Houses loomed in the dark, like teeth in the mouth of the valley. I ran until my lungs burned and pulled Sebastian behind me. I couldn’t let go of his hand—I needed to feel the flesh and bones of it. I couldn’t be alone.
“Up the hill,” Sebastian shouted.
We tried to find purchase in the snow, but the road was so hard-packed it was like ice. We scrambled, digging our boots in and pulling each other as we went until the big house crested into view. A light flickered in one of the upstairs windows—Lucien’s window.
Ama surged toward us, faster than we could run.
“Come on!”
Sebastian pulled me toward his house where the great double doors stood sentinel before us. He turned the knob.
“It’s stuck.”
I glanced behind us. Ama’s golden coat gleamed in the moonlight, her movements smooth and strong as she ran up the hill. Emméline stopped and notched an arrow, pulled the string taut, released. It landed in the earth in front of Ama’s left paw.
“Hurry up!” I shouted.
“I’m trying.” Sebastian jiggled the knob and we both rammed our shoulders against the unforgiving wood.
“Again,” I said. “On the count of three. One, two, three.”
We threw our bodies against the door but it still didn’t yield. Then I remembered the markings carved into the frame as Sebastian banged on the doors and shouted for Madame Écrue. I pressed my hands and forehead against the doors and traced the whirls and stars carved crudely and splintering into the wood. Please let us in.
One of the double doors gave way beneath Sebastian’s hammering fists and he tumbled into the hall. I ran over the threshold and slammed the door shut behind us. Sebastian let out a heavy breath and pushed himself to his feet. He stared at me, and I thought I saw a trace of fear in his eyes.
“Somehow, your sister is the beast, isn’t she?”
I pressed my lips together. What’s left to protect? He knows what Ama is. I gave him a tiny nod.
“But she came after us!”
If only I understood as much as he thought I did. Sebastian marked himself, but Ama had jumped out when she thought I was in danger, like she knew me.
“She didn’t come after us. She was running away from Emméline just like we were.”
“She attacked me!”
“I think she thought she was protecting me.”
“And now Emméline’s out there with her.”
My heart contracted. Ama could outrun Emméline. She could.
“You gave her the task of killing the beast, didn’t you? Why would you worry about her now?”
Sebastian ran a hand over his eyes and through his hair.
“No more of this. Tell me everything.”
The request lost its edge without a musket between us. Sebastian’s face settled into indifference that didn’t quite hide the sadness underneath. I couldn’t swallow the lump in my throat when I looked into his careful, blank eyes. My sister had killed his parents, but I couldn’t tell him that, couldn’t sever the only line to another human being I had right now. So, I lied.
“I don’t know if she killed your parents, Sebastian.”
He titled his head a little and his black, curling hair fell over his shoulder. Sebastian came undone before me, wilting a little where he stood before falling to his knees and running his palms over his cheeks again and again. The mask broke and his eyes shone with wild agony. He bared his teeth and opened his mouth to let a growling scream tear through his throat. I flinched at the inescapable pain of the sound. I wanted to reach for him, but I didn’t think he’d want my touch right now.
“Listen,” I said after a moment. “I don’t know who . . . or what . . . killed your parents, but something happened to my sister here.”
He blinked away the wetness in his eyes and stared at me. “What?”
“This all happened when she worked here . . . she came home cursed. Someone did that to her.”
“Someone in this house?” he said.
“It had to be. She came here a girl and came back a beast.”
Sebastian’s hands rested on his knees and I reached for them slowly because I couldn’t stop myself anymore. I had to touch him. His palms burned as if he had a fever, but I closed my own cool hands over them. Sebastian didn’t flinch or try to pull away. We sat on the embroidered rug in silence until he slipped his hands from mine. To my surprise, disappointment prickled through me.
“Does this have to do with what people said about my mother?” he asked. “She hated it here. The whispers followed her everywhere. Witch. People were awful because they said her own maman had been enslaved on Martinique. They thought she didn’t belong here.”
It was cold and brutal in this town. Judgmental. Small.
“She belonged here if she wanted to be here,” I said. “Your papa owned this valley, didn’t he? And now you do. You can say who belongs.”
“He didn’t own it and neither do I, not really. The king is the ultimate ruler of the land, and he’s the one who made it all right for Maman’s mother to be enslaved by someone. People don’t forget that that’s a possibility, and the color of my skin reminds them even though I’m their lord. They don’t treat me the same as they treated my white father. You don’t think the color of my skin is one of the reasons they think I killed my parents, that I’d be capable of something like that?”
“You’re right, of course. I’m sorry, but I know that’s not enough,” I said.
