Chapter 54

"My lord." Margaux greeted Calamité with a deep bow of reverence.

"How is my favorite child?" he asked as the Divided Ones strode from a shadowy corner of the room and crossed to her.

She rose on tiptoe to press a kiss to his cheek without offering Félicité so much as an acknowledgment. "So much better now that you're here."

The Divided Ones turned, scanning Euphemia's chambers, their gaze missing nothing. I felt the moment Calamité's eye fell on me. "Hello, Hazel. I like your gown. Life at court seems to suit you."

I stared up at the god with a stony expression. "Nothing about this place suits me these days."

Calamité shrugged blithely and they turned to peer into the princess's bed, watching as she trembled. "My, what a mess she's made," he murmured, sounding pleased.

Something was wrong, I realized.

The Divided Ones were moving slowly, almost as if the air around them was too thick, holding them back.

They looked…sluggish.

"Good evening, Félicité," I called, noticing she'd said nothing since their arrival.

The room was quiet, too quiet by far. Usually the Divided Ones were always speaking, always talking over mortals, taking control of conversations, bickering with one another. But now…

"I'm afraid my sister can't hear you at present," Calamité warned me, abandoning Euphemia. "None of them can. It's just little oldme."

I looked to the goddess's side. Since they had no pupils, it was always difficult to tell exactly where the gods were looking, but her gaze did seem to be especially unfocused now. Calamité shifted, his steps slow and measured, and I realized he was dragging Félicité's side of their body with him. She controlled nothing. She wasn't moving at all.

"What's wrong with her?"

"Nothing is wrong, " Calamité drawled, tilting their head so he might better look in my direction. "Perhaps everything is finally right . "

"What did you do?" I gaped, unable to look away from Félicité's slack muscles. She looked like a cut flower left without water, wilted and shrinking in on herself.

"What did we do," Margaux interjected, sounding proud, and a sliver of dread sliced deep within me.

"You don't really think I'd spend millennia stuffed inside the same body as all my siblings and not find a way to secure a touch of independence? You've no idea how chafed I feel in here. So many gods, so little space." He shuddered, but only his side of their frame moved.

"Do they know?"

He laughed, stiltedly wandering about the chamber, picking up small trinkets and toys, examining them with interest before discarding them. Margaux watched, her mouth wide, smiling rapturously.

"Of course not. I once spent an entire afternoon along the canals of Boizenbrück, whispering treachery and plots into the ears of passersby, and a week later, as the citizens rose up and fomented revolution, I acted as surprised as the lot of them. Not a single one suspects a thing."

I let out a bark of laughter. "You can't possibly believe that Félicité won't catch on to this. She notices everything."

Calamité's eye flashed. "Do not forget to whom you speak, mortal. Just because I'm friendly to a thirteenth child does not mean we are friends. It does not make us equals. I am the lord of chaos, the great numen of turmoil. The earth and all its mayhem pay me homage, cast offerings of reverence at my feet. I hear praise in every cry of insurrection. My blood stirs at turbulence and panic and disorder. My acolytes sanctify me with their schemes, they venerate me with their gifts of sedition." His eye flickered over Margaux with cool appraisal. "Or they try their best to." He sighed testily. "What am I doing here, exactly? I specifically told you I didn't want to be summoned until the denouement."

Margaux's smile faltered before she gestured about the room, as if showing off a prize, grand and precious. "And here we are."

"This? This is your final act?" His tone was saturated with evident skepticism. "Where is all the fighting? No one is screaming, and not a single drop of blood has been spilt. The queen's bastard is alive, and if I'm not mistaken, Hazel still has both her candles." He cocked his head, horror growing across his features as he strained to listen to the noises filtering in from the rest of the palace. "There's a soiree downstairs. A party! Mortals are celebrating, happy and whole and why did you bring me here ?"

Calamité's frame loomed large, scraping the gilt from the ceiling as his anger burst forth. His spine hunched to fit the space, bringing his splintered face unbearably close to my own. Waves of rage as tangible as fire radiated from his half of the body.

I felt the instinctual urge to drop low and beg for forgiveness, but I pushed the notion aside and stood tall. This was not my godfather, and for once, such ruthless anger was not directed at me.

Margaux, to her credit, only pressed her lips together, frustrated yet unalarmed.

"The plans did have to change a bit." She cast a look of scorn toward me. "But that doesn't mean we failed. We're just…adapting. You did say it was a good plan," she reminded him. "You commended it."

"You should have stuck to the original version," Calamité said, heat blazing from him once more. "Kill the queen, start the Shivers, let the king die, and watch as the world burns."

