“I’m not leaving,” Anouk said.
“I’m turning you away for your own good. No one finds her crux so soon before the ceremony. Most never find it. Come wintertide, the Coals will burn your flesh from your soul.”
“I can . . . I can help you,” Anouk offered desperately. She considered the cobwebs underneath the long tables. “I can clean.”
“We already have Heida and Lise to clean.” The Duke motioned to the pair of sisters and began to walk toward the door, clearly ready to throw her back into the cold.
She thought fast. The Cottage was a bleak place, the kind of place where good meals were probably in short supply. The chunks of bread the girls were eating looked rough as sandpaper. Those bowls of soup didn’t seem likely to win any culinary prizes either. “I can cook too.”
The Duke stopped. The girls at both tables sat up straighter. The girl with glasses looked with distaste at her bowl of soup.
“French cuisine, if you like,” Anouk added quickly. “Or German. I don’t mind slaughtering the animals if I have to. If you have chickens, I could make a cassoulet.”
Duke Karolinge and the girls exchanged a long look. Someone’s stomach growled. Anouk felt an inward flush of success. Nothing won over doubters like the promise of a good meal. She felt the uncanny sensation of being watched and found the storm-cloud girl, still on all fours, staring at her with pointed intensity. Anouk touched her own cheeks and forehead, wondering if she had dirt on her face. She did. But even after she wiped it off, the girl still stared.
“Can you bake . . . strudel?” the Duke inquired, raising one woolly eyebrow. Before she could answer, a dark shadow swooped through the open window and soared across the grand hall on wide-stretched wings. Anouk gasped and ducked.
What was it? A crow? An owl?
The bird circled and flew toward them, then landed gracefully on the Duke’s left shoulder. Anouk straightened, her heart still pounding. A falcon. Smaller than she’d thought at first, with a beautiful array of feathers ranging from tan to gray. It wore a bell around its neck.
“Ah, Saint. You’ve returned.”
The Duke stroked the bird’s chest with one finger and studied Anouk for a long time. He no longer seemed concerned about strudel.
“Girls die here,” he said at last. “You will most likely die here if you choose to stay and undergo the Coal Baths. Many girls think they want magic, only to falter before the Baths’ blue flames. They return to the Pretty World and to lesser ambitions.”
“I’ve never faltered.”
He grunted. “These acolytes are no strangers to sacrifice. They’ve left behind what they love most. Their families. Their futures. The comforts of the Pretty World. Are you also willing to make a sacrifice?”
She didn’t blink. “Yes.”
What hadn’t she already sacrificed? She’d lost the closest thing she had to a mother. She’d left the only home she’d ever known. The people she considered her family were now locked in cages.
He nodded in slow approval. “Then I’ll have to take it. It isn’t fair, I’m afraid, for one acolyte to have greater abilities than the others.”
“I don’t understand. Take what?”
His thick fingers twisted around his falcon’s bell, and it rang with a strangely pitched sound that struck fear in her heart. “Your magic.”
Chapter 8
A sacrifice.
Before Anouk could speak, Duke Karolinge twisted his thick wrist with a flourish and something sharp tugged in her throat. She fell to her knees. It felt as though he’d cast hooks into the space between her vocal cords and was now teasing something out, like separating magic from flesh. She clutched at her neck. A coughing fit seized her so painfully that she worried she’d tear the lining of her esophagus. She gagged. It suddenly felt like she’d swallowed a swarm of gnats. She thrust her fingers deep into her mouth and groaned at a sudden sharp sting. She leaned over and coughed until the stinging swarm rose up her throat and into her mouth. She spat it out. It was a chaotic ball of green lights that floated on the air like dandelion fluff straight to the Duke.
He caged his fingers around the ball of energy—her magic—and whispered it between the metal leaves of the golden bell around his falcon’s neck. “Now you may stay, if that is still your intention.”
Anouk pressed her hands to her throat. Her tongue felt raw, as though she’d vomited up salt and thorns. “Wait . . . Armur ver . . .”
She stopped abruptly. Something had changed. Ever since the first time she’d cast a spell, she’d felt a warming sparkly fizz with each word of the Selentium Vox, like sips of champagne. But now the fizzy warmth was gone. Her throat felt frigid, like it held a clutch of coals doused with ice water. There was no magic behind her words anymore.
“Wait,” she said again. “I need my magic.” The taste in her mouth was dry and ashen. Repulsed, she wiped her lips frantically on her sleeve. “Give it back. You have no idea what I went through to get that magic. It’s a part of me. You can’t just take it!” She stood but then tottered and fell; she felt like she’d just stepped from a long boat trip back onto solid land.
“And yet I did.” The Duke calmly turned to the table of girls. “Esme, thaw out our new acolyte, bandage her frostbite, and then give her a bed—the corner room upstairs with the other new girl.”
Esme, the British girl who’d first addressed her, hitched up her muslin dress and climbed over the bench, muttering a curse as she fought with the stiff fabric as though she were more used to tulle skirts and silk blouses.
“And Lise,” the Duke said to the smaller redhead, “take the dog below and lock him in the cellar.”
“No!” Anouk shoved herself to her feet. Her cry echoed throughout the great hall. The sound crashed back on her, ringing in her ears. If only she had her magic, she’d cast a whisper to stop this. “No,” she repeated fiercely. Her hands were balled at her sides, but she forced herself to take a deep breath. “I can do without magic,” she said, though the thought pained her. “I can try, if I have no other choice. But I can’t do without that dog.”
Her voice broke. She forced her chin high and gave him an icy stare.
No one would say that his face softened, exactly. Like all the Royals, he’d been alive for centuries, had seen kingdoms rise and fall, had seen greater tragedies than a girl separated from her dog. But he took off his glasses, rubbed them on his shirt, put them back on, and considered her afresh.
“The Cottage,” he said, “is no place for loose creatures. The forest that surrounds us is ancient and filled with capricious spirits. There are things beyond that door that wouldn’t hesitate to make a meal of your dog, should he wander down the wrong hall. We lost three goats last week. The only thing we found were their livers.”
Anouk thought of Jak and his sharp teeth. Would he eat a live goat? A dog?
At her uncertain silence, the Duke signaled again to Lise, who untied the rope belt knotted around her waist and started toward Little Beau. Anouk panicked. Was Beau’s freedom worth begging for? She had sworn that she’d never trust any Royal. Not Rennar, not the Parisian Court counts and countesses, and not a self-exiled duke either.