“It was very much not hilarious, and that’s not what happened.” A slight flush reddened Laurence’s cheeks. “Regardless, I got off track—His Majesty is hosting a small party next week once more of the chevaliers have arrived.”
Madeline sighed beside me.
“Agreed.” Laurence looked at Charles. “It’s to celebrate our retaking of Segance and begin discussing our plans on taking the rest of Kalthorne. There will be a representative from nearly every major family in attendance.”
My mother—where would she stand on this?
“There will be a simultaneous event in Serre to accommodate those families with members not serving currently or working as diviners with Mademoiselle Charron.” Laurence’s eyes flicked to me. “Emilie, you aren’t invited. My apologies, but I imagine you will enjoy having a night off. You will have to cover all of Charles’s and Sébastien’s work. Understood?”
Oh, well, my gig was up. My mother would definitely be in Serre and so, almost certainly, would Annette.
I nodded.
“Excellent,” Laurence said.
When he had left, I turned to the others and said, “In one week, we’re going to use that party as a distraction. My friend in Bosquet is helping Laurel spread the truth to show people what happened, and it’s going to be our job to get the posters out.”
Before we died or I was caught, one way or another, the king was going down, and Demeine was not going to war.
Eighteen
Annette
Isabelle painted. She drew Gabriel’s face in her journal, charcoal lines smeared and fading. She inked him onto the glass tablets we were supposed to use for work, leaving behind ghosts of him that materialized when the tablet caught the light, and sketches of him appeared in books and on tables. Gabriel, writhing. Gabriel, staring and unable to scream. Gabriel, the flesh of his arm pulled back to reveal the muscles and bones making him up. Gabriel, empty.
We found him on windows and bedsheets, in books and foggy mirrors on cold mornings, in blues and blacks and vivid, violent yellows the exact shade of the fat that had been under his skin. She drew him everywhere, each stroke of her fingers or brush or quill another line bringing him back to life. Dying a little bit every time.
Isabelle was an undercurrent of air, her presence like green-sky days when birds fell silent and lightning bounced on the horizon. Funnel weather, all power and constraint.
“Here,” I said, setting a plate of savory and sweet pastries between us. “I can’t possibly eat all of these, so you’re going to have to help.”
“No, thank you,” Isabelle said, running her inky hands across a fresh canvas. Her fingers were a flag of dripping black, gray, purple, and green, and she painted Gabriel, his profile the mottled purple-green of a healing bruise, with so much care, it hurt to watch her. “I’m busy.”
She had spent all day trying to perfect her shade of green for the grass outside instead of sleeping.
“Isabelle, I love you and I don’t want to make you do something, but I remember how bad I got after my sister died and—”
“Really?” she asked, and her eyes rolled to stare at me. “Did you watch her die?”
“Yes. I did.”
Grief was an old, familiar friend who came calling at all the worst times.
“Oh. Did it get better?”
I had lied to her so much that I couldn’t do it again. “No. It got different, and eventually I got used to the different.”
She hummed and went back to painting. Coline, still wearing her nightgown and a robe, looked up from her text on the fighting arts and made a motion for me to try again. I had told her my sister’s death was a closely guarded family secret, and she hadn’t brought it up again. I sighed.
“Isabelle, I’m going to hold this pastry in front of your mouth till you eat it, so either I’m haunting you with breakfast foods forever, or you’re eating. Just one,” I said. “You can’t paint Gabriel if you’re passed out from starvation.”
“I’m not starving,” she muttered, but when I held the food to her lips, she ate it.
Yvonne had made them. She’d the run of the one small kitchen and still prepared all the breads for the school, but it was slow work with long pauses. I spent the hours before sleeping with her, kneading bread and making sure it didn’t burn, so that she could continue her alchemistry work. We’d finally found Laurel—their name was Aaliz, and they were five days away, stuck with their old unit training