My mouth fell open, but before I could respond, from the far side of the chamber came a gasp, and our heads all snapped toward its source.

There, inconceivably, was Leopold, his jaw slack with horror, his eyes wide as he tried to take in everything happening. At his back was an open door, paneled to look like every other wall in the room. A perfectly hidden passageway.

Calamité beamed, relishing this new twist. "Your Royal Highness, good evening! Come, come in! What a most unexpected yet pleasant surprise!"

"What is going on?" Leopold turned to me, looking dazed. "Bellatrice says she's running away, and I heard Euphemia wasn't feeling well and there are guards outside her door, so I used the secret way in, and now there's…" He gestured toward the Divided Ones. "Hazel?" He looked so painfully lost. I took a step toward him, unsure of how to explain any of this, but his gaze darted back to Calamité. "What are you doing here? The Divided Ones have no reason to be—"

"Don't blame me. I didn't ask to be summoned," Calamité interrupted, his half of their mouth grinning. "Poor little dimwitted prince. Your father opened your home to quite a wolf in sheep's clothing."

"Hazel would never have…" Leopold paused, then whirled toward Margaux, putting everything together. "You. What did youdo?"

Margaux jumped as the room's attention fell on her. She looked mildly queasy, sensing that the last bit of her plan was unraveling into a big messy pile right before her very eyes.

"I? Nothing," she began. Her voice squeaked, breaking too high.

"Give it up, child," Calamité advised with a sigh. "You overplayed your hand and there's no way out now." His eye flittered toward the ceiling. "Such a waste."

"What did you do to the queen?" I asked, prompting softly, the words too terrible to speak at full volume.

"Nothing…much." Margaux's eyes darted from me to her god, then back to Leopold. "I…Well. Before she went out to ride that day…" She licked her lips. "I might have put a bit of oleander in her canteen."

I couldn't stop my gasp. "You poisoned her?"

She turned to me, her eyes impossibly round and pleading. "She didn't suffer. I didn't want her to suffer."

"Why?" Leopold demanded, his voice stony and loud enough to stir Euphemia from her slumber. She shifted uneasily in the bed, the muscles along her jawline twitching in staccato beats. "Why would you do such a thing? My mother was kind to you. She brought you here, made this palace your home. She—"

"It was regrettable," Margaux began, having the decency to glance down in remorse. "Certainly not personal. You're right, Aurélie always treated me well. She was lovely, without fault, truly."

Calamité broke into a laugh. "Other than that dalliance with her husband's brother, of course." He looked about the room, as if expecting us to join his mirth. He squinted at Leopold. "You do know that's the real reason your uncle left court, don't you?"

Leopold looked sick.

Margaux took a step forward, hands outstretched, as if to reassure the prince of her good intentions, then stopped short, thinking better of touching him. "It did not bring me joy, poisoning her, watching her go out on that fateful ride."

"Yet you did it all the same," Leopold muttered, voice dark as an approaching storm.

"For the greater good," Margaux explained. "For his good," she added, nodding toward Calamité. Her lips twisted, showing her sudden dismay. "For all the good it did."

"It was a promising start," Calamité offered.

"Your uncle was meant to have been blamed for Aurélie's death," Margaux explained, looking to Leopold. "Once she'd fallen from the horse, snapping her neck, I left a torn scrap of scarlet fabric near her body, with Baudouin's sigil stitched on it. It was supposed to start the war. Marnaigne was to strike first. Baudouin would retaliate. It would have been…" She paused, her eyes growing distant. "It would have been beautiful. A beautiful, calamitous ruin, the likes of which the world has never seen."

Calamité sighed, wistful over what might have been, but Leopold gritted his teeth. "No sigil was ever found."

"No," Margaux agreed miserably. "Your mother's maid never saw it. The foolish girl came across the body and panicked, trampling about, screaming her head off like some unhinged imbecile. By the time a game warden found her, the fabric had been smashed in the mud or lost in the grasses. I looked for it later, once the queen had been taken away, but it was gone, unrecoverable. So I had to adjust my plan."

"You've caused suffering and untold horrors, and for what?" I exclaimed, all but shouting. "For him ?" I shot a terrible glance Calamité's way. He had the audacity to wink back. "You said she began the Shivers," I reminded him. "How? You don't just start a plague."

He shrugged, his shoulder rising and falling. "It's her gift; she can use it as she pleases."

"What gift? She's not actually an oracle, is she?" I turned toward Margaux. "Are you?"

