hands shook against my thighs, the bright burn of Florice’s life all I could focus on. The tissues of his intestines gave way beneath the magic that had finally become more than his body could handle. His ribs were webbed with cracks. His very blood was a poison.
He could still be saved maybe. It would take work. It would take action—now.
“Now,” Pièrre asked, “I will ask once more—did anyone see Florice’s accomplice?”
Pièrre was letting Florice die. His hack! The assistant he had worked with for years, the assistant who had worn down his body channeling magic so Pièrre could heal.
It might have been magic wearing Florice down enough to end his life, but it was Pièrre who had killed him by not helping.
“This is a trying time that requires loyalty and solidarity,” he said, “and as we have only recently welcomed you into our school, it would be beneficial to demonstrate your loyalty.”
No one spoke.
Pièrre nodded, clasping his hands together behind his back. “Then I am hopeful that none of you are involved in this nonsense and that we may care for Demeine together. All infections must be burned out, of course.” He glanced at Florice. “And if any of you need a reminder of what I mean by that, let Florice be your demonstration. Anyone found with such propaganda from the coward Laurel or aiding him will be dealt with swiftly.”
He left.
Then we went on with our day as if nothing had gone wrong, none of us able to save Florice, and the eyes of the people around, from the varlets to the guards to the physicians to the other hacks, too threatening to let us near him. We all, I hoped, disagreed with Pièrre.
But disagreeing wasn’t enough. Thoughts weren’t enough. Words weren’t enough. Inaction—Pièrre’s calculated inaction—was a killer. What sort of comtesse was I if I didn’t act? What sort of person?
That night I told Madeline I was going to take a bath, but instead, I snuck back to the courtyard.
Pièrre was going to let Florice die the slow, painful death of sepsis, and there was no part of me that could swallow that truth.
But when I reached the courtyard, a dark figure was already bowed over Florice, magic flowing from him to Florice’s injuries. Stareaters fluttered about them, white and threatening, and their light flickered across the grass in quick cuts. No one else was around as far as I could see. The fool tending Florice pushed more magic into him.
That would only wear Florice down faster. All we could do for him was take away the pain or kill him quickly.
“Stop.” I sprinted to them and paused. “Rainier?”
He spun, breath leaving in a terrified, stilted sigh. “Lord, you know how to not sneak up on someone?”
“What are you doing?” I took his hands and used my own magic to stop Rainier. It was night and it was harder, but there was enough left in me to do it. “It’ll kill him faster.”
Rainier, white skin ghostly in the moonlight, nodded. “I know. He knows too.”
“Hacks never do have survival instincts,” Florice said. Up close, he was younger than I had thought, and that hurt more. His coat and vest were undone, and his shirt had been pulled up, revealing the hole that had once been his stomach. Two brave Stareaters crawled along the yawning wound, their wings a sickening shade of pink. “You all shouldn’t have come.”
He smelled of damp earth and singed hair, magic leeching the life from his body even now. A mushroom stalk grew from the jagged edge of a rib, the same way a spine grew—slowly folding in on itself over and over until more cells bloomed. The cap was the pink-streaked gray of brain matter.
Power corrupted, taking what we were and making us into someone else. Something new, terrible, and incompatible with mortal life.
“But we did,” I said, and before I could speak, I felt the tug of magic behind me. I spun and raised my hands.
Madeline appeared from the shadows. “What are you two doing?”
“Apparently,” I said and dropped my hands, the magic I had gathered dwindling, “we all had the same idea.”
She sighed and her shoulders slumped. I nodded her over to my side.
“One of us want to keep watch while the rest of us work?” I asked.
“I can.” Rainier pulled his blue coat back on. “Someone sees you, they investigate. I can at least distract them.”
“You new hacks?” Florice asked, coughing.
Madeline nodded. “I can stop you from feeling pain,