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.
Rennar, however, remained quiet.
“I haven’t trained at one of the witch academies, no,” Anouk said. “I wasn’t born into magic, like the Royals. All I’ve learned are spells overheard from Mada Vittora and a few Goblin tricks. But this spell is simple. It requires nothing but a tremendous amount of life-essence.”
Now Mada Zola really wasn’t smiling. “You would have to take a human life to acquire that much blood. You wouldn’t do that. You’re too tenderhearted.”
Anouk thought of Viggo and said softly, “Not all life-magic has to be taken by force.”
A commotion came from the stairs. Anouk whipped around. Someone was coming. For a second her confidence faltered. Countess Quine appeared with Luc in tow, her hair mussed as though they’d been in a struggle. Luc’s hands were bound with twine. A bruise marred his dark cheek.
Anouk sucked in a breath. “Luc, are you all right?”
But he wasn’t. Anyone could see.
Mada Zola smirked again, her confidence restored. “Good, he can be a witness to this. Quine, our little dust mop says she’s going to turn us into animals if we don’t obey her. Go ahead, dust mop. Show us how you’d do that.”
Anouk loathed the smirk on the witch’s face. It itched at her with blade-sharp claws, just like the sounds of the battle outside.
Rennar grabbed Luc and jerked his head at Quine. “Go. Handle the driver. He’s the only one left.”
Beau.
Anouk turned and gripped the window ledge, searching the battle. She caught sight of Tenpenny’s top hat—he was crouched behind a garden wall near the Goblins’ potting-shed stronghold. A dozen or so more Goblins huddled with him, trying to break the spell that locked the shed door. And then a sandy-haired boy in a white chauffeur shirt and black trousers sprinted toward the Goblins, jumped over a fallen wooden soldier, and joined them behind the wall.
A streak of magic tore across the garden, turning the kilted Goblin that Cricket had danced with to stone. Anouk whipped her head around. It was Quine—she was below now, in the shelter of the porte-cochère, eating powder and casting spells.
“Beau, watch out!” Anouk yelled.
He couldn’t hear her. He was so far away. He was slamming his umbrella against the lock, unaware that his back was exposed and that Countess Quine was swallowing more powder . . .
“Beau!” Her cry was hoarse. But just as Countess Quine’s next bolt hurtled across the garden, Tenpenny heard Anouk’s call and spun around to see what was happening. In a few long strides, he got to the shed and shoved Beau out of the way. Beau landed against the stone wall, his shoulder connecting hard enough to make Anouk bristle.
The bolt of magic clipped Tenpenny in the hip. Anouk cried out. It spread from his hip with alarming speed, immobilizing his legs and his chest, swallowing his neck and head, finally reaching the hand that was still outstretched to protect Beau. In only seconds, he was transformed from the leader of the exiled Goblins into a mass of colorless granite.
Anouk gasped.
One of the wooden soldiers wrapped its rootlike fingers around Tenpenny’s stone body and, with one swift motion, lifted the statue off the ground and slammed it against the wall.
It shattered into dust and pieces.
Anouk had to steady herself on the windowsill. Her lungs felt robbed of air, like she’d forgotten how to breathe. A statue could be whispered back to life, but there was no returning from rubble and dust. Tenpenny was gone. She clutched the ledge hard enough to leave imprints.
“No!”
Below, Countess Quine aimed at Beau again. He was leaning against the stone wall, looking dazed from the fall. He could never get up and run in time.
She’s going to turn him to stone too.
In that moment, reason disappeared. She’d never let Beau become a pile of rubble.
She raised her hands toward the window. Luc called out a warning before Rennar could silence him, but she barely heard him. Hot anger was slick between her ears. It deafened her. Controlled her. She channeled every ounce of Viggo’s blood, every bit of her love for Beau, no longer needing Rennar’s belief in her because she believed in herself.
“Bomba ak ignis bleu,” she whispered grimly.
It was quiet. That was the thing about magic. It was best done with whispers, not shouts. And her one whisper, bolstered with the strength of six pints of life-blood, sent a shock wave over the gardens. The lavender in the fields rippled as though a hurricane had passed through; buds, stripped from the plants, rose in the air like a dusky purple cloud. The Goblins fell to their knees from the tremor.
Each of the wooden soldiers, one by one, burst into blue flames. The smell of wood smoke mixed with the lavender as hot flames turned their wooden bones to ash. A hideous scream pierced the air as Countess Quine sizzled along with them.
Just like that, the battle outside was over.
Won.
Rennar and Mada Zola were caught in a stunned silence. Luc too. Zola ran to a window and leaned out over her charred fields and her ashen soldiers, her garden overrun by the surviving Goblins. Her fingers curled into claws on the windowsill as she let out a furious cry.
Rennar, though, didn’t seem angered by Countess Quine’s death. Instead, he regarded Anouk with something like amazement, and that felt somehow far more dangerous. Goose bumps sprang up from her head to her eight toes.
It crashed down on her then: a mistake.
That impulsive burst of anger had saved Beau and won the battle, but it had cost her every drop of Viggo’s life-essence.
