“Had you noticed anything odd about it before?”
Another shake. “I rarely took it off. I don’t know what happened to it.”
A giant tug within him, lurching his consciousness back to reality.
No. Not yet.
There was one more question he couldn’t leave without asking, even if the answer would kill Julien. “Béatrice, what was your involvement with the Arcane Purifiers?”
She blinked at him.
“Could they have done this—murdered you?”
“What? Why would they do that?”
“Julien found a note in your diary. It marked the day they attacked Auri. You have to tell me. Were you workingforthem, or against them?”
A silence. A breath held in anticipation.
“Is Julien going to be very angry with me?” she asked, her grey eyes as wide as the moon. “When he finds out?”
Cinn grabbed hold of both her hands. “No. Julien loves you very much.”
She suddenly stood, dragging him up with her. “Don’t leave me here. Take me back with you.”
Stunned, it took him a moment to reply. “Béatrice, I can’t.”
“You can. I can feel it.”
“They’ve warded my body with this ink stuff. It won’t let me bring anything back with me.”
“Please, justtry,” she said, more tears streaming down her face. “I don’t want to be here by myself.”
“Okay,” he said, to appease her, and she threw herself into his arms, clutching him tightly to her, burying her face into his neck.
He tipped his head back at the night sky. The stars shimmered, brightening. Then he noticed a shadowmote, dancing above Béatrice’s head.
“Where have you been?” he whispered to it, holding out a hand. Another appeared, then another, and soon there was a tornado of darkness encircling the pair of them.
They were the eye of the storm.
Cocooned in a tempest of shadows.
The shadowmotes’ pace increased, and so did Cinn’s grip on this reality. He pressed Béatrice tightly to him, as the shadowmotes circled ever closer to them, until they were brushing up against them, a rush of wind and black.
Then, they were spinning, spinning alongside the shadowmotes.
Spinning, spinning, spinning.
twenty-four
Julien
The grandfather clock in the corner of the dining room chimed eight p.m.
Darcy wandered back into the room from the kitchen. “Still dead to the world?”
“Yup. He’s puttingmeto sleep now.” Elliot yawned, slumping backwards on his chair.
