An Affair of Poisons(84)

“It wasn’t just about them.” Mirabelle’s voice trails off and she buries her face in her hands. “How was I to know Mother was bluffing? She’s done such horrendous things. I was just trying to—”

“You sentenced my sisters to death.” Saying it aloud gives it weight. Truth. I totter to the far side of my cell and crumple to the dirty straw. It smells of dung and vomit and I gag as I ease down on my side.

Mirabelle crawls closer, pressing her face between the bars. “We may not be able to save them, but who’s to say Louis hasn’t? He escaped the fire. Perhaps he had the foresight to hide them somewhere else.”

My laughter is bitter and grating. “Perhaps your Mother will beg my forgiveness, release me from this cell, and crown me King of France.”

Mirabelle lowers her brows. “I’m in earnest.”

“So am I! In fact, I’d say my scenario is more likely.”

“Why do you insist on underestimating Louis?”

“Because I know him.”

“Do you?” she presses. “Or have you invented a convenient identity for him? So you always have a scapegoat?”

I shove up to my elbows. “He invented an identity for me!”

“Have you considered that perhaps you’ve been unfair to each other? How long are you going to cling to this senseless childhood grudge? If the two of you would just—”

“Stop!” I bang my fist against the bars and the impact rattles through me. The hair on my neck rises like hackles. “Is it not enough that you’ve sent my sisters to the chopping block? Do you have to side with Louis as well? Kick me while I’m down. Spit upon my rotting corpse.”

“Josse, I—”

“No! Don’t pepper me with your excuses and platitudes or pretend to understand my childhood grudges. You are oblivious. And careless. And disloyal. Rescuing you from the sewer was the worst decision I’ve ever made. If I’d let Desgrez finish you, he would be alive. My sisters would be alive.”

Mirabelle shrinks back. She wraps her arms around her stomach and blinks at me through tear-filled eyes. “Do you honestly believe that?”

I ignore the tiny twinge in my chest, refusing to be deluded by her mournful frown and poisonous logic any longer. I regard her with my iciest expression. “I don’t believe it—I know it.”

She bites her lips together, but her shoulders shake. “Then I suppose there’s nothing more to say.”

“I suppose not.”

I turn away and stare across the dungeon. It’s a foul, low-ceilinged place. The wall opposite is fitted with chains, and an insidious black stain covers the stones. Mirabelle and I are far from the only prisoners. Each cell is occupied, and the poor souls are nothing but lumps of skin and bone and hollow eyes. The man on my other side scrapes at the bars in slow, eerie repetition, his fingertips raw and bloodied. And the old man across from me lies faceup on the ground, weeping the name Jeanne. And somewhere down the block, a woman cackles day and night like a bedamned jester.

But none of them is as irritating or as pitiful as Mirabelle. She cries quietly for what feels like an eternity, and the sound is worse than the squeal of pigs being slaughtered. Like nails hammering my eardrums. She has no right to cry like that. To act as if she’ll die of heartache when she could have prevented this. All she had to do was hold her tongue and let me die. I clench my teeth and clamp my hands over my ears, but her whimpers still seep through the cracks. So I climb back to my feet and resume writhing and railing against the bars. Anything to drown her out.

Hours later, when we’ve both collapsed to the ground and sit in exhausted silence, she whispers, “I’m sorry, Josse. So very sorry.”

I don’t respond. Because sorry will never be enough.





25



MIRABELLE


I drift in and out of fitful sleep. My thin dressing gown clings to my skin, wet with sweat and tears and whatever ghastly horrors float in the puddles on the floor. My eyes are itchy and swollen, and my head pounds. I may not have been tortured like Josse, but I’m so heavy with grief, I haven’t the strength to drag myself to the bowl of unidentifiable sludge that slides into my cell. Once I see the worms wriggling through the rotten fare, I haven’t the appetite, either.

I shutter my eyes and rock forward and back, sobbing until there’s not a drop of water left within me. Then I choke on silent tears as those horrible moments in the laboratory play again and again across the stage of my mind.

How could I have been so gullible?

I don’t blame Josse for hating me.

I rather hate myself.

There’s no way to tell how much time has passed. The single window, high up on the wall, is no wider than my hand, and the dim shaft of light that cuts through the gloom is a perpetual shade of gray. Every so often I allow myself to peek at Josse, and each time I immediately wish I hadn’t. His speckled skin pulsates with the sickly glow of désintégrer, and he’s so weak that he can hardly hold himself upright, yet he continues to throw himself against the bars. Blood weeps from the wounds on his face and arms and back, but the dull, vacant look in his eyes is most heartrending of all. It’s as if he drank the Viper’s Venom. As if by saving him, I delivered the final death blow.

I didn’t want to betray your sisters, I silently shout. He must know that. I didn’t have a choice! So many lives were at stake.