Serpent & Dove (Serpent & Dove, #1)(127)

Beau watched incredulously as the wound knit itself back together. “How—?”

“Not now.” Coco flexed her wrist and shook her head, eyes sharpening, as a man’s scream sounded beyond the temple. The witches must’ve marshaled their forces, recovering from their initial panic. Though I could no longer see the clearing, I could imagine them using the only weapons they had at their disposal: their consorts. Human shields against my brethren’s Balisardas.

Coco glanced back at Madame Labelle’s pale body. “We need to find our camp quickly, or she’ll die.”

She didn’t need to tell us twice. Ducking our heads, we raced through the forest and into the night.

Shadows still cloaked the pines when we found our abandoned camp. Though Madame Labelle had grown steadily paler, her chest still rose and fell. Her heart still beat.

Coco rifled through her pack and pulled out a jar of thick, amber liquid. “Honey,” she explained at my anxious look. “Blood and honey.”

Lowering Madame Labelle to the forest floor, I watched in morbid fascination as Coco reopened her wrist and mixed her blood with the honey. She applied it carefully to the puckered welt on Madame Labelle’s chest. Almost instantly, Madame Labelle’s breathing deepened. Color returned to her cheeks. I sank to my knees, unwilling to look away. Not even for a second. “How?”

Coco sat back, closing her eyes and rubbing her temples. “I told you. My magic comes from within. Not—not like Lou’s.”

Lou.

I lurched to my feet.

“She’s fine.” Ansel cradled her head in his lap across the camp. I hurried over to them, examining her pale face. Her gashed throat. Her gaunt cheeks. “She’s still breathing. Her heartbeat is strong.”

I turned to Coco despite Ansel’s reassurance. “Can you heal her too?”

“No.” She vaulted to her feet as if realizing something, pulling a bundle of herbs and a mortar and pestle from her pack. She set to grinding the herbs into powder. “You’ve healed her already.”

“Then why isn’t she awake?” I snapped.

“Give her time. She’ll wake when she’s ready.” Breathing labored—ragged, uneven—she let the blood from her wrist drip onto the powder before coating her fingers with the mixture. Then she crawled to Lou’s side. “Move. She needs protection. We all do.”

I eyed the mixture with revulsion, angling myself between them. It smelled terrible. “No.”

With a noise of impatience, she knocked me aside and swept a bloody thumb across Lou’s forehead. Then Madame Labelle’s. Then Beau’s. Then Ansel’s. I glared at all of them, pushing her hand away when she lifted it to my face.

“Don’t be an idiot, Reid. It’s sage,” she said impatiently. “It’s the best I can do against Morgane.”

“I’ll risk it.”

“No, you won’t. You’ll be the first Morgane targets when she can’t find Lou . . . if she can’t find Lou.” Her eyes flicked to Lou’s inert form, and she seemed to crumple. Beau and Ansel both extended hands to steady her. “I don’t know if I’m strong enough to ward against her.”

“Anything will help,” Beau murmured.

An empty platitude. He didn’t know any more about magic than I did. I’d just opened my mouth to tell him so when Ansel sighed heavily, touching my shoulder. Pleading. “Do it for Lou, Reid.”

I didn’t move as Coco wiped her blood across my forehead.

We all agreed to leave the camp as soon as possible, but the mountainside proved just as dangerous as the Chateau. Witches and Chasseurs alike roamed the forest with predatory intent. More than once, we’d been forced to scramble up trees to avoid detection, unsure whether Coco’s protection would hold. Palms sweating. Limbs shaking.

“If you drop her, I’ll kill you,” she’d hissed, eyeing Lou’s unconscious form in my arms. As if I could’ve relinquished my grip on her. As if I’d ever let her go again.

Through it all, Morgane did not reveal herself.

We felt her presence hovering over us, but no one dared mention it—as if giving voice to our fear would bring her swooping down upon us. Neither did we mention what I’d done at the temple. But the memory continued to plague me. The sickening feel of my knife sinking into the Archbishop’s flesh. The extra push it’d taken to force the blade between bones to the heart beneath.

The Archbishop’s eyes—wide and confused—as his would-be son betrayed him.

I would burn in Hell for what I had done. If there even was such a place.

Madame Labelle woke first.

“Water,” she croaked. Ansel fumbled for his canteen as I hurried over.

I didn’t speak as she drank her fill. I simply watched her. Inspected her. Tried to calm my racing heart. Like Lou, she remained pallid and sickly, and faint bruises shadowed her familiar blue eyes.

When she finally let the canteen fall, those eyes sought mine. “What happened?”

I unloosed a breath. “We got out.”

“Yes, obviously,” she said with surprising bite. “I mean how?”

“We—” I glanced to the others. How much had they guessed? How much had they seen? They knew I’d killed the Archbishop, and they knew Lou had lived—but had they connected the two?