“Do you think it matters?” I say with a growl. “Look at me. I’ve one foot in the grave already.”
“I can help you. Most of your wounds are superficial. Some chamomile, tea tree, and yarrow will do wonders for your burns and bruises. And if we escape, I can distill the antidote to désintégrer.”
I wave a dismissive hand at her. “We’re not going to escape, and I don’t want your bedamned antidote. I don’t care what becomes of me if I cannot save my sisters.”
“What if wecansave them?”
“How?” I glower at her. Disgusted with myself for trusting her. For allowing myself to care for her.
She fidgets in the filthy rushes. “I don’t know,” she admits.
“But we’ll think of something. And you’ll be of little use to them if you turn yourself to mincemeat. I cannot bear to watch you—”
“Don’t act as if you care.”
“Idocare!”
“You don’t! If you cared for me at all, you would have kept them safe. If youknewme at all, you would have known I’d gladly die to protect them.”
“It wasn’t just about them.” Mirabelle’s voice trails off and she buries her face in her hands. “How was I to know Mother was bluffing? She’s done such horrendous things. I was just trying to—”
“You sentenced my sisters to death.” Saying it aloud gives it weight. Truth. I totter to the far side of my cell and crumple to the dirty straw. It smells of dung and vomit and I gag as I ease down on my side.
Mirabelle crawls closer, pressing her face between the bars. “Wemay not be able to save them, but who’s to say Louis hasn’t? He escaped the fire. Perhaps he had the foresight to hide them somewhere else.”
My laughter is bitter and grating. “Perhaps your Mother will beg my forgiveness, release me from this cell, and crown me King of France.”
Mirabelle lowers her brows. “I’m in earnest.”
“So am I! In fact, I’d say my scenario is more likely.”
“Why do you insist on underestimating Louis?”
“Because I know him.”
“Do you?” she presses. “Or have you invented a convenient identity for him? So you always have a scapegoat?”
I shove up to my elbows. “He invented an identity forme!”
“Have you considered that perhaps you’ve been unfair to each other? How long are you going to cling to this senseless childhood grudge? If the two of you would just—”
“Stop!” I bang my fist against the bars and the impact rattles through me. The hair on my neck rises like hackles. “Is it not enough that you’ve sent my sisters to the chopping block? Do you have to side with Louis as well? Kick me while I’m down. Spit upon my rotting corpse.”
“Josse, I—”
“No! Don’t pepper me with your excuses and platitudes or pretend to understand my childhood grudges. You are oblivious. And careless. And disloyal. Rescuing you from the sewer was the worst decision I’ve ever made. If I’d let Desgrez finish you, he would be alive. My sisters would be alive.”
Mirabelle shrinks back. She wraps her arms around her stomach and blinks at me through tear-filled eyes. “Do you honestly believe that?”
I ignore the tiny twinge in my chest, refusing to be deluded by her mournful frown and poisonous logic any longer. I regard her with my iciest expression. “I don’t believe it—I know it.”
She bites her lips together, but her shoulders shake. “Then I suppose there’s nothing more to say.”
“I suppose not.”
I turn away and stare across the dungeon. It’s a foul, low-ceilinged place. The wall opposite is fitted with chains, and an insidious black stain covers the stones. Mirabelle and I are far from the only prisoners. Each cell is occupied, and the poor souls are nothing but lumps of skin and bone and hollow eyes. The man on my other side scrapes at the bars in slow, eerie repetition, his fingertips raw and bloodied. And the old man across from me lies faceup on the ground, weeping the nameJeanne.And somewhere down the block, a woman cackles day and night like a bedamned jester.
But none of them is as irritating or as pitiful as Mirabelle. She cries quietly for what feels like an eternity, and the sound is worse than the squeal of pigs being slaughtered. Like nails hammering my eardrums. She has no right to cry like that. To act as if she’ll die of heartache when she could have prevented this. All she had to do was hold her tongue and let me die. I clench my teeth and clamp my hands over my ears, but her whimpers still seep through the cracks. So I climb back to my feet and resume writhing and railing against the bars. Anything to drown her out.
