Serpent & Dove (Serpent & Dove, #1)(110)

But he’d already done that.

“Love makes fools of us all, darling.”

Though I knew she was goading me, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. “What do you know about love? Have you ever loved anyone but yourself?”

“Careful,” she said silkily, fingers stilling in my hair. “Do not forget to whom you are speaking.”

But I wasn’t feeling careful. No, as the great white silhouette of the Chateau took shape above me—and Angelica’s Ring glinted on her finger—I was feeling precisely the opposite of careful.

“I’m your daughter,” I said angrily, recklessly. “And you would sacrifice me like some prized cow—”

She wrenched my head back. “A very loud, disrespectful cow.”

“I know you think this is the only way.” My voice grew desperate now, choked with emotions I didn’t care to examine. Emotions I’d locked away tight when I’d grown old enough to realize my mother’s plan for me. “But it’s not. I’ve lived with the Chasseurs. They’re capable of change—of tolerance. I’ve seen it. We can show them another way. We can show them we aren’t what they believe us to be—”

“You have been corrupted, daughter.” She enunciated the last word with a sharp tug to my hair. Pain radiated across my scalp, but I didn’t care. Morgane had to see. She had to understand. “I feared this would happen. They’ve poisoned your mind as they’ve poisoned our homeland.” She jerked my chin up. “Look at them, Louise—look at your people.”

I had no choice but to gaze at the witches still dancing around us. Some faces I recognized. Others I didn’t. All regarded me with unadulterated joy. Morgane pointed to a set of sisters with brown skin and braided hair. “Rosemund and Sacha—their mother burned after delivering an aristocrat’s breech baby. They were six and four.”

She pointed to a small, olive-skinned woman with silver marks disfiguring half her face. “Viera Beauchêne escaped after they tried to burn her and her wife—acid this time instead of flame. An experiment.” She gestured to another. “Genevieve left our homeland with her three daughters to marry a clergyman, severing their connection to our ancestors. Her middle daughter soon sickened. When she begged her husband to return here to heal her, he refused. Her daughter died. Her eldest and youngest despise her now.”

Her fingers gripped my chin hard enough to bruise. “Tell me again about their tolerance, Louise. Tell me again about the monsters you call friends. Tell me about your time with them—about how you spit on your sisters’ suffering.”

“Maman, please.” Tears leaked down my face. “I know they’ve wronged us—and I know you hate them—and I understand. But you cannot do this. We can’t change the past, but we can move forward and heal—together. We can share this land. No one else needs to die.”

She only gripped my chin harder, leaning down next to my ear. “You are weak, Louise, but do not fear. I will not falter. I will not hesitate. I will make them suffer as we have suffered.”

Releasing me, she straightened with a deep breath, and I toppled to the wagon floor. “The Lyons will rue the day they stole this land. Their people will writhe and thrash on the stake, and the king and his children will choke on your blood. Your husband will choke on your blood.”

Confusion flared briefly before hideous despair consumed me, obliterating all rational thought. This was my mother—my mother—and these were her people. That was my husband, and those were his. Each side despicable—a twisted perversion of what should’ve been. Each side suffering. Each side capable of great evil.

And then there was me.

The salt of my tears mingled with the jasmine in my hair, two sides of the same wretched coin. “And what of me, Maman? Did you ever love me?”

She frowned, her eyes more black than green in the darkness. “It matters not.”

“It matters to me!”

“Then you are a fool,” she said coldly. “Love is a nothing but a disease. This desperation you have to be loved—it is a sickness. I can see in your eyes how it consumes you, weakens you. Already it has corrupted your spirit. You long for his love as you long for mine, but you will have neither. You’ve chosen your path.” Her lip curled. “Of course I do not love you, Louise. You are the daughter of my enemy. You were conceived for a higher purpose, and I will not poison that purpose with love. With your birth, I struck the Church. With your death, I strike the crown. Both will soon fall.”

“Maman—”

“Enough.” The word was quiet, deadly. A warning. “We will reach the Chateau soon.”

Unable to endure the cruel indifference on my mother’s face, I closed my eyes in defeat. I soon wished I hadn’t. Another face lingered behind my eyelids, taunting me.

You are not my wife.

If this agony was love, perhaps Morgane was right. Perhaps I was better off without it.

Chateau le Blanc stood atop a cliff overlooking the sea. True to its name, the castle had been built of white stone that shone in the moonlight like a beacon. I gazed at it longingly, eyes tracing the narrow, tapering towers that mingled with the stars. There—on the tallest western turret, overlooking the rocky beach below—was my childhood room. My heart lurched into my mouth.