Blood

but La Voisin only smiled, small and suggestive. “You are not what I expected, Louise le Blanc.”

The world didn’t end in a scream.

It ended in a gasp. A single, startled exhalation. And then—

Nothing.

Nothing but silence.

The world didn’t end in a scream.

It ended in a gasp. A single, startled exhalation. And then—

Nothing.

Nothing but silence.

“I don’t even know if you’re real,” I whispered, laughing and crying and feeling infinitely foolish. My hands trembled. “I’m
probably talking to myself right now like a madwoman. And maybe I am mad. But—but if you are real, if you are listening, please, please . . .”

Does that make me a monster?”

He stared at me for a long moment, white-faced and trembling. At last, he dropped his hands and stepped back. The anguish in
his eyes cleaved my chest in two, and fresh tears trickled down my cheeks. “No,” he finally murmured, brushing them away one last time. A farewell. “It makes you your mother.”

As I realized the truth.

Lou had lied. Again. She had rescued her lover from the Tower.
Right under my nose. It shouldn’t have surprised me—shouldn’t have mattered—but the deception still cut deep. Deeper than it should have, deeper than any flesh wound ever could. I felt raw, exposed, cut past muscle and bone to my very soul.

“Share?” Ansel’s eyes widened in alarm, darting to Coco. He released me to run a nervous hand through his hair, to tug at the hem of his coat. “We’re sharing a tent? To—to sleep?”

“No, to fu—” I started cheerfully, but Coco interrupted.

The world didn’t end in a scream.

It ended in a gasp. A single, startled exhalation. And then—

Nothing.

Nothing but silence.

porcelain, pretty doll, forgotten and alone,

Pretty porcelain, pretty doll, forgotten and alone,

Trapped within a mirrored grave, she wears a mask of bone