Page 115 of The False Vow

A couple of older men, evidently having chosen to exit the banquet early, blinked at me as I threw the doors open. Anais close behind me, I shoved past them, out of the rain and back into Fortblanche’s corridor once more.

“Sisters!” I shrieked as a body wheeled in front of me. Mireille Laurent. The silkwitch’s hair had come free of her caul, wisping against the sleeve of her bridesmaid’s dress. She was breathing hard; there was a knife in her hand, a pasty white substance smeared along its bottom edge. Frosting. She must have grabbed it from the cake stand.

I pivoted back toward the billiards room just as the door to it thumped open. Delphine Barbier stood in the threshold, grasping a silver candlestick tight. Both girls looked positively murderous; I pressed closer to Anais, my pulse racing, as they began to close in.

Delphine shrieked. A white blur had jumped on the hem of her dress, scrambling up her body to tangle itself in her hair. Good Sister. I felt a surge of gratitude, as strong as a tide, as the mouse dug her claws into the silkwitch’s scalp, forcing her to drop her weapon.

Nathalie was right behind her, several more mice skittering at her feet. For a moment after she appeared in the threshold of the billiards room, we locked eyes, neither of us moving. Had she come to aid me? Or had Good Sister only dispatched Delphine so that her mistress stood a chance of killing me herself?

I stiffened. Nathalie took a step forward, her gaze still on mine…

And launched herself at Delphine.

Her mice swarmed after her. My heart in my throat, I shifted back toward Mireille—my remaining attacker—in the same second that the sharp sound of porcelain shattering issued from behind her. Abruptly, the fair-haired silkwitch’s eyes rolled toward the back of her head. She swayed where she was for a beat, then crumpled inelegantly to the ground, unconscious.

Standing in her place was Manon. She was gripping the jagged remnant of a patterned dinner plate in one hand, the rest of it scattered on the floor around her. Her eyes were saucer-wide and fearful, darting from Mireille’s body to the fragment of porcelain she was gripping to me.

Anais spoke first. “Manon!”

“Ani!” The other silkwitch’s voice seemed to focus Manon; she looked past me, her gaze fastening on Anais, to my back. “I—you’re helping her?” Her expression gentled.

Anais melted beneath it. “Of course,” she effused, stepping around me toward Manon. “As if I would’ve made any other choice.”

I scoffed. At the sound, Manon straightened, her cheeks coloring. “Cecilia!” she cried out. “Or—Miss Tamerlane. Are you all right?”

Anais was less sympathetic. Stooping, she picked up the cake knife from Mireille’s prone body and pressed it into my hand. “Move or be caught,” she commanded. Then, catching Manon’s reproving look, “If you please, that is.”

I glanced back at Nathalie. She’d pinned Delphine to the ground, mice rushing over the other witch’s body, but Delphine was still struggling. As I watched, she managed to grab a section of Nathalie’s hair and pulled.

Nathalie shrieked and pushed her away. “Go,” she spat, peering up at me. “She’s a fighter.”

As if in confirmation, Delphine’s form shivered. Abruptly, she disappeared, a raven fluttering out from between Nathalie’s arms. Several mice launched themselves at the bird in pursuit, which rapidly flew up toward the ceiling, evading them.

I didn’t wait for it to come down again. In unison, Anais, Manon, and I took off, sprinting for the library entrance.

By some miracle, we reached it without further interruption. Like the corridors we’d passed through, the area was abandoned, two halls meeting in a T-shaped intersection with the oak double doors at their center.

Anais pressed an ear against the wood, listening for voices on the other side. Pulling back, she asked, “What now?”

I didn’t know. Noé had told me to come here—why? I thought through the extrapolations I’d discovered thus far. I could reach out to another door, the way I’d done when Manon had pushed me from the landing and then again during the Maiden’s Race, but all I’d accomplish would be jumping us to another place within Fortblanche. Most of the guests had likely fled the ballroom by this point; soon, the estate would be flooded with them. We’d leap away from one set of pursuers and into the arms of others.

Not that, then. What else? The binding ritual threaded into the marriage ceremony meant my power was now tied to Noé, but from what he’d explained to me at the end of the Vainglory, the transition wasn’t an instant severing—more a gradual draining, magic moving from one body to another. The more he called on my Wit, the more it would be coaxed out of me and into him, until he possessed all of it and I, none.

That meant for now, I could still use it. To do what, though?

“I can lock us in.” I felt confident the doors would listen to that command, though by barricading ourselves behind them, we’d essentially be trapped.

Anais came to the same conclusion. “They’ll break the entrance down, and we’ll be caught,” she said impatiently. “Dammit. Just when my reputation was starting to improve.”

I ignored her. Focus, Lovett, focus. What had Noé said, exactly? Think of your extrapolations. There is always a way out.

I bit down on my cheek, my mind drifting back weeks, months, all the way to the end of the Vainglory, when Noé had first described the concept of extrapolations to me. Imagine my mother’s Wit as a root of power, he’d said. What else might a gift such as hers grow into?

Desperately, I applied the same logic to myself. Opening doors—that was the core of my Wit. And expansion of it could be commanding doors, more generally—making them open and close upon my orders, even transporting myself to them from relatively far away, as I’d learned to do—and an expansion of that…?

Forging new doors. Making new paths. My eyes snapped open. “I think I can take us someplace else.”

Anais and Manon exchanged glances. Ignoring them, I turned back to the library doors. Where to? We needed to get away from Fortblanche, that much was certain, but without testing my Wit, I wasn’t sure how far I could push it. Somewhere on the Isle d’Eylau, then. A meaningful destination, one I knew well—could picture clearly in my head. Like…