“First, Iambetter than Louis—that doesn’t require much effort. And second, I love Anne and Françoise because they’re the only ones who have ever loved me. Protecting them has nothing to do with pleasingHis Royal Majesty.”
“If you say so.” Mirabelle’s expression is pitying—as if I’m as sad and confused as she is, which I most definitely am not. That sniveling little boy who needed his father’s approval died a lifetime ago. I buried him myself.
“I don’t know why I bothered,” I mutter. “It was foolish to think a poisoner could understand.”
Mirabelle flinches, but I don’t apologize. Her dark eyes bore into the side of my face from across the shop, but I refuse to look at her.
Finally, she huffs and looks away. “You’rethe one who initiated the conversation.”
“Well, I shouldn’t have.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
We sit in silence as the hours pass.
A prince and a poisoner.
Trapped in the same room, but on opposite ends of the world.
11
MIRABELLE
I ball my fists in my skirt—mostly so I don’t fly across the millinery and throttle the bastard princeling—and watch the sun make its languid arc across the sky. Morning shifts to midday then evening. As eager as I am to leave this place, he’s right—it will be safer under the cover of night. So I drum my fingers against the floor and count the seconds until it’s dark and I can be free of him.
Never in my life have I known anyone so bullheaded. So willfully obstinate! Sitting over there with his devil-may-care attitude.I see you!I want to shout.You are just as desperate for approval as I am. Maybe even more so, since you’re too blind to recognize it.
I glance over and hope to catch him staring again—soIcan make a barbed remark. But he’s drifted off to sleep. His long legs are stretched out in front of him and his hands are tucked behind his head, his hat propped partially over his eyes. He looks younger in sleep—the hard set of his jaw finally slack, his brows released from their perpetual scowl. A strand of dark hair has slipped from the queue at the nape of his neck and dangles down the side of his face. My fingers twitch, inexplicably wanting to tuck it behind his ear.
He’s impossible. And infuriating. But also desperate and lonely and aching.
Like me.
You don’t have to feel that way.
I want to say his words back to him. Not to rub salt in his wounds, but because they’re true. We’re more alike than either of us would care to admit. In another life, we might have been friends.
But not in this one.
He may be a bastard, but he’s still royal. He grew up at court, oblivious to the hunger and sickness and poverty I’ve spent my life fighting. There’s also the undeniable fact that I killed his father. I don’t know why I omitted that rather large detail when he asked about Versailles. Maybe I don’t want to accept my part in it; I may be less culpable than Mother and Marguerite, but I’m hardly blameless. Or maybe it’s more self-serving than that. He would never grant my freedom if he knew the truth.
Josse insists he wanted nothing to do with Louis XIV, but it’s a lie. Deep down, he loved the man. Desperately.
Which is why we’ll go our separate ways. I have an agenda to keep, and it doesn’t include hiding away like a coward while the Shadow Society ravages the city. Not if I can help the people and quiet the nagging finger of guilt that’s prodding me in the belly. I push up to my knees and peer between the boards nailed across the window, waiting until the night is half gone and the gambling dens on either side are silent. Then I gather up my skirts and tiptoe across the millinery. At the door, I steal one more glance at Josse—the moonlight dancing across the sharp planes of his handsome, but entirely irksome, face—and slip into the chilly night.
After a quick scan of the street, I head south toward the river. More specifically, toward the Louvre.
I may not be able to change what I’ve done, but I can attempt to redeem myself.
I creep toward the city center, past the Palais Royal, which is no doubt overrun with Shadow Society loyalists, and I’m about to turn on to the rue Saint-Honoré—the street bordering the northern wall of the Louvre—when a hand snakes out of a shadowed alcove and catches me by the throat. A moment later, fingers slap across my lips, muffling my scream.
“You filthy little liar!”
I had expected to find Fernand or Marguerite or another high-ranking member of the Shadow Society. But Josse’s gray-green eyes blaze down at me. His fingertips press bruises into the skin above my collar bone.
“Unbelievable,” he seethes.
