I’d forgotten he was now an ass.

Jean Luc and Coco worked on tying the horses to trees while Célie and Beau approached. Beau rubbed his hands together against the cold. “What’s the plan? We charge in, swords drawn, banners flying?”

“Morgane would kill us before we even crossed the bridge.” My eyes snagged on Célie’s hands. She’d clasped them at her waist, the picture of propriety—except for the needle sticking between them. “What is that?”

Slowly, she uncurled her fingers, revealing a crude metal syringe. She didn’t cower or flinch beneath my black gaze as she said, matter-of-fact, “An injection. I lost it at the beach, but Elvire returned it to me. I plan to stab it in your mother’s throat.”

“Ah.” Coco and I shared an incredulous glance. “Well, if that’s all.”

Reid’s eyes gleamed as he stepped forward, but Célie snatched it away before he could take it. “Don’t even think about it. It belongs to me.”

Jean Luc and Coco joined us now. “What is the plan?” the former asked. “Do we have any strategy at all?”

“How did you sneak in on Modraniht?” I asked Coco.

“Madame Labelle transformed our faces.” She shrugged helplessly. Reid, however, frowned at the name, his gaze turning inward, distant, as he found his mother in his memories. When his frown turned to a scowl, I knew he’d remembered her a witch. “Can you do the same? If witches have gathered from all over the kingdom, we could slip inside without suspicion.”

“It’s possible, but . . .” I shook my head with mounting apprehension. “Morgane might not remember me, but she’ll remember how you infiltrated the castle. Others will remember too. I doubt they’ll fall for such a trick again—especially after Zenna’s attack. Everyone will be on high alert. Every stranger in the castle will be counted.”

“How did you sneak in?” Coco asked Jean Luc. “You and the Chasseurs?”

“We waited on the beach until Madame Labelle led us through the enchantment. We had no need to disguise ourselves. We wanted the witches to see us approach—to know ours would be the last faces they ever saw.”

Célie wrinkled her nose at the gratuitous explanation. “Lovely.”

His expression turned solemn. “I’m still a Chasseur, Célie. I still eradicate the occult. What I’m doing now—I’d lose my Balisarda if my brethren caught me here. I’d burn at the stake myself.” He gestured between us. “We all would.”

“Unless we bring them La Dame des Sorcières’s head.” Reid looked pointedly at Coco and me. “And those of her sisters.”

Beau jutted a finger at him. “You don’t get to talk anymore—”

“Just be sure this is what you want.” Jean Luc clutched Célie’s hands, ignoring them both. “We can still walk away. You have a choice. You don’t have to do this.”

Célie’s knuckles whitened around the injection. “Yes, I do.”

“Célie—”

“And you are not called to eradicate the occult, Jean. You are called to eradicate evil.” She pulled away from him, stepping backward to stand beside me. “There is evil in this chateau. Truthfully, we have no choice at all.”

They stared at each other for several seconds—neither willing to blink—before Jean Luc finally sighed. “If we must enter from the bridge, we need some sort of cover.” Reluctantly, he unbuckled his scabbard, retreating briefly to his horse to hide it within his pack. The sapphire of his Balisarda’s hilt winked as he withdrew a set of knives instead.

Reid’s eyes widened incredulously. “What are you doing?”

“Think, Reid.” He tucked one knife into each boot. “The only viable cover available to us is magic.” He waved a hand in my direction, refusing to look at me. “Magic will not work if I carry my Balisarda.”

Together, they all turned to stare at me. As if I knew the answers. As if I held each of their fates in the palm of my hand. Stomach rolling, I forced myself to return their gaze—because in a way, they were right. This was my ancestral home. These were my kin. If I couldn’t protect them here, if I couldn’t hide them from my sisters, they would indeed die.

“Perhaps I should . . .” I cleared my throat. “Perhaps I should go in alone.”

The thought met instantaneous and decisive objection, each of them speaking over the other. Coco and Beau refused to leave me. Célie demanded a chance to prove herself, and Jean Luc insisted I would need his expertise. Even Reid shook his head in stoic silence, his eyes communicating what his mouth did not.

Nothing would stand between him and his conquest.

At the moment, that conquest was Morgane le Blanc. Soon, he would realize his target had shifted, and the fleeting impulse to kill me would solidify into something very real and very dangerous. When he learned I’d become La Dame des Sorcières, I would no longer be safe with him. Not until he remembered. Not until I recaptured his heart.

“We go where you go,” he said with dark resolve.

My heart twisted with the words, and I turned away, closing my eyes. A web of golden patterns rose up to meet me. Studying them carefully—my lids fluttering in concentration—I discarded one after another, unsatisfied with each. This sort of magic, the sort to hide six people, would exact a heavy cost. Perhaps I could transform their bodies instead of their faces. They could become birds or squirrels or foxes. A rock in a badger’s mouth.

Expelling a sigh of frustration, I shook my head. Such transfiguration would probably kill me. Beau would have to live the rest of his life as a rock—or, more likely, live as a rock forever because rocks didn’t die. After another moment or two of my own fruitless searching, Coco said softly, “Could you make us invisible?”

I didn’t open my eyes, instead widening my inner sight for such a pattern. My skin tingled at the effort. My chest ached, an uncomfortable pressure building there. These cords—they felt simplistic somehow. Inadequate. Almost weak. Had something happened to my magic? Had Nicholina . . . altered me somehow? I frowned and pushed harder, stamping a metaphorical foot at the injustice of it all. Heat fanned across my face in humiliation.

Here I was, La Dame des Sorcières—famed and all-powerful, Mother, Maiden, and Crone—yet I couldn’t even cast an enchantment to protect my friends.

My sister chose wrong.

I could feel their expectant eyes on me now, waiting for a miracle.

I stomped my foot again, this time in desperation, and the web beneath me bowed and rippled outward. Startled, I instinctively stomped once more.

This time, the web broke.

A web of pure, blinding white lay below it, and the tingle in my skin exploded in a wave of raw power. No. Awareness. Every blade of grass, every flake of snow, every needle of pine I felt with such an intensity that I stumbled backward, breathless. Célie caught my arm. “Lou?” she asked in alarm.

I didn’t dare open my eyes. Not when the web below offered so much more. I tracked each pattern eagerly, feverish with possibility. I’d thought my magic infinite before. I’d thought it limited only to my imagination.