Mirabelle drops to her knees. “Please don’t be dead,” she mutters as she places her ear near the girl’s lips. After several excruciating seconds, she sags with relief. “She’s breathing. A bit of butterbur for her head wound and …”
Mirabelle keeps talking, but I’m no longer listening. I check the chamber door, then look back at the unconscious girl. I don’t mean to be insensitive, but La Voisin will have the portcullises lowered and every corner of the palace overturned if she finds a body in her bedchamber. And we cannot return to the lab for butterbur—whatever that is.
I bend over, lift the girl gently over my shoulder, and carry her from the room.
“What are you doing?” Mirabelle demands.
“What needs to be done.” I stuff the maid into the alcove in the hallway and pull the curtain strategically around her body.
“We can’t just leave her.”
“We can and we will.” I hook Mirabelle by the elbow and drag her back toward the servants’ stairs. “It’s just a knock on the head. She’ll be fine.”
Mirabelle glowers at me.
“Well, she may have a skull-splitting headache for a few days, but it won’t kill her. I, on the other hand, will be executed the moment I’m discovered, and since you made it my duty to ensure we don’t get caught, that’s what I’m doing.”
Mirabelle looks back at the alcove once more but eventually sighs and follows.
“You can make up for nearly killing her by healing another,” I say as we wind down the stairs.
Mirabelle kicks the back of my ankle, and I trip, nearly smashing my nose on the stone steps. I suppose I deserved that.
As we hurry past the kitchens, a woman in a black dress with a severe gray bun spots us and insists we follow her, but I break into a run. I’m not about to be caught now, when we’re so close to pulling this off. We batter through the servants entering the castle, then slow to a walk, our heads bowed as we make our way across the crowded courtyards and past the porters at the gatehouse.
Even after I’ve shed my disguise and we’ve blended into the bustle of the busy streets, we continue to plow past vegetable carts and shopkeepers waving baguettes and children selling flowers until the decrepit millinery comes into view. It feels oddly reminiscent of running through the streets the day before, when I freed her from the sewer. That same breathless, buzzing energy. That samerightness,dancing across my skin, warmer than the midday sun. Our boots pound the cobbles in perfect cadence. The air between us feels charged and electric. I’m as raucous and jittery as if I spent the night playing winning hands of lansquenet.
“We seem to have a knack for narrow escapes,” I say.
Mirabelle allows a tiny smile and her fingers brush the front of her dress, where her father’s grimoire hides. “I suppose we do.”
13
MIRABELLE
I cannot stop staring at Father’s grimoire. Cannot stop running my fingers over the crumbling leather binding. It’s truly in my possession—his thoughts, his handwriting, that sweet, sweet scent of sage. I bury my nose in the brittle pages and pull a deep breath into my lungs. Holding it. Imagining Father’s wily, wicked grin. How he would have loved this intrigue!
That’s my girl, risking all in the name of alchemy!
I lie down on a pile of scraps in the corner of the millinery and will myself to sleep. I need to be well rested and ready to begin making curatives the moment Gris delivers my supplies.
But Josse has other plans.
“I don’t know how you can sleep!” he says, tromping around the shop all wide-eyed and red-cheeked, like a child on May Day. “There’s so much to do, so much to plan.”
“It’s simple. You shut your mouth and close your eyes and lie very still—which I’m beginning to realize may not be simple for you …”
He laughs as if I’m joking. “Are you always so calm and practical, poisoner?”
“Are you always so loud and overzealous, princeling?”
He scrunches his brows and strokes his chin. “Why, yes. I do believe I am. And you should thank me for it. You wouldn’t have accomplished half as much without me.”
“I convincedyouto sneak into the Louvre! You demanded I stay hidden in this dusty hovel.”
“Did I?” He waves a hand. “I didn’t mean forever, obviously.”
“Obviously,” I bite back at him. But a hint of a smile creeps across my lips. He’s a bit like a puppy: exuberant and excitable and thoroughly agitating, but so jaunty and eager you can’t help but want to pat his head. The thought makes my smile widen, and I turn toward the wall to hide it as I drift off to sleep.
