Page 97 of The Scarlet Veil

“Don’t know what he thinks we’ll find with these searches.” The first man’s footsteps grow closer, and I tense, my eyes clenching shut when he raps his knuckles atop our coffin. The witchlight flickers and spins against the dark of my eyelids, and it’s harder to swallow now than it was before. Michal’s hand creeps over my back. “Noticeheisn’t out here in the middle of the night, freezing his balls off with the rest of us.”

“Better him than the one upstairs,” the second says bitterly, “wearing that blue coat and acting like a king on high. If he calls meboyone more time, I swear I’ll take that silver stick of his and shove it straight up his ass. You just watch. I’ll do it.” A pause. “Should we search the coffins?”

Another sharp rap on the lid. “No. The only thing we’ll find in here is a stiff, and I won’t be the one to tell Toussaint his little fiancée has kicked it.”

“You think she has?”

He scoffs. “I think he does too, deep down. Women who disappear rarely turn up again, do they? Not alive, anyway. Just look at her sister. I heard the witches got ahold of her, cursed her to age until her heart gave out. It’s only a matter of time before we find this one dead too.”

Cold, gentle fingers touch my hair now, sliding through the heavy mass to my nape. It takes several seconds for me to realize why—to notice that my entire body has started to tremble, that my hands clamp bone white around the lapels of Michal’s coat. I didn’t know I held him. I didn’t think I could move at all. “I don’t know,” the younger man mutters. “She already disappeared once. No one knows where she went then either. My dad thinks she ran away. He thinks she left him—Toussaint. She wasn’t wearing his ring when she fled the Tower. My mom says Toussaint deserves someone better for a wife.” He chuckles grimly. “She volunteered my sister.”

The buzzing in my ears pitches higher with each word. Sharp and painful now.

Before they can continue debating the faults of my character, however, the ballroom door opens once more, and a third pair of footsteps joins them. “Gentlemen.”

A violent shudder wracks my body at the word, and I abandon all pretense, burying my face in Michal’s cloak. Becausethisvoice I recognize. It’s a voice I would give every couronne of my father’s reward to never hear again.

“Frederic,” the first man grumbles. It sounds as if he pushes from our coffin, straightening reluctantly. The younger man says nothing. “She isn’t down here.”

“You’ve checked every casket.”

It isn’t a question, and the two men—unsure how to answer—hesitate briefly before the second clears his throat and lies with relish. “Of course.”

“Good.” The word drips with disdain, and I can picture Frederic strolling down the aisle now, trailing his hand along the ornate boxes. Perhaps inspecting his fingers for dust. “The sooner we find her body, the sooner Toussaint resigns.”

“You think he’ll resign, monsieur?” the first asks dubiously.

Frederic laughs—a short, humorless sound that makes my stomach twist. “How can he not? A captain who fails to protect not only his subordinate but also his fiancée? It’s humiliating.”

“It’s hardly his fault the girl ran out on him,” the second mutters.

“And that, boy,” Frederic says, his voice sharpening, “is exactly where you’re wrong. It is his fault. Thisentirefucking mess is his fault. He brought a woman into a brotherhood of men. He gave her a Balisardaandan engagement ring.” He scoffs bitterly. “You aren’t a Chasseur, so you wouldn’t understand.”

The second man, theboy, only takes further offense. “Oh yeah? Try me.”

Another mirthless chuckle. Another pause. “Fine. I’ll try you. Do you remember the bloodshed in December and January? After that redheaded Chasseur allied himself with awitch?” He snarls the word like a curse, and to Frederic, it is. “The kingdom lost all faith in our brotherhood when he killed the Archbishop on Christmas Eve, then again when his mother-in-law slaughtered our king in the New Year. Toussaint was his friend. Toussaint sided with Diggory and his witch in the Battle of Cesarine, and the kingdom suffered.”

A tendril of anger cracks open in my stomach, churning with the absinthe. It rises up my throat, but I choke it back down, my breathing growing louder. Harsher. HowdareFrederic criticize Jean Luc and Reid? How dare he holdanyopinion on the Battle of Cesarine—a battle in which hundreds of innocent people lost their lives, a battle in which he didn’t evenparticipate? Michal’s fingers tighten on my nape in warning. He breathes something in my ear, but I can’t hear anything beyond that wretched humming, can’tseeanything beyond Frederic’s hateful face in the training yard.

This scrap of wood won’t debilitate a witch.

Basile’s leering grin.

Only two scraps of wood will do that! A stake and a match!

My brethren’s laughter—all of their cruel laughter—as I struggled to lift a longsword.

“You don’t have to tellusabout Reid Diggory,” the second man snaps. “My brother lost several fingers in that battle.”

“I wasn’t a huntsman then,” Frederic says. “If I had been, your brother might’ve kept his fingers. Regardless, I’ve worked very hard to restore the kingdom’s trust, but Toussaint’s actions have cast doubt upon our brotherhood all over again.” He makes a low, disgusted noise in his throat as his footsteps recede. “Perhaps it’s for the best. Even if Toussaint fails to resign, he’ll have no choice but to rededicate himself to our cause without Mademoiselle Tremblay as a distraction.” He pauses at the foot of the stairs, and for a split second—less, even—I can almost feel his brilliant blue eyes settle on our coffin. Bile rises in my throat, and this time, a violent heave rocks my stomach, my chest. Michal pulls back in alarm. I clamp a hand over my mouth, his face blurring into sicklylines of white and black. My mother was right. Absintheisthe Devil’s drink.

“It really is a shame,” Frederic says with a sigh. “She would’ve been a lovely wife.”

With that, his footsteps retreat above deck, and the ballroom falls into silence.

She would’ve been a lovely wife.

The words pulse with the stabbing pain in my temple like a sickening poem. No. I swallow the bile, and it burns all the way down. Like a prophecy.

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