He lets go of me with a howl. I launch myself back out the other side of the bed, scramble to my feet, and run for the door.
The marquis is right in my path. I slam into him. I expect him to topple over. At least move backward a few inches. Nope. It’s like hitting sack of bricks. I reel back. He shoves me. I stumble into the center of the room.
Havriel is hulking toward me, one hand clutching the small red puncture in his velvet coat.
I try to stand tall, dig my fingers into my palms. The pain in my rib cage is excruciating. It makes me mad. It makes me proud. The chandelier didn’t kill me. The psycho butterfly thing didn’t kill me. Hayden didn’t kill me. You’re going to kill me, but hey, I made it all the way to the end, boss. That’s not too shabby.
Havriel doesn’t even blink. He lashes out with the nozzle. I duck, drop to the floor, and scrabble away on hands and knees––
And now I hear something behind me, coming from the double doors. The click-click of a handle being tried, cautiously.
Havriel kicks me in the shoulder. The pain is unreal, more like a white shower of sparks, like my nerves can’t even really deal with that much anymore. I’m reeling, dragging myself over the floor.
The doors are opening.
I look up.
It’s Lilly.
No way.
But it is.
Lilly, standing in the doorway, her face filthy, her clothes torn and ragged, grimy with sweat and blood. She’s not crying. She’s holding an old-fashioned flintlock pistol. She pulls back the hammer and raises it at Havriel.
Seeing her makes me smile like nobody’s business. “Shoot Havriel!” I shriek from the floor. “I mean Dorf, shoot Dorf!”
The marquis starts toward her from the left. She wheels around, pointing it at him.
I start to crawl for the door. Havriel lets out a low growl and comes after me, fast and liquid like a panther.
Lilly jerks the gun back and forth between them, confused. The marquis is digging something out of his pocket, another glinting bottle––
“Lilly!” I scream. “SHOOT THEM!”
The gun goes off. There’s a bright flash, a dull cracking sound, and a puff of gray smoke.
Havriel freezes, inches away from me.
Who’s been shot?
They’re both still standing. I get myself upright. Hobble toward Lilly.
The bottle falls from the marquis’s grasp. Bursts against the floor. He brings his hand down to his stomach.
“Aide-moi, mon frère . . . ?” the marquis breathes. And he collapses, folding at the knees, the waist, neatly, like a length of fabric.
Lilly points the gun at Havriel. Aims at his leg and pulls the trigger. It clicks. She pulls again.
One shot, Lilly. Flintlocks have one shot.
She throws the gun full force at Havriel’s head, grabs my arm, and we race out of the room.
I glance back. See Havriel kneeling next to the marquis, pressing his hand to the wound. He’ll be up in a second. Maybe the marquis will be, too. Can these people die from bullet wounds?
We’re in a long hallway. It’s blazingly bright, and it only seems to get brighter up ahead. Wild, crazy elation bubbles up inside me. I feel weightless. I’m gripping Lilly’s hand, and she’s got mine, and we’re running so fast. We’re flying.
“Where are we going?” I shout.
“The boys!” Lilly shouts back. “I found the boys!”
Palais du Papillon, Chambres du Morelle Noir–112 feet below, 1790
I watch from the ceiling, my gown drifting about me like a pulsing black stain. A girl lies below me. Her body is fetal, her knees drawn up to her chin. A younger girl darts around her, trying desperately to drag the dead girl upright. I see her tears, watch her mouth open in a wail, but I do not hear that sound she makes. Everything is silent. Calm and warm, like floating on a pond, in a boat, in summer.
A small, pale man drifts into the scene below, his crimson coattails like twin fangs, or a dark cloven hoof. He is circling the girl on the floor, drawing nearer, nearer.
Aurélie!
It is Delphine. I hear her now. She turns her tear-streaked face and looks up at me, hovering just under the ceiling.
Aurélie, wake up!
The butterfly man leans down over the girl on the floor. His satchel lies open against the wall. He is lifting something out of it, a glass bottle tipped with a long, silvered needle. The bottle’s contents pool at its base, black and oozing.
Pain explodes in my arm. I am on the floor again, in the cage of my body, and something is buried in my wrist. White fingers are pressing, pressing a vile serum into my veins, and I see it wriggling below my skin like dark snakes, crawling into me.
A wretched burning sickness rises in my chest. Images flash before my eyes, nightmarish concoctions, empty faces and roiling skies, snippets of sound and color—