I’d always hated that dirty old bird.
Dread crept through me as the doors closed behind us with ringing finality. Silence cloaked the snowy courtyard, but I knew witches lingered just out of sight. I could feel their eyes on me—probing, assessing. The very air tingled with their presence.
“Manon will accompany you day and night until Modraniht. Should you attempt to flee,” Morgane warned, eyes cold and cruel, “I will butcher your huntsman and feed you his heart. Do you understand?”
Fear froze the scathing reply on my tongue.
She nodded with a sleek smile. “Your silence is golden, darling. I cherish it in our conversations.” Turning her attention to an alcove out of my sight, she shouted something. Within seconds, two hunched women I vaguely recognized emerged. My old nursemaids. “Accompany her to her room, please, and assist Manon while she sees to her wounds.”
They both nodded fervently. One stepped forward and cupped my face in her withered palms. “At last you have returned, maîtresse. We have waited so long.”
“Only three days remain,” the other crooned, kissing my hand, “until you may join the Goddess in the Summerland.”
“Three?” I glanced to Morgane in alarm.
“Yes, darling. Three. Soon, you will fulfill your destiny. Our sisters will feast and dance in your honor forevermore.”
Destiny. Honor.
It sounded so lovely, phrased like that, as if I were receiving a fabulous prize with a shiny red bow. A hysterical giggle burst from my lips. The blood would be red, at least.
One of the nursemaids tilted her head in concern. “Are you quite all right?”
I had just enough self-awareness left to know I was most certainly not all right.
Three days. That was all I had left. I laughed harder.
“Louise.” Morgane snapped her fingers in front of my nose. “Is something funny?”
I blinked, my laughter dying as abruptly as it’d started. In three days, I’d be dead. Dead. The steady pounding of my heartbeat, the cold night air on my face—it would all cease to exist. I would cease to exist—at least, in the way I was now. With freckled skin and blue-green eyes and this terrible ache in my belly.
“No.” My eyes rose to the clear night sky above us, where the stars stretched on for eternity. To think, I’d once thought this view better than Soleil et Lune’s. “Nothing is funny.”
I’d never laugh with Coco again. Or tease Ansel. Or eat sticky buns at Pan’s or scale Soleil et Lune to watch the sunrise. Were there sunrises in the afterlife? Would I have eyes to see them if there were?
I didn’t know, and it frightened me. I tore my gaze from the stars, tears clinging to my lashes.
In three days, I would be parted from Reid forever. The moment my soul left my body, we would be permanently separated . . . for where I was going, I was certain Reid couldn’t follow. This was what frightened me most.
Where you go, I will go. Where you stay, I will stay.
But there was no place for a huntsman in the Summerland, and there was no place for a witch in Heaven. If either place even existed.
Would my soul remember him? A small part of me prayed I wouldn’t, but the rest knew better. I loved him. Deeply. Such a love was not something of just the heart and mind. It wasn’t something to be felt and eventually forgotten, to be touched without it in return touching you. No . . . this love was something else. Something irrevocable. It was something of the soul.
I knew I would remember him. I would feel his absence even after death, would ache for him to be near me in a way he could never be again. This was my destiny—eternal torment. As much as it hurt to think of him, I would bear the pain gladly to keep even a small part of him with me. The pain meant we’d been real.
Death couldn’t take him away from me. He was me. Our souls were bound. Even if he didn’t want me, even if I cursed his name, we were one.
I became vaguely aware of two sets of arms around me, carrying me away. Where they took me, I didn’t care. Reid wouldn’t be there.
And yet . . . he would be.
Harbinger
Reid
“I’m freezing,” Beau moaned bitterly.
We’d camped within a grove of ancient, gnarled pines in La Forêt des Yeux. Clouds obscured whatever light the moon and stars may have provided. Fog clung to our coats and blankets. Heavy. Unnatural.
The snow on the ground had soaked through my pants. I shivered, glancing around the company. They too were feeling the effects of the cold: Beau’s teeth chattered violently, Ansel’s lips slowly turned blue, and Coco’s mouth was stained with rabbit blood. I tried not to stare at the dead carcass at her feet. And failed miserably.
Noticing my stare, she shrugged and said, “Their blood runs hotter than ours.”
Unable to keep quiet, Ansel scooted toward her. “Do you—do you always use animal blood for magic?”
She scrutinized him a moment before answering. “Not always. Different enchantments require different additives. Just like each Dame Blanche senses unique patterns, each Dame Rouge senses unique additives. Lavender petals might induce sleep, but so might bat blood or tart cherries or a million other things. It depends on the witch.”
“So—” Ansel blinked in confusion, his face scrunching as he glanced at the rabbit carcass. “So you just eat the tart cherries? Or . . . ?”
Coco laughed, lifting her sleeve to show him the scars crisscrossing her skin. “My magic lives inside my blood, Ansel. Tart cherries are just tart cherries without it.” She frowned then, as if worried she’d said too much. Ansel wasn’t the only one listening intently. Both Madame Labelle and Beau had been hanging on her every word, and—to my shame—I too had inched closer. “Why the sudden interest?”
Ansel looked away, cheeks coloring. “I just wanted to know more about you.” Unable to resist, his gaze returned to her face seconds later. “Do—do all the blood witches look like you?”
She arched a brow in wry amusement. “Are they all breathtakingly beautiful, you mean?” He nodded, eyes wide and earnest, and she chuckled. “Of course not. We come in all shapes and colors, just like the Dames Blanches—and Chasseurs.”
Her eyes flicked to mine then, and I looked away hastily.
Beau moaned again. “I can’t feel my toes.”
“Yes, you’ve mentioned that,” Madame Labelle snapped, scooting her log closer to me. To my great irritation, she’d affixed herself to my side for the journey. She seemed intent on making me as uncomfortable as possible. “Several times, in fact, but we’re all cold. Grousing about it hardly helps.”
“A fire would,” he grumbled.
“No,” she repeated firmly. “No fires.”
As loath as I was to admit it, I agreed. Fires brought unwanted attention. All sorts of malevolent creatures roamed these woods. Already a misshapen black cat had started following us—a harbinger of misfortune. Though it kept a wide distance, it had crept into our packs the first night and eaten nearly all our food.
As if in response, Ansel’s stomach gave a mighty gurgle. Resigned, I pulled the last hunk of cheese from my pack and tossed it to him. He opened his mouth to protest, but I cut him short. “Just eat it.”