“But I don’t know where he is,” she admitted. “I thought he’d be here. Or at Mada Zola’s estate. He’s been missing for over a week.”
Rennar considered this, and for a brief moment Anouk forgot he was her enemy; it felt as though they were simply two people caught in a mystery. Her dress felt itchy. The heavy curtain fabric, the stiff wires. Or was it something else? The feeling of fur or feathers or scales beneath her skin?
“I suppose at midnight,” she said bitterly, “it won’t matter anyway.”
“That would be true,” he said evenly, “if I wanted the five of you gone.”
“Don’t you?”
He shook his head slowly, coming toward her with those eyes that held that tapeta sheen. They caught the firelight like there was something beneath the iris, a stone beneath a stream. She took a step backward but bumped up against his desk. Pieces of parchment fluttered to the floor.
She held the broom across her body. It was all that separated them—?a scrap of wood and straw.
“I went to the party at Mada Vittora’s home three nights ago to see if the rumors were true that she kept beasties as servants. Imagine my surprise to find that they were. That fool Vittora had no sense of the powerful magic she was toying with; to think she was using the most dangerous order of the Haute to clean her cobwebs! But perhaps I speak too harshly of the dead. Few magic handlers know the full dark history of the beasties. And perhaps I share a portion of the blame. I should have seen months ago, through the portaits, that you were more than a girl with a ribbon in her hair and a rag in her hand. But our empire is vast and our numbers are small. We cannot spy on everyone.” He turned to a gilded frame on the wall that held only a blank white space. Was this how he spied on his kingdom? “When I returned to Castle Ides after the dinner party, I sent orders to the lesser lords that the five of you needed to be dealt with immediately. They were to come to the house the following day to take all five of you from Mada Vittora, by force if necessary. I had no way of knowing, of course, that she would be murdered and the four of you would flee.”
Visions flashed in her mind again of blood blooming on her mistress’s blouse.
“Understand me,” Rennar continued. “Beasties have not historically been agreeable creatures. A fact that brings me much regret. They were fundamentally unstable—?many innocent people died. As their creator, I was the one who had to destroy them and then shelve the beastie spell indefinitely. And so, despite my wishes, I thought I had no choice but to destroy you as well. Until my spies told me of a different story.”
The fire crackled softly.
He touched her hair. Her lace veil was long since gone, her hair once more in tangled knots. His long fingers threaded delicately through her hair, and she felt the brush of his cheek against the side of her face as he leaned close. He breathed in, smelling her hair, and her heart thumped in warning. She squeezed the broom tighter. When he straightened, he held something that had been tangled in her locks.
A thyme sprig.
It smelled woody and of Luc—?of Mada Zola’s estate.
“They told me of this. Of magic.” He motioned to the thyme. His voice was as quiet as dawn, and it felt like magic too. “You have Petra to thank for your lives. She told me—?taking the great risk of going behind her mistress’s back—?what my crows could not see and what Mada Zola didn’t want me to know: That you could do magic. Not unharnessed, destructive conjuring like the original beasties. Higher magic. True enchantment. And you, Anouk, showed me that just now in the salon. You took Lord Metham’s life with the blue-fire spell, and yet you weren’t bound by the vitae echo. If a witch had done that, her eyes would have turned to oak.”
The thyme sprig spun in his fingers, the smell making her think of late summer.
“You
and your friends aren’t like the original beasties. Whatever alteration Mada Vittora mistakenly made to the spell, it was a lucky twist of fate. And so I intended to capture you, but not to kill you. To uphold the spell to keep you human.”
He was telling her that midnight didn’t have to mean the end for them, and yet she didn’t dare believe it. “If you trusted us, you wouldn’t need cages.”
“Ah, but you see, there are those among us who still wish to see you destroyed. Who don’t yet believe you are more stable than the originals. Who claim Mada Vittora must have died at a beastie’s violent hand. Hence the cages. As protection until we are certain you won’t slaughter the lot of us.”
He rubbed the thyme between his fingers, and it smelled alive, awake, reminding her that this wasn’t just a dream. “So tell me, little beastie, what am I to do with you?”
“Well, I haven’t killed you yet, so you could let me go.”
“You killed Lord Metham.”
“Not for the joy of it.”
He smiled. “The original beasties weren’t joyfully savage at first either. They grew unhinged as they aged. You have spent barely one year as a human, isn’t that right? You are nothing but virtue, devotion. What of the others, the older ones? Already they are disobedient. Thieving. Traitorous. Someone killed Mada Vittora after all.”
“It wasn’t any of us,” she argued. “And you can’t blame us for disobeying a mistress who treated us like slaves. And I’m not as innocent as you think.”
His eyes shimmered. “I fear that I believe you.”
He took a few steps backward. She felt a rush of space—?she could breathe again. With a touch of powder to his lips, he whispered a spell and opened the door. Whatever had been behind it moments ago was gone. Now it led to the meeting room with its five cages.
Beau grabbed the bars. “Anouk?”
“Beau!”