She laughed. "Of course not. Who'd want to be saddled with a curse like that?"

Calamité reached out and cupped her chin, smiling fondly. "Margaux has been blessed with the gift of discord. She has an unusual talent for making a disordered mess everywhere she goes. Each time she uses it, she feeds me, venerates me. The more she uses her talents, the stronger I become. The stronger I become, the moretime I can steal away from…well, all of them." He gestured toward Félicité's blank expression.

I studied the other thirteenth child with fresh eyes. "You truly started an entire plague?"

Margaux couldn't help but smile. "When my first attempt at revolution didn't work, I had to try something different. I traveled north, to Baudouin's duchy. It was clear his province was thriving. Fertile farmlands, happy villagers. I tried to think up something that would disrupt that, something grand and dramatic for my godfather, something that would make it all fall apart."

"The Shivers," I prompted, tired of this conversation, exhausted with her expression of pleasure.

She beamed. "My eyes may not be able to predict the future, but my hands can certainly shape it. You don't think it coincidence the sickness runs gold, then black, do you?"

"Marnaigne colors," Leopold murmured. "I never…I never put that together."

Margaux smiled sweetly, unsurprised. "Of course not, Your Royal Highness. But Baudouin did. He immediately believed the plague to have been summoned by your family in an attack against him. So he rallied those around him who were left and began his march south."

Her cheery recitation horrified me. "Thousands of people have died because of you," I whispered.

"For him, " she reminded me. "Everything would have worked if I'd not brought you to court."

"Why did you?" I asked, curious. "You were poised for everything to go the way you wanted. Baudouin was stirring unrest, the Shivers was everywhere. Why tell the court you saw me in a vision?"

"She got greedy," Calamité supplied with a weary tone. "She couldn't execute her plans without wanting to bring you down as well." He rolled his eye. "I warned her it was a terrible idea, but some people just never listen."

"I didn't think there was a cure for the Shivers," Margaux said flatly. "I thought you would come and everything would still be terrible and the king would either sentence you to death or you'd get sick or—"

"This is exactly why you're in this mess right now," Calamité sang, and I wondered briefly if these confrontations were feeding him too, nourishing his hunger for chaos. "You used what should have been my crowning moment for your silly personal vendettas. You ruined—"

"I thought it would work!" Margaux snapped. "I had no idea she'd go and use one of her candles to save the king."

"Candles, what candles?" Leopold demanded.

Margaux blinked in surprise. "She never told you?" She glanced at me and the gleam in her eye turned cunning. "What other secrets have you been keeping from him, Hazel?"

"Don't—" I began, but she went right on, talking over me.

"Her god adored her so much he gave her three lives instead of one. Three candles meant to burn so very, very, terribly long. If anything should ever come of your disastrous little dalliance, she'll outlive you by nearly two centuries, I'd guess. Well, she would have." She tsk ed. "But she's only got one spare left now."

To his credit, Leopold didn't question the logic or the logistics of it. He simply believed.

"You gave up a life for Papa?" he asked, his blue eyes falling on me. "One of your own lives?"

His expression looked wondrous even as his words were tinged with horror, and I felt a flush of shame. He didn't know about my gift, my curse. He didn't know about the people I'd seen marked by skulls, the things I'd had to do to them. The things I was meant to do to his father, to Euphemia.

"It was the only way to save him," I said simply. It was the truth, even if it felt like half a lie. Hot tears pricked at my eyes. "His Brilliance was already darkening and I didn't have a cure yet, and I didn't want Euphemia to…"

Euphemia.

She was still lying there, soaking her bedsheets bronze with every twitch of her muscles, seized by an uneasy sleep and completely oblivious to everything happening around her, every dark deed that had been brought to light, every confession uttered.

I glanced at Margaux, putting the final piece of her twisted puzzle into place.

"You made Euphemia sick so I would use my last candle to save her, didn't you?"

The accusation landed in the room like a cannonball.

Margaux, suddenly wide-eyed and fearful, raised her hands in denial, shaking her head as she stumbled backward, darting behind an end table, a chair, anything that would put distance between her and the prince.

Leopold's cheeks flamed, hot spots of red burning across his face. He lunged at Margaux, but Calamité grabbed him first, and the pair crashed to the floor as the god struggled to restrain him.

"I will end you!" Leopold shouted, twisting to free himself. I'd never seen him fight like this, scrapping and wrestling, muscles straining as he sought to shove Calamité aside. This was not the languid prince of old but the battle-tested soldier.

