“Lance, we need your sword to cut these stitches,” Gwen called. “I feel life in her, but the spark is trapped inside her. That’s why her body is like a corpse. If we can free the spark, her body will hopefully respond to healing.”
Okeanos dropped her alpha down beside us and Lancelot pulled out a shorter blade to delicately cut the stitches holding Leonie’s eyes and lips closed.
“Sorry, I lost your knife when I fell.”
He shook his head but didn’t look away from the tiny stitches. “Not to worry, Your Majesty, I have plenty more. As Sir Guillaume would tell you, it’s sort of an unspoken rule for knights to always carry a dozen or more blades.”
Cupping her face in both of my palms to hold her steady in case she woke while he was cutting, I closed my eyes and focused on the Dauphine’s power.
Mypower, I reminded myself grimly. As Lancelot cut each stitch, I felt the unraveling of the magical bonds placed upon this queen. The intention to incapacitate in every careful stitch. The thread had been soaked in the Dauphine’s blood first, then blessed—cursed—with words spoken in French as she sewed with her own hand.
I couldn’t speak the language, but with the inheritance of this gift, I fully understood the words.
With this stitch, I bind you.
With this stitch, I compel you.
With this stitch, I blind you.
With this stitch, I silence you.
With this stitch, I own you.
With this stitch, I claim you.
Your soul is mine. Your power is mine. Your magic is mine. Your house is mine. Your Blood are mine. Your gifts are mine. Your goddess is mine.
Though Jeanne’s hand trembled with that sentence. A jarring, discordant sound echoed through time and space, as if Leonie’s goddess had rejected that intention with great displeasure. Though Jeanne continued the spell regardless.
Your body is mine. Your will is mine. I am you. I am Leonie Delafosse. I wear Leonie’s body. I wear Leonie’s face. I speak in Leonie’s voice. I write in Leonie’s hand. We are one, now and forever. By Jeanne Viennois, so let it be.
Lancelot cut the last stitch, and Leonie’s body shuddered. But she still didn’t wake.
What else did the Dauphine do to her? Something to root the spell inside her. Before the stitches. Before the mutilation.
A leech. Just like she’d done to Thierry.
Goddess. I did not want to have to hang her up by her heels and cut her throat to let all of the taint spew out of her…
I sank into her thin, wasted body, letting the power guide me back to its source. She wasn’t rotted and tainted like Thierry had been. She was a queen. The leech would’ve carried Jeanne’s blood. The ones that had done the worst of the thrall damage had been given to him in the swamp. Leeches tainted with human blood. By then, my mother would’ve been dead. He had no queen’s bond to ground him. Mixed with the Dauphine’s original leech, he’d slowly turned into a near mindless thrall, subject to her will.
Except for the tiny bit of his true self he’d been able to keep inside him. The Isador blood he still carried, anchoring him to Esetta’s goal.
Me.
I found the leech burrowed deep inside Leonie’s heart. It hadn’t grown to enormous proportions like Thierry’s. Thatwasn’t its goal. This leech was the primary connection to Jeanne, creating a sort of warped sibling bond. Everything Leonie possessed then shifted to the other queen. Gwen’s words played back in my head from earlier.“What’s mine is yours.”
Literally.
Seizing the leech, I crushed it with the very power that had created it.
Leonie’s back arched up on a rattling wheeze. She sucked in a breath and screamed, ragged and rough, shredding her vocal cords. Her arms and legs flailed, her heels drumming the concrete.
I held her head on my lap, leaning over her, trying to soothe her. “You’re safe. You’re free. You’re Leonie Delafosse. Jeanne’s dead. She can’t harm you ever again.”
Tears streaked the drying mud on Leonie’s cheeks. Her eyes bulged, wild with terror, but she looked up at me. She said something. Mumbled, like her mouth was filled with a wad of cotton. I couldn’t quite understand her.Because Jeanne had cut her tongue out.
“You’re safe. We’re here to help you. You’re safe.”
