Warrior Witch (The Malediction Trilogy #3)(3)

“Us?” she snarled. “If your interests were so aligned with ours, why didn’t you let Anushka be? If she was still alive, none of this would be happening.”

And Cécile would be dead, with me along with her. And my people would remain at the mercy of my enemies. “The costs were too high.” I hesitated. “I’ve come to believe there’s a better way.”

“Is that what you told Cécile to convince her to help you kill her mother?”

It had been very much the other way around, but I was content to let her believe I was the instigator. The Regent was staring at his wife as though she were a stranger, confirming he’d had no idea that Marie was harboring the witch he’d been hunting on our behalf.

“Genevieve de Troyes was one of the many aliases Anushka used over the years,” I said.

“And you knew?” the Regent demanded of his wife. “You harbored her? Do you have any idea what they would have done to us if they’d discovered your betrayal?” It dawned on him then that one of them stood less than two paces away. “I didn’t know.”

“Clearly,” I said, wondering how well he was going to take the revelation of his son’s betrayal. “But no longer relevant. What matters now is the defense of Trianon.”

They stepped aside for me as I made my way back to the heavy door. Cécile was moving through the castle, her distress biting at my concentration. I wanted to talk to her, to find out what was going on in her head, but what I needed was to focus on discovering the plans of both my father and Angoulême. And Winter.

“What about those flying creatures? Will your dome keep them out?” Marie demanded, following me down the stairs.

Considering the fey could tear a path between worlds nearly anywhere they chose, I highly doubted it, but the question was good. She alone seemed to understand the urgency of the situation. “Only iron–” I broke off when a slice of fear lanced through me. Cécile.

“Iron?” she asked. “What of it?”

Where was she? Had my father’s minions reached us before I’d cut them off? Or Angoulême’s?

“Marie, be silent,” the Regent hissed. “He isn’t interested in listening to the questions of a woman.”

Pain.

I bolted down the last few stairs and across the room, passing Aiden-Fred as I ran. Only as my hands slammed against the door did it occur to me that his presence didn’t make sense. Fred had been up in the tower with us. Had been silently shadowing the Regent on the stairs. Which meant the man who’d just passed me wasn’t Cécile’s brother.

Marie screamed, and I turned around in time to see Aiden du Chastelier plunge the point of a sword through his father’s heart.





Chapter Three





Cécile





My first instinct was to dive out into the corridor, but sensing my intentions, Julian’s finger tightened on the trigger and I froze. No amount of luck would allow me to dodge a bullet at this range: I was no troll.

“Julian, don’t.” I forced as much power as I could into the command, but he only sneered and flicked the sprig of rowan pinned to his collar, the expression grotesque on his tear-stained face.

“Do you think I’d leave myself vulnerable to your tricks?”

I swallowed the bile rising from my stomach. “I’m sorry, Julian. If you knew the truth then you’d understand that I–”

“Shut. Up.” The words were barely louder than a whisper, but they silenced me more thoroughly than any shout.

“I know everything,” he continued, voice shaking but pistol steady. “You might be little more than a back-country twit, but you were right when you said she trusted me more than you with her secrets. Her greatest secret. I know who she was, who you are, what he is, and more about them than you could even dream of.” He wiped his face with his free hand. “Most of all, I know that you are the one who was supposed to die, but instead…” His eyes flickered down to my mother’s corpse, then back to me. “All I have left is revenge.”

He gripped the pistol with both hands, leveling it at my face. It couldn’t end now. Not after everything. Not like this. “Please.”

He bared his teeth. “Not so brave without your troll to protect you?”

“She doesn’t need a troll for protection from the likes of you.” Sabine stepped out of the bedroom and pressed my mother’s gun against the back of his head. “A human is plenty good enough.”

Julian was quiet for one heartbeat. Two. Three. Then he smiled. “When you’ve lost your reason for living, much becomes worth dying for.”

The retort of the pistol shattered my ears, and pain sliced across my face. I staggered sideways, my head ringing and hot trickles of blood coating my fingers as I pressed them to my cheek. But it was nothing in comparison to the gore pooling at Sabine’s feet.

“Idiot,” she said, lowering the still smoking gun. “What good is dying for the dead? They are past caring.”

Lifting her head, Sabine’s eyes landed on me. She dropped the gun and clapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh, Cécile. Your face!”

“It’s fine,” I said, even though my cheek burned, the line the bullet had scored across my skin deep enough to mark me permanently. A fraction of an inch closer, and I would’ve been dead, and no amount of vanity could undermine that fact.