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His knees crumbled and Laurent fell heavily to the ground.

And behind him—Armand stood with a raised shotgun, Tilly behind him.

My scalp ached, but I moved even closer as he fell.

“Curse on your bloodline, curse on the ground where you fall, may you wander forever in the afterworld, may you never find the ancestors.”

Hugo crawled the last few feet and he had a rock in his hand—but Laurent was already dead, his mouth sagging open, my curses sitting pretty on his skin.

“Are you all right?” Tilly cried out, hurrying toward me.

My ears were ringing, blood pounding in my temples.

“Thank you, thank you,” I could only gasp. “Why⁠—”

“It ain’t right what’s been done to you,” Armand said, and I felt my heart threaten to burst from my chest.

My husband might have abandoned and cast me aside, but there were people in this world who loved me.

“You won’t get in trouble for this, will you?” I asked as we helped Hugo up.

“Where are you planning to go?” Tilly asked, not answering my question.

When Hugo began to explain our plan, Armand shook his head.

“You’ll never outrun him that way.”

He didn’t even need to say his name, because we all knew who him was.

Étienne

“He won’t want to chase me,” I protested, wincing slightly as a hard Braxton-Hicks contraction gripped my belly. “He doesn’t love me. He has a new woman now.”

Armand grunted. “Better safe than sorry. I have a better idea.”

“What? What is it?”

“The Savatier clan.”

Wait, who was that?

“They don’t really get involved in our affairs,” Hugo said slowly. “From what I’ve heard, they’re practically hermits. And why would they want to help us?”

“They’ve been left alone for many years,” Armand said. “But they have a nice little territory over by Blue Sky Lake. And I think with the right inducements they might take you in. Inducements like everything you could tell them about the Bastide family business. . .”

Hugo and I looked at each other.

Would they take us in?

Tilly frowned as she looked behind me.

“I see the dust of those trucks the monsieur must have sent. Better get going, you two. We’ll take care of the bodies.”

I looked down at Margot and Laurent.

Would knowing they’d tried to kill me spark even the tiniest shred of regret in Étienne Bastide’s cold, dead soul?

If he wanted a wife who was dead to him, why not make that official. . .