CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Madame Écrue wasn’t in the kitchen yet—perhaps resting past dawn was part of her present. The girl who did the fires and lit the candles had already been and gone. I took a little knife and used the flat edge to crush the foxglove flowers until they bled, then I sopped up the juice with a twist of paper. These little drops of liquid would make Lucien bed-ridden all day. I felt sick myself at the thought of doing it, but I’d make sure there wasn’t enough poison in his porridge to have a lasting effect. I could live with that if it got me what I needed to save Ama.

The path leading from the kitchen to the dining room was familiar now. Sebastian stood in his regular place before the fire, basking in the heat. The air was crisp, the snow still blindingly white outside the window.

I gave Sebastian the briefest hint of a smile, too nervous to do anything else. “Where’s Lucien?”

“I’m sure he’ll be down in a minute.”

I almost wished he wouldn’t come down to breakfast at all, that I wouldn’t have to do what I was planning. Nothing in me wanted Lucien to suffer for even a moment, but this was the only way I could see to help Ama right now. I conjured up her face in my mind and held it there. I wished I had a miniature of her like Madame LaClaire’s locket so I could squeeze it in my palm the same way the old ladies at church folded their bony hands around little wooden crucifixes.

I fumbled my fingers over the high back of one of the dining chairs. Sebastian turned stiffly to gaze back out the snow-covered window until the kitchen girl bustled into the dining room with a tray of white bowls filled with steaming porridge. She set a little jug of cream on the table with a small bowl filled with tawny brown powder before departing.

“Cinnamon,” Sebastian said, and pinched some between his fingers. He extended his hand toward me. “Smell it.”

His loose sleeve fell back to reveal a freckled wrist and I let my eyes linger a beat too long on his skin. He cleared his throat and I flushed, my underarms prickling with sweat. I clamped my elbows close to my body so he wouldn’t see and leaned toward him to sniff the spicy powder. I hated how my own body betrayed me like this. No matter how hard I tried to mask it, my emotions were writ large by the sheen of sweat on my skin.

“It smells of heat,” I said.

Sebastian smirked and wiped his ruddy fingers against his blue trousers, leaving a smear behind. “Put some in your porridge. It tastes good.”

“Does Lucien like it?”

Sebastian nodded and I took a bit in my fingers. While he watched, I sprinkled some in two of the bowls. When he blinked, I let the little twist of paper fall in Lucien’s. If luck were with me, he wouldn’t notice it in his porridge before the foxglove took effect.

The little boy came in then, with his eyes flitting like a bird. He walked over and took my fingers loosely in his hand. I liked how he did that so easily now, but it made everything so much harder. I was supposed to be there for his comfort, not for what I was about to do.

I took a deep breath, the cinnamon I’d inhaled still tickling my nose. This won’t hurt him much. I had to hold that in my mind. The effects would wear off pretty quickly considering how small the dose was.

“I’d like to see the garden under the snow,” I said, and gestured out the window. Sebastian took two steps toward me instead of watching Lucien.

“It’s buried,” Sebastian said. “But my mother loved it in the winter.”

A jagged edge caught his voice and the last word came out as a half-whisper. He coughed and looked away from me, out into the trees so weighed down with snow it seemed their branches would break.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Lucien scrape the cinnamon off the top of his porridge and lick it from his spoon. My heart beat a little faster and my palms grew sweaty again. I clasped my hands, threaded my fingers together so Sebastian couldn’t see the wetness there. I didn’t want him to suspect anything. I held myself tightly together, my arms pressed to my sides and my legs pinched together under my skirt.

The sound of the silver spoon clattering against the porcelain bowl filled the room like a thunderclap. Sebastian and I both turned, but he stumbled for the table and I stayed where I was. For a moment. For a beat. Then I reacted.

Lucien shook in Sebastian’s arms, the whites of his eyes too bright against his smooth brown skin.

“What do I do?” Sebastian cried. “Help me.”

“Hold his head,” I said.

He tried to hold Lucien, to stop his writhing body, but he could no more calm his brother than he could a roiling wave in a stormy sea. I pulled the shaking child onto my lap and he stilled, as I knew he would. The fits lasted only a couple minutes at most. Now, he would sleep.

“Lucien?” Sebastian bent his head to his brother’s mouth. “He’s breathing.”

“Yes.” I put my hand over his heart and felt the thud of life through his shirt. “He lives, but we need to put him to bed.”

“He’s been doing so well.”

It wasn’t a question, but Sebastian’s eyes searched mine anyway. I didn’t lower my gaze as I said, “Everyone’s fine until they aren’t.”

Sebastian ran his hands through his hair, making it go wild.

I opened my knees a little and eased Lucien’s head down my skirt onto the fading red carpet. The fire had gone out and a chill stiffened the air. With Lucien settled, I pulled myself up with a hand on the edge of the table. His bowl sat there with glutinous porridge sticking to the sides. Bile rose in my throat and I pushed the bowl away. It was done. There was no taking it back now.

Sebastian sat on his knees and brushed something from his brother’s cheek. He loved him. It was as clear and as pure as the untouched snow outside—and it made him much more vulnerable. He pulled his hand back from Lucien and stared up at me.

“Can you save him?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“What do you need?”

