An Affair of Poisons(79)
She knew.
How did Mother know?
I call for Josse but everything’s lost in the roar of the blaze. I squeeze my eyes shut and pray he’s alive and running to safety—and that he thinks to help Louis. The rebellion will be dead without him.
The rebellion is dead either way.
Our allies lie burning in these fields—my ears still ring with étienne’s wails; he shouted Ameline’s name until the flames leapt over his head. My eyes burn with the final image of Desgrez—his face contorted, his skin glowing the same ghostly green as the day we met. Only this time I couldn’t bring him back.
I couldn’t save any of them.
Guilt slashes through me like a cold knife, and tears spill down my face.
The fire burns hotter and higher, and shapes take form in the smoke: the flutter of a crimson cape, flashes of velvet masks. I push up to my elbows and try to crawl away, but I don’t get far. Long, knobby fingers reach through the haze and grip me by the throat.
“There you are, La Petite Voisin,” Fernand says in his slippery serpent voice. “Or should I call you La Vie? Though it looks to me like you bring more death than life.”
He wrenches my arm so hard it feels like it’s tearing from my body and drags me through the dirt to the road where Mother waits. Her lips are pressed into a determined slash, and triumph dances in her dark eyes as she looks out across the blaze—a victorious general surveying her battlefield. The mother I once knew would have wept and trembled to see so many people drowning in flames, but she no longer resembles the woman who cried beside Father’s empty bed each night and lovingly traced the lines across my hands, teaching me and Marguerite to read palms. This monstrous version of Mother drinks in the bilious smoke and stands taller, the flames glinting through the folds of her black satin gown.
“Ah, my long-lost daughter, found at last. I’ve been sick with worry,” Mother jeers. Fernand dumps me at her feet. “You look surprised to see me. Perhaps you weren’t expecting me so soon?”
“How did you know?” I ask, but my tongue is as thick and slow as a slug, and the words come out garbled.
Mother laughs. “Sometimes I forget how hopeless and na?ve you are. Did you honestly believe you could outwit me? I have eyes and ears everywhere. Even among your followers.” She accentuates the word followers as if it’s ludicrous to think anyone would follow me.
“My people detest you. They would never take your side.”
“That’s your mistake—assuming they are your people. Some of them have always been mine—will always be mine.” She claps and Marguerite parades forward, tugging a slack-eyed Gris behind her. “He came to me,” Mother continues, “of his own volition. No threatening, no prodding.”
No. An unbearable high-pitched buzzing fills my ears, and my vision swims as I gape up at Gris. He wouldn’t. He promised to take my side. Mother is lying. I look into his light-brown eyes and wait for him to flash me a look of indignation. To fight and flail and loudly proclaim his innocence—that he had no part in this. He is my best friend. My brother. He would never betray me like this. He would never betray the people like this.
“Tell me it isn’t true,” I say, my voice a shaky whisper.
Gris bites his lip and refuses to meet my gaze.
Agony carves through me, and I moan as I curl into a ball. Suddenly my cuts and burns are nothing. Nothing compared to the storm raging within me. The scorched fields take on a blood-red hue, and I can’t squeeze my fists tight enough, can’t scream loud enough. I can’t even tell if I’m breathing. It was excruciating to think someone else betrayed us, or that we weren’t vigilant enough and the Shadow Society trailed us through the streets.
But Gris?
“How could you?” I shout. The sight of him standing there with his slumped shoulders and miserable expression makes me twitch with fury. I want to pluck his deceitful eyes from his skull. I want to strap him to the rack or hang him from the gallows.
Traitor. Traitor. Traitor. My heartbeat roars the word.
“They’re dead! You killed them!” I spring to my feet and lash out with a scream, clawing for Gris’s throat, but pain explodes across the side of my face. Bright bursts of white and twisting pillars of fire dance across my vision as I plummet back to the ash-covered ground. My breath whooshes out, and my pulse hammers at my temples. When my eyes clear, Fernand stands above me, shaking out his fist. Mother and Lesage join him, sneering down with disgust, followed by Marguerite and, last of all, Gris.
I knew the rest of them were lost, but I trusted him. Needed him. He promised to choose me this once.
“Why?” The word is mangled in my blood-filled mouth. I slide my tongue across my teeth and spit to the side. Gris’s cheeks drain of color. “Answer me!” I shout. The exertion is too much, and I curl into the brittle grass.
“The dauphin was there, in the millinery,” Gris says. “I’d heard the rumors, of course—La Vie is uniting the commoners and nobility—and I knew you were carousing with the bastard, but I said to myself, Mira would never align with the dauphin. She swore to me she’s only healing. The people are spreading false rumors. But there he was. Assisting you!”
I think back to that night. How Gris froze in the doorway and left so abruptly. I’d assumed it was because he was hurt, because he was so distraught over Mother’s plan to destroy the crops. And I was so distracted by the news, it hadn’t even occurred to me that he would notice and recognize Louis, stripped of all his finery. But of course he did.