Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
éTIENNE
The darkness recedes as a sweet voice sings in the old tongue, the language of the Veil. She sings to the shadows inside me, and astonishingly, they listen. I succumb to its enchantment except…no, I must not give in to the Veil.
My eyes fly open, my hand grips her wrist. “You sing it too.”
Her eyes, a rich mahogany, meet mine without the faintest sign of fear despite the curse I now bear from the Hollow Court. “Mais oui.”
"You're a Veilseer.” A rare breed of mortal attuned to the Veil. It’s my duty to report her to the Council, who’ll either imprison her or execute her.
Alas, I will be dead soon enough and unable to make such a report. And the Council would surely see my own execution swiftly follow hers, unwilling to risk my being claimed by the Hollow Court to be used against the Council and humanity.
"And you're an Oathmarked.” She reaches for a cloth and tinctures, her demeanor still unafraid.
“I am accursed. Your remedies cannot save me.”
Her lips twitch upward. “Then it is not saving I’ll do, monsieur. It is listening. The Veil called you to my gate, not I.”
She dips the cloth into a basin fragrant with chamomile, then presses it to my wound. The heat of it sears where it touches my skin. The shadows inside me recoil from her light.
“You should not touch me,” I rasp. “The poison runs deep.”
“I have touched worse things than men half in the grave,” she murmurs. “Hush now, before the Veil mistakes your pride for permission to take you.”
Her hand is firm against my wound, and pain flares white behind my eyes. She resumes her song in the same forgotten tongue. The melody flows through me, until the shadows within me still and listen. So do I until I’m lulled into the darkness again.
I startle awake, prepared to fight, although I don’t know my foe. The room is strange. The bed unfamiliar. With great effort, I rise halfway. Across the chamber, a tall mirror reflects my form confirming my state. My body is solid, but my reflection wavers. The curse progresses.
"You're awake."
The Veilseer stands in the doorway, her honey-bronze skin glowing in dim light from a hurricane lamp, black curls tied up in a faded ribbon. She’s ethereal, as if she’s beyond this world and the Veil. An angel, and for a moment, I suspect the Veil is playing tricks, luring me away from my life.
She tilts her head. “êtes-vous d’accord?” Are you alright?
"Why did you help me?"
She crosses to the bedside, hands steady as she unwraps the poultice from my side. "You were dying on my doorstep."
"I've been dying for years."
“And so it continues. But that’s how it is for the Oathmarked, n’est pas?” Her fingers pause against my skin.
“What do you know of the Oathmarked?” My world is a secret to mortals.
“Enough.” Her tone sharpens. "The Council may hide its truths, but they can't silence what the spirits tell me."
I wince as she presses on my wound. "What do they tell you about me?"
"That you're a ghost halfway made." She has no fear in her eyes, only curiosity. "That you belong to the Fifth House."
My breath catches. My current situation all but guarantees the fifth house’s erasure. "There is no Fifth House. Not anymore."
"Yet here you are." She places a clean cloth soaked in something bitter-smelling against my wound. "Half-here, at least."
I say nothing as she tends to my wounds.
"And this?" Her fingertip traces the edge of my Oathmark, sending a shiver across my skin. The fifth circle of my sigil is broken, proof again that House Noctier no longer exists.
"The price of protecting the Veil.” I shouldn't speak so freely. This woman is a stranger. No, she’s something worse, a Veilseer unbound by oath or Council. But imminent death has loosened my tongue, and her hands on my skin feel like the only true thing left in either world.
She frowns. “The council did this—”
I shake my head. “Those who live behind the Veil. They bested me and now I’m cursed, doomed to vanquish in the Veil.” I hold my hand up, seeing through it to the lovely healer who seems determined to save me from fate.
"You speak folly, monsieur." She cleans blood from my skin with gentle strokes.
"étienne.”
“étienne,” she repeats, and something in the way she speaks my name grounds me. I’m still here even as I vanish.
Her hands pause against my skin. Around us, shadows shift and whisper.
"I’m Geneviève," she offers in return. “Geneviève Laurant.”
