My age no longer matters.
An ancient woman, dark-skinned and stooped and wrinkled, leans over me. I struggle to blink, to sit up, but she pushes me back down against the mat with firm hands.
“You’ve come too far, child. You must rest now.”
The images come in a flash: the curtains of the parlor, engulfed in flames. The men, dead at my feet, the mud tinged red. My power, coursing through my veins, electric blue against the black night sky.
And the blood. Mon Dieu, the blood.
The woman mutters under her breath in the slave tongue and shakes a bundle of bones tied together with a blue ribbon over my chest.
“You’re a witch,” I say. My voice feels strange in my mouth when I speak, gravelly and rough. My skin too is wrong—my face feels tight, like someone has exchanged it for another’s.
“Some even call me a queen,” she says. Her eyes, bright blue, glimmer like sapphires. “You may call me Madame.”
I bite back the words on my tongue, that I am the daughter of a count, the wife of a prominent landowner, a peer of the realm, and I will call no lowly slave woman Madame. Instead, I struggle to sit. “My children,” I say.
“You do not remember?”
I close my eyes.
I remember.
I do.
I remember tucking them into bed, pressing kisses against their perfect, smooth brows.
I remember their screams, high and piercing, the kind of screams that ripped my heart in half, over the smoke and chaos that covered the house.
I remember falling to the ground beside their still forms, their eyes already staring deep into forever, while I sucked in air through the gaping wound in my chest.
I remember closing my eyes and surrendering myself to death’s dark embrace.
My hands fly to my chest, and I tear at the thin linen shift until the fabric gives way and my breasts lie bare, but the skin is smooth, untouched, unscarred.
Perfect.
“What did you do?”
The woman raises her eyebrows. “Death is not through with you yet, cherie. He chewed you up good and spat you out, right back here with me, but he did not want you.” When she smiles, her teeth are black and rotting, and I close my eyes and turn my head towards the wall. My home is destroyed. My children, dead.
And yet, I live.
Over the next few weeks, the old woman nurses me back to health. She prays over me, chanting and sprinkling me with bits of ash and sand and herbs, and forces foul-tasting potions down my throat. Despite myself, I grow stronger, and in the third week, when I can finally stand without my knees knocking together like a newborn colt’s, she takes me with her down a long, deserted stretch of beach.
“The power is strong within you,” she says. “And so is the darkness. The anger. And that is good, yeah? The anger and the darkness is what he bring you to me for.”
“I don’t understand,” I protest. “Who is he?”
She clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth and grins, exposing her rotted teeth. “That don’t matter right now. What matters is that darkness. Someone has wronged you, yeah? Someone has taken what is yours. Stolen from you.”
His face swims before my eyes, unbidden. His golden hair curls around his shoulders, his brown eyes crinkle at the corners, and his mouth crashes down on mine.
And then another face, this one small and dark-haired, clutching at my breast.
The pain comes swiftly, so sharp that I stumble and sink to my hands and knees in the sand.
Something stolen.
My son.
“How do I even know that he lives?” I choke out. “My parents and sisters are dead. How do I know that he did not perish with them?” Even as the words spill from my lips, I know that I am wrong. Somewhere, my son, my Henri, is alive. A pulsing fills my chest, tugging me in a direction toward the sea.
Toward him.
“You know, cherie,” Madame says. Her eyes blaze bright blue against her dark skin, and she taps one thin finger against my chest, over the spot where the rebel’s knife had pierced it. “And I will teach you how to take back what is yours.”
And she does.
The first time is the hardest. The girl is young, maybe eleven or twelve. She stares up at me with tears in her eyes, even after Madame has given her the potion to paralyze her limbs. I hesitate, unsure that I can continue, but Madame nudges my hand, causing the knife to draw a brilliant bead of scarlet blood. I close my eyes as I draw the sharp blade across her throat. I hum loudly, trying to drown out the wet gurgles of her dying breaths. I lean close and press my mouth to hers, taste the blood on her lips.
A soft blue glow surrounds me as the girl’s soul fills me. Fire shoots down my limbs and wraps around my heart. I gasp and wrench away from her. The power that courses through me is unlike anything I have ever felt before. It’s too much to control—I turn and open my hands toward the fireplace. Bright blue flames erupt from my palms and race up the chimney.
Madame’s hand falls on my shoulder.
My smile matches hers.
By the time I board the ship heading for Philadelphia, I am no longer a simple woman with natural talents. I am a weapon, forged by fire, shaped by darkness, and destined for one purpose:
Revenge.