Gods & Monsters (Serpent & Dove, #3)

by Shelby Mahurin

Whereas before her eyes had shone with grief—with near unfathomable loss—they now sparkled with wicked intent. I frowned as the other witch, Coco, stepped in front of her, breaking my line of sight. Was she—I stared at them incredulously—was she pulling Lou’s neckline down?

“Why? Why are you here? Did you”—those accusing eyes cut to mine—“did he think I couldn’t do this? Did he think I would die at the first opportunity?” “You did almost fall from a cliff,”

Jean Luc shot me an impatient look. “Just get on the horse, Reid.” Judas.

At least her breasts weren’t in my face anymore—they were pressed into my back. God was trying to kill me.

“It’s too much. It’s like I can’t breathe.” “So don’t,” Reid offered. If I’d had hands, I might’ve strangled him.

A handful of witchlings passed us a moment later to make shapes in the snow outside. Though I recognized none of them, the familiarity of it all made me smile. Nothing had changed. Reid unsheathed another knife beside me, and my smile faded. Everything had changed.

“She let us go.” “To kill us later.” “She could’ve killed us just then, but she didn’t.” I scowled now, thoroughly disenchanted with his single-minded intensity. It bordered on pigheaded. Had he been this stupid when I’d first met him?

“Hello?” Her eyes narrowed suspiciously, flitting over my dark shape, and she lifted a hand as if to touch me. I scuttered backward. I had no choice. If she touched me, she’d realize without a doubt that I was human. When her frown deepened, I winced, realizing too late that shadows didn’t scutter. “Who’s there?” She flicked a thin blade from her sleeve. “Show yourself, or I’ll summon the sentries.” Why did every plan I ever made go to complete and total shit?

“My god. I think my knees might’ve actually cracked.” “My māmā rū’au can predict the weather with hers,” Beau offered. “She sounds like a fascinating woman, and I mean that genuinely.”

She looked at me like I belonged to her and she belonged to me.

“Description, please!” “I can’t describe the inside of a lock, Célie! I’ve never seen one!” “Well, I have, and—” “You have?” Jean Luc asked incredulously. “When?” “Everyone needs a hobby.”

“I don’t understand. Why would Morgane have created simple keys and locks when she has magic?” “Who the hell cares?” Beau hovered anxiously by the stairs, keeping watch. “It’s an enchanted lock for an enchanted door in an enchanted fucking castle. None of this makes sense. Just hurry up, will you? I think I heard something.”

“Though there is a doll there. Morgane once said it was cursed.” Beau blanched. “Cursed how?”

“Why did you get to keep yours?” Manon whispered behind us. Sadness clouded Lou’s face as she gazed back at me. “I didn’t.”

Helplessly, I clawed at her. Her arms shook beneath my weight. “Lift me up!” My shouts sounded delirious to even my ears. “Lift me up now!” A shadow shifted in her eyes at the command. She flashed a feline grin. “Tell me I’m pretty.” “I—what?”

She’d been pretending to struggle this entire time. Stoking my fear. She probably could’ve lifted me with a single finger. Fresh anger burned white-hot in my chest. “Now,” she said, immensely pleased with herself, “tell me that I’m an excellent singer.” “You—you—” “I’m waiting,” she trilled. “You’re an excellent singer. You sing like a bird. An angel. And if you don’t lift me up this second, I’m going to snap your pretty neck.” She waited another second just to spite me. Then another. And another. “Well, now that we’ve sorted that.”

“Ask me no questions, mon amour, and I shall tell you no lies.”

As the smallest of the three, I dove beneath the bed. As the stupidest, Beau crouched behind the dressing table in plain sight.

Wiping his mouth, he handed it to Reid next. “You start.” Reid examined the bottle in distaste. “I’m not playing.” “Oh, come on, Chass.” I rose to my tiptoes, clasping my hands together at my chest and swaying. “Please? I promise I won’t make you measure your dick against Jean Luc’s.” Jean Luc smirked. “Now that is for the best. I wouldn’t want to embarrass anyone.” Spluttering, Reid’s knuckles whitened on the bottle. “You—you can’t—” He grimaced. “What are the rules?”

Jean Luc scrubbed a hand down his face and muttered, “Yes and no. I don’t regret following orders. The rules exist for a reason. Without them, we have chaos. Anarchy.” He heaved a sigh, not looking at anyone now. “But I do regret the rules themselves.” Dropping his hand, he asked Reid, “Truth or dare?” “Truth.” “Is your heart still with the Chasseurs?”

I would never imbibe another ounce of liquor for as long as I lived. The horse nearest me lifted his tail and defecated in response.

Jean Luc seized her shoulders then, his eyes bloodshot and pleading. “I love you, Célie, but please—shut up.” “Hear, hear,” Beau said, lifting his shoe.

Qui sème le vent, récolte la tempête. He who sows the wind shall reap the tempest. —French proverb

“He’s fucking infuriating.” “That he is.” “I want to gouge his eyes out.” “I completely agree.” “I might steal his Balisarda and shave his eyebrows with it.” “I wish you would.”

I hated it. I hated her. I hated that I didn’t hate her at all.

up your mind. You can’t string me along forever, blowing hot one minute and cold the next. Do you want to love me, or do you want to kill me?”

My wife. I couldn’t remember. Those memories had disappeared, leaving great cracks of emptiness in my identity. In my mind. In my heart. No, I couldn’t remember. But now I wanted to.

outrage. “I wasn’t—” “I’m joking, Chass.” “Oh.” He frowned when I snorted. “Is this really the time to joke?” “It’s never the time to joke with us. If we waited until we were out of life-or-death situations, we could only laugh in our graves.”

