Serpent & Dove (Serpent & Dove, #1)(91)

I swallowed hard and nodded.

Bernie watched us approach with utterly empty eyes. “Bernie?” I smiled encouragingly, keenly aware of Andre’s knife in my boot. “Bernie, do you remember me?”

Nothing.

I reached out to him, and something flickered behind his vacant eyes when my fingers brushed his skin. Without warning, he lunged over the trash bin toward me. I yelped and stumbled backward, but he held my hand in a vise-like grip. A terrifying leer split his face. “I’m coming for you, darling.”

Pure, unadulterated fear snaked down my spine. Paralyzing me.

I’m coming for you, darling . . . darling . . . darling . . .

Reid pulled me backward with a snarl, twisting Bernie’s wrist with brutal force. His blackened fingers splayed, and I managed to snatch my hand away. As soon as our contact ceased, Bernie fell limp once more—like a marionette with cut strings.

Reid stabbed him anyway.

When the Balisarda pierced his chest, the shadows enveloping his skin melted away into nothingness, revealing the true Monsieur Bernard for the first time.

Bile rose in my throat as I took in his paper-thin skin, the white of his hair, the laugh lines around his mouth. Only his milky eyes remained the same. Blind. He gasped and spluttered as blood—red this time, clean and untainted—bloomed from his chest. I fell to my knees beside him, taking his hands in my own. Tears ran freely down my face. “I’m so sorry, Bernie.”

His eyes turned to me one last time. Then closed.

The covered wagons of Ye Olde Sisters gathered outside the church, but I hardly saw them. Moving as if in another’s body, I floated silently above the crowd.

Bernie was dead. Worse—he’d been enchanted by my mother.

I’m coming for you, darling.

The words echoed in my thoughts. Over and over and over again. Unmistakable.

I shivered, recalling the way Bernie had reanimated at my touch. The way he’d watched me so closely in the infirmary. I’d foolishly thought he’d wanted to end his pain when he’d tried to jump from the infirmary window. But his escape . . . Madame Labelle’s warning . . .

The timing couldn’t have been coincidence. He’d been trying to go to my mother.

Reid said nothing as we walked to our room. Bernie’s death seemed to have similarly shaken him. His golden skin had turned ashen, and his hands shook slightly as he pushed open our bedroom door. Death. It followed wherever I went, touching everyone and everything dear to me. It seemed I couldn’t outrun it. Couldn’t hide. This nightmare would never end.

When he closed the door firmly behind us, I tore off my new cloak and bloody dress, flinging Andre’s knife into the desk. Desperate to scrub away all memory of blood on my skin. The knife wouldn’t protect me, anyway. Not from her. Pulling a fresh dress over my head, I tried and failed to hide my trembling fingers. Reid’s mouth pressed into a thin line as he watched me, and I knew from the tense silence stretching between us that he’d give me no respite.

“What?” I sank onto the bed, weariness beating out all vestiges of pride.

His gaze didn’t soften. Not this time. “You’re hiding something from me.”

But I didn’t have the strength for this conversation now. Not after Madame Labelle and Bernie. Not after the crippling realization my mother knew where I was.

I fell back against my pillow, eyelids heavy. “Of course I am. I told you as much in Soleil et Lune’s attic.”

“What did Madame Labelle mean when she asked if I knew the true you?”

“Who could know?” I sat up, offering him a weak grin. “She’s stark raving mad.”

His eyes narrowed, and he gestured to Angelica’s Ring on my finger. “She was talking about your ring. Did she give it to you?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered.

He tore a hand through his hair, clearly growing more agitated by the second. “Who is coming for you?”

“Reid, please—”

“Are you in danger?”

“I don’t want to talk abou—”

He pounded the desk with his fist, and one of the legs splintered. “Tell me, Lou!”

I flinched away from him instinctively. His fury fractured at the small movement, and he dropped to his knees before me, eyes burning with unspoken emotion—with fear. He caught at my hands like they were a lifeline.

“I can’t protect you if you won’t let me,” he pleaded. “Whatever it is, whatever has you so frightened, you can tell me. Is it your mother? Is she looking for you?”

I couldn’t stop fresh tears from spilling down my cheeks. A greater fear than any I’d ever known gripped me as I stared at him. I had to tell him the truth. Here. Now.

It was time.

If my mother knew where I was, Reid was in danger too. Morgane wouldn’t hesitate to kill a Chasseur, especially if he stood between her and her prize. He couldn’t be blindsided. He had to be prepared.

Slowly . . . I nodded.

His face darkened at the confession. He cupped my cheeks, brushing aside my tears with a tenderness at odds with the ferocity of his gaze. “I won’t let her hurt you again, Lou. I’ll protect you. Everything will be all right.”

I shook my head. The tears fell faster now. “I need to tell you something.” My throat constricted, as if my very body rebelled against what I was about to do. As if it knew the fate that awaited it if the words escaped. I swallowed hard, forcing them out before I could change my mind. “The truth is—”