I stare after her, my eyes watering, my heart screaming. Another flash of emerald lightning smashes into the palace, and Anne shrieks in my ear, “Run, Josse!”
I tuck the knife in my boot and spin toward the outer wall, but the gatehouses are overrun with figures in purple and green cloaks. Arrows assail the courtiers attempting to flee, putting them down like deer on the hunt. I look back to the grand château, but hordes of intruders are charging up the steps. Inside the palace, eerie green light streaks through the hallways, setting the draperies aflame.
There’s no way out. Nowhere safe.
Think, Josse.
I close my eyes and imagine each hall, each level of the palace, until my attention snags on the hidden passage beneath the stairs outside the Venus Salon. My best friend, Luc Desgrez, and I discovered it years ago, when I was desperate to evade my chores and he wanted nothing to do with the Latin lessons his scholar father taught Louis. It used to be a discreet entrance for carpenters and masons during construction—my father couldn’t have commoners traipsing across the cour d’Honneur—and it leads from the main château to the stables and into the woods beyond. Brilliant.
With a grunt, I boost Anne higher up my back and tug Françoise toward the nearest window. I’ve never stepped foot inside this wing of the palace—the dauphin has expressly forbiddenbastard scumfrom entering his apartments—but it’s the fastest way to the hidden passage, so I smash my boot through a window and duck past the shards of glass.
For all I’ve heard of its beauty, Louis’s bedchamber is a scorching, incendiary hell at present. The gold damask walls are spattered with sickening green scars that drip onto the parquet floor, and two gentlemen of the bedchamber lie in the center of the room, their skin greener than leaves and their faces frozen in agony.
I look away and charge ahead, willing myself not to scream.
The stairs. Get to the stairs.
I careen through the door and into a wood-paneled antechamber, where I slam into an intruder. The man is my height but twice as broad, and his face is covered with an intricate black mask. “What luck,” he says with a husky chuckle. “Just the girls I was looking for.” He leans forward in a mock bow and reaches into his scarlet cloak.
Anne and Françoise scream, and I don’t wait to see what he’s grabbing for. Rage flash-boils the blood in my veins. I have never killed a man, never trained with a sword like Louis, but my time in the kitchen serves me well. Faster than I’ve ever moved, I set Anne down, pull the knife from my boot, and plunge it into the man’s belly. Up and in. Gutting him like a pig. He coughs and sags against me, his blood rushing warm and thick over my hands. I wait for my arms to tremble with horror, for nausea to squeeze my throat, but I only feel fury. A ferocious desire to stab him again for eventhinkingof harming my sisters.
I dump him on the ground, return the knife to my boot, and take Françoise and Anne by the hand, cringing at the blood that smears their skin. The smoke thickens as we run through the next antechamber. Servants pour from the dauphin’s library and grand cabinet, screeching and crying as ghostly green flames blaze down the hall. “Everything’s going to be fine,” I call, as much for myself as the girls.
We burst into the forecourt and the marble staircase comes into view. So close. But a cry pricks my ears as we pass the Diane Salon, and my stomach bottoms out.
I think I recognize it.
Clenching my teeth, I take another step. If our roles were reversed, they wouldn’t stop for me. Anne and Françoise are my only responsibility, the only ones I care for in this rutting palace. But the cry comes again, even louder. Wrenching me between the two halves of my life.
Be strong, Josse,Rixenda’s voice echoes.
I whirl around and pound on the door. “Marie? Are you in there?”
The door flies open and my half sister, Madame Royale—the king’s eldest daughter—pokes her face into the hall. Her porcelain complexion is blotchy enough to be poxed, and her eyes are swollen into slits. She’s coughing so hard she’s unable to speak, but silence from her isn’t unusual. In my eighteen years, we’ve only exchanged a handful of words.
“What are you still doing here?” I demand.
“There’s nowhere to go. Louis says we simply cannot rush into the fray.”
“Louis?” I choke on his name. “He’s here? But I saw him at the gates… .”
“When Father was struck—” she begins, but she collapses in the doorway, weeping. Anne and Françoise burst into tears again, and I scoop them up and step past Marie.
The Diane Salon is the most decadent of all the sitting rooms, with rich violet hangings and ebony furniture, but like the dauphin’s apartments, it has been transformed into a picture of gory contradiction. Three intruders lie strewn across the glittering tiles, swimming in pools of blood, and the Grand Condé, the most celebrated general in the French army, sags against a divan and clutches his side, a deep red stain spreading through his ivory justaucorps. Beyond him, Louis leans over a table laden with snuffboxes, quills, and decanters arranged in the shape of the palace. He points to a wall on the far end of the table, and Condé shakes his head. His Royal Highness roars a black oath.
I’m tempted to turn on my heel, grab the girls, and leave the court to sort out their own escape. They will never listen to me, and every moment could be the difference between making it to the passageway. But Marie moans into her palms, and my insides wring like a washrag. Deserving or not, I cannot leave them to die.
I situate my sisters against the wall and stride toward the men, clearing my throat since neither of them have bothered to acknowledge me. “I know a way out,” I announce.
They jerk at the sound of my voice, and even though he’s halfway to death, Condé manages to frown down his bulbous nose at me. “Thank the saints! The royal bastard has come to save us.”
“This is hardly the time for politics,” I bark. “Come.”
The old general waves a hand. “They’ve posted guards at every gate. They’ll kill us on sight.”
“Thankfully my way doesn’t require a gate. Follow me. Andmake haste.”
Louis’s blue eyes flick up from the table and flay me open like a butcher’s knife. “If myself and the Grand Condé cannot find a way out, youcertainly cannot.”
