An Affair of Poisons(57)

Desgrez scrambles on top of me. I kick out and my boot sinks into his stomach. He doubles over, wheezing, and I try to roll away, but there’s nowhere to go and I smash into the counter. A gallipot clangs to the floor, reverberating like a bell, followed by the crash of at least a dozen glass phials.

“What the devil is going on in here?” Mirabelle bangs into the shop. She looks first at her shattered equipment and then at Desgrez. “You.”

Desgrez props himself up onto his elbows, his blue eyes dancing with amusement. “How precious, Josse. Your poisoner has come to rescue you.”

“Tell him,” I say to Mirabelle as I rub my throbbing head. “Tell him he can trust you. That you haven’t hurt anyone, and you had nothing to do with the attack on Versailles.”

She blinks as if I’m speaking in tongues. “What?”

“Tell him what you told me.”

Slowly, she steps back and steadies herself against the door. Her eyes are wide and haunted, her cheeks the same chalk-white as the moon. “I don’t understand. I can’t… .” She grips her forehead. Droplets of sweat bead along her hairline. Her lips open and close, but she can’t seem to find her voice.

A prickle of dread traces up my spine. “Mirabelle?”

She clasps her hands and looks heavenward.

“Mirabelle!”

I can feel Desgrez watching us. His eyes flit back and forth as if this is the most enthralling tennis match he’s ever witnessed.

I clamber to my feet, heart battering inside my chest. “What, exactly, are you trying to say?”

“I’m sorry.” A shudder grips her shoulders. “So sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?” She’s silent so long, I want to launch across the room and shake her. “Answer me!”

Finally, she looks down. Her gaze is as vacant and as faraway as it was at the Duc de Luxembourg’s chateau.

“It’s all my fault,” she says softly.

“I don’t understand,” I say again.

A sob burbles up her throat and her voice breaks. “My mother delivered the poisoned petition into the Sun King’s hands, but I made the poison. I am ultimately responsible for his death.”

A burst of bone-chilling cold spreads through my chest and curls its icy fingers around my throat. I shake my head vehemently. “No. That’s impossible. You said you had nothing to do with the attack on Versailles.”

Mirabelle speaks to the floor, her voice flat and matter-of-fact. “I said I knew nothing about Mother’s plans, which I didn’t. But that hardly makes me innocent. I knew she would administer the poison to someone. And beyond that, I created the blood draught to make Lesage’s magic tactile—his lightning, the smoke beasts, none of it would exist without me. I am the reason the Shadow Society was able to seize the city.”

The ringing in my ears drowns out the end of her confession. She is the reason my sisters nearly died. She killed my father. And Rixenda …

I gape at Mirabelle, hunched in the doorway, trying to reconcile the girl I watched lovingly administer curatives with the monster she’s describing. And I can’t. It’s impossible.

“Forgive me,” Mirabelle chokes out.

“You see!” Desgrez jumps to his feet and points. “She admits it herself! She murdered the king—your father. Which is a capital offense in itself. But then she also claimed responsibility for the deaths of half of the nobility and the Paris Police. This is who you’ve chosen to align with”—he sneers at me—“but I’ll not make the same mistake.” He extracts a rapier from the folds of his brown robe and stalks to where Mirabelle stands. “On your knees.”

The door is open. She could attempt to flee. But she gazes up at Desgrez with watery black eyes and complies. Her lips tremble and her breath comes short and fast. She doesn’t beg for mercy. Doesn’t look away.

Desgrez lifts his blade to her throat and twists the tip so it digs into the flesh below her ear. A ribbon of crimson snakes down her neck. I watch it trickle lower. Every heartbeat slams against my temples. My dagger lies on the floor within reach, but I’m unable to move. Unsure if I want to.

Mirabelle swallows against the pressure of Desgrez’s blade and lifts her chin higher. “Do it,” she breathes. But at the same moment, a grating scrape, scrape, scrape comes from outside on the street. Like a sword dragging across the cobbles. It draws closer, louder, and a terrible stench fills my nose—like rotting eggs and gunpowder. Billows of oily blue smoke pour into the millinery and curl around our ankles.

Desgrez reels back, shouting oaths. Mirabelle collapses to the floor and clutches her neck. I quickly gain my feet. And we all stare out the door at an enormous indigo smoke beast that ambles into sight. It has long leathery wings, claws the length of my forearm, and a spiked tail that looks unnervingly like a mace. It scrape, scrape, scrapes from side to side as it lumbers down the rue de Navarine.

The creature stops directly in front of the millinery and turns its golden eyes on us, the pupils slitted like a snake’s. It cocks its head and lifts its blunted snout into the air. Hot, rancid breath curls from its nostrils.

Mirabelle gasps. “He set them loose.”

Desgrez shoves her aside, slams the door, and casts around for something to use as a barricade. I spring to assist him, wedging a chair beneath the handle. Which is laughable. The smoke beast could burst through with the flick of a single claw. Or burn the entire shop to cinders.