Chapter 217: Better Matters
ÉTIENNE
The word demon settled into my chest like a stone dropped into still water, and I felt the ripples of it spread out into every corner of what I thought I already knew.
Because it couldn’t be a coincidence. Laurent had messaged me not even an hour ago, warning me to be careful of a spirit he’d assumed was simply an unkind Valcourt ancestor that had once been haunting the library; which they inadvertently released, and now Vivianne stood in front of me shaking, saying the word demon like it belonged in the same conversation as my mate’s name.
I didn’t believe in coincidences that convenient.
Vivianne’s hands trembled as she pulled herself together enough to speak, her composure clearly fractured from everything that had already passed between us.
"I only just discovered it not too long ago," she said. "But the things she’s been saying, the things I feel like you must now know about her... how special she is... As odd as it all might sound..." She swallowed hard. "It’s because she’s a whisperer."
I said nothing, watching her carefully, the way she couldn’t quite meet my eyes when she said it.
"My s—" She stopped herself abruptly, the word catching somewhere in her throat before it fully formed, and I watched her visibly recalibrate, choosing different words to walk around whatever she’d almost let slip. She took a long breath. "I am like her. But I needed to protect her. I sealed her ability a long while back." Her voice dropped lower. "But for some reason, that seal has broken. Despite the pact I made with the spirit that bound it, which was supposed to last until her death."
I felt something cold slide down my spine at that, though I kept my face still.
"Part of the reason I am here," she continued, "is because I have been hearing about witch attacks in this territory and don’t tell me that it didn’t happen to protect yourself or this rotten pack. I heard it from Shanelle’s own mouth when she came here. It is not also lost on me that what is happening is a calculated attack. Someone or something is targeting her specifically."
"Where she left to, is to know more information about what she is," I said, my voice coming out sharper than I intended. "She called you before all of this started. Before Séverine’s marks, before the wraith, before any of it. I know she did, because I remember the days she tried to reach you and came away from those calls looking hollowed out." I stepped closer, letting every year of carefully cultivated patience slip for just a moment. "I knew you two were alike, in whatever way that means. I had overheard you talk about it before when I was a child... With my mother. But you didn’t give her the information that could have saved her life. Why did you lie to her?"
Vivianne flinched like I’d struck her. But I didn’t care. She was a horrid mother and it was even clearer now.
"Why would you come now," I pressed, "hoping to save her, when you couldn’t even be bothered to tell her the truth when it might have actually mattered? What kind of mother does that?"
She didn’t answer the question at all. She must have realized that nothing she was going to say or do was going to change my mind about her. So there was no point to it.
"So she really isn’t here," she said instead, her eyes darting toward the empty corridor behind me like Margaux might materialize out of thin air if she looked hard enough.
"No," I said. "Unlike you, I do try to be honest. She went out to meet a whisperer. And I hope to every goddess listening that she is fucking safe."
I reached for my phone before I’d fully finished the sentence, my fingers moving faster than my thoughts, and I dialed her number with the kind of urgency I usually reserved for actual emergencies rather than the low, simmering dread that had been building in my chest since Vivianne first said the word demon.
It rang three times.
Each ring stretched longer than the last, my jaw tightening with every second that passed without an answer, and I was already half convinced I’d need to send sentinels out along every road between here and that clinic when she finally picked up.
"Where are you?" I said, the words coming out faster and rougher than I meant them to.
"We are heading back to Valcourt," Margaux said, and the sound of her voice, steady, familiar and alive, loosened something tight in my chest even as everything else stayed coiled and ready to spring. "I heard my mother is there."
"Yes," I said. "Yes... she is."
I let my eyes drift to Vivianne as I said it, watching her face carefully. The way her whole body seemed to lean toward the phone like she could physically will herself closer to her daughter’s voice through sheer proximity.
"And how do you feel?" Margaux asked.
"Angry," I said honestly, because there wasn’t much point lying to her about that particular emotion, not when she knew me well enough to hear it in my voice regardless of what words I chose. I did not, however, want to frighten her with talk of demons over a phone call while she was still on the road, not when there was nothing either of us could do about it from this distance. "But it’s fine."
"Oh," she said, and something in the single syllable told me she suspected exactly what I was avoiding, that touch-and-go quality to her voice that meant she already had her own theories about why I sounded the way I did.
"I don’t want to kill her, by the way," I said, "if that’s what’s currently running through your head. She does anger me. If this had happened at any other point in my life, I might have seriously considered it." I glanced at Vivianne again, who had gone very still, clearly listening to every word she could catch from her side of the conversation despite pretending not to. "But I am exercising a truly heroic amount of restraint right now and I did mean that promise I made you in the garden."
Margaux let out a breath that might have been a laugh under different circumstances.
"Just get back," I said. "I’m sure you two have a great deal to discuss."
Vivianne’s voice came out in a whisper beside me, barely audible, desperate in a way that made something in my chest twist despite everything I’d just said to her.
"Can I talk to her?"
I ignored her completely.
"Can Laurent have the phone?" I asked instead.
There were better matters to attend to.