“Me?”
She takes a step closer and whispers, “It’s important.”
I sigh and run a hand through my hair. “Okay.”
There’s no one in the waiting area on this floor, just a handful of empty armchairs. A student nurse is working behind the desk, earbuds in, head bopping. She looks up when we enter the room, but Nolwenn waves her away. We walk to the farthest corner from the desk. Nolwenn sits, crosses her legs, pats her puffy blonde hair, and clears her throat. She gives me a quick smile, and I see she’s got lipstick on her teeth.
I’m debating whether to tell her or not but am brutally interrupted by a confession that pins my lips shut.
“I’m the one who sent you away from Brume.”
I don’t know what I was expecting her to say but not this.
I find my voice. “So, the mystery of how I ended up in foster care’s finally solved.” The irony that I get closure minutes before I’m set to die isn’t lost on me. “Do you know how fucking awful it was?”
She flinches as though I’d slapped her. “I’m sorry, Marseille. Back then, we thought anything would be better than you being here. We had no idea what you might endure. I’m truly sorry.” Between the purple smudging her eyes and the red rimming them, she looks it.
A flash of anger sparks through me, then settles into cold indifference. It doesn’t matter anymore. Nothing fucking matters anymore.
Still, I ask, “Why?”
“Amandine asked me to.”
My whole body feels hollowed out. “Amandine de Morel? Cadence’s mother?”
“Yes.” She puts a hand to her helmet of hair again.
“So Rainier knew the whole fucking time where I was . . .”
It’s not a question, but she must think it is because she shakes her head and says, “No.”
I grip my knees, and pain radiates up my bruised phalanx. “I don’t understand.”
She plays with the rectangular catch on her purse, flipping it open, then closed. “You were only a toddler. But also the only Roland left. If you’d stayed in town, Amandine was convinced . . .” Her gaze flitters to every inch of deserted space. “She was convinced he would try to get the Quatrefoil together again, no matter your age.”
“Who’she?”
She lifts a penciled-in eyebrow.
“You saidhewould have tried to get the Quatrefoil together again. Who’s he?” I want to hear her say it.
She snaps the golden clasp shut and hugs her purse to her chest, her gaze flitting around the empty waiting room again.
“Rainier,” she whispers.
His name echoes like a gunshot inside my throbbing skull. I roll my fingers into fists, relax them, roll them back in. “Amandine asked you to hide me from him?”
“Yes.”
Glad to see my gut hasn’t deceived me yet. “Why tell me now?”
She eyes the Bloodstone. “I’ve lived with this secret for seventeen years. And then I lived with the guilt of having lost track of you. I don’t know if the others told you, but my son was cursed. When it happened, when he started acting—” A tear snakes down her cheek, gets lost in one of her wrinkles. “He consumed my every thought. My every minute. After I sent him away, I tried locating you, but you’d vanished . . . without a trace.” Her voice grows thinner, her grief heavier. “I hope you can forgive me.”
I don’t answer her, too busy planning how I will take De Morel down with me when I go. I might be scum, but a man feared by his own wife . . . there’s no word to describe that sort of person. I stand and pace, back and forth, back and forth.
Nolwenn sniffs, following my frantic marching with her shiny eyes. “Marseille?”
“I knew I couldn’t trust him.”
