“Y-you!” I stammer when his hand slides away from my lips. “You were asleep.”
“No. I was testing you. And you failed. Running straight back to your mother, despite your pretty promises. I should have let Desgrez kill you.”
I wrench my arm back, but his hold tightens. “I’mnotrunning back to my mother.”
Josse narrows his eyes. “You just happened to fancy a stroll past her stronghold?”
“Ihappento have a plan of my own.” I rear back again, and this time I stumble free.
“And what plan is that?”
I wrap my arms around my chest, rubbing his angry red fingerprints from my skin. “I don’t see how it’s any of your business, but I plan to continue the work of the Shadow Society—ourtruework,” I add when he scoffs. “Murdering the king and seizing the city was never our aim. Our concern has always been for the common people: brewing curatives and hunger tonics and love potions.”
“I still fail to see how that requires returning to the Louvre. You can’t honestly hope to recruit La Voisin’s followers to your cause.”
“No, but I can steal back my alchemy supplies.”
He’s silent for a moment. His heavy breath billows between us in the cold. “While your intentions are noble …ifyou’re telling the truth,” he adds with a deliberate pause, “I can’t allow you to put yourself in such a precarious position.”
“Why not?” I cut him off. “The common folk aren’t worth the risk?”
His eyes flare. “I am a commoner.”
“Are you? Truly?”
He tugs at his collar in frustration. “That’s beside the point. I must focus on getting my sisters safely out of Paris before your mother finds us, which is why I can’t allow you to flit about raising a ruckus and getting yourself caught. It’s madness to think one person could make a difference, anyway.”
“Is it, princeling?” I take a bold step closer, the toes of my boots knocking his. He’s a good head taller than me, but my indignation raises me up to his height. “Did I not make a difference when I brought your sisters and Desgrez back from the dead?”
“Yes, but—”
“Don’t others deserve such a mercy?” His lips part, but I don’t let him speak. “I’m not asking for your permission. I’m free to do as I please. You’re free to go on your way, help me, or kill me. And since we both know you can’t stomach the third option …”
He rips off his tricorne hat and rakes his fingers through his messy hair. “I haven’t time to help the whole bedamned city!”
“So don’t. Scurry back to the sewer.” I charge from the alcove and continue down the rue Saint-Honoré toward the gatehouse in the palace wall, though I’m not entirely sure how I’ll get inside. Perhaps when the guards change… .
I stop beneath the awning of a butchery across the road and study the gate, with its sharp iron teeth digging trenches into the ground. I tilt my head back and frown up at the ramparts that soar higher than the roofs of the half-timbered houses.
“Do you have a death wish?” Josse materializes beside me, grabs my elbow, and pulls me down the street. “You’ll be caught within the hour if you try to get through there. Follow me. I lived here half my life. I’ll get you inside.”
“I thought you didn’t have time to help?”
“I don’t. But I’ll have even less time if you’re captured.”
He leads me past the palace, down the muddy, sloping embankment of the Seine, and plunks me down in the reeds. The cold mud seeps through my skirt, and I shudder as the midnight breeze skiffs across the river. “This doesn’t look like the inside of the palace,” I say.
Josse glowers and removes a dagger from his boot.
I eye it warily but refuse to flinch. “Ah, I see. You’ve decided to kill me after all.”
“We both know I’m not going to kill you,” he murmurs, turning the blade to offer me the handle. “Cut off your hair.”
My hands instinctively reach for my curls. “Why?”
“Why do you think?” He makes large swirling gestures all around his head that are offensive and altogether exaggerated.
“It isn’t that unruly.”
