Between Burning Worlds (System Divine #2) - Jessica Brody Page 0,245

the Third Estate to fight for him. And what’s worse, he still has it. He could activate the program again at any time and command his Third Estate army.”

“No, he can’t.”

The words came so unexpectedly, so swiftly, Marcellus was almost certain he misunderstood. He squinted at the gray-haired woman in front him. “What?”

“The Skins have been turned off,” she said simply.

Turned off?

Baffled, Marcellus thought back to the balcony, when he’d stood beside his grandfather and watched the survivors stare down at the darkened screens in their arms.

Did the Vangarde discover a way to get around the Forteresse?

“Still, tonight was a travesty,” Principale Francine said, bowing her head solemnly. “And unfortunately, we were too late to stop it.”

“I tried to tell you,” Marcellus insisted. “I swear I tried to make contact, but I couldn’t get through. After Bastille, I thought … We thought you were all …”

“Dead?” Francine guessed.

Chatine’s gaze darted curiously toward the woman.

Marcellus nodded, trying to catch his breath. “Yes.”

Francine stopped in front of a closed wooden door and turned around to face Marcellus. In that moment, her eyes looked kind and her face looked earnest. “Merci for everything you’ve done for the Vangarde. You have been a loyal and faithful servant. Just like your father. Mabelle was right to insist we recruit you. Given the circumstances, however, we were forced to employ a few very extreme tactics. And, unfortunately, we had to keep many of our operatives in the dark about it. I’m terribly sorry about that. But you must understand it was for the benefit and safety of everyone involved.”

Marcellus’s brow furrowed. Extreme tactics? “You mean you weren’t communicating on purpose? You were pretending to be dead?”

She flashed him a knowing look. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

His thoughts drifted painfully back to that night in the warden’s office. When they’d all gathered around a bank of monitors and watched Citizen Rousseau’s finger unexpectedly twitch on the screen.

They’ve been playing dead.

“The general has been trying to track us down for years,” Francine explained. “We had to make sure he stopped looking for us. Which is why we chose to go completely silent. We couldn’t take the risk of any of our correspondence being intercepted. And that, unfortunately, included cutting off our own internal network among the Sisterhood.”

“The beads,” Marcellus said suddenly.

Francine nodded. “Yes. Traditionally our devotion beads are linked together so that we can stay connected to each other. But knowing that two of our operatives were in custody, and that their belongings would surely be confiscated and analyzed, we decided to use that to our advantage. Severing the connection was a difficult choice to make, however, because it meant we were no longer able to track Alouette. But we had to trust that our teachings had prepared her for the world and that she would be able to take care of herself. And we simply couldn’t risk the Ministère hunting us down. Especially after Bastille. We needed General Bonnefaçon and the Patriarche to believe that we didn’t succeed up there. And that they had won.”

Something dark and heavy lifted instantly from Marcellus’s chest. “You mean, you did succeed?”

For the first time, a small smile broke through the woman’s hardened facade. And she looked almost proud. “Yes.”

Marcellus tried to pull his thoughts into focus, but they were spinning too quickly. Round and round until all he could see was the roof of the Trésor tower and that strange little ship vanishing from the sky in a gust of smoke and fire.

There was a small yelp beside him, and Chatine’s mouth fell open in shock. “Citizen Rousseau is alive?”

At that, Francine turned around and opened the door in front of them. Inside, a woman lay stretched out on a narrow bed with a wooden frame. She was so still, only a slight movement of the sheet indicated that she was breathing. Her silver hair had been gently brushed and plaited into a long braid, which now lay across the crisp white pillow. The crevices and lines in her skin looked less deep, less angry, less battered here, under the soft glow of the infirmerie lights. But the hollows under her cheek bones were just as sunken and shadowed and beaten as Marcellus had remembered from years of staring at her on a security feed.

Citizen Rousseau.

The woman who had led a rebellion and failed.

The woman who Marcellus’s father had died for.

The woman who had inspired hope in a people who had lost theirs centuries ago.

Could she do it again?

Looking