“I don’t know . . . I . . . I need that book, Sebastian! Madame Écrue told me it has cures in it, remedies that would work.”

He swiveled his head around as if he’d find it sitting out on the sideboard. “But I don’t know where it is!”

“Think, Sebastian!”

“All right, all right . . . it might be in my mother’s parlor, but this better save him, Marie! You have to be able to do something!

“He’s in my heart now, Sebastian. Of course I’ll try to save him.”

It wasn’t a lie. I’d grown to care about Lucien—it was impossible not to. He was sweet and adventurous and refused to let his illness stomp out his light. I hated that he might have felt some pain while the poison set in, but now he slept soundly and I knew he’d be fine once the poison filtered from his body.

“No, Marie. You can’t try. You have to succeed.”

He said it without heat—just a fact—but I heard the undercurrent of the threat there. Surprise rippled through me, leaving a trail of something else in its wake. A small spark of recognition. We were the same, Sebastian and I. We’d both do anything for the ones we loved. He didn’t have to verbalize what he might do to me if I failed.

Madame Écrue and a tall man with a dirty cravat picked Lucien up by his arms and legs. He hung between them like a rag doll and I fought the urge to help cradle his head. He couldn’t feel this—any of it. He’d be fine, I knew that, and yet guilt made me ill.

Sebastian hovered close, moving in rhythm with the two servants, his hands just under Lucien’s back. He resembled a bird taking teetering steps—scared and hopeful at the same time. Finally, they reached the stairs and Sebastian fell back. He let the servants carry his brother over the stairs and his shoulders dropped almost imperceptibly.

I wasn’t only causing Lucien pain, but Sebastian too. It must all be worth it. I had to find the book and the cure for Ama’s transformations. I’d be saving my sister, but there was more to it than that. Breaking her curse was the best way to save us all. Sebastian’s estate would be safer, more prosperous maybe. Lucien wouldn’t have anything to be afraid of.

“He’ll be all right, Sebastian,” I whispered.

Sebastian turned to me and sagged, his knees buckling as a sob crashed over him.

I caught him, held him, and he let me. I held up both of us, but my own heart was so heavy.

“Let’s go get the book and we’ll make him feel better,” I said. “It’s the best thing we can do right now.”

Sebastian wiped at his eyes, took a deep breath, and looked away. I wanted to tell him I liked him more for all of it but couldn’t bring myself to say the words.

I trailed a few paces behind as he led me through a hall so narrow that I could reach out my arms and touch the frail paper lining the walls on both sides. The wood-paneled ceiling hung low over our heads and the whole space made me want to run outside and take in gulping breaths of fresh air.

The musky scent of mildew lingered in my nose, so I brought my hand up to shield my face. Sebastian turned down a branching hall opening up into a long-forgotten sitting room. White sheets hung over pictures on the walls like a child’s imagining of a ghost. A thin layer of dust dulled the color of the furniture—a settee and matching upholstered footrest; an inlaid card table on thin, tooled legs; two straight-backed armchairs by the cold fireplace.

The family would have gathered here, perhaps after supper, with Sebastian sitting at his father’s feet by the fire while his mother played Quinze and laughed at her son’s games. Lucien had never brought me here. I hadn’t even known it existed.

I could almost hear the faint sound of a woman’s tinkling laughter whispering around the room.

Sebastian swung around and pushed the candle into my face. “I hate coming here.”

“Because it reminds you of your parents?”

Sebastian tightened his jaw. “It reminds me of what I couldn’t do for them.”

Which was far worse, of course. The option of saving them was gone. He’d either had his chance and failed or he’d never had any chance and his parents had simply been stolen from him.

“Did you see how they died?” I asked.

My stomach twisted while I waited for his answer, while he pulled in a breath and wet his lips with his tongue. He probably hadn’t seen Ama in any clarity or he’d have been much more determined a year ago to have Emméline catch the beast, but still. I squirmed.

“There was nothing to see except their bodies, and I tried not to look very hard at the details of what happened to them.”

His face paled and flushed, like he was terrified just from the memory. I shouldn’t have asked.

“I’m sorry, that’s awful.”

“Yes, well.” He gave a half-hearted shrug and reached for a cloth on the card table. It was stark white and looked clean and out of place in this museum of memories. When he unfolded it, the fresh scent of rose petals drifted toward me. He pressed the cloth to his nose and took a deep breath. Then he carefully folded it again and placed it gently next to an ivory comb. Perhaps these were his tributes to the mother he’d never see again.

Sebastian made his way to the bookshelf and walked slowly along it, searching the tomes until he stopped and pulled out a thin blue volume—inconspicuous among other spines of emerald tooled leather. My heart thumped in my chest, hard and fast. I took it from his hands slowly, with the reverence it deserved.

I’d thought of it so often—imagined holding it in my hands—that it felt surreal to do so now. It was heavier than expected. Black splotches marred the gilded edges of the pages. The cover was deep blue leather with no title or words at all. It looked like a very expensive prayer book.

“Open it,” Sebastian said. He was so close to me, his breath stirred my hair.

I turned the cover and flipped forward a few pages. The yellowing paper crinkled under my fingers.

Nothing. No words, no spells. Not even the scribbles Lucien said he’d seen his mother draw in this book, just brown mold edging the pages. My stomach contracted.

Every page in the book was utterly blank.