Margaux, now cowering in the curtains of Euphemia's bed, kept shaking her head, denying everything. "I didn't. I swear to you. Not on purpose. It was so hot this morning at the execution. She was so thirsty and must have found the flask in my satchel. Leopold was supposed to drink it. I wanted him to get sick so that you'd waste your last candle on him. But Euphemia drank it instead. I never would have given that to her. Not Euphemia. I'll swear that on mylife."

"Your life means nothing," I pointed out. "Your word is nothing. Everything you've said has been a lie. Why should we believe you now?"

I rounded the corner of Euphemia's bed. If Leopold couldn't get to her, I would in his place. But a hand, fingers elongated and strong, shot out, stopping me. It grabbed my ankle and sent me stumbling.

"I've heard enough."

Félicité's voice boomed loudly through the chamber, startling us all.

On the other side of Calamité, the goddess had awakened. The Divided Ones' mouth opened wide as she stretched her muscles, wresting herself from whatever trance Calamité had kept her in. She flexed her hands, her fingers looking like the legs of a spider as she took back control, pushing their shared body up from the floor. Their spine rippled in a series of cracks as she straightened.

Calamité sighed, looking miserably put out. "Well, there goes that fun."

"Fun," Félicité echoed, rubbing her cheek. "You found yourself a thirteenth child of your own, Brother?"

He shrugged. "Perhaps."

"And gave her a blessing?"

On his side of their face, Calamité smiled.

The goddess peered down at Margaux and startled. "I remember you. You always were an appalling acolyte. Give me that."

Margaux made an attempt to cover her necklace, but Félicité snatched at the set of pipes, breaking the chain and crushing the necklace in her balled fist.

"This is terribly off-putting," she muttered, tossing the scrap aside.

Leopold let out a disgusted bark of laughter. "To put it mildly." He too had gotten to his feet, but Calamité's hand was still heavy on his shoulder, holding him in place. He studied Margaux with icy hatred. "You will pay for this, for all of this. My mother, my sister. For every death you caused throughout the kingdom, whether on the battlefield or in the sickbed. I will see you pay."

Her eyes darted around the room as she searched, calculated. Even now, Margaux was trying to work out a way to survive this, to emerge unscathed. Her audacity was staggering.

"You know, I don't think you will, Your Royal Highness," she began. "Your father adores me. He trusts me. I've spent the last three years telling him the secrets of everyone at court: Yours. Your sisters'. Those of the entire gentry and every one of his advisors. I've proven my loyalty to him time and time again. He believes everything I say. All I need to do is whisper that it was Hazel who poisoned the queen, Hazel who made him sick, Hazel who—"

"Do you hear yourself?" Leopold demanded over her madness. "That doesn't even make sense. Hazel wasn't here for any of that."

"Perhaps not, but she could have had help from her secret lover…you," she murmured, her grin wide and wicked. She looked so triumphant. "That won't be too much of a stretch for the king to believe, will it, Leopold? You've been plotting this together for months, years. The timing doesn't matter; I'll make something up as I go. The pair of you will be executed by dawn and I will still be here. Still pulling every one of his strings." Her attention darted to Calamité and she offered him the smallest bob of her head. "I will fix this, my lord, I swear it!"

In a flash, Margaux was across the room, racing for the secret passageway. Leopold tried to go after her, but Calamité's hold on him was still too strong.

I turned to Félicité for help, but she only stared after the false oracle's retreating form. I felt any trace of hope within me deflate.

Calamité would never be punished. Margaux might be held accountable, but that wouldn't undo the deaths she'd caused, the chaos she'd created.

The only way to move forward was to fix what I'd done wrong.

The answer came to me in an instant, striking as bright and certain as a bolt of lightning from the sky.

I took the goddess's great hand in mine, drawing her attention. "Send me back to the Between."

"What?" she questioned, studying me curiously.

"Give me the godsight and send me back. I need to put a stop to all this. I need to set everything right."

She blinked, considering my words. "You'll clean up the mess my brother and his reverent made?"

"Now, just a minute—" Calamité started.

"As much as I can," I said, racing to talk over him. "I won't be able to undo the deaths she or the king have caused, but I can stop more from happening. Starting by killing the king himself. Send me back and I will make sure the deathshead is obeyed."

Félicité pursed her side of their lips, thinking it over with a terrifying divine stillness. "You certainly are your godfather's child," she murmured, then pressed one of her thumbs to my forehead, electrifying my senses and taking hold of my vision. "Perform your charge well, little mortal." She gave a meaningful glance over my shoulder to where Euphemia thrashed on the bed. "All your charges."