“Fine. If you have a death wish, I’ll happily leave you to rot.”
“I would be careful,brother,how you address the King of France,” Louis quips.
Louis is king? That means our father, the Sun King, is dead. I hardly knew the man, but I still feel the loss deep in my gut. Like the heel of a boot. “The queen?” I whisper.
Condé glances at Marie, who bursts into another fit of tears, then he quietly says, “Her Majesty is dead on the veranda. I was defending the dauphin and didn’t reach her in time.”
I toe the masked corpses strewn across the carpet. “Who are they?”
“Hell if I know,” Condé says, “but the court magician, Lesage, is leading them. Turncoat rat. He’ll burn us all to cinders with his devil magic.”
A shiver races through me from crown to toe. “Please come.”
Louis slams his fist against the table and bellows, “Be gone!” At the same moment, the window nearest the door shatters. Bolts of fiery green light shoot into the room and strike the wall a hair’s breadth from where Anne and Françoise stand. Hissing green ashes nip their arms, and they yowl like mice caught in the traps beneath the kitchen cupboards.
No, no, no.
I fly across the room, scoop them up, and brush the burning soot from their skin. Then I leap over Marie, who stares at me with a pained expression before rising to her feet and clinging to my tunic. To my surprise, the heavy thump of Condé’s step and Louis’s grumbling about howheshould be leading our exodus trail us down the hall.
Fancy that. Following a bastard is preferable to burning alive after all.
“This is your brilliant plan?” Louis says when I press the notch on the stair rail and the panel slides. I’ll admit, it looks a bit ominous. The walls are splintered and bowed and the sharp tang of rot makes me cough. Louis hesitates, but thankfully he’s a good deal shorter than me and slender as a bean pole, so I shove him inside, hard enough that he falls to his knees. Without an apology, I push the others in behind him. Then I crowd in and bar the door.
Blackness swallows us. The air is heavy and sour, and the damp walls soak the sleeves of my tunic as we inch forward. Marie sniffles, Condé groans and lists against the wall, Louis curses as he tries to keep the old general on his feet, and the girls cry silently onto my shoulder. That’s when I notice the specks dotting their skin like freckles. They’re round with raised centers that glow a faint, otherworldly green. My ribs squeeze around my heart, and I hold my breath as I wipe my thumb across a spot on Françoise’s finger. It doesn’t smear.
Damn.
No one utters a word as we blunder through the dark. My arms ache from the weight of my sisters. It feels as if we’ve been walking for hours. Days. I take a deep breath and readjust for the hundredth time. Whatever it takes to keep them safe.
Except you’ve failed already,I think, looking at the sores and feeling sick.
When we reach the hidden door behind the stables, Louis lets out a whoop, but it’s quickly followed by a horrified scream from Marie. As soon as I emerge from the tunnel, I bite back a scream of my own. The south woods are drenched in molten-orange flames. Heat lashes my face, and smoke pours down my throat like gravy. I have led us straight to the gates of Hell.
Condé’s scowl bores into the side of my face. “Don’t stand there staring while we burn alive, boy! You brought us here.”
I cast around for the safest route while praying for Rixenda to hobble from the barn or beckon from the forest’s edge. Guilt drags at my feet until they’re heavy as boulders. It was foolish to think an old woman could make it through the chaos.
“It seemsImust lead us to safety.” Louis shoots me a disgusted look as he charges into the north woods. I raise my eyebrows but decide not to mention that the Petit Parc is the nearest thing he’s seen to wilderness—and he gets lost on those manicured paths.
With one more glance at the barn, I follow the others.
We tromp through the underbrush, slower and more painfully than a royal procession. Flames crackle through the canopy and fiery leaves rain down atop our heads. They fall faster and hotter as we aimlessly twist and turn, wandering farther from civilization and help. I need to say something, need todosomething—I’ve picked mushrooms in these woods hundreds of times; I could have us to the road in minutes.
Be strong, Josse.Rixenda’s admonition plays in my head so loudly that I whip around, hope banging in my chest. But it’s only the blaze, spitting and snapping at our backs.
I shake the sweaty strands of hair from my eyes, heft the girls higher, and make my way to the front of the group. “We need to head north along the road and find a carriage out of Versailles, perhaps out of France entirely.”
Louis glares at me as he mops his forehead with a silver-stitched handkerchief. “The king cannot flee his own country.”
“You won’t be king if you perish in these woods,” I retort.
“Watch yourself, boy.” Condé moves a trembling hand to his sword—as if he could cut me down in his condition. But by some miracle, when I stomp off, he and the others follow.
We pick our way through the burning trees, the fire dying out as we near the road. Gruff voices shout orders, and a chorus of whimpers follow. My heart thuds in my throat as I squint through the branches. Two masked intruders are herding a cluster of bloodied servants and courtiers down the road at sword-point. And there, second from the front, is Rixenda. Her petticoats are charred and her white hair billows around her like a storm cloud.
Relief crashes through me, and my eyes fill with a blurry wash of tears. She’s alive. But for how long? Desperation blows me forward like a violent gust of wind, and I dodge through the underbrush.
Momentarily forgetting that I’m carrying my sisters, a twig rakes across Anne’s cheek and she yelps.