“Your father won’t be pleased, Victoire.” “My father can swallow an egg!”

“Please, don’t cry. I can’t stand your tears. They make me—they make me want to rend the world apart to stop them, and I can’t—” He kissed me again, fierce with abandon. “Tell me again. Tell me all of it. I’ll remember this time.”

Where you go, I will go. Where you stay, I will stay. She’d whispered the words to me like a prayer. And I still felt them. I felt each one.

I couldn’t soothe this ache. I couldn’t right this wrong. In all likelihood, we’d both burn at sunset. But I could hold her.

“They could still come, you know.” She smothered a yawn, her eyes drifting shut. “The others. They could still rescue us.” “They could.” I held her tighter than necessary as she slipped under. The silence seemed to grow and stretch in her wake. The torchlight flickered. “They could,” I repeated firmly. To her. To myself. To anyone who would listen. They could still rescue us. But they didn’t.

Though Achille hesitated, he had no choice. His fingers curled slowly around the torch. My frown deepened. They looked . . . straighter than I remembered. The skin younger. Tawny and smooth. When my gaze snapped to his face, his cheeks seemed to broaden, to move, the bones inching higher. His eyes lengthened. His nose too. His grizzled beard fell out in pieces, his hair deepened, and his skin—the wrinkles faded as he winked at me. Then he turned to the king. “You know, père,” he drawled, the last of Father Achille’s features melting with the words, “it’s rich of you to speak of great disappointments.” Disgusted, Beau shook his head. I gaped at him. Beau.

Lou expelled a ragged breath. “Reid . . .” The tingling in my palm spread to my fingers. The patterns began to sharpen. “I’m here, Lou. They’re all here.” “Sorry we’re late, sister mine.”

“You dare to choose them?” Auguste hissed. Another vein throbbed in his throat. He looked less handsome now. More deranged. “Over your own father?” Before Beau could answer, Philippe finally breached the platform, and Auguste lunged. It happened in slow motion. Beau whirled to drive him back, sweeping the torch wide, and a single spark snapped into the air. It hung motionless for a second—for a thousand seconds—before drifting almost lazily to the platform. To the hay. I could do nothing but watch, horrified, as we went up in flames.

Auguste’s shrieks stopped abruptly. His limbs stilled. Skin and flesh melting into bone. With empty eyes, he stared at his burning city forevermore. The flames danced on his corpse.

“Why didn’t you give me that sticky bun?” His own cheeks remained flushed, his smile wide. “Because it wasn’t yours.”

Morgane scrambled backward as Chasseurs and witches charged. Balisardas flashed. Magic erupted. Zenna snorted again, launching into the air, plucking them from the street one by one and— And eating them. “Oh, that is disgusting,” Beau said, grimacing. “The indigestion alone—”

Claud winked at me. “Fancy meeting you here, poppet. How did you like my sister?” I choked on a laugh while the woman shrieked, contorting her limbs to escape the tree. It had ceased moving. “I thought—I thought you couldn’t intervene?” And if not— “Where have you been all this time?”

“How does she control them?” Reid yielded a step as the woman shoved him and fled up the street, still screaming hysterically. “The trees?” “They loved her once too.”

“I’m helping them by helping you, you great selfless prick. If you give that Balisarda away again, I’ll make you swallow it. Consider chivalry dead.”

The three of them died together. It wasn’t poetic. It wasn’t grand or heroic or momentous, like one might’ve expected. The heavens didn’t part, and the earth didn’t swallow them whole. These three women—the oldest and most powerful in the world—died just like anyone would: with their eyes open and their limbs cold.

When the dust settled, Beau, Coco, and I stood on one side of the chasm. Lou and Célie clutched each on the other. Behind them loomed Morgane le Blanc.

We stared at each other for the span of a single heartbeat. Then he nodded. I love you, I told him. As I love you.

My stomach curdled at Nicholina’s congealed throat. At Josephine’s empty expression. Though the former might’ve found peace with her son, could the latter say the same? Could Morgane?

“I failed our people that day. It took sixteen years to harden myself again. Even then, I would have gifted you everything. I would have gifted you greatness.” “I didn’t want greatness.” Casting my shield aside, I pushed to my feet at last. Her heart might’ve softened for a newborn babe, but she hadn’t ever loved me—not me, not truly, not the person. She’d loved the idea of me. The idea of greatness, of salvation. I’d mistaken her attention for the genuine thing. I hadn’t known what real love looked like then. I glanced across the chasm to Reid, Coco, and Beau, who stood hand in hand at the edge, pale and silent. I knew what it looked like now—both love and grief. Two sides of the same wretched coin. “I only wanted you.”

Her throat worked for several seconds before sound came out. “Daugh . . . ter . . .” I memorized those emerald eyes. “Yes.” Then I drew Célie’s blade across my mother’s throat.

“He was your father. I am sorry for it, but I am never sorry for you.”

Though night still claimed the sky, dawn would come soon. With it, a new day. I knelt to catch my mother’s eyes. “I love you. I don’t think I’ve ever told you.” Scoffing, she busied herself with her skirt. Still, I saw her eyes. They sparkled with sudden tears. “I only expect to hear it every day from this moment onward. You shall visit at least thrice a week, and you and Louise shall name your firstborn child after me. Perhaps your second too. That sounds reasonable, does it not?”