Coco hesitated only a second more before nodding. Célie hesitated longer.

“Are we sure this is safe?” She peered into the dark hole with palpable panic. Twin circles of white surrounded her irises. “The last time—”

But Coco caught her elbow as she passed, and the two vanished into the tunnel together. Beau abandoned the trapdoor—it fell open fully with a thunderous crack of wood on wood—to help Thierry navigate the room. The latter’s entire chest heaved with each breath. Each step. His body was failing. That much was clear. After passing him to Coco, Beau finally turned to me. “Time to go.”

“But Lou—”

“Will die if we stay here. The villagers are going to raze this place to the ground.” He extended a hand. “Come on, little brother. We can’t help her if we’re dead.”

He had a point. I gathered Lou in my arms and followed.

Beau slipped in behind us, clumsily maneuvering an arm through the gap between door and floor to wrench the bed back in place. He cursed, low and vicious, when the door slammed shut on his fingers. Footsteps thundered overhead not a second later. We didn’t linger, racing after the others without another word.

The tunnel let out about a mile down the cliff’s face, where a rocky path led to the beach. Black sand glittered in the early morning light, and the rocks of Fée Tombe leered down at us, macabre and unnatural. Like sentient beings. I shuddered and laid Lou’s body across the sand, careful to remain in the shadow of the cliffs. If any villager thought to glance below for their cauchemar, they wouldn’t see us here. Wouldn’t descend with their torches and pitchforks.

I whirled to face Coco, who’d extracted a vial of honey from her pack. She fed it to Thierry carefully before lifting her forearm to his lips. He swallowed once, twice, and the contusions on his face immediately began to fade. With a shuddering sigh, he collapsed back against the rocks. Lost consciousness within seconds.

But he would be fine. He would heal.

Lou would too.

“Fix her.” My word brooked no argument. “You have to fix her.”

Coco glanced at Lou before bending to rifle in her pack, her face a mask of calm. Her eyes remained tight, however. Her jaw taut. “There is no fixing her. She’s possessed, Reid. Nicholina has—”

“So cast Nicholina out!” I roared, my own mask exploding in a wave of fury. Of helplessness. When Coco jerked upright, glaring at me in silent rebuke, I clenched my head in my hands. Fisted my hair, pulled it, tore it, anything to combat the fierce ache in my chest. Shame colored my cheeks. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry. Just—please. Cast Nicholina out. Please.”

“It isn’t that simple.”

“Yes, it is.” Desperation laced my voice now. I dropped my hands, pivoted sharply on my heel. Paced. Back and forth. One, two, three, four, five, six. One, two, three, four, five, six. Faster and faster, my footsteps carved a jagged path in the sand. “In the book of Mark, Jesus cast demons into a herd of six thousand pigs—”

“This isn’t the Bible, Nicholina isn’t a demon, and I’m not the son of fucking God.” She splayed her hands, facade cracking just slightly, and gestured to the sand and waves around us. “Do you see any pigs?”

I spoke through gritted teeth. “I’m saying there’s a way to remove her. We just have to find it.”

“And what happened to the possessed after Jesus cleansed them?”

“Don’t be stupid. They were healed.”

“Were they?” Her eyes flashed, and she tore a vial of blood from her pack. “The human body isn’t meant to house more than one soul, Reid.”

I spun to face her, my own hands flying upward. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying this doesn’t end the way we want it to end,” she snapped. “I’m saying even if we miraculously manage to evict Nicholina, Lou won’t be the same. To have touched another soul so intimately—not just in a sonnet or some other bullshit symbolic way, but to have actually touched another soul, to have shared the same body—I don’t know if Lou’s will survive intact.”

“You mean—her soul could be—”

“Fragmented. Yes.” She marched forward, dropping to her knees beside Lou with more force than necessary. Black sand sprayed in Lou’s pale hair. I mirrored her movements on Lou’s other side, sweeping the sand away. “Part of it might go with Nicholina. All of it might go with Nicholina. Or”—she uncorked the vial, and the acrid stench of blood magic assaulted my senses—“Lou could already be gone. She was in a bad way. Nicholina wouldn’t have been able to possess her otherwise. Her spirit was weak. Broken. If we force Nicholina out, Lou might . . .” She took a ragged breath. “She might be an empty shell.”

“You don’t know that,” I said fiercely.

“You’re being willfully ignorant.”

“I’m being hopeful.”

“You think I don’t want to believe Lou will be okay?” She shook her head in disgust. No—in pity. She pitied me. My teeth clenched until they ached. “That Nicholina will go easily, that Lou will wake up and smirk and ask for fucking sticky buns? You think I don’t want to pretend the past three months never happened? The past three years?” Her voice broke on the last, her facade finally splintering, but she didn’t cower. She didn’t look away. Even as fresh tears slipped down her cheeks, as every emotion shone clear in her eyes. Every unspoken fear. Her voice flattened as she continued. “You’re asking me to hope, Reid, but I can’t. I won’t. I’ve hoped too much and too long. Now I’m sick with it. And for what? My mother left, Ansel died, my aunt betrayed me. The person I love most in this world has been possessed.” She scoffed through her tears, through the smoke that curled from the sand, and lifted the vial to Lou’s lips. “Why should I hope?”

I seized her wrist to still the movement. Forced her to meet my eyes. “Because she’s the person you love most in this world.”

She stared at me over our hands. Her fingers tightened around the vial. “Let me go.”

“What are you doing?”

“Healing her.” She snatched her wrist back, wiping furiously at her tears. “Because apparently, I can’t heal myself. I’m sick with hope, but I can’t make it go away. It’s still here, even now. Poisoning me.” When she looked back at Lou, one of her tears dripped from her cheek to Lou’s throat. To Lou’s scar. Together, we watched—silent and anxious—as the tear sizzled against her skin, transforming the silver gash into something else entirely.

Into a vine of thorns and roses.

Delicate, intricate—still silver and raised on her skin—the scar looked less a disfigurement now. More a masterpiece.

And it was.

Behind us, Célie gasped. A small, wondrous sound. “Il n’y a pas de roses sans épines.”

There is no rose without a thorn.

Coco said nothing, staring at the scar with a frightfully blank expression. I hardly dared breathe. One blink. Two. When her eyes opened on the third, resolve had crystallized sharp and bright within them. I nearly wept. “My blood poisoned Lou because Nicholina has assumed control,” she said. “I can’t use it to heal her.” She lifted the vial once more. “We’ll use my aunt’s blood instead. It won’t evict Nicholina, but it’ll counteract the effects of mine. It’s powerful—more powerful than anything on this earth. It’s also rare. I nicked it from her tent at the blood camp.” She grinned then. A truly terrifying grin. “I’m sure she won’t mind.”