Save her, the magic whispered. Save them all.

I continued to ignore it.

Coco cried out as her strings tightened, and Lou took advantage of my distraction, finally twisting free. “Look, maman, look.” She waved her hands in a placating gesture. “I’ll play with you now. I’ll even trade toys: me in exchange for Beau and Célie.” Though I still shook my head, reaching for her, she kicked away and continued determinedly. “But you can’t harm them again. I mean it, maman. Any of them. Beau, Célie, Reid, Coco—they’re all safe from this point onward. No one touches them.”

The pattern pulsed. My head continued to shake.

Morgane didn’t seem particularly surprised by Lou’s request, nor did she laugh or dance or goad as she once would have. “You can see how that might present a problem, daughter. With your death, the prince and huntsman will also perish.”

“You assume I’ll die.”

“I know you’ll die, darling.”

Lou smirked then, and the sight of it struck me like a physical blow. Only days ago, I’d feared I would never see that smirk again. My body tensed with barely controlled restraint. “I guess we’ll have to play to find out,” she said.

She started for shore once more.

“No.” I caught her arm. She hadn’t suffered this long—she hadn’t sacrificed everything, walked through literal fire, exorcised a fucking demon—to give up so easily now. Coco had said one life wasn’t worth more than another, but she’d been wrong. Her life meant more. Beau’s and Célie’s lives meant more. And Lou—her life meant most of all. I would ensure she lived it. I would ensure they all lived. “You can’t do this.”

She kicked upward to kiss me in one last desperate plea. “I can’t kill her if I keep hiding, Reid,” she breathed against my cheek. “Remember what your mother said—closing my eyes won’t make it so the monsters can’t see me. I have to play. I have to win.”

“No.” My jaw locked. I couldn’t stop shaking my head. “Not like this.”

“Either I kill my mother, or my mother kills me. It’s the only way.”

But it wasn’t. It wasn’t the only way. She didn’t know that, of course. I’d refused to speak the alternative aloud, refused to acknowledge it even in my own thoughts. The golden cord quivered in anticipation.

Lou had already given so much. She’d journeyed to Hell and back to save us, shattering herself in the process. She couldn’t die now. And if she didn’t die—she spoke of killing her mother lightly, as if matricide wasn’t an unspeakably heinous act. As if it wasn’t unnatural. As if it wouldn’t break her all over again.

“No.”

My purpose resolved as I clutched her face. As I brushed the water droplets from her lashes.

So beautiful.

“You test my patience, children.” Morgane flicked her hand, and Beau, Célie, and Coco all crumpled in identical movements—like toys crushed underfoot. Beau and Célie lost consciousness completely, and Coco bit her lip around a scream. Morgane’s emerald eyes filled with spite. “Perhaps you’re right, little blood witch. Perhaps I’ll kill all of you instead.”

“Do not be foolish,” La Voisin snapped. “Accept the terms. The prince and girl mean nothing. They will die soon enough.”

Morgane whirled to face her. “You dare command me—?”

Faintly, I heard their voices escalate, but my entire world had narrowed to Lou’s face. To the golden pattern. It vied for my attention, nearly blinding now, pointing straight and true at its target. Connecting us. Demanding to be seen. Hope and despair warred deep in my chest. Neither existed without the other.

I would find my way back to her. I’d done it once. I could do it again.

And she’d finally be safe.

“I’ll find you again, Lou,” I whispered, and her brows puckered in confusion. I kissed them smooth. “I promise.”

Before she could answer, I clenched my fist in her hair.

The pattern burst in a shower of gold.

I saw no more.

Part III

C’est l’exception qui confirme la règle.

It’s the exception that proves the rule.

—French proverb

Doubt Creeps in

Nicholina

The pain fades without a body, as does all sense of touch, of smell, of taste. There is no blood as we spiral from sea to sky. There is no magic. No death. Here we are . . . free. We are a gust of wind. We are the winter cold. We are a flurry of snow on the mountainside—swirling, twirling, whirling—nipping the noses of witches below. Our mistress walks among them. She calls them by name.

She does not call ours.

Anxious now, we sweep onward, up, up, up the mountain as snowflakes flit to and fro around us, within us. It isn’t here, they flutter, they mutter. We cannot find it.

Our body, our body, our body.

Our mistress will not have forgotten us.

We move faster now, searching, gusting through the trees. The castle. She will have brought our body to the castle. But there is no castle, only snow and mountain and pine. There is no bridge. There is no one to welcome us, no one to grant us entry. If she would’ve stayed—the one with the nasty words, the one with the golden patterns—if her spirit would’ve fragmented, we would have found the castle. We would have found our body.

But she did not fragment. She did not stay.

Now she is alone.

You’ve failed, Nicholina.

Nasty words.

Your mistress needs her more than she needs you.

Our mistress has not forgotten us.

Perhaps your body won’t be there at all. Perhaps you will die.

We spiral again in agitation, in fear, and streak the mountainside. Already, we feel ourselves spreading, drifting, losing purpose. We cannot linger long without a body, or we will become something else. Something helpless and small. A cat or a fox or a rat. There are many ways to become a matagot, oh yes, but we will not become one. Not us. We are not forgotten.

Something scurries through the foliage, and we dive, eliciting a shriek of fear from the creature. It matters not. We need a body until our mistress returns. Until her mistress shows us the way. Nasty woman, like her daughter. Nasty witch.

We crouch inside the mink’s body and wait. Time passes differently to animals. We track shadows instead, quivering within the roots of a tree. Hiding from eagles. From foxes. We smell our mistress before we see her, and we hear her sharp, impatient words. She argues with Morgane. She speaks of Morgane’s daughter.

We leave the mink and follow behind as towers and turrets take shape. A bridge. Fire has ravaged each structure. All around, white ladies knit and weave their invisible patterns into stone. Into wood. Into windows and arches and shingles. We do not care about castle reparations. We sweep for the entrance, hiding from their prying eyes, curling through the smoke. We feel the pull of our body now. We feel it here.

Our mistress hasn’t forgotten us after all.

Up the stairwell, down the hall, into the small, sparse bedroom. Our body isn’t on the bed, however. It isn’t on the pillow. The bed is empty, we cry in dismay. The bed is bare. We draw short, quivering, as we search. As we follow our body’s pull. As we find it on the hard stone floor. But the bed is empty. Confusion swirls. The bed is bare.