans for the city. A magie-stealing poison.”
Gasps. Curses. Disbelief. Officer, Reste, or rebel, they all turned their suspicious gazes up to the banner.
“Rousseau tried to show you where he’d hidden it.” Nik pointed at their mess. “In the very food he’d promised you.”
Behind them, a building collapsed in a cough of flame and smoke.
“To save the city from people like her!” Lafontaine snarled. “Her ideas and power would destroy us all! She tried to divide us!”
“You divided us when you killed Corinne Rousseau!” Nik shot back.
Outrage turned to cries for justice.
Fernand, who held Elara’s trembling body, added, “Souverains, he let you eat your fill because he was willing to let you pay the price, with your magie or your lives.”
Tremblay’s eyes sharpened on Lafontaine. Gabriel remained hidden behind his throne.
“What’s to stop him from using this on anyone who stands in his way?” he added.
Elara seized once more.
The world watched.
Nik jumped from the station and approached the caravan. For once, he didn’t have to fight his way forward. People parted for him, and not out of disgust.
He stroked a tendril of Elara’s hair back from her sweaty gray forehead.
“I used to stare at my mother’s painting, wishing she’d walk right out of the frame and back to me.” Nik glanced up at his father. “I imagined you felt the same.”
Lafontaine said nothing.
Because he knew how thoroughly he’d ruined both their lives.
“Nothing about her death ever made sense,” he continued. “She betrayed the people who needed her most, yet the bomb still went off. People still died. She died.”
Nik had tried to bury the truth the winter his father had abandoned him. First with violence, then with alcohol. Finally, he’d covered it in denial so deep it poisoned the rest of his life.
“You killed her,” he said. “Her and everyone else at the Senate that day. To start a war.”
“To bring peace!” Lafontaine hissed.
For all his spitting and rage, he was every bit the broken old man he’d always been. He was a murderer who’d chosen his position over the people who adored him.
It was his fault Nik had grown up without his mother.
It was his fault any of this had started in the first place.
Lafontaine tried a new approach, eyes softening as his lips trembled into a smile that would never work on Nik again. “She was my greatest treasure. A necessary sacrifice.”
“Is that why she guarded the room where you killed Gaetan Arnaud?”
The crowd was nearly back to a riot. Rocks cracked against the caravan. Knives gouged the polished wood. One blade narrowly missed his father’s head. Pity.
Fernand turned to the remaining Counseil. “And Lisette Plouffe?”
Tremblay turned stony, expression darkened by rage.
“Arrest him,” she ordered. “For the assassination of Lisette Plouffe, the murder of Gaetan Arnaud, and conspiracy to commit treason.”
Two guards moved right past Elara and Fernand to scoop up Lafontaine.
“Get your hands off me!” He cursed as they pulled him away.
Nik didn’t even watch him go. He didn’t deserve another second of thought. Instead, Nik cradled Elara’s body as Fernand lowered her down to him in order to face Tremblay. Gabriel had miraculously disappeared. Coward.
“Fernand Travers.” He offered his palm. When she snubbed the shake, he shrugged. “I humbly submit myself to represent the Restes as we move forward. The Sociétés must change, and you will listen to your people. All of them.”
He plopped into Lafontaine’s empty chair and leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
“Let’s begin.”