It was clear that Sebastian felt like he was on the edges of the village too. We were outsiders—for very different reasons, and I knew I’d never truly understand how he felt. He couldn’t—and shouldn’t have to—hide his skin color. I’d once thought I could move from the outskirts of the village into the heart of it, become accepted as the sister of a respectfully married woman. I didn’t know if I wanted that life anymore, but at least it was possible. Sebastian didn’t have that same opportunity. It made me even more angry at Père Danil and all the people who crowded into church on Sundays but refused to look outside of their own experiences to understand anyone else’s.
“My father brought Maman here because he loved her, but he didn’t know what he was doing,” Sebastian whispered. “Maman told me the mountains suffocated her. She felt like the valley might as well be at the bottom of the ocean. She wanted to leave and go somewhere bigger where we wouldn’t be the only ones with brown skin . . . but she died before she could.” He sighed, finally looking at me again. “Marie, I don’t know what happened to Ama here. I don’t even remember her . . . and I know how awful that sounds. But Maman wasn’t like that. She was warm and kind.”
I knew it wasn’t going to be easy to convince him his mother might have been someone he might not recognize. She could have loved him and Lucien tenderly and still been the witch who turned my sister into a beast. People always treat those they love differently.
I stood and looked out the window, past the bubbles and imperfections in the glass. No Ama. No Emméline. I pictured the arrows gliding past the crest of fur on Ama’s back. I wanted to go back out and make sure she was safe, but I couldn’t know she wouldn’t come after me too. Not after what just happened. Capturing her and locking her in the cellar wasn’t a good plan anymore. She was injured, but her beast body would probably heal quickly.
Sebastian glanced up the stairs. “We need to check on Lucien.”
The trust between us stretched taut like a gossamer thread, and I wouldn’t test its strength by telling him Lucien just needed time for his body to expel the poison I’d given him. Sebastian wouldn’t forgive me that.
But I would ask for what I needed most.
“Sebastian, the book I asked you to help me find. It’s not a book of remedies. I think it’s a spell book.”
“What?”
He stood and stared down at me. I didn’t like looking up at him, so I stood too.
“The book! I think it’s a spell book and in it is the curse that made my sister into a monster. You and Lucien saw her write in it! The words were used to curse her, so the curse’s undoing could be in there too. It’s a place to start at least.”
“Why did Emméline call you a witch?” he asked suddenly.
I dropped back from him. “You just finished telling me how everyone made your mother miserable by calling her a witch and now you’re asking why Emméline called me one?”
“You’re saying Maman was a witch, or at least someone who could cast curses! How do I know you’re not someone like that too?”
I reached up to put my hands on Sebastian’s shoulders, squaring him to me, looking into his eyes.
“If I were a witch, Sebastian, I would have cured my sister a long time ago.”
“But you want me to believe my maman was one and that she did something horrible to your sister. How can you ask that of me?”
“She could have been a witch and still good in many ways, Sebastian. I don’t think all witches are always evil.”
“Even if she was what you say she was, she wouldn’t have cursed a young girl.”
“Well, she did.”
Sebastian glared at me. “She didn’t, because she wasn’t a witch!”
“Something happened here! Every month, my sister’s body breaks and builds itself again into a strange imitation of a lion. I just want to undo the curse with your mother’s book.”
“The book is blank!”
A creak on the stairs made me turn. Madame Écrue stood there with her stiff white cap perfectly in place.
“How is he?” Sebastian asked her.
“You should come, my lord. Master Lucien’s fever has worsened.”
So, she’d been nursing Lucien and that’s why she hadn’t answered our banging on the door—perhaps she hadn’t wanted to leave his side even when she heard us come in.
Sebastian seemed to absorb her words before whirling and grabbing my shoulders. He shook me hard. “You said he’d live!”
I wrenched away. “He will if you listen to me.”
Sebastian took a deep, shuddering breath as if trying to tame his rage. Still, he shook with it and it leapt into his eyes. He didn’t know the news about Lucien’s fever filled me with a similar fire. It shouldn’t have been happening. The foxglove poison should have worn off by now.
“If Lucien dies of this fever, it will be your fault!” Sebastian said.
Whatever heat had been left in my body fled through my fingertips.
“No. I’m trying to help him!”
Sebastian nodded slowly. “Oh yes? He’s sicker now than he was when you arrived. If he dies, you’ll have to leave and I’ll let the villagers decide if you’re a witch or not.”
I wouldn’t let my face betray me, but fear washed over me like a gust of frigid air.
“The book of spells, the one that looks blank . . . maybe it can cure Lucien too, from the consumption . . . from all of it.”
“You don’t know that!”
He was right, I didn’t. In fact, if Madame LaClaire could have cured consumption with her magic, she would have done so as soon as the doctors told her that was what Lucien had. But I wanted to get the spell book to reveal its secrets, and maybe there was something in there that could help Lucien. The book might hold all the answers—I just needed to find the key.