No.
I refused to.
“It was during the middle of the war. Henri would go to Louisiana to help us find them, and your mother somehow got put in the middle of it.” She grabbed me by the shoulders, turning me around. “When that ratchet Fausti, Matteo, chased after you in Sub Rosa, he was out to kill you too. You were lucky to get out alive! He wants what is mine! Do you hear me, Étoile?” She shook me like a rag doll. “He wants what is mine, and he will not have it! He will try to take you from me—kill you!You must do what I say at all times, understand?!”
It felt like the last droplet of blood was leaving my body, and I was about to be a puddle on the floor with it. I couldn’t keep myself upright. I couldn’t breathe.
Somewhere in the distance, someone screamed, and then I was being lifted, my body weightless, except for my heart. It felt like a weight full of pain I couldn’t bear to hold. It rooted me to this world when all I wanted—needed—to do was let go and be free.
Chapter 9
Stella
It was the drugs that did it. Made me move when all I wanted to do was lie down and die. Régine had never used them on me before. I’d seen a man injecting it into a dancer who had refused to perform. She was out of her mind with panic, and to calm her down, make her more complacent, one of the men put his arms around her, holding her tight, while the other slipped the needle under her skin and hit her vein. I’d been ushered to another side of the tomb while they did this, but it didn’t take long before her screams subsided.
I hadn’t been screaming. I hadn’t said anything. I just couldn’t get up. All the blood in my body was gone, and my mind refused to stop replaying the wordmurderedinRégine’s voice.
“It is your own fault!” Boris had barked at her. “Telling her those things before she went on stage! You will have to return the money. Not me.”
Over me, all I could hear was voices, two of them belonging to Boris and Régine. They argued about what to do with me. It felt like sleep paralysis again. My mind was turned on, thoughts and outside voices screaming inside of my head, but my body couldn’t move.
That was when the same man who had given that dancer the drugs gave me something. At first, I felt nothing, but then a fire started to move through my veins, and it was like my body obeyed it. I couldn’t sit still. I had to move, or I might start to smoke and turn into ashes. The more I sat still, the hotter the fire in my veins became. Tears covered my cheeks as I danced for people who believed in an illusion, causing black streaks to run over my silver makeup. Out of all the times I’d danced on the stage, that time was the time worth believing that I was another creature all together. Because on the inside, I was burning with a sadness so hurtful, if I stopped moving, it was going to consume me.
The dance always comes to an end, though. And when it did, on the way back to the château, the fire started to move toward my hands, like I could ball it up and throw it at the world. Régine’s voice was still in my head, but it was starting to grate on me. And I was so pissed at myself for believing her! My mom wouldn’t have done anything to get herself killed. She was coming back for me!
Régine was a fucking liar.
What she said about Matteo? I could believe. Maybe he was after me. But not because of my mom. Probably because of something the Nemours did.
Fuck all the Nemours to hell and back!
I was so busy thinking these things, opening and closing my hands, that I didn’t even notice that Régine and Boris were walking me down to the dungeon until my foot landed on the last step and Boris ran into my back, forcing me down the entire way.
“What?” I barely got out. What I was seeing was such a shock. Then I found my voice. “What are you doing?!”
Odette and Henriette had my things, the hidden things from the vanity, spread out. They were picking through them like they meant nothing.
“I told you, Maman!” Odette lifted my watch. “She has been keeping secrets!”
“And Henri allowed her to!” Henriette whined.
Régine whirled past me, rushing to where the things were spread out. She lifted a book and turned back to me. “Explain yourself!”
“I don’t have to explain shit!” I shouted.
The room grew quiet. Then, a few seconds after the shock had faded, Odette opened her mouth to probably shout back at me, but Régine lifted her hand, instantly silencing her.
“Have we not treated you right, Étoile? Have we not given you a roof over your head when we didn’t need to? And now you are stealing from us?” She waved the book.
“Stealing,” I barely got out. “Stealing!I’mstealing? Who hasmythings?” Before any of them could stop me, I went after Odette. I was going to pull every strand of hair out of her head. I was going to smash her pointed nose in so it would never look the same. She’d look like Ms. Piggy after I was done with her! I was going to fling her in the fire if I was strong enough to do it.
Screams erupted around us as I chased her. I caught her by the hair, pulling her back, ready to do some damage. But then she did something that melted the heart in my chest.
She screamed, “Fetch, dog!” As she flung my watch in the open mouth of the fireplace, the fire eating the metal and plastic in a second. I watched in horror as it melted into a shape I didn’t recognize. It bubbled and ran and exploded and became…nothing but a stain on the scorching grate.
Nothing left.
Nothing.
