Mirabeau.
Alveche.
De Laurion.
I flipped to the last page. “No Montrachet.”
“No.” Dowser shook his head, spectacles slicing through reflections. “But we’ll keep searching for him. Are you sure—?”
I wasn’t. All I could remember was that last, horrible moment when I’d found Thibo lying broken and empty in the undergrowth. I’d run for help, but I’d been too late. By the time I’d gotten back, he wasgone.And now he kept slipping away from me, like water through my fingers—a sweeping feather hat with no face beneath it, laughing words with no voice to speak them, a ruffled silk shirt with no heart beating inside it. These were all the things I had left of my friend.
“His heart was beating, the last I saw him.” I handed back the sheaf of papers like they’d scalded my fingers. “Just find him. Find all of them. If it’s the only thing I do before—”
I clicked my teeth together, unwilling to finish the sentence. Beforewhat? My unspoken doubts roused restless heads. Before another red-masked killer attempted to assassinate me in the street, and succeeded? Before Severine roused from her coma with vengeance in her eyes and violence in her heart to steal my legacy and regain her throne?
“Just do it.”
Dowser nodded. His footsteps receded.
I turned to Severine’s desk with a sigh. I’d already examined its contents more than once, but I kept hoping to find my sister’s secrets—where she’d hidden her Relics, where she’d banished her lost legacies, why she’d ruled her empire with a dristic fist and manipulated her nobles with gilded lies.
I tidied a few books—a heavy treatise on the principles of war by an Aifiri philosopher named Dax Kinza; a tome of translated Lirian death poetry bound in crackling leather that looked enough like human skin to makemyskin crawl; a collection of famous love letters between my ancestor, Celestine Sabourin, and the beautiful and accomplished courtesan she never got to marry.
A slender volume tucked inside a Cascaran history book fell to the marble with a slap. I picked it up. Bound in suede, it had a simple lacy pattern embossed along its spine, but no title or author to speak of. I flipped it open. Elegant, girlish handwriting looped across the pages, fine as spider silk, and I squinted at the letters. I still wasn’t as literate as I’d like, and while I could usually get by with printed words, handwriting always posed a challenge.
…F punished me again today, although I did not deserve it. He knows I never meant to drive her away, but it is a convenient excuse. And so he made me watch as he tormented S with the twisted power he dares calllegacy. I know my brother will not blame me, as F intends him to. But I blame myself.
A notion dark as the winds out of Dominion chilled me. My eyes cut toward Severine’s limp body, motionless in its bed. This was a diary. Could it be—?
I shoved the journal away, as though by increasing its distance from my body I could diminish my desire to read it. But it was no use. I snatched it back up, flipping through pages and pages of looping writing. Just past the halfway mark, the entries abruptly stopped. I thumbed to the last entry, curiosity and a distant kind of inevitability spurring me on. It was a single line, inked in black at the top of a swathe of staring white.
The baby is dead, it read.My last sister is free. And I am finally alone with my burden.
Ice crackled along my bones and congealed in my veins. A low buzzing teased at my ears and tingled along my palms. I dropped the book, then picked it up again and shoved it into my pocket. And when I fled Severine’s spare, silent chambers, I swore I heard her laugh—a distant sound like chiming bells and anticipated pain.
Lys Wing smelled of crushed lilies and bittersweet memories.
Birdsong echoed through the green-draped courtyard. Clouds seared black lines across a cinnamon sky. It was too quiet. Most of the courtiers who’d fought with me in the coup had returned to their estates, to reconnect with their families and shore up their corners of this teetering empire. The legacies loyal to Severine remained in the palais, confined to their chambers until I decided what should be done with them. I trotted past chambers I no longer slept in toward Lullaby’s rooms. No one answered my knock, and I had almost turned away when the door creaked open.
“Yes, lady?” The petite girl who answered was one of Lullaby’s handmaidens.
“Is Lullaby at home?”
“No, lady.” Camille shifted her weight. A snowflake of dismay brushed my heart.Again?
Since I’d returned to the city, my relationship with Lullaby had been strained. Although she’d survived the coup unscathed, she—along with Sunder and a number of other legacies—had been captured and incarcerated by the Skyclad when I fled to Belsyre. While retaking the palais, I’d found her outside her cell, standing over the body of a soldat who should have known beautiful things could still be weapons.
Are you all right?I’d asked, urgent. Fingerprints bruised her arms and violence bruised her eyes.
Fine, she’d whispered.
But when I reached out to embrace her, she held up a shaking hand and turned her face away. Loup-Garou blurred around us, kicking open doors and subduing Skyclad. So I asked about the only person I still hadn’t found.
Sunder?
She pointed deeper into the dungeon.He might still be alive.
And she’d avoided me ever since.
