Enchantée(122)

They stared at one another, tense as wires. Lazare—bright, fearless, bloody—had bested Séguin.

It was over. Lazare was alive, safe.

On the other side of the lake, in front of the green wall of trees, the mist brightened.

The Chevalier Lasalle stepped between the duelists. “Marquis de Sablebois, you drew first blood. The duel is finished. Still, I must ask: do you consider your grievance settled?”

Lazare ignored Lasalle. Instead, he pointed his notched sword at Séguin’s upturned face. “Get up, cheater,” he growled. “Stand up so I can kill you.”

As he climbed to his feet, Séguin’s face twitched in a horrible smile.

“Wait, Monsieur de Sablebois.” The chevalier’s face creased with confusion. “The rules say you must put down your sword and declare yourself: are you satisfied?”

Somewhere, a blackbird sang out. Lazare held his sword upright, his left arm curved up behind him for balance. Ready.

In Lazare—proud, determined, brave—she saw worlds of shadow and pain and heartbreak. His father, his divided self. And Séguin, who had cheated them both. He had denied them the happiness they wanted. He had denied them one another.

Sensing her sorrow, the dress embraced her. Its memories streamed through Camille: other duels, other men, young and old, handsome and rich, grievances and hate and love and warm blood pooling around still bodies—all the dress had witnessed. And the shiver of its voice in her mind: I am armor. It is not over.

Camille met Lazare’s eyes, trying to say silently everything she was thinking. He nodded and lowered his sword. “I am satisfied, Monsieur Lasalle.”

A sigh rippled through the observers; someone clapped.

“As far as my own honor is concerned,” he continued. “But I cannot leave Camille Durbonne and her sister Sophie in the Vicomte de Séguin’s keeping. If I’m to be satisfied, he must free them. Before all these people.”

Against Camille’s skin, the dress stirred. Agitated. Camille tensed, waiting.

Lazare cleared his throat. “Release them and this is finished.”

Séguin looked pityingly at Lazare. “Madame gave herself willingly to me. Is that not so?”

Lazare’s face filled with confusion, disbelief. Camille moved her head a fraction: no.

“She did,” Séguin purred. “She is my wife and there is no law in France that will let her leave me. She is bound to me utterly, in body if not yet in soul. Imagine that, Sablebois. My hands on her. She always by my side, in my bed. You thought she loved you? You have lost her forever.”

Séguin’s dangerous smile was a weapon. But it was something else, too. With a sharp stab of understanding, she suddenly knew: Séguin needed her.

Lazare swayed, as if uncertain about where he might go next, and then sank to one knee in the slick, crumpled grass. He dropped his head into his hand.

Behind his back, Séguin’s bronze stare brightened, the way a knife does when it is honed.

She saw it and understood: there was no world in which Séguin would let her go.

From inside his waistcoat Séguin pulled a dagger, its hilt heavy with jewels, the blade’s tip forked like a serpent’s tongue. The acrid scent of magic poured off it like smoke.

Camille reached in her pocket for the piece of glass.

She remembered Alain putting his knife to her throat, how she held still to save herself and Sophie, and all the things that came after that, sorrows unspooling like thread into endless night. She refused to go back to that place where she had nothing.

Magic was not something apart from her, something she could give up. It was the power of her deepest feeling. The power of who she was. And from nothing, she would make something.

She uncurled her fingers. In her palm lay a glass knife, nearly invisible, its edges already bright with her own blood.

Séguin sprang at Lazare.

Everything slowed.

Camille wrenched forward, racing for the closing space between them. Her shoes slid on the wet grass. To the left, blurry, she sensed Lazare stand up. Foudriard running, both of them shouting.

As she flung herself between Lazare and Séguin, her glass knife outstretched, she hazarded one last bet, based only on the look on Séguin’s face: he would not kill her.

Lazare howled her name.

The dress steeled itself against what was coming.

Séguin slowed, his golden eyes wide with surprise, and tried to stop. But the grass was slick.

She stabbed at him with her glass knife, felt the blow of his body against hers wrench it from her hand.

His dagger struck her under the ribs. The dress screamed as the blade sliced through its silk and into the quilting of Camille’s stays.

She slipped and lost her balance, fell to the ground.

Séguin loomed over her. “Stay back,” he warned the others, “or I will kill her!”

Desperate, she felt in the grass for her knife, but she could not find it anywhere. It had vanished. She pressed her hand to her dress—pleading, hoping—but it was silent as death.

She had one more card to play. “You will not kill me, Vicomte,” she said. “I am too dear a thing to you.” As she lay there, she had the strangest feeling of wanting to laugh. “Everyone here knows you for a magician. Kill me and you have no standing at court. No sorrow-well. Nothing.”