sharp like orange water. “You hate me. Why would you even want to share?”
“I don’t hate you. I think you’re”—I paused, the precise words not coming and shrugged—“insufferable and stubborn; however, you’re intelligent and hardworking, and I know you put the well-being of patients over your current health no matter how foolish that is. You gave half of them your lunch. Please eat the pastry.”
“You called yourself those things weeks ago. The insults only, though.” He laughed and took the pastry from the bag at my feet. “How peculiar.”
“Not really.” I tore a piece of the pastry off and ate the plain corner. “I’m much meaner to me than I am to you. You should be astronomically insulted to share an insult with me.”
“I’m astronomically concerned about how you think that’s a normal sentiment.” Charles took me by the shirt collar, gently, carefully, and tapped my lips with the pastry. “Eat.”
I did, and Charles ate the other half. We sat in silence for some time, wiping our hands on Laurence’s blanket—not that he slept or would use it—and talking about nothing. He leaned back, his left side flush with my right. My mother would have died if she saw us.
“I actually quite like you,” I said finally.
He tapped his foot against mine. “I quite like you as well, Emilie Last-Name-Definitely-Not-Boucher.”
“Let me keep one secret successfully,” I said. “My mother shipped me off to Gardinier’s finishing school before I could get away, and I had to improvise.”
He let out a barking laugh, nudged my shoulder with his, and said, “I am very glad you ended up here, though.”
“Me too.”
Someone at the tent door cleared their throat. Sébastien shuffled his feet. “Charles, I need your help in the infirmary.”
Charles glanced at me. “Later, then.”
I nodded. He set the book back on the cot, and I stood as well.
The pair left. I fiddled around Laurence’s stacks of journals, mostly things he had carried so we could continue studying. The odd haze that had interrupted my magic lifted, and I peeked outside. Waleran strolled toward the tent.
I gathered the magic in my hands faster than I ever had before and channeled it through me, the sting of so much power in my veins a pain I hadn’t felt. I thrust my hands at Waleran. The alchemistry of his body lit before me.
Another soldier darted between us. A dozen more soldiers rising from the sides of the path. I let my magic fade and turned to run. A soldier yanked me up by my coat.
I stumbled.
“Please do not try to run,” Waleran called out. “Any further attempts of escape will be met with retribution, either on you or Madeline Mercer.” Waleran unsheathed his sword, a long, thin thing of artist-forged steel and magic. “Understood?”
“She had nothing to do with this,” I said. “Don’t touch her.”
I lunged for him, and he flipped his sword up, ramming the hilt into my temple. I blacked out, knees hitting the ground. The world shifted beneath me.
“We’re aware she’s not involved, but I assumed she would make an excellent motivator.” Waleran clucked his tongue against his teeth and wiped his hands clean. “Madame, please do not do that again. We require you alive for questioning.”
Twenty-Two
Annette
We returned to Bosquet without stopping. I was in a coach with Madame Bisset and Estrel, watching her scry and divine and do a number of things with the midnight arts I didn’t know how to describe. At one point, she started talking to the mirror, doing what she’d done last night with du Montimer, and she had to ask me to hold her steady as she scryed. The magic channeling through her was so powerful, I could feel how she was using it in the silver, peeling apart the ethereal threads of time to peek into the past. I stiffened when she stopped.
“Laurel has reemerged,” she said, voice raspy. She wiped the sweat from her face. “Apparently His Majesty has been using hacks’ bodies to repair his when it wears down, and Laurel revealed this truth last night.”
Bisset tensed, her mouth falling open. “What? No, he—what?”
“So did we attack Segance just to distract from that?” I asked and hoped she would catch on.
“Oh, there are certainly people saying that.” Estrel glared at me over the top of her mirror, and she sunk lower in her seat. Her eyes fluttered shut. “And it’s very hard to go to war when all your hacks and soldiers are refusing to work until the truth is told and crimes