I’m made aware that my being here puts her in more peril than she already is by being a Veilseer. "I'll bring danger to your door," I say, catching her wrist again, finding solace in feeling her pulse of life. "I'm sorry."
Geneviève looks down at me without fear. "The shadows have whispered your coming for weeks, étienne Noctier. I think perhaps it is not chance that led you to my gate."
She gently pulls her wrist from me, setting her palm against my broken mark, and warmth blooms beneath it. My breath catches as light spills from her touch, finding the fractured places in me that go deeper than flesh.
“Do you live here alone?” Who else am I putting in danger? Is there a husband who will not want another man preoccupying her time?
Her hands still. “Alone enough,” she says, and resumes her treatment.
“You have no husband?” I say carefully.
“No.”
“Family?”
“My father left for his new family when I was still a child.”
That suggests her father is a white man and her mother, likely a femme de couleur libre, a free woman of color.
“My mother is gone.” She lifts her hands, and I miss the warmth.
“No brothers or sisters? Aunts—?”
“My brother was sent to France. He prefers it there.”
“Then you are quite alone?” Just like me.
She sighs. “I was a placée, like my mother. He was a merchant when it suited him, pirate when it paid better.”
“And now?”
“The sea took him off Barataria three winters ago.” She gathers her herbs.
“I am sorry.”
“Do not be.” Her mouth lifts, rueful. “He gave me a roof.”
“And children?”
She turns away. “You ask many questions, monsieur, for a man leaving this world.”
“Forgive my impertinence. It is difficult enough that I’m putting you in danger. I wouldn’t want to have harm come to your family.”
“You need not worry. I’m not blessed with children.” There’s a mournfulness to her tone.
“Still, I should leave. You are not safe with me." I make an attempt to sit up, but pain lances through my chest.
"You'll bleed to death before you reach the street." She presses her hand against the wound I’ve reopened. "The Veil has you halfway already."
"Perhaps that's where I belong."
"Non." Her gaze meets mine. "Whatever chases you can wait until you're strong enough to face it."
I should refuse. But her healing hands against my skin remind me what it is to be tethered to this world of the living. And so, against reason and fate, I surrender to her care.
But I don’t rest in sleep. I walk the halls of my family home, Noctier Maner. I can feel the spirits of my parents who built the home at the calling of the Veil. More than any spot in New Orleans, the Veil runs strong through the property.
I reach the atrium, the glass ceiling translucent, allowing a view of the stars above.
"How are we here?"
I turn to see Geneviève, lovely in a dark green dress, her dark hair wrapped in an emerald and bronze tignon, the elegant headwrap worn by Creole women of color by law. Her expression is curious as she takes in the atrium.
"The Veil thins in sleep," I tell her. "And apparently you can follow where I walk."
“This home was filled with love. But it will be a long time before it is again.”
“How do you know?” What are the spirits telling her?
She circles the marble floor, her fingertips brushing the air as if listening through her skin. “The Veil hums here. It’s awake even while you sleep.”
That doesn’t answer my question specifically. But it tells me that I won’t find happiness here. What more is there to know?
“I’m the last of my name,” I say. “Someone else will need to bring love to this home.”
She nods. “Your father hoped you’d marry.”
I believe all fathers hope their children will marry, but her words bring back a memory of my father.
The last night I saw him, he was heading to a council meeting, appearing more unsettled than I’d ever seen him.
He warned me, “Always heed the calling of the Veil. Promise me. The future requires it.”
I’d promised, unsure what he meant. I protected the Veil, could feel the Veil, but it never spoke to me.
I asked my warrior brother, Bastian Favreau, whose line carries the gift of Veilwalking, allowing them to slip into the Veil for short periods of time, what my father might have meant. He had no answer and only warned me to be careful if the Veil ever called to me.
I feel the Veil now, but it’s not a calling. It’s a slipping as my life slowly drifts away from me.
“I was not fortunate to find a wife,” I responde to her comment.
Her head tilts back, looking up toward the sky partly obscured by the branch of an old oak hanging over the glass ceiling.
I follow her gaze upward. Up high among the branches, a pale green shimmer glows.
“Do you see?” she asks.
“See what?”
“The beginning.”