Chapter Twenty Marie #3
Now Antoine kept his eyes steady on the alchemist, as gentle as they had been with Marie all those years ago.
Silas was looking past Antoine, searching the darkness.
Startled, Marie ducked back behind the pillar, heart pounding.
Just what had she overheard? When she looked again, Antoine and Silas were gone, the corridor empty.
“A word of advice, Laveau,” came a voice from the shadows. Marie whirled to find Silas standing in front of her. Crackling vitality had returned to him, and with it, his usual air of silent contempt, that same look of mocking disdain.
His eyes swept over her tearstained cheeks. “Cry your tears if you must, witch. But outside of these walls, you’d do well to use some of that infamous magic on yourself”—his voice fell soft, strangely gentle—“and turn that bleeding heart of yours to stone.”
Silas held her gaze, eyes cutting through the shadows at her. And then he was gone.
Were those the words of an ally or foe? Truthfully, with a man like Silas, she might never know. And there was simply no time. Marie hurried forward into Antoine’s chambers.
He was at his great bookshelf, running a finger along the various timeworn tomes, his reading glasses hanging down the bridge of his nose. He took one look at her breathless appearance and made his way to her. “Marie, what is the matter?”
“I am with child, Antoine,” Marie said. “Jon’s child. I am to have a daughter.”
Antoine remained very still, watching her with that same unending patience he had when Marie had first been brought into his quarters as a little girl. He was grayer now, older, but the same.
“Sanite, she…warned me of Jon’s growing influence on you.”
“Jon is a good man,” insisted Marie.
Antoine turned away from her, his weathered eyes on the Holy Virgin, who stared down at them both, her marbled eyes completely white and unseeing. “I fear…I fear there is no such thing in New Orleans, child. Not even me.”
“What exactly is the Song of Three?” Antoine said nothing. His silence told her that he knew. “Did you know this entire time?” she pressed.
“I knew only what the Inquisitors spoke of in whispers,” he said finally.
“I was a simple priest, Marie. The Inquisition, it was…terrible work. Maddening work. You could not always trust the words of those being persecuted. I had hoped that it would not come to pass.” He stared into Marie’s eyes, into the cold eyes of the past. “When they burned Saloppe at the stake, she spoke of three vessels that would avenge not just her death, but the deaths of all her people. She said that these vessels would form a trinity of power, a triad chosen by the Voodoo gods themselves. The sun, the moon, the star. A union of bloodlines.”
The strange mural on the wall. The sun, the moon, and the star. Voodoo’s trinity.
“But the child,” continued Antoine, “the child would be the sacred conduit, the meeting point at which two vibrant magics flowed. But you know best of all, Marie. Power like this rarely comes without consequence.”
“What are you saying, Antoine?” Her voice trembled.
The silence between them seemed to stretch forever. Another second and she would go mad.
“The child would have to die,” Antonio de Sedella said at last.
Marie closed her eyes, tears slipping down her cheeks. She wanted to scream.
The Baron’s promise, Jon’s words at the fire: I would feel this pain once more, but only once more. Marie felt her heart twist.
And then she remembered the golden eyes of the snake that bit her.
They were Jon’s eyes too. She remembered the poison he’d sucked from her veins, the poison he’d made her drink with every sweet kiss and lesson.
Those eyes had been trying to tell her something…
something she’d missed. Jon was a man of practice and principle.
He did nothing that had not already been calculated a thousand times over.
And then Marie understood. The whole thing had been a stage.
A performance before the real thing. Jon was powerful, his magic older than hers.
But he was not strong enough for his war.
Not yet. For that, he would need a conduit to raise his army of zombi.
One last missing piece.
Jon had told her what he intended all along without her realizing. We must be willing to sacrifice the few to save the many.
Marie shook her head. “No, I will not let that come to pass. I will never allow that.” A million thoughts, a million paths before her. Each one leading to the birth and death of her child. Her daughter. “What am I to do? Please, tell me, there must be something—”
“You must keep away from Jon until the child is born, Marie.”
“And then?”
“We will baptize the child and look after her together. And you.” Father Antoine’s eyes dampened with emotion. “You will become the mother you are destined to be. Until then, we must pray fervently. We must pray God forgives us for what we must do.”
She should not ask, especially when she could not bear the answer. But ask she did. Because in the end, she would find a way to bear this pain as she had for all the others. For her child, she must. “And Jon?”
“When the time is right, you will use what he has taught you.” Antoine took her by the hand as if she were still the same scared little girl who spoke of visions and demons. “But, Marie, you must be sure to strike him first.”