Anouk stood alone in the garden. Her mind felt whipped like cream, beaten to turn raw ingredients into something new—?but what, she wasn’t sure. She tugged out a rag she’d stashed in her sleeve, knelt by the blood drops on the stone path, and began to clean, but then stopped.

What was she doing?

She cleaned because that was all she knew. Mada Vittora had told her she was a maid, and Anouk would have done anything for a scrap of affection. She thought back to the day Luc had killed the rabbits. He’d been out flower hunting at the market in the Marais and must have stumbled on Mada Vittora and overheard her plans. But Anouk hadn’t known that at the time. She hadn’t thought twice to see Luc return from the market and slaughter the rabbits in the courtyard. It wasn’t rare for him to bring home live crows for pie, live quail for roasting.

He’d strung up the bodies in the kitchen. For supper, he’d told her. Rabbit stew. She’d cooked the rabbits without question. But when she’d ladled out the stew, Mada Vittora had taken one bite and slammed the bowl on the floor, shattering it. She’d dragged Luc down from his attic and shoved his face in the scalding stew and broken shards of china. No matter how he’d pleaded that it had been a mistake, she’d beaten him.

Later, Anouk had cleaned up the mess without question.

You knew, didn’t you? she whispered silently to Luc. You knew those rabbits were meant to take our places. You slaughtered them to protect the others, but you couldn’t protect yourself.

She stood sharply. On impulse, she tugged the black ribbon from her ponytail, letting her hair fall loose around her shoulders.

At last she could breathe.

At last she felt free of Mada Vittora—?and now she knew what she needed to do.

Little mouse, Mada Zola had called her, as though the truth of what she was were written on her face. Anouk touched her heavy jaw, thinking of those five pelts hidden away in the car trunk. The littlest one, gray and stiff with a ropy pink tail. She didn’t feel like a mouse. Not at all. The dark thing inside her wasn’t timid and plain, wasn’t the type to skitter around the edges of a room, fearful of every footstep.

I’m no mouse.

She stuffed the rag between the branches of a topiary gardener.

“Clean your own damn mess.”

She grabbed a handful of roses, stuffed them in her mouth, and swallowed petals down dry as she ran back to the château. She shoved open the front door and climbed up onto the edge of the heavy clay pot in the foyer, then whispered into Toblerone’s leafy ear. The bear began to stir with a rippling of green pelt and stretching of creaky wooden joints. On her command, he lumbered down from his pot. He left tiny fluttering leaves in his wake that she followed like a trail of bread crumbs all the way to the sentinel hedge.

She found the corkscrew branch that Petra had used to get in and gave it a twist.

She stepped back, breathless, as the branches began to untangle themselves into the archway. When Viggo and Hunter Black returned, they’d find the gates open. They wouldn’t know about the enchanted topiary bear waiting to drag them in his thorny teeth to the château as prisoners.

She left Toblerone to guard the entrance and returned to the château, to the west bedroom, where Beau was still in bed but awake now, groggy, rubbing his head as though it ached. It was cold, and she pulled on her Faustine jacket.

“Anouk. The time—”

She climbed onto the bed and pressed a finger to his mouth.

“For once, let’s not think about time.”

Then, impulsively, she replaced her finger with her lips.

He stirred awake quickly after that, stiff with surprise at first, but then his arms circled her waist and an exhale slipped from his throat. He kissed her back, sending magic shooting between her two ears, all the way to her ten fingers and her eight dirt-caked toes.

One of his hands found her hair, and she, in turn, found herself touching his cheekbones, his chest, his arms, every inch of him. She felt those champagne bubbles churning like they never had before, going straight to her head, making her feel giddy and thirsty and like she was a fool too, that she should have kissed him long ago, that they had wasted too much precious life already.

“Is this because life as we know it is about to end?” he asked, his forehead pressed to hers.

She couldn’t keep her grin from showing. “No. It’s because our true lives are just about to begin.”

Chapter 18

One Day and Three Hours of Enchantment Remain

By the time Anouk had tumbled out of bed, grinning like she’d sipped too much wine, combed her fingers through her hair, and straightened her rumpled jacket, it was dark outside. The lumbering shapes of the topiary gardeners dotted the fields, tending to the lavender by moonlight. She squinted toward the hedge wall, but it was too far away to make out the archway or the topiary bear guarding it. Lights burned in the potting shed’s windows. She felt her good mood falter—?Mada Zola’s potion must not have worked or she wouldn’t still be out there—?but it didn’t matter. She was past depending on witches for help.

She closed the curtain and turned back to Beau, who was reclining on the bed, wearing a goofy smile. The cat clock ticked away on the bedside table but he ignored it, continuing to smile, though his eyelids flinched slightly at every tick. As far as the kissing had gone, they hadn’t done much beyond short sweet ones on the lips or hands or, once, daringly, a neck; neither of them knew exactly what came after that. Still, Anouk felt as though they had crossed some threshold there was no turning back from. To love, and be loved, and be forever human.

When she at last turned to the clock, she felt a squeeze of panic.

Tags: Megan Shepherd Grim Lovelies Fantasy
Source: readsnovelonline.net