It felt as though the bones in her legs momentarily vanished, and she had to catch herself on a low wooden beam. A wave of lightheadedness made her see stars. She licked her lips, forcing herself to stand straight. She couldn’t let them see how weak it had made her. They had to believe she was still strong enough to carry through with the contra-beastie spell, even though in her hands and her lips, she felt an awful numbness. Her magic was all but gone. And there were no flowers in the bell tower, no butterflies, not even a spider to swallow down.
Zola raked her nails through her hair as she spun away from the window. “Vittora didn’t kill your kind soon enough! I won’t make that mistake.”
Anouk took a shaky step backward. Glanced at the door. Could she make it in time? What about Luc? She couldn’t leave him, wrists bound, at the prince’s mercy.
Zola raised her hands toward Anouk, but then paused. She saw how Anouk was throwing worried looks at Luc and smiled grimly. She turned toward Luc instead.
Fresh panic thrummed in Anouk’s body. Not Luc! She bolted around the edge of the bell tower to stop the witch, but she was too weak, too slow. Zola whispered low, and a dark cloud began to surround Luc, crackling and sparking just as it had for Cricket.
Prince Rennar grabbed Anouk’s arm and pulled her away from the magic cloud. “Anouk, don’t.” His voice was quiet in her ear. “Get too close and you’ll be caught in the same spell.”
But his words felt distant. What did it matter if she sprouted fur or feathers when so many of her friends had already turned?
“Luc!” she cried.
But it was too late. The change had already started. The cloud of sparking light obscured him, but she could make out his limbs shrinking, the twine binding his wrists dropping to the floor. Fine gray fur clouded like smoke around him—the smallest pelt from the oubliette, transported here by magic—and began to weave itself onto his bare arms. She fought against Prince Rennar’s grasp, trying to muster enough magic to save Luc, but she was spent. The whispers on her lips had no life behind them.
As soon as the spell was done, Zola cried out, clutching her side. A slash of pain twisted her face. Something had soured in her, just as it had when Lady Metham pushed herself to do the same spell. Maybe her lungs. Maybe her bowels. But not her heart—her heart had turned to stone long ago.
The dark cloud surrounding Luc began to dissipate. Where her friend had been, all six feet of him, there was simply . . . nothing. Confused, she dropped her eyes to the bell-tower floor, and she stifled a cry.
A mouse was left in his place.
First Cricket.
Then Hunter Black.
Now Luc.
And outside, Tenpenny was gone, dozens of Goblins were dead, and Beau—
Anouk glanced out the window, almost afraid to see what might have happened to Beau. Smoke was rising from the smote topiaries. But there. Beau was on his hands and knees but moving. Alive. He crawled slowly toward the château, one arm streaked with blood.
Despite the pain twisting her features, Zola lurched forward to catch the mouse and stuff it into one of the wire crow cages. “What, no more magic?” She coughed. “Can’t you save your friend with all that life-blood you’ve been bragging about?”
Anouk’s gaze fell to the caged mouse. In hours, would she herself be the same? A dog, she thought dimly, or an owl. There would be no more Anouk. It didn’t matter that she’d proven herself to be more than a maid. And her promise to help the Goblins retake London? Worthless. She sank to the floor, her legs like wobbly jam. She felt as weak as Viggo had looked when he was almost drained of blood.
Mada Zola unhooked another of the wire crow cages. “Do you want to do the honors, Rennar, or shall I?” she asked.
Rennar’s eyes were flashing again. They held no mercy. A girl in tatters on his floor stirred no pity in him, and yet she wasn’t just some helpless girl. He still wore that odd look of curiosity he’d had when she’d cast the spell to stop the battle. Beau’s words came back to her: He’s fascinated by you. You have something he lost long ago—youth. Wonder.
“Yes, I’ll handle this,” he said simply.
He raised a hand, a gesture as simple as waving away a fly, and cast a spell with a flick of his first two fingers.
Only it wasn’t directed at Anouk.
The time she had cast the sleeping spell on Beau, she’d been struck by how instantly it took effect. There had been no yawning, no heavy eyelids, no graceful slump into a chair. No sooner had the whisper left her lips than Beau’s head had connected to the floor with an audible crack.
The Mada fell the same way. One moment she was standing, and the next she was lying on her back on the turret floor. No scream. No moan. Just small wisps of dust rising in the air and the vibration from her collapse still traveling through Anouk’s ankles. The thunk had been heavy enough to cause the crows perched outside to take wing.
The witch’s eyes were open. Empty. Her chest did not rise and fall.
Not a sleeping spell this time.
It was the second time in three days Anouk had seen a dead witch. She’d thought of them as invincible. Next to witches, she had always felt like a fluttery little gnat beside ancient willows—an inconsequential, ephemeral thing. And yet she had outlived both Mada Vittora and Mada Zola. She had mourned the death of the first; the death of the second brought her only a feeling of increasing dread, a tightening hollowness where her pulse should have been, because the crown prince of the Shadow Royals did not take a witch’s life and spare hers without a reason.
“Now that it’s just the two of us,” Prince Rennar said, rolling up his shirtsleeves over sinewy forearms, “I really think you should reconsider my offer.”