Do you understand now, child?Legba called from the dark.It always comes back.She did—she finally understood why her magic had always felt so different from her mother’s, why the spirits taunted her, nudging her path away from her mother’s and into the shadows. She was never meant for her mother’s light. Becausethiswas her power. This was her birthright.
The convulsing passed through her, one last terrible wave of cold, before it finally subsided. Henryk pulled Ree to her feet as they watched the undead creep out from the mist. Corbin turned tail and ran, leaving his men in his wake.
She bolted after him but was seized by the wrist.
“Don’t,” Henryk warned when she turned to face him. “Let him go, Ree.”
Didn’t he see that there was no letting him go? They’d already come too far to not finish this dance. If by some miracle they survived the night, it would be Corbin’s word against theirs. Corbin and his men would have to die. Mutiny was already here.
“I’m not asking.”
“You don’t have a choice.” Ree snatched her wrist back. “Let me finish this.”
“Let me help you.”
“You want to help me? Helpthem.” She nodded toward the Voodoos. They had been there when Corbin had announced him a traitor. By now they would know he was a spy. If they were going to work together beyond tonight and stop the Inquisition, then he would need to prove his worth now, prove that he was more than the monster behind the mask.
Show me you’re different.
She could tell from his expression that she was winning this argument. But who knew winning could feel so awful? If discovered, they would all be charged and hung in the square before dawn. Her hand rose to cup his cheek, her thumb gently wiping the blood from the side of his mouth. “I’ll find you,” she swore softly.I promise you: This time, I will find you again.
It wasn’t a promise she could afford to make. And yet she pulledhim to her, crushing her lips to his. In many ways, it felt like the first time they had met, when she had breathed life into his cold body. Or maybe it was like their second kiss, when he had kissed her this time and had poured his magic into her weakened body and brought her back from the edge of darkness. When they broke apart, she kept her eyes on his, drinking in the details of his face. Just in case it might be her last chance.
Then she turned and ran. A bullet grazed her cheek. She whirled to find one of Corbin’s men falling to the ground, turned completely to stone. Silas lowered his staff, his expression seeming to say,You take care of our mutual friend, and the Brotherhood will take care of the rest.Ree nodded. Silas held her eyes one last time, then disappeared into the smoke.
She followed Corbin’s trail of blood up through the house.
The air in the house constricted her as Ree made her way through the dark of the parlor. Every inch of it full of tumultuous memory. The house creaked and groaned, calling for her to see and hear its pain. The pain of her grandmother. Of her mother before her. Marcel’s agony. It followed her like a shadow at her heels, all the way up the winding staircase and into the dark mouth of the hall.
Ree spotted a door ajar at the end of the hall. She crept toward it. She was in no condition to keep going. First the encounter with the demon in Jon’s tomb, then opening the Veil—it had cost her something, had drained her of power. She sorely needed rest. How long could she go on like this? She set her eyes on the darkness beyond the door where Corbin waited and gritted her teeth.
Slowly, Ree crept into the room. The air changed, and she stepped aside as Corbin went for her throat. She was faster, and she’d been expecting his violence. Ree grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, then, using the magic of Ogoun’s iron-clad strength, forced him to the ground. She followed him, snatching his face toward the light. Fury lit her veins on fire.
Corbin’s face swam beneath hers, his eyes a bright hungry blue in the dark, the pupils dilated, enlivened in a way that made him appear mad. “You will give yourself to me, you fucking cunt. Or I will give you the pain of a very slow and public death.”
“Like how you killed my friend,” she gritted out. “Not a chance.”
“No.” Corbin smiled, red in his teeth. “Youkilled your friend. They told me you gave him the vial. If that’s true, then you might as well have hanged him up yourself.”
“To punish an overseer who nearly murdered him!” Ree twisted his arms into the floor over his head. But he was laughing still. Why wouldn’t he stop?
“You killed him,” he repeated. “And you can’t live with it, can you?”
Ree saw Marcel swinging from that rope, his body limned in cold sunlight. Other horrors too, that she had pretended not to see: The bruises along Anabelle’s shoulders, the ones from rough men and paying clients. Anabelle turned on her side, silently crying so that Ree would not hear. But Ree had heard. The countless other little black and colored girls with flowers in their hair and collars on their necks. Ree held out her hands, raised them high, right over Corbin’s smiling, bloodied face…
All she had to do was press down and bludgeon him with her bare hands. No magic. And he would be done.
“You go on and bash my head in, love,” he taunted. “But when you’re done, you make sure to take those chains, raise them in the air just like that, and bash your pretty little head in too.” His blue eyes were alive. Wild. “Bash and bash until there is nothing but blood and brains left on this fucking floor because, make no mistake, you are as wicked as me! You’re as muchcomplicitas me, as your mother who sat idly by for years!”
He was right. Ree hesitated.
And that was her mistake.
Corbin brought his cane up with vicious precision, striking Ree directly in the temple. She staggered backward, then hit the ground, her vision blurring.
Corbin seized her by the ankle, then began to drag her across the room, toward the balcony outside that was splintered from cannon fire, the railing broken in half. Corbin wrenched her painfully by the hair, forcing her to see the dead clamoring below. More had come. They seemed to be trudging directly for the chateau, for Corbin himself.
“Call those demons back!” he bellowed into her face. Corbin began shaking her, back and forth. “Stop them!” he cried.
