Chapter Forty-Two
The first golden light of dawn had broken through the windows of the quiet hall, leaving no darkness in which to hide. It
was just as well. Hiding wasn’t an option, not anymore.
I burst through the door, gathering my skirts above my ankles to free up the movement of my legs. Oliver’s form was nothing
more than a vague blur as I broke out into a full run, my heart racing ahead of my feet—of that last, gruesome sight of the
King’s face.
It didn’t matter where I was going, it only needed to be away from here. The palace had as many corridors and rooms as the
Brickbats had alleys and lanes, and as I began a winding path through it, my mind distantly tracked the scents around me,
avoiding rooms and halls where I could smell servants or, worse, guards.
“Viola!” Oliver shouted behind me, damn it. I glanced back, unsurprised to find his face pale and streaked with sweat.
“Go!” I told him. “Don’t follow me!”
He’d strain himself. He’d collapse and I’d be responsible for another life. But, my God, his scent was woody with determination.
As long as I ran, so would he.
Bloody hell. Brighten’s voice boomed out behind us, his essence gathering with others I didn’t recognize. “To me! To me!”
I could do this. I could disappear into the city—if I could find another way out, where they wouldn’t think to look for me,
where the servants would still be away, attending to the guests. The kitchens? The statuary or gallery? Not to the private
apartments, not to Cartwell. There were guards there. If I could just get out, if I could get back to—
My chest seized with the realization. No. I couldn’t go back to Foxcourt House. I couldn’t give the palace the impression
that they were involved in any way. And—
Oh, God. Hugh.
I blazed past the grand staircase, the pale stone sleepy with morning. I had stayed after I’d applied the perfume—I would
have seen if it had had that effect on him, wouldn’t I?
My toe caught on the edge of a carpet, momentum carrying me down hard onto my knee. I gasped in pain as my ankle twisted, and struggled to pull myself back up again. Each time I swung my right leg forward, pain sliced up the muscle from my foot to my hip.
I gritted my teeth, fighting past the painted landscapes lining the hall. The crimson carpet spread out around me like a spill
of blood, and for a disorienting moment, I was sure I was sinking into it, that I would drown in it.
A hand caught my arm. I sent my elbow back a second too late to keep it from connecting to Oliver’s chest.
“Oof—” he gasped out, doubling over. “Viola—”
“This way!” Brighten shouted, his voice echoing along the stone walls.
Oliver straightened at once, his essence flooding with wet fur. He spun in a desperate arc, trying to orient himself as to
where we were in the ceremonial wing of the palace.
“Here,” he said. “Just up ahead, the statuary . . .”
He was stronger than I had ever given him credit for, that much was clear. Supporting the bulk of my weight, he rushed us
toward a room on the right, just past a painting depicting the storm of cannon fire and sinking ships that marked the end
of the Battle of Rocheblanche.
The small gallery smelled of cold stone and the faint essences of their sculptors and the emotions they had carved into the
marble. The checked floor was dizzying and dark; the lush red curtains were still drawn, the room waiting to be opened for
the day.
Oliver pulled us behind a towering statue of Lune in Solarius’s embrace, tucked into an alcove. There was just enough room
for us to kneel behind it.
I panted as I dropped to a crouch, bracing my palms against the cold tile.
“What happened?” Oliver gasped out, the whites of his eyes flashing in the dark.
He was trembling, his emotions a potent blend of peppery excitement and damp fur and the mint undercurrents of his stress.
“He—the King—” I whispered, my voice a harsh scrape. Outside, the guards thundered past the room. One of them—who smelled
strongly of horses and tooth powder—lingered in the entry, the door creaking as he pushed it open. A slash of light fell over
the tiles; I held my breath, my ears straining for the click of his boots against them.
After a moment, however, he retreated into the hallway, throwing us back into a near-complete darkness. I released a shuddering breath.
“The King?” Oliver prompted. “What happened to him?”
“It was—” I shook my head, pressing my fist to my mouth to stanch the surge of nausea. “It was horrible, I can’t—I don’t understand
what happened—”
He shook me, his essence taking on a metallic spike. “Is the King dead?”
Despite the chaos of my thoughts, despite my heart rioting in my chest, I stilled.
The cold marble tile bled through my dress skirt into my skin, and yet, it was nothing to the icy bite of comprehension that
spread through me like hoarfrost.
“Is he dead?” Oliver demanded.
Not, Did the perfume work? Not, What happened?
I breathed in sharply, forcing myself to answer calmly: “Yes.”
Oliver sat back with a harsh exhale like a laugh.
And I knew.
Not from the way the air turned to a cloud of pepper around us, but the pure honeysuckle of elation that blossomed in it.
I shot forward, gripping his jacket, tearing it open. The buttons scattered around us, pinging the statue. I felt his pockets,
felt for—
The flacon of perfume I’d brought with me. The one I’d had in my cloak—that I thought he’d handed me.
He stared at me through the darkness. His lips curled, twisting the shadows over his face until he was nearly unrecognizable.
We moved at the same moment. I broke the perfume bottle against the statue and jabbed the jagged remnants forward blindly,
catching him in the shoulder.
The glass pierced him the moment his gloved hand slapped over my mouth and nose, and he tackled me back against the alcove
wall. I screamed into his palm—screamed my rage, and betrayal, and pain.
“You made this . . . so . . . difficult,” he snarled, blood staining his pristine white shirt. “If you’d just used the bloody
jasmine grandiflorum oil—”
Without air, my vision was crowding with a deeper, more frightening darkness.
