“Fair enough.” He bridged the deck together. “My brother and I are resident psychics here at Troupe de Fortune.”

“Psychics?”

“That’s right. I’m reading your thoughts at this very moment, but I promise not to share. Spilling a person’s secrets is a lot like spilling their blood. Once it’s done, it’s done. There’s no going back.”

I frowned. They weren’t the same thing at all. “Have you ever spilled blood?”

His gaze flicked to Thierry for half a second—less than half a second—but I still saw. He kept smiling. “That’s none of your business, friend.”

I stared at him. Psychics. That sounded like magic to me. My gaze flicked surreptitiously over their clothes. Unlike the others’, theirs were dark. Simple. Unremarkable. The clothing of men who didn’t want to be remembered. I leaned closer under the pretense of examining Toulouse’s deck. This close, I could smell the faint earth on his shirt. The even fainter sweetness on his skin. His hair.

“You admit it, then,” I said carefully. The scent itself wasn’t proof. It could’ve lingered on him from another. Claud himself had a peculiar smell. “You use . . . magic.”

Toulouse stopped shuffling. If possible, his smile grew—like he’d been waiting for this. Wariness tightened my neck, my shoulders, as he resumed snapping his cards. “An interesting question from a Chasseur.”

“I’m not a Chasseur.” The tightness built. “Not anymore.”

“Really?” He held a card in the air, its face pointed away from me. “Tell me, what card is this?”

I stared at him, confused.

“Your reputation proceeds you, Captain Diggory.” He slipped it back into the deck. Still smiling. Always smiling. “I was there, you know. In Gévaudan.”

My heart skipped a painful beat.

“Troupe de Fortune had just finished our last performance of the season. There was one boy in the audience—couldn’t have been more than sixteen—who just adored the cards. He must’ve visited us—what—three times that night?” He looked to Thierry, who nodded. “He couldn’t afford a full spread, so I pulled a single card for him each time. The same card for him each time.” His smile hardened into a grimace. He wasn’t the only one. My shoulders ached with tension. In the next second, however, he brightened once more. “I couldn’t show it to him, of course. It would’ve frightened him out of his wits. The next morning, we found him dead along the side of Les Dents, left to rot in the sun like roadkill. A Chasseur had cut off his head. I heard he leveraged it for a pretty captaincy.”

“Let me tell you”—Toulouse shook his head, scratched his neck absently—“the Beast of Gévaudan didn’t take it well. A friend of mine said you could hear his howls of rage and grief all the way in Cesarine.”

I cast a furtive glance at my mother. He still saw.

Leaning forward on his elbows, he spoke softly. “She doesn’t know, does she? None of them do. For someone who has never performed, you’re doing a fine job of it.”

Significance laced his voice. I didn’t like his implication.

Thierry watched us impassively.

“They think Blaise will help you kill Morgane,” Toulouse said, leaning closer still. “But I don’t think Blaise will ever ally with the man who killed his son. Perhaps I’m wrong, though. It’s happened before. For instance, I thought only Chasseurs were in the business of killing witches, yet here you are.” His eyes fell to the Balisarda still strapped to my chest. “Not a Chasseur.”

My fingers curled around the hilt protectively. “It’s a powerful weapon. It’d be foolish to stop carrying it.” The words sounded defensive, even to me. At his superior expression, I added, “And killing Morgane is different. She wants to kill us too.”

“So much killing,” he mused, flipping the card between his fingers. I still couldn’t see its face. Only the gold and black paints on its back. They swirled together into the shape of a skull—a leering skull with roses in its eyes and a snake twined between its teeth. “You say you’re no longer a Chasseur. Prove it. What card am I holding in my hand?”

Jaw clenched, I ignored the soft hiss in my ear. “You’re the psychic. How should I know?”

Seek us, seek us, seek us.

His smile finally slipped. A cold stare replaced it, chilling me to the bone. “Let me be clear. Claud may trust you, but I don’t. It’s nothing personal,” he added, shrugging. “I don’t trust anyone—it’s how people like us stay alive, isn’t it?”

People like us.

The words hung between us, sentient, and the hiss in my ear grew louder, more insistent. We have found the lost ones. The lost ones are here. Seek us, seek us, seek us—

“I know what you want from me,” he said, voice hard with finality, “so I’ll ask you one last time: What card am I holding?”

“I don’t know,” I ground out, slamming the door on the voices, retreating from their unholy shrieks. My hands shook with the effort. Sweat beaded my brow.

“Tell me if you figure it out.” Toulouse’s lips pressed tight in disappointment. He returned the card to his deck, rising to his feet. Thierry shadowed his movements. “Until then, I’d appreciate if you stay away from me, Captain. Oh, and”—he flashed another smile, casting a sly look in my mother’s direction—“good luck with your performance.”

..................................................................

Blood Drops

Lou

The blood witches called it pendency—the time between this life and the next. “The soul remains earthbound until the ashes ascend,” Gabrielle murmured, holding a cup of her mother’s blood. Identical in their grief, their cheeks were pale, their eyes wet and swollen. I couldn’t fathom their pain.

Etienne Gilly hadn’t died of exposure or starvation.

His body had been burned beyond recognition, except—

Except for his head.

Ansel had vomited when it’d tumbled from Etienne’s charred shoulders, rolling to touch my boots. I’d nearly succumbed as well. The hacked flesh of his throat communicated unspeakable torment, and I didn’t want to imagine which horror he’d suffered first—being burned or decapitated alive. Worse still, the witches’ horrified whispers had confirmed Etienne hadn’t been the first. A handful of similar tales had plagued the countryside since Modraniht, and all the victims shared a common thread: rumors of their mothers once dallying with the king.

Someone was targeting the king’s children. Torturing them.

My hands stilled in Gaby’s hair, my eyes flicking to where Coco and Babette stood watch over Etienne’s pyre. He was little more than ashes now.

Upon finding his body, La Voisin hadn’t been kind.

Coco bore the worst of it, though her aunt had made it clear she blamed me. After all, Etienne had disappeared when she’d agreed to harbor me. His body had been placed at my tent. And I’d—I’d been led to him, somehow, by the white pattern. In the ensuing chaos—the panic, the screams—I’d quickly realized it wasn’t mine. It’d been inside my head, inside my sight, yet it hadn’t belonged to me. My stomach still rolled at the violation.