“Thank you, Your Highness,” I whisper, my knees nearly buckling under the weight of my gratitude. “Truly. I could not be more grateful.”
“And now we are left with the outstanding matter of Athenais,” he muses, resuming our walk. “Tell me, sorcière jolie, what am I to do with her?”
I frown, wondering why he should bring up the nature of her punishment with me.
“Surely she will be tried for treason?” I say. “To be followed by some form of public execution?”
He shakes his head briskly, pursing his lips.
“Oh, I think not,” he says with a sudden icy deliberation that nearly steals my breath. “It would hardly do to have it known that the king is vulnerable to the stratagems of his own maîtresse. What would my enemies think of such a weakness? No, she must be removed much more quietly and swiftly. Her death must appear to have been an unfortunate accident.”
He pauses on the path, turning me around until we stand face-to-face. I see a snowflake trembling in the trap of his dark lashes—another fragment lifted from my vision. A runnel of chill trickles down my spine at the cold rage that consumes his face.
Here, then, is Louis XIV as Marie has known him. The one who lays merciless waste to Les Pays Bas, and ruthlessly scourges the cité.
The one who would bring the whole world to its knees.
“And I intend for there to be pain as well,” he says softly, barely above a breath. “A sharp punishment for such ultimate treachery. She will be made sorry in her final moments, for having schemed against me while sharing my bed.”
“Your Majesty,” I force through trembling lips. “Why do you speak to me of this at all? I fear that knowing such things is not my place.”
Slowly, he peels the gloves off both his hands, then gently cups his palms around my face. The warmth of his touch spirals through me, radiating outward like a slug of liquor burning down my throat. I even feel a little dizzy, as if I am truly drunk.
“Do you know, before seeing your Messe, that I despised all things eldritch and arcane?” he says huskily, tilting my face back and forth as if to inspect me. “The last time a comet’s passage stirred up the peasantry, I commissioned an astronomer to strip it of its status as some dread portent. Such vulgar beliefs are only fodder for the coarse and narrow-minded, I have always felt. Reason is what must reign supreme.”
His dark eyes shift silkily between mine, and he draws the bright ringlets that frame my face through his fingers. My scalp tingles furiously at the touch, as though he is stroking my skin rather than my hair.
He tugs at me like a lodestone, exuding an irresistible compulsion. A magnetic pull unlike anything I have ever felt.
“But you, sorcière jolie,” he murmurs, narrowing his eyes. “I believe that you are the exception that proves the rule. Though much of the Messe may have been no more than your compatriot’s exceedingly clever illusions, I believe some genuine magic courses through your veins.”
“Are you …” I must stop and clear my throat before I speak again. “Are you saying I might be of some use to you, Your Majesty?”
With a slow finger, he traces a path between my eyes and down my nose, over the crests of my lips and under my chin.
“I am saying that you fascinate me, and that I would know more of you,” he murmurs as he slowly closes the distance between our lips. “I am also saying that, from what I have heard from Athenais, your rituals are typically much more savage than the one I witnessed. And that they also rely upon the use of blades.”
I think again of my vision, of the raised knife and the droplet of blood corkscrewing through water, the painted devil’s visage with its silent, leering laugh.
And as I yield to the king’s kiss, I understand what it is he asks of me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The Plot and the Dream
“So the king wishes you to kill the marquise for him during a Black Mass,” Adam says, firelight picking out the luster in his short hair.
We sprawl in front of the fireplace in my study, having reconvened upon my return from Versailles.
“In a way that can be construed as an accident,” he continues. “An unfortunate consequence of dancing with the devil.”
“Exactly. And he wishes us to invite the foremost peerage, so that her demise becomes something of a public secret. An incident to be swiftly covered up for everyone’s benefit.” I swallow the salted truffle I am eating, licking the crystals off my fingers. “After all, who would want it to be known that the marquise died at a Devil’s Mass, especially one with such an illustrious gathering of guests?”
“Ingenious,” Adam breathes. “Who would have thought we had such a devious king?”
“He is … remarkable.” I struggle to find a better word to capture his mercurial essence, the strange charisma that emanates from him. But I cannot properly describe what I do not even understand. “As though there is more to him than can be seen with the eye alone.”
“And you can do what he asks?” Adam inquires more soberly. “I know the marquise is no Claude, certainly far from innocent. But I also know you seem … somewhat averse to causing women’s deaths.”
“It was not so much a request as a command,” I reply, though disquiet stirs within me at the question. “And as you say, the marquise is easily as bad as the men whose ends we’ve hastened. Besides, what choice do I have? I certainly cannot defy the king without risking my head.”
“And once she is gone, it sounds as though the king aims to make you his new maîtresse.” Adam shakes his head, awed at the prospect of such influence. “Pardieu, this is even better than we planned. Think of what we could accomplish behind the
