Each case different. Each more disturbing than the last.
“REID!” Jean Luc waved his arms, but I ignored him. Unease rapped just beyond conscious thought as I watched the witches advance on the royal family. Slowly, leisurely, despite the battalion of Chasseurs sprinting toward them. Bodies rose like marionettes, forming a human shield around the witches. I watched in horror as a man lunged forward and impaled himself on the Balisarda of one of my brothers. The witches cackled and continued contorting their fingers in unnatural ways. With each twitch, a helpless body rose. Puppeteers.
It didn’t make sense. The witches operated in secrecy. They attacked from the shadows. Such conspicuousness on their part—such showmanship—was surely foolish. Unless . . .
Unless we’d lost sight of the bigger picture.
I charged toward the sandstone buildings to my right for a perch to see over the crowd. Gripping the wall with shaking fingers, I forced my limbs to climb. Each pitted stone loomed higher and higher than the last—blurry now. Spinning. My chest tightened. Blood pounded in my ears. Don’t look down. Keep looking up—
A familiar mustachioed face appeared over the roof’s edge. Blue-green eyes. Freckled nose. The girl from the patisserie.
“Shit,” she said. Then she ducked out of sight.
I concentrated on the spot where she’d disappeared. My body moved with renewed purpose. Within seconds, I hauled myself over the ledge, but she was already leaping to the next rooftop. She clutched her hat with one hand and raised her middle finger with the other. I scowled. The little heathen wasn’t my concern, despite her blatant disrespect.
I turned to peer below, clutching the ledge for support when the world tilted and spun.
People poured into the shops lining the streets. Too many. Far too many. The shopkeepers struggled to maintain order as those nearest the doors were trampled. The patisserie owner had succeeded in barricading his own door. Those left outside shrieked and pounded on the windows as the witches moved closer.
I scanned the crowd for anything we’d missed. More than twenty bodies circled the air around the witches now—some unconscious, heads lolling, and others painfully awake. One man hung spread-eagled, as if shackled to an imaginary cross. Smoke billowed from his mouth, which opened and closed in silent screams. Another woman’s clothes and hair floated around her as if she were underwater, and she clawed helplessly at the air. Face turning blue. Drowning.
With each new horror, more Chasseurs rushed forward.
I could see the fierce urge to protect on their faces even from a distance. But in their haste to aid the helpless, they’d forgotten our true mission: the royal family. Only four men now surrounded the carriage. Two Chasseurs. Two royal guards. Jean Luc held the queen’s hand as the king bellowed orders—to us, to his guard, to anyone who would listen—but the tumultuous noise swallowed every word.
At their back, insignificant in every way, crept the hag.
The reality of the situation punched through me, stealing my breath. The witches, the curses—they were all a performance. A distraction.
Not pausing to think, to acknowledge the terrifying distance to the ground, I grabbed the drainpipe and vaulted over the roof’s edge. The tin screeched and buckled under my weight. Halfway down, it separated from the sandstone completely. I leapt—heart lodged firmly in my throat—and braced for impact. Jarring pain radiated up my legs as I hit the ground, but I didn’t stop.
“Jean Luc! Behind you!”
He spun to look at me, eyes landing on the hag the same second mine did. Understanding dawned. “Get down!” He tackled the king to the carriage floor. The remaining Chasseurs dashed around the carriage at his shout.
The hag glanced over her hunched shoulder at me, the same peculiar grin spreading across her face. She flicked her wrist, and the cloying smell around us intensified. A blast of air shot from her fingertips, but the magic couldn’t touch us. Not with our Balisardas. Each had been forged with a molten drop of Saint Constantin’s original holy relic, rendering us immune to the witches’ magic. I felt the sickly-sweet air rush past, but it did nothing to deter me. Nothing to deter my brethren.
The guards and citizens nearest us weren’t so lucky. They flew backward, smashing into the carriage and the shops lining the street. The hag’s eyes flared with triumph when one of my brethren abandoned his post to help them. She moved swiftly—far too swiftly to be natural—toward the carriage door. Prince Beauregard’s incredulous face appeared above it at the commotion. She snarled at him, mouth twisting. I tackled her to the ground before she could lift her hands.