“How do we know for sure that he is trapped in that candle?” Anaïs whispered, sounding a little wistful. “It seems too small to hold him.”
Armand squeezed Mallory’s hand tighter.
Anaïs took a step closer, still clutching the sheathed sword, head cocked as she peered into the blue flame. She stilled, her brows knit. “Something is wrong.”
Mallory tensed. “What do you mean?”
Gabrielle did not react. She and the wives were locked in a trance—their bodies motionless, their focus latched onto the blue flame.
Mallory stood. “Anaïs, what is it?”
Her sister hesitated. “Bastien is here,” she said slowly. Thoughtfully. “But… he is not trapped.” She was motionless, listening.
Lightning flashed again, illuminating Anaïs’s face—and the slow, cruel smile stretching across her mouth.
Backing away from Mallory, Anaïs drew the sword from its sheath, turned to the altar, and drove the blade into Gabrielle’s back.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
The windows shattered. The likenesses of seven gods rained through the chapel in shards of colorful glass, a sandstorm of reds and blues. Mallory felt the sharp bits pelting her skin, but she barely winced. She could not look away from the nightmare before her.
Gabrielle reached for the altar, her hand knocking her ring onto the floor, then fell to her knees.
Anaïs released the sword, leaving Gabrielle impaled on the blade. She met Mallory’s gaze for one brutal moment. One haunting, terrible moment, when her sister’s eyes shone an unnatural, brilliant blue.
Then Anaïs leaped through one of the broken windowpanes and disappeared into the storm.
With horrified yells, Fitcher and Constantino raced after her.
Mallory took a step as if to follow, but hesitated. Her mind was whirling with the impossibility of what had just happened.
Anaïs, a murderer.
Anaïs,possessed.
She dropped beside Gabrielle, a trembling hand on her great-grandmother’s back. She didn’t know if she should pull out the sword or not. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know how things had gone so wrong, how she had been misled. Every step, every choice—
A hand gripped hers. She met Gabrielle’s eyes, glossy and impossibly black.
“Tell me what to do,” Mallory pleaded. “How do I fix this? How do I save you?”
“He has… his fifth… sacrifice,” Gabrielle said. Blood mixed with saliva began to drip from her mouth. “He has won.”
“No! I don’t believe that.” Her vision blurred. “There must be something…”
“Velos will still… want him back. He can be bound. With magic. The house…”
Tears slipped down Mallory’s cheeks, cutting trails through the dust and dirt caking her skin, but she hardly felt them.
“I can’t bind him,” she whispered. “I am not a witch.”
“You are a Savoy.” Gabrielle’s face twitched in that strange, birdlike manner. She spoke with her head cocked to one side, never addressing Mallory straight-on. “He cannot take away what you are. You must… trust… yourself.” Her last words came in stunted gasps. Her hand squeezed one last time, then fell limp. She shuddered forward, her body suspended on her knees. Her blood dripped down the length of the sword, splattering on the floor.
Mallory looked at her palm. Gabrielle had tucked the black-and-white tail feather into her fist.
She launched to her feet. Tears blurred her vision, and she let out a scream of fury, the sound tearing out of her—feral and vicious. She would see Le Bleu dead. She would destroy him, for all he had done, for all the pain he had—
Swiping at her eyes, she sniffled once, then dragged her emotions back inside as she spun toward Armand. Tucking the feather behind her ear, she reached for the straps on his arms and started unbuckling him from the chair.
