“Has anything you’ve told me ever been true? Are you even a thirteenth child?”
“Of course I am!” she snapped, wounded. “I’m every bit as special as you are. Even more so, truly.”
There was something in her tone, in that imperious tilt to her head, that stirred up a memory I’d not thought of in years.
“I know you,” I whispered, floored as I pulled that dreadful afternoon from the deep recesses of my mind. “You were the little novice at the temple in Rouxbouillet, that day when Bertie was sold off.” My hands flew to my face, covering my mouth. “That wasyou!”
Margaux’s lips parted. She looked as though she was going to deny it but then nodded. “It was.”
I felt stunned into silence.
Her face curled in a sneer, all façades falling away. “You’ve no idea how much I hated you.”
“What? Why?”
Margaux snorted. “That look right there, for starters! You’re like a little woodland creature, all big-eyed innocence, fawning naiveté. It’s sickening.”
“Margaux, I don’t know what I’ve ever done to offend you. I don’t even know how I could have—”
Her hands balled into fists. “Just…being here. Just…existing,” she snapped, struggling to explain her resentment. “Our priestess wanted you so badly. It was all she could talk about.” She pantomimed a spread banner. “ ‘The Thirteenth Child Who Got Away.’ When she already had me! And your brother! Oh—he was the worst!”
Her words rushed from her in a manic deluge. I felt each exclamation land on me like an assault.
“When he first arrived, of course, he had to take a vow of silence. One whole year of wordless devotion, of purifying your thoughts and mind and readying to serve your gods. But when his vow ended, all sorts of stories came tumbling out of him, and they were all about you. He was so proud, proud to have a sister chosen by a god. He was starstruck, I think, bragging about all the things your father had told him. The night that three gods came for you. The night you were chosen. The night the Dreaded End promised you all those extra years.”
“Extra years,” I repeated, dismayed that my father had understood Merrick’s promise for me before I ever had. He’d told Bertie, and Bertie had gone on to tell Margaux. I felt a lurch of queasy dread in my stomach. That wasmysecret. That Margaux knew it felt terribly, terribly wrong.
“What do you need so many years for anyway?” she went on, the question falling from her lips with ease, and I suddenly pictured her in her chambers, asking it over and over as she paced, as she fixated, as she raged. “Why did your god give them to you but mine didn’t do the same? It’s so unfair. So infuriating. No matter what I did with my life, no matter how talented I was, no matter the great things I’d accomplish, at the back of my mind were all those extra years of yours, taking up space, pricking and prodding at me. So yes. I hated you,” Margaux admitted. “You weren’t living in a crowdeddormitory, fighting for every scrap of attention, for a chance to be noticed. You weren’t flaying yourself open, literally pouring out your blood to prove your love. You had blessings untold, and on top of everything, all those years.”
“Margaux, I never asked for them. Merrick had it arranged before I was even—”
“Eventually,” she went on, speaking over me as if my protests, my explanations meant nothing, “my anger and resentment built to such a fevered pitch that my lord finally took notice. Calamité came to me one night and promised that if I devoted my life to him alone, he would bless me too.”
“But you’re a daughter of the Divided Ones…of all their gods. How could you abandon the rest of them?”
Margaux shrugged. “What have they ever done for me? Calamité saw that I was special. He promised to reward me. So I accepted his offer. And he has.”
She reached into the folds of her robes and withdrew the bronze chain once more, showing off the trinket.
“Where’s your whistle, healer?” she demanded, her mouth open wide as she laughed. Candlelight winked off her canines, making her look as dangerous as a rabid dog. Without warning, she put the pipes to her lips and blew.
A low and familiar atonal rumble rang out, a call to war, a call to chaos and ill fortune. A call to the only god who ever came when beckoned.
Calamité.
Chapter 54
“My lord.” Margaux greeted Calamitéwith a deep bow of reverence.
“How is my favorite child?” he asked as the Divided Ones strode from a shadowy corner of the room and crossed to her.
She rose on tiptoe to press a kiss to his cheek without offering Félicité so much as an acknowledgment. “So much better now that you’re here.”
The Divided Ones turned, scanning Euphemia’s chambers, their gaze missing nothing. I felt the moment Calamité’s eye fell on me. “Hello, Hazel. I like your gown. Life at court seems to suit you.”
I stared up at the god with a stony expression. “Nothing about this place suits me these days.”
Calamité shrugged blithely and they turned to peer into the princess’s bed, watching as she trembled. “My, what a mess she’s made,” he murmured, sounding pleased.
