I hesitated only briefly before pulling it open. Inside lay a single item: a leather-bound journal, its cover unmarked save for a scratch that matched the gouges on the walls. With hands that shook slightly, I lifted it from its resting place, half-expecting Beast to appear and snatch it from my grasp. But the room remained silent, holding its secrets close.
The journal’s weight felt significant in my hands, a tangible piece of the past that might finally shed light on the present. As I opened it to the first page, my breath caught at the elegant script that flowed across the paper.
“From the personal accounts of Queen Charlotte Vieux, reigning queen to the Majik throne,” I read aloud, my voice barely a whisper in the devastated room.
My heart stopped, then raced. Queen Charlotte. The answers I sought might finally be within reach. She had to have been the mother in the torn painting.
nineteen
Gaspard
Two days of hunting through this godforsaken forest, and all I had to show for it was mud-caked boots and the growing ache of rage in my chest. Isabeau’s trail had gone from promising to pathetic to nonexistent, like she’d evaporated into the fetid air of this dying woodland. I kicked at a rotting log, sending splinters of decayed wood flying as Alf flinched behind me. She couldn’t have simply disappeared.
The witch—yes, the water test had proven what I’d suspected when she threw me across the room with unnatural strength—had help, or luck, or both. But neither would save her from me forever. Nothing could, especially with my own dablings in the dark arts.
“Master Gaspard, perhaps we should turn back,” Alf wheezed behind me, his short legs struggling to keep pace. “These trees... they aren’t right. Everyone knows this part of the forest is the turning back point. Thou art worth more than the horror stories finding us. No one returns”
I didn’t bother looking back at him. Alf’s fear was as constant as his devotion, both equally pathetic and useful.
“If thou art afraid, go back alone,” I said, knowing full well he wouldn’t. He never did. The fat little fool would follow me into hell itself if I asked, all because his eyes lingered too long on my form when he thought I wasn’t watching. “I’m not returning without what’s mine.”
Mine.
The word tasted right on my tongue. Isabeau had been mine since the moment I first saw her blossoming into womanhood, those curves filling out her simple dresses in ways that made my mouth water and my cock stiffen. Her ample breasts were unlike all the others I’ve touched. The fact that her father had dared refuse my offer still burned like acid in my gut. Old man Arnaud, with his tinkering and his books and his ridiculous notion that his daughter deservedbetterthan the most accomplished hunter in the village.
Better than me. As if such a man existed.
“The maiden can’t have gone much farther,” Alf offered, his words punctuated by labored breaths. “A woman alone in these woods... the beasts would have—”
“She’s not dead,” I snapped, certainty hardening my voice. “I would know if thy bride were dead.”
The trees around us had grown more twisted, more wrong with each step deeper into this part of the forest. Their bark peeled away like diseased flesh, revealing pale wood beneath that resembled exposed bone. No birds sang here. No squirrels darted between branches. Even the insects seemed to have abandoned this place, leaving nothing but silence and decay.
I’d been warned about this section of the forest my entire life. “Never go beyond the lightning-struck oak,” my father had told me. “Nothing good lives there. Nothing worth hunting.” But he’d been wrong about that, as he was wrong about so many things. Isabeau was worth hunting, no matter where she fled.
Alf stumbled over a root, cursing softly as he regained his footing. His round face was flushed with exertion, sweat soaking through his shirt despite the autumn chill. He wasn’t built for this kind of tracking, but I needed someone to carry supplies, to make camp while I scouted ahead, to attend to the thousand small tasks beneath a hunter’s dignity.
And I needed someone who would never question my methods. Someone whose loyalty was absolute.
“You’re falling behind,” I observed coldly, pausing to let him catch up and not calling him by a proper pronoun. “Perhaps I overestimated your usefulness.”
Fear flashed across his features, quickly masked by determination as he hurried forward. “No, Master Gaspard. I’m fine. Just a small stumble.”
I watched him approach, this man who had been my shadow since boyhood. Alf was four years my senior but had never married, never shown interest in the village girls who giggled and preened whenever I passed. I’d known the truth about him since we were teenagers, when I caught him watching me bathe in the river, his eyes hungry in a way that should have disgusted me but instead revealed his weakness.
A weakness I’d exploited ever since.
“Good.” I clapped his shoulder, feeling him lean into the touch before catching himself. “I need thee eyes. The witch is clever, but not clever enough to cover every trace.”
His chest puffed with pride at being needed, pathetically eager to please. Like a dog seeking scraps from its master’s table. “Of course. Anything thou needs.”
Anything.He meant it too. He’d helped me drag Isabeau’s cage to the river for her trial without a word of protest. Had held the cage steady while the other villagers lowered her into the water. Had even helped secure her father for the sacrifice, though he’d gone pale when she went under.
Weak stomach, but useful hands.
A flicker of movement caught my eye. Something pale against the dark decay of the forest. I raised my hand, silencing Alf’s labored breathing as I focused on the object dancing in the noxious breeze. High in the branches of a gnarled oak, something fabric-like fluttered.
“There,” I pointed upward. “Get it.”
