Chapter 185: Always, I Come
MARGAUX
I eased open the heavy door, its hinges sighing in the quiet, and Laurent stood on the threshold, backlit and unmoving, his gaze already searching my face for something unspoken.
"Let him go," I said, voice steady, not a plea, but a decision that left no room for debate.
Laurent’s eyes slid past my shoulder, landing on Chris, and a flicker—wariness, duty, the weight of history all braided together—crossed his features. "If he—"
"He won’t," I answered, holding his gaze, refusing to flinch. "I’m sure. It’s time they went home. Beaumont will already be thick with rumors—people counting absences, wondering aloud at what doesn’t fit."
Laurent slipped past me, his silence carrying a reluctant trust. It was one forged in shared risk, even if neither of us would admit it outright. He didn’t argue. He didn’t need to.
Shanelle materialized at my side, her presence sudden yet familiar, the kind of arrival that said she’d been waiting for the chance to intercept me.
"Are you ready to talk now?" she asked, her voice a quiet demand, more invitation than interrogation.
I guided her to the far end of the corridor, well clear of the doorway, out of earshot of the metallic clatter, the private negotiations of freedom being worked loose just beyond the wall.
"Of course," I replied, weaving calm into the words as if that would make it true.
She regarded me with that same unblinking concentration she’d worn since stepping onto Valcourt ground, the sort of scrutiny reserved for people who learned your lies before you did and who read the syllables you swallowed as fluently as those you spoke.
"Tell me you’re actually all right," she said, cutting through pleasantries and demanding the unvarnished version in place of the one shaped for people who only want the outline of truth.
"The real answer is complicated," I admitted. "But I am okay. I promise you that much."
"Something is clearly wrong in this pack." She said it without hedging, the way Shanelle said most things she had already made up her mind about. "Witch attacks. The way that old man spoke to you at dinner. The fact that I had to hand over a file to buy my own brother’s freedom." She shook her head. "And now I find Chris cuffed to a wall and you are wandering around this estate having conversations with apparently no one."
"About that," I said, letting the words settle between us. "Chris was under a spell. Or I believed he was. Séverine left a witch mark on him—a silence seal, too—which closed his mouth around secrets he couldn’t name."
She stared, sharp and incredulous. "What?"
"He’ll recover. Mostly. The silence seal is the less urgent problem. The mark, however... Well, that’s more persistent, and I’m trying to unravel it."
"How?" She shook her head before I could answer. "Witches are notoriously hard to find, Margo. You cannot put yourself at risk trying to undo some crazy shit that you do not understand, and you definitely cannot—" She stopped. Looked at me carefully. "What is the plan?"
"I am figuring that out," I said.
"That is not reassuring."
"It is the most honest thing I can offer you right now, and I am certain that is what you want. The truth."
She exhaled, a long and slightly exasperated sound that I recognized from years of her making exactly that sound in exactly that register whenever I did something she found simultaneously brave and deeply inadvisable.
"I still think you should come home with us," she said.
"I am fine here."
"The way you say that almost makes me believe it."
"Because it is true." I met her eyes. "I know this place looks like a disaster from the outside, and the last few days have genuinely been a lot. But I am not suffering here, Shanelle. I know that is what you are afraid of. I know that is probably what you will go back and tell my mother. But I need you to believe me when I say I am okay."
She was quiet for a moment, studying me.
"Your mother called me," she said. "She was panicked. Rambling, almost, which I have genuinely never heard from her before. Something about protecting you. I also sort of babbled a bit and mentioned the witch situation, which, in hindsight, was very dumb of me to do. But I think you need to know that."
It was a strange feeling. To hear or even believe that my mother gave a damn. But beggars could not be choosers.
"I will call her," I said, though the word call sat in my mouth with some bitter weight.
"She seemed genuinely scared, Margo. Like actually scared."
"I will call her," I said again, and I meant it this time in a way I had not meant it the first time.
Shanelle looked at me for one more moment. It felt like she was cataloging me. Whether to believe that I would keep my promise or something.
"Well... If you ever feel like you have had enough," she said, "I am here. Always. You call me, and I come. That has never changed and it never will."
"I know that," I said. "I have always known that."
She drew me into an embrace that lingered, her arms tightening until my ribs protested just enough for me to notice. I folded into her without thinking, my forehead settling against her shoulder as the familiar scent of her soap and the steady rise and fall of her breathing wrapped around me. For a few stolen seconds, the noise inside my head fell away.
When she pulled back, her eyes were slightly bright.
She blinked hard, and the shine in her eyes disappeared with it. When she lifted her gaze again, every loose thread had been tucked away, her composure restored so completely it was impossible to tell anything had nearly unraveled.
The door opened behind us, and both of us turned.