Page 126 of The False Vow

I hummed in approval. “That’s better,” I said. “Nice to see you, Clio.”

Her responding mutter was muffled by my palm. Removing it, I wiped the flecks of her spit on her pillow and gestured for her to speak again.

She scowled. “I said, that bullet was meant for you, not him.”

“And yet it is he, not I, who bears the scars.” My smile was chilly enough that Clio quaked beneath it. Adjusting my grip on the knife, I leaned closer. “We’ll get to the bullet,” I murmured. “First, I would like to know what you’ve done with the gloves you stole from me.”

The other silkwitch stared at me. “I told you, I didn’t take any Sisters-damned gloves.”

“And I told you, you were the only girl at our bridal dinner whose magic could have shown you where to find them,” I rebutted. “Anyone else would have gone to my room—the place where I said the accessories were hidden—if they wanted to retrieve them, but you headed straight for the turret. I’m assuming you didn’t realize my Wit would inform me when you entered, yes?” I winked at her. “Lucky Eliot was around to cover for you. Did he see you with the gloves once the pair of you had left Fortblanche? Is that why he told me before my wedding that you frightened him—because he’d realized you were just as much of a liar as me?”

It was a wild guess, but instinct told me it was the right one to make. Clio held my gaze. Even in the dimness of her bedroom, I could see her mind working—weighing the strength of my argument, feeling it for holes. Her brain was like a great puzzle box; there were mazes within it, and then traps tucked away beneath those, all of them coming together in an elaborate construct of dark machinery hidden inside her skull.

I shivered against my will. She was a formidable opponent.

Eventually, Clio tilted her head. Her throat bobbed against the tip of my blade; calmly, she said, “Conjecture.”

I smirked. “Is it?” I asked from above her. “Let’s take the story further back. I have seen you several times since the Vainglory, and on each occasion, you’ve matched the color of your gloves to that of your dress. It seems to be a preference of yours—yet on the night of Sybil Dabos’s death, you were wearing white gloves when you came to alert me to her passing. White, though your dress was green.”

Finally, a reaction. Clio’s pert nose twitched, her abdomen clenching where I gripped it between my thighs. Progress. My heart lurched.

“They did not match your gown because they were not yours,” I asserted. “You discarded your pair after you exited the tunnels, trading them for Anais Tremblay’s, which she’d dropped earlier in the evening. Your gloves were ripped. You couldn’t wear them, else someone might have asked questions as to your whereabouts, so you hid them in the first place you could find—a vase in a corridor near the ballroom.

“You meant to go back and fetch them after the gathering was over, but Manon Blanc found them first,” I continued after a beat. Clio had altogether stopped pretending to feign disinterest by this point; her eyes were honed blades, digging into mine. “That the gloves were not in your possession would have seemed an intolerable risk to you. What if Manon realized that they were yours and attempted to find out why you’d hidden them? With your Wit, it would have been simple for you to keep tabs on their location, waiting for an opportunity to arise where you could retrieve them again. When the gloves left Manon’s townhome and came to my bedroom, you must have sensed that chance was nigh.”

I arched a brow at her, careful all the while to keep the edge of my knife pressed against her neck. Clio’s body was coiled as tight as a wire; the second I let up, I had no doubt she would strike.

“Just over three weeks ago, Bastian Alaire asked me to find Sybil’s killer,” I told her levelly. “I don’t believe that person was you, but I do require an explanation. What were you doing in the tunnels that night?”

Clio snorted. “I didn’t kill Sybil.”

I was grateful that the dimness masked the surprise on my face. I hadn’t expected her to concede so easily. “A fine start,” I said warily. Then with a dip of the blade: “Go on.”

She winced. I could see her still considering the bellpull, her gaze darting toward it every so often when she thought I was not looking, though she had yet to reach for it again. Her reticence concerned me as much as it soothed me. If she was not calling for help, it was likely because she’d concocted an alternative scheme.

I needed to play this very carefully.

After a minute, Clio spoke. “It was because of the first trial.”

For a second, her meaning slipped past me. When I finally grasped it, I frowned. “The first trial of the Vainglory?” I asked, uncomprehending. “The one involving secrets?”

Clio started to nod, only to stop short as my knife wedged against her. “A secret Noé did not know,” she quoted dryly. “Ridiculous—I thought so even then.” She sighed. “That night, I asked my Wit to show me such a secret. It gave me an image: a pair of coins cupped in a hand.”

My brow furrowed. “It can do that?”

Clio chuckled. “There is a reason Bastian wanted me to win,” she said slyly. “Initially, I didn’t understand the meaning of the message—until, days later, I happened upon Eliot examining a coin identical to the one I’d glimpsed in my vision. He slipped it into his pocket when he saw me watching him, but still, it was enough to prompt a realization: If he had one, someone else must have the other.” She paused briefly, then went on. “I wanted to find out who it was,” Clio continued. “On the night of the Midway Ball—the night Sybil died—I asked my Wit to lead me to the person who had Eliot’s second coin.”

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I could see where this was going now. “But there were two of us,” I breathed.

Clio lifted a brow in confirmation. “Exactly,” she agreed. “The trail my Wit gave me was snarled, hard to follow. Eventually, though, I tracked it through a hidden entrance in Fortblanche’s walls, down into a tunnel.” She swallowed, my blade bobbing where it rested against her skin. “I found Sybil’s corpse at the end of it. She was splayed out on a stone bridge over some kind of underground lake—I could make out her hair from the cavern entrance, like a tongue of flame over the water. I searched her body for a coin like the one my Wit had shown me, but I found nothing. Nothing except a key.”

Her gaze snapped my way. “Bastian’s key,” I said, holding her stare. So that’s where it is. Not with the veiled lady, as I assumed, but with Clio. “But why didn’t you give it back to him when Dorian tasked you with finding it afterward? He would have crowned you his winner on the spot.”

“Because,” Clio replied bitterly, “I dropped it. There was a noise in the tunnel I’d come through—I thought I saw something, a kind of…veiled woman…lurking just past the cavern entrance. I startled. The key slipped from my hand and fell into the waters of the underground lake.” Again she drifted off; beneath her covers, I felt her fingers flex. “I pretended like my Wit couldn’t trace its location when Dorian asked. I thought if I drew out the hunt long enough, Bastian might be forced to grant me victory, just so I’d be able to keep working for him following the Vainglory’s conclusion.” She rolled her eyes. “Clearly, that hope was unfounded.”

I didn’t grace her comment with a response. Eventually, she dropped her glare, her attention returning to the place where my fingers grasped the hilt of the knife.

“The key is gone,” Clio finished. “Wit or no Wit, no one could pull it from the waters of that lake.”