Serpent & Dove (Serpent & Dove, #1)(94)

“To bed did he take her, forsaking his oath, revering her body—the curve of her throat.” At this, the narrator glanced up at the Archbishop and winked. The blood left my face, and my vision narrowed to her ivory skin, to the youthful radiance emanating from her. To her eerily familiar green eyes. Like emeralds.

The ringing grew louder, and my mind emptied of coherent thought. My knees buckled.

The pretend Archbishop and the woman in white embraced, and the crowd gasped, scandalized. The narrator cackled. “She waited until the height of his sin to reveal herself and the magic within. Then she leapt from his bed and into the night. How he cursed her moonbeam hair and skin white!”

The woman in white cackled and twisted out of the pretend Archbishop’s hold. He fell to his knees, fists raised, as she fled back to the wagon.

Moonbeam hair. Skin white.

I turned slowly, my heart beating a violent rhythm in my ears, to stare at the Archbishop. His grip on my hand turned painful. “Listen to me, Louise—”

I jerked away with a snarl. “Don’t touch me.”

The narrator’s voice rose. “From that night forward, he strove to forget, but alas! Fate had not tired of him yet.”

The woman in white reappeared, her stomach swollen with child. She pirouetted gracefully, her gown fanning out around her, and from the folds of her skirt, she pulled forth a baby. No more than a year old, the child cooed and giggled, her blue eyes crinkling with delight. Already, a constellation of freckles sprinkled her nose. The pretend Archbishop fell to his knees when he saw her, tearing at his face and robes. His body heaved with silent shrieks. The crowd waited with bated breath.

The narrator bent beside him and stroked his back, crooning softly in his ear. “A visit soon came from the witch he reviled with the worst news of all”—she paused and looked up at the crowd, grinning salaciously—“she’d borne his child.”

Reid broke through the crowd as their muttering grew louder, as they turned to stare at the Archbishop, the disbelief in their eyes shifting into suspicion. The Chasseurs followed, hands tight on their Balisardas. Someone shouted something, but the words were lost in the tumult.

The narrator rose slowly—young face serene amidst the descending chaos—and turned toward us. Toward me.

The face of my nightmares.

The face of death.

“And with not just any a child did he share.” She smiled and extended her hands to me, face aging, hair lightening to brilliant silver. Screams erupted behind her. Reid was sprinting now, shouting something indiscernible. “But with the Witch, the Queen . . . La Dame des Sorcières.”





Part III


C’est cela l’amour, tout donner, tout sacrifier sans espoir de retour.

That is love, to give away everything, to sacrifice everything, without the slightest desire to get anything in return.

—Albert Camus





Secrets Revealed


Lou


Screams rent the air, and the crowd scattered in panic and confusion. I lost sight of Reid. I lost sight of everyone but my mother. She stood still in the swarming crowd—a beacon of white in the impending shadows. Smiling. Hands extended in supplication.

The Archbishop pulled me behind him as the witches converged. I cringed away, unable to process the emotions pounding through me—the wild disbelief, the debilitating fear, the violent rage. The witch in black, Fate, reached us first, but the Archbishop tore his Balisarda from his robes and sliced it deep across her breast. She staggered down the steps into her sister’s arms. Another shrieked and charged forward.

Blue flashed, and a knife split her chest from behind. She gasped, clutching helplessly at the wound, before a hand pushed her forward. She slid off the blade slowly and crumpled.

There stood Reid.

His Balisarda dripped with her blood, and his eyes burned with primal hatred. Jean Luc and Ansel fought behind him. With a quick jerk of his head, he motioned me forward. I didn’t hesitate, abandoning the Archbishop and rushing into his outstretched arms.

But the witches kept coming. More and more seemed to appear from thin air. Worse—I’d lost sight of my mother.

An enchanted man with vacant eyes lumbered forward to meet the Archbishop. A witch stood closely behind, wringing her fingers with a ferocious snarl. Magic exploded in the air. “Get her inside!” the Archbishop cried. “Barricade yourselves in the Tower!”

“No!” I shoved away from Reid. “Give me a weapon! I can fight!”

Three sets of hands seized me, all dragging me back into the church. Other Chasseurs broke through the crowd now. I watched in horror as they drew silver syringes from their coats.

Reid shoved the church doors closed as fresh screams started.

Moving quickly, he began to lift the enormous wooden beam across the doors. Jean Luc hurried to help, while Ansel hovered by my side, face white. “Was it all true—what the witches said? D-Does the Archbishop have—does he have a child with Morgane le Blanc?”

“Perhaps.” Jean Luc’s shoulders strained under the weight of the beam. “But perhaps it was—all a—diversion.” With one last heave, they set the beam into place. He looked me up and down, breathing heavily. “Like the witches at the castle. They’d almost breached its walls when we arrived. Then they vanished.”