“Go,” she said. “Find Beau. And Tenpenny and December.”
Luc kissed the twin hearts painted on her cheeks and squeezed her tight. “Stay safe, dust bunny.”
“You too, Luc.”
She climbed one stair, then another, trying to move quietly but deafened by her own raspy breath. She ran her shirtsleeve over her face and it came away with sweat and smeared red lipstick from her cheeks. It made her think of Tenpenny and how the night before, she’d told him that it was their choices that made them human, not their bodies, and he had said that tails had something to do with it too. She almost let out a delirious laugh. Cricket, a cat. Hunter Black, a wolf. No choices they could make now would keep them human.
But she still had choices.
“Des forma humana, fiska et skalla animeux,” she whispered to herself, rehearsing the words of the contra-beastie spell. She wouldn’t let Rennar catch her unprepared this time.
The door to the chamber at the top of the bell tower was made of plain wood, not ornate wrought iron over mahogany like the ones downstairs. There wasn’t even a lock, just a simple latch. Press it, and the door would open.
She knew what waited on the other side.
Mada Zola and Prince Rennar, of course, but something else.
She could feel it—?that dark thing that she feared looking at too closely, the animal inside her that was always hungry, always awake. For as long as she’d been alive, she’d kept that other self at a distance. But once she stepped across this threshold, she’d have no choice but to embrace it.
She pressed the latch and opened the bell-tower door.
Chapter 37
Eight Hours of (New) Enchantment Remain
They were waiting for her.
They stood in the round turret in front of open windows that looked down over the château’s gardens where the battle was still being fought. The bell loomed from a ceiling joist, nearly as tall as she was and ten times her weight. Wire cages for Mada Zola’s crows, empty now, hung on hooks from the ceiling. The cries of the battle below sounded distant, as though it were happening in some other world. This must be how the Royals always felt in their elevated homes, far removed from the suffering of their people.
Mada Zola had always been beautiful, and she and Rennar together looked like gods out of one of Luc’s stories. Those tapeta eyes of Rennar’s were swallowing Anouk up once more, regarding her the same way that Luc’s had when he’d been freed from the oubliette, as though she had changed in the short time they’d been apart and he was trying to put his finger on exactly what was different about her. She wasn’t sure if Rennar liked what he saw—?messy hearts painted on her cheeks, the Faustine jacket, wearing determination on her face like the Goblins wore makeup—?but he didn’t take his eyes off her.
“Where are your friends, little beastie?” Mada Zola asked. “You’re all alone.”
“I don’t need them. Not for this.”
The witch smirked. “You were clever to extend your enchantment for an extra day, but you can’t buy yourself any more time. Not unless you surrender to us, and then perhaps we can discuss how much each hour of humanity is worth to you.”
“I don’t want hours,” Anouk said. “I don’t want days. I want a lifetime, and I’m going to have it.”
Rennar folded his arms, looking perplexed. “I cannot understand why someone so bold would refuse to serve her creator. We are the same, you and I.”
“You didn’t create me,” she spat. “Mada Vittora did. And she learned too late what happens when you mistreat a beastie.” She took the spell out of her pocket and held it up.
Mada Zola laughed at the scrap of paper—?she didn’t seem to know what it was, and paper didn’t seem like much of a threat.
But Rennar didn’t laugh.
“I told you,” he said hoarsely. “That spell is useless without one of us to cast it for you. You haven’t the Selentium Vox fluency necessary for such a complex spell.”
“Not for the beastie spell, that’s true,” Anouk admitted, “but I’m talking about the spell on the back. The one that is simple enough even for me.”
A flicker of confusion crossed Mada Zola’s face. She looked for guidance from Rennar, but he ignored her, every ounce of his attention focused on Anouk and the spell.
“What is she talking about?” Mada Zola whispered.
Anouk brandished the spell like a weapon. “One of you is going to cast the beastie spell and keep us human—?that is, if you want to stay human too. This is a contra-spell. It will turn anyone, even a witch or a Royal, into an animal. I can’t say which animal. The spell chooses, not the caster, just as we had no choice what type of humans we’d become.” She paced in a slow circle around the bell tower. “If you don’t recast the beastie spell on the five of us permanently, I will cast this spell on the two of you.”
“You haven’t the skill,” the witch said simply.