I shoved at him, cutting my own hand to jam the broken perfume flacon harder into his shoulder.
He pulled back with a yelp of pain, and air flooded into my lungs.
But the scent of his glove lingered, nagging at my awareness. Sweat, leather, and . . .
Licorice.
Heat gathered in my blood, fizzing like sparkling wine. I knew at once what it was. Magic.
“You,” I gasped, scrambling back around the statue. “It was you—you saw the poison in Mama’s journal, you—”
“I knew from the moment I met you at the flower stand,” Oliver said. “I knew you were like me. The way you spoke about scents,
about being able to smell how someone felt . . . My whole life, I had been the only one. My father thought I was mad. I learned
not to speak of it. Not until he came to find me.”
“Glenmoor,” I choked out.
He nodded. “I told you my mother’s family was Gallian, didn’t I? The DeForests were sure the talent had died out in the bloodline,
thanks to your grandfather. They have given me everything I needed to see this through, including the acid. I thought that
a nice touch of irony.”
I balked.
“But you were the one to truly teach me. I learned so very much from listening to you, watching you, reading your mother’s journal . . .”
He rose, following my frantic path with a look of contempt.
“You’ve rather muddled our plans, you know,” Oliver said. “We had everything in place to create an endless array of perfumes:
the House of Rosebourne’s materials and manufacturing, Glenmoor’s control of the country, countless unwanted children in the
orphanages he built, teeming rookeries waiting to be reclaimed. We could have created new perfumes, more powerful perfumes.”
I stared at him in horror. “You wouldn’t.”
“Ah, there it is,” Oliver said with a cold laugh. “You always thought me weak. Everyone did. Do you know what that’s like?
To have your family see you as pathetic . . . hopeless . . . soft . . .” He spat each word. “I tried to be good. To be nice. I was so bloody nice to you. And none of it mattered.”
I couldn’t think. “Oliver . . .”
“I knew there was something great in me, and I thought you would recognize it,” he said. “If it hadn’t been for Glenmoor bringing the DeForests into my life, I would have dawdled after
you forever, accepting what meager scraps you offered.
We could have achieved so much together, but instead you opened your legs like a whore to the first titled lord who gave you a second glance.
” He shook his head, revulsion and disbelief pouring from him.
“Even now, you pity me. You pity me. I wanted you more than anything, more than anyone, and you pitied me, like I was the gutter-born one.”
My nails clawed at the floor as I scrambled back, trying to put more distance between us. “Why did you go through with it?
Glenmoor has been exposed. You won’t get the House of Rosebourne no matter what becomes of me.”
“The best way to prove a man’s innocence is to demonstrate another’s guilt,” Oliver said, with another terrible smile. “If
you had just said yes to me at Fairgate, none of this would have happened. Now that you’ve killed the King and proved all
the nasty newspaper stories true, Glenmoor can step back into the good graces of society and rule as regent.”
I tried to stand, only for my ankle to collapse beneath me. I dragged myself back, away from him, until I bumped into the
statue of a saint at the center of the room.
Using every ounce of my boiling anger, I dragged myself up along its holy form. “He will never rule.”
“Then I’ll deploy my perfumes on the new regent,” Oliver said, “and bend him to my will until I have everything I desire.”
His eyes drifted over me. “Well. Nearly everything.”
“What are you—” I began.
“Viola,” he interrupted, “come here.”
The trickle of warmth I’d felt before roared with sudden heat, blazing through my blood. My skull, already aching, flared
as if ringed with fire. It was haunting to feel my body move without my willing it to. To feel my very soul seem to recede,
burning away in those golden shimmering flames.
The glove. Magic. The words broke apart, scattering. My body limped toward him, teetering as my balance failed me. With a grunt of annoyance,
Oliver met me halfway, coming to stand so close, I could pick up the trace of the perfume he’d dabbed onto his glove.
Using the arm I hadn’t wounded, he cupped my cheek. “Stay still.”
The magic clamped me in its flaming jaws as he brought his face in line with mine.
“If I have to sacrifice you to have everything I want, I can at least have this.”
His pupils were enormous, drowning out the other colors in his eyes. Dread coiled in me. I knew what was coming next.
“Don’t fight,” he murmured. His fingers tightened so painfully in my hair I cried out, only to be silenced by the insistent press of his lips.
My vision tinted black with the force of my panic. I lifted a hand to shove him away, only for my fingers to feebly graze
his silk waistcoat. I wanted to vomit, to scream, as every soft memory I had of him was shredded.
He pulled back with a soft sigh, and I seized my chance. Before he could think to issue another command, I drove my forehead
into his nose, relishing the satisfying crack as it broke.
Oliver cried out, choking as blood poured down his face and throat, momentarily blinded by the pain. I fled for the door,
ignoring the jagged agony that lanced through my ankle.
Breath sobbed in and out of me as I burst back into the bright hallway. Magic thrummed and hissed in my veins, feeding on
my fear.
“There!” someone cried out. “There she is!”
To my right, Brighten and two other guards stood at the end of the hall. I bolted left, trying to double back the way I had
come.
Three steps.
I made it three steps before Brighten bellowed, “Lady Foxcourt, stop!”
Magic roared in me at the command and my body locked up as if slamming into a wall. Off-balance, I fell to the carpet with
a pained gasp, my vision flashing with bursts of light at the impact. The floor shuddered as the guards rushed forward, and
I closed my eyes, my soul straining to get up, to keep running, to escape.
And when the butt of the rifle cracked against my skull, knocking me into the waiting darkness, it was a mercy.