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At a loss for words, I stare at Sybella, realizing she has just given me what I have been missing for the last five years—this sense of someone having my back. Of seeing to my safety when I am too caught up in the moment to care.
Of being a sister. A true sister. Not one who undercuts me at every opportunity. Who sends sly, subtle barbs my way only to claim it was a jest later. Who laughs at my attempts to fix things or improve them or even adjust to them.
It feels as precious as a newly formed pearl. Before I can find my tongue and say something—anything—Sybella glances around the room, cocking her ear.
“Do you hear something?” I ask.
“A heartbeat. The servants, most like. I must go. I should not be discovered here. But I will be watching the king. Know that.”
As she heads for the servants’ passage, I call after her. “Do not forget that talk you promised me.”
She tosses a nod of agreement over her shoulder, then opens the door. She does not gasp, but I feel her breath catch in her throat.
It is not a serving maid, or even the valet that stands there, but the regent.
A moment of utter silence captures us all. Sybella recovers first, inclining her head at the regent as if they have merely passed each other in the hallway, then slips out of the room.
As the regent emerges from the narrow passageway into the king’s apartments, a shiver of deep apprehension racks my body. “Madame Regent?” I drop into a curtsy.
Her gaze moves from my face to roam over my body, as if appraising a mare she has purchased only to find it is lacking. “You and Sybella know each other. You are from the convent as well.”
My entire body grows cold. “I never met Sybella until ten days ago. That was not a lie.”
She studies me with the intensity of a mason looking for a flaw in his stone. “What did she want with you?”
The faintest scrap of hope moves inside my chest. She did not hear us talking. “She was only asking if I would put in a good word for her with the king. She knows he does not care for her.”
She looks at the painting behind me and smiles, then gives me another appraising look. “While your good fortune seems high at the moment, you’d best hope he doesn’t tire of you any time soon, my dear, for who will protect you then?”
* * *
The night before we leave for Paris, the king allows me to return to my own chambers. He has many demands on his time before we leave in the morning, and I have a few things I must do to get ready as well.
Sybella finds me there, packing up my few possessions. One eyebrow arches, in mockery or amusement, I can never be certain with her. “The king has allowed you out of your cage?”
I throw one of the old riding boots I am holding at her, then shove the other one into my pack. “He is convinced that I mean to accede to his punishment.”
“And what of you? Are you convinced this charade still has merit?”
“Yes.”
She nods, then hands me my boot and peers down at my small pile of possessions. I shove the boot into the pack and reach for my jerkin.
She picks up a small leather packet—it is all I can do not to grab it from her—and asks, “What is this?”
“My sewing needles.”
The eyebrow quirks again. “You plan to have time to stitch on our way to Paris?”
I grab the case from her hands. “Spoken like someone who has never had to mend her own clothes.”
A faintly startled look crosses her face. “You have?”
“Yes.”
“But surely now . . .” She waves her hand at the gaudy chain around my neck. “You no longer need to do such things.”
I look down at the soft leather case I hold in my hand, feeling both proud and shy. “These are not ordinary needles,” I say. “But ones I made for myself.”
At her inquiring look, I continue. “The convent gave us very little to work with when they sent us out. When I felt vulnerable, I would fashion something for my needs.”
“Let me see.”
I hesitate briefly before opening the case and showing her.
“Why do some have red thread and others white?”
“The red have been dipped in poison. Probably not enough to kill a man, but enough to put him down for a while.”
She whistles appreciatively, and I am embarrassed at the warm glow of pride her approval brings. “That is ingenious. Truly.”
“Thank you.” I only just resist pulling out the leather cuff I made to conceal them in and showing it to her as well. Instead, I tuck the needles into my pack. “What?” I ask as she continues to stare at me.
“You said the other night that your gift from Mortain was that you are able to sense heartbeats when someone dies. That is the only time?”
I shrug. “For the most part. As I told you, it is a useless gift.”
“For the most part?”
I pause in my packing. “Once I heard a heartbeat. It was the one that led me to the dungeons in Cognac when I first discovered the prisoner. It was the strongest I had ever felt.” I pause, remembering the way the heartbeat reverberated through my body, up through the very ground itself. “But the prisoner wasn’t dead, and I never learned the source of the heartbeat.” I shrug again. “Other than that one time—”
“Wait!” Sybella’s eyes are narrowed. “When was that?”
“Around Saint Martin’s day.”
“No, when precisely?”
I stop packing and count back in my head. “It was four days after Saint Martin’s day.”
Sybella’s intrigue becomes awe. “You felt it. You felt him.”
“What are you talking about?”
She picks up one of my shifts from the bed and smooths it. “Remember when you offered to help me with Monsieur Fremin, I told you that the nature of Mortain’s marques had changed?”
“Yes. Then we were interrupted, and you never did explain to me how.”
“Well, what I did not get the chance to tell you was that the nature of Mortain himself has changed.”
I frown, not understanding.
“You said you were so surprised to learn of the marriage agreement between the duchess and the king. You were not alone. That was not expected by anyone, least of all the king.”
“But the duchess knew to expect it?”
Sybella shrugs. “She did not know to expect it so much as hope. It was a final, desperate effort to prevent Brittany from being engulfed by yet another war. It was an opportunity born of the Nine.”
“The Nine?”
She looks at me then, spearing me with the intensity of her gaze. “It was Arduinna’s last arrow. Hidden away at the convent of Saint Mortain for centuries. Guaranteed to ensure the love of whomever it struck. And the duchess had one shot. Or rather, one person who could make such a shot.”
“You?” My voice sounds breathless to my ears.
“No. Our convent sister Annith.”
“Annith. The perfect one. Of course.”
“Don’t say that!” Sybella snaps. “There is far more to her story than you can even guess at.”
“Then tell me.”
“It is not my story to tell. But on this day—four days after Saint Martin’s day, with the armies of France encamped before Rennes, the Nine came to the duchess’s aid. The Arduinnites, the convent, the hellequin—”
“They are real?”
“Even the trickster god Salonius had a hand in that day.” Her voice grows distant with remembering. “But in order for Annith to take that shot, the king had to be lured onto the battlefield where she could reach him. That is where the others came in.”
She sets my carefully folded shift back on the bed. “And so, with the Arduinnites on the battlements to cover them with their arrows, they rode out of the gates of Rennes, the hellequin and the Breton armies, led by Mortain himself.”
