Chapter 29

The skull covering René Marnaigne's face was completely different from any I'd seen before.

It was as black and slick as tar, with an oily viscosity I wanted to cringe from. It looked grimy and foul, so terribly wrong against the severe austerity of the king's profile.

The skull's jaw fell into its usual leering, gleeful grin. Though there were no eyes in its deep sockets, I could feel it watching me with rapt interest, pleased to have been noticed, pleased to have so thoroughly disrupted everything.

My heart sank as I stared down at it.

A deathshead.

King Marnaigne was meant to die.

King Marnaigne was meant to die, and I was meant to kill him.

I felt sick as I imagined him following me around, another ghost added to my collection. I wanted to cry as I pictured his long, dark shadow, forever trailing behind me, stumbling nearer and nearer, until the day I slipped up and let him get too close. His bony, long-dead fingers would reach out and—

My horrible daydream stopped short as another, altogether more terrible thought flickered to life.

This was no ordinary man the deathshead wanted me to kill.

He was a king.

The king. My sovereign.

I would have royal blood on my hands. To even think of his demise was treason.

I'd heard tales of men who'd simply dared to disagree with the king. They were thrown in the stocks for weeks, and pelted with moldering food and spit and jeers. Marnaigne was swift to anger, swift to seek respect and revenge.

Should I be caught in the act of poisoning him, no matter how good my intentions were…

I shuddered.

I'd be sentenced to death, no questions asked, no chance to redeem myself. They executed people in Chatellerault's town square, setting up a gruesome platform and block, bringing out a temple reverent carrying a long, curved sword. People came to watch, came to cheer.

The grim hooded man would chop off my head, but it wouldn't take. I wouldn't die. Not at first.

I imagined my severed head coming to life yards away from my abandoned body as my second candle lit. I could hear the screams of the crowd, horror and elation mingling before panicked fear consumed them. Surely they'd see Merrick's gift as a sign of magic most foul and stomp me out of existence once more, burning through my second candle with swift vengeance. Then my third. My three lives would be over and done.

What purpose would my life have been for then? Would my ghosts follow me into the afterlife, forever haunting their murderer? I didn't know what awaited beyond the veil—I'd always been too terrified to ask Merrick—but it was safe to assume I wouldn't have unlimited stores of salt with me.

The entire scenario was too terrible to bear.

"Hazel?" the king asked, and it jarred me from my reverie. There was a note of concern in his voice, an indication that this wasn't the first time he'd tried to get my attention.

"Sire?"

"You stopped applying the paste. Is everything all right?"

My hands flinched from his face, instantly erasing the wicked skull, but it was as if its image had burned across my retinas. A ghostly reverse imprint remained, white as bone and covering the king's features as effectively as a mask.

He opened his eyes and they stared up through the phantom skull's sockets, bright as sapphires.

"Everything's fine, Your Majesty," I said, turning back to the counter, back to my valise. I busied myself, poking through pockets for cures that were not there, that did not exist because the king was supposed to die and die soon, and die by my hand. "Just lost in my thoughts."

My fingers trembled, brushing vials of foxglove and hemlock, oleander and castor bean, and my heart thudded painfully in my chest, beating faster and faster until I could feel it in my throat, creeping higher and higher as the room spun about me. It was in this haze of distorted equilibrium that I realized I was having a fit of nerves. Panic was flooding my system, and my head felt too heavy to keep up. I wobbled on feet that seemed too small to hold me up.

"How long should I keep this on? It's beginning to tingle." He took in a sharp, hopeful breath, whispering with amazement, "Is it working already?"

I gripped the edge of the counter, clinging to the marble top as I fought to stay upright.

The king.

I was meant to kill the king.

I'd kill the king, then they'd kill me.

"Does it feel hot in here to you?"

I heard myself ask the question but couldn't remember when I'd decided to speak. I fumbled at my dress's neckline. It was too tight, making it hard to breathe. If I could just loosen it somehow, perhaps I could draw in some air and everything would be all right.

But I'd still have to kill the king.

"Hazel?" His words reverberated through my mind, bouncing back and forth like an echo caught in a chamber. My name splintered into nonsensical syllables before uniting, whole but still terribly wrong. "Hazel? Are you all right?"

I wanted to turn around and assure him that all was well, that all would be fine, but I couldn't because when I turned, I would see that ghastly skull over his face, hiding his expression, hiding everything but his eyes, and I wanted to scream but my words wouldn't form and my mouth wouldn't open, until it did, but only to release a soft hiss of air as my eyes rolled back into my head and the floor rushed up to meet me.