Chapter 203: Road Trip
MARGAUX
I woke to the sound of his breathing.
Slow and even beneath my cheek, his chest rising and falling with the steady rhythm of someone who had finally returned from wherever pain had carried him and surrendered completely to sleep. I lay still for a moment, registering the weight of his arm across my back, the warmth of his body, the cool breath of the garden air that had drifted through the open windows during the night.
Then I looked at his face.
The left side of it.
For the past week, every time I looked at him, my eyes had gone there first. The scars had become a landscape I could not help but map, ridges and pale seams carved into skin that had once been whole. Now that landscape was disappearing. The roughness had softened. The angry lines that had probably belonged to him for years had faded until they looked less like wounds and more like memories.
He looked younger.
Not because the years had vanished from him, but because his face no longer carried the constant tension of something it had been forced to endure for far too long.
I brushed a strand of hair away from his forehead.
He did not wake.
I leaned down and kissed him, soft enough that it barely disturbed the moment. He shifted slightly, his brow smoothing for an instant, but never opened his eyes. Carefully, I slipped out from beneath his arm and padded toward the bathroom.
The shower helped.
I stayed beneath the water longer than I needed to, letting the heat unknot muscles I had not realized were still braced from yesterday. By the time I stepped out and wrapped a towel around myself, the fog had begun to soften the mirror.
I picked up my brush.
"Prim," I said quietly, watching my reflection. "Are you around?"
The shape that materialized behind me was not what I expected.
It wasn’t even truly a shape.
Just a shifting mass, neither solid nor transparent, as though someone had taken the idea of a person and forgotten how to finish drawing it. Nothing about it resembled the sharp, expressive apparition I had spent the better part of a day speaking to.
I turned.
"Is this a new look you’re trying?" I asked. "Because I have concerns."
The blob quivered.
Not aimlessly, but with the restless, unfinished motions of someone trying to form words with ’ghost’ muscles that no longer obeyed them.
I reached toward it.
My fingers passed through nothing colder than the surrounding air.
"Did something happen?"
The blob pulsed.
The chill that settled in my chest arrived a heartbeat before the thought itself.
The bathroom door opened.
Étienne leaned against the frame, his hair flattened from sleep, studying me with the wary expression of someone who had woken expecting the ordinary sounds of morning and found the silence waiting a little too perfectly.
"What is going on with you?"
I looked back at my reflection and smiled.
"Nothing," I said. "Just getting my head together before I leave."
He watched me for another second.
"Margaux..."
"I’m fine."
"The bond says otherwise." He folded his arms. "What is actually happening?"
"I genuinely don’t know what to expect today," I admitted, even though it was a half-lie. That was not what truly bothered me. "I have a lot of questions, and I’m hoping some of them finally get answered. That’s all."
He held my gaze through the mirror, measuring the spaces between my words as much as the words themselves.
"It’ll be fine," he said eventually. "Whatever she knows, she’ll tell you. The healer said she’d be happy to see you."
"I know."
He crossed the room and kissed me properly this time, slow enough that I almost forgot I had to leave soon.
When he pulled away, I wrinkled my nose.
"Your breath is terrible."
He looked personally wounded.
"I literally just woke up."
"The observation stands."
"I shall remedy this grave injustice immediately," he said with all the solemn dignity of a man determined to defend his honor with toothpaste.
I laughed and left him to it.
Prim drifted after me as I walked into the bedroom.
She never moved ahead of me or lagged behind, remaining beside me with the eerie precision of a shadow that had decided it belonged to someone else.
I looked back to the bathroom when I reached the middle of the bedroom, and Étienne reached the door, winked at me, and shut it.
I went to a drawer and saw shirts that were my size. Prim probably did it while she had been alive, and that made me swallow bile for a hot second.
I picked one and started to wear it. I did not speak until the sound of the shower came out from the bathroom.
"What happened to you?" I then asked quietly over the sound of the shower. "Talk to me somehow."
She pulsed.
Blue bled into gold, then into colors that refused to settle, each one dissolving into the next before I could decide whether it meant anything.
I stopped buttoning my shirt.
"Can you understand me? If you can do that, I need you to glow blue. If you cannot, glow... I don’t know... Gold. Though, you wouldn’t be able to answer me at all if you cannot understand me."
My ramblings would have gone on if she didn’t glow blue.
A small spark of relief loosened something inside me when I saw that.
"Can you speak?"
The color gold followed.
I nodded slowly.
"Oh... Okay."
I thought for a moment.
"Was this your choice? Not being able to speak?"
The blob turned gold again.
I exhaled and thought about how to structure this.
"Is this an intentional choice? Not being able to speak?"
The gold did not leave, which gave me the answer I needed.
"Were you attacked?"
Blue slowly swallowed the gold.
My fingers froze over the next button.
"Did Séverine do this?"
The color of the blob she was turned back gold.
"Okay... Someone else?"
Blue overtook the gold.
I studied her.
Every useful question I could think of depended on knowing something I didn’t know.
"Was it... something already inside the estate? Were you attacked in Valcourt?"
She erupted into a rapid cascade of colors, blue folding into gold, violet flashing between them so quickly they blurred together.
I’d spent enough time with her now to recognize that pattern.
It meant it’s more complicated than that.
"All right," I said quietly. "It doesn’t matter right now."
I finished fastening the last button.
"We’re still going. We’ll figure this out once we get there. Maybe she can even help you."
Prim flashed blue and gold in quick, impatient bursts, the supernatural equivalent of someone vigorously shaking their head.
I was strangely grateful she couldn’t elaborate.
I walked to the bathroom door.
"I’m heading out," I called. "Can I steal one minute before we leave?"
"One minute," he answered.
It took less than that.
He emerged half dressed, still tugging his shirt into place, and walked with me to the infirmary.
The head healer stood beside a large leather bag, packing it with the calm efficiency of someone who had repeated the same routine so many times that every movement happened before conscious thought.
"You’re bringing supplies," Étienne observed.
"Herbs," the healer replied. "A few prepared compounds. My sister runs short of certain things from time to time since she runs a human wellness clinic and I prefer not to arrive empty-handed."
He fastened one compartment before moving to the next.
"And of course, the spares are for contingencies."
"What kind of contingencies?" I asked.
"The sensible kind. Who knows what could happen while we are out there?"
He offered nothing further.
"Does she know we’re coming now?"
"I spoke to her last night." He assured.
A quiet smile crossed his face, though it seemed directed more toward the bag than either of us.
"She was delighted. More than delighted, actually. I suspect she’s been waiting for someone like you for a very long time."
Étienne looked at me. "I could still come."
"You should stay with Alpha Dorian."
His brow lifted. "What do you know that I don’t?"
"Nothing specific. I just think the conversation you’ve both been avoiding is finally ready to happen."
He seemed to pause when I said that. "And what does that mean?"
"Theodore gave him a message before he ascended. I think today will be the first time the two of you sit across from one another without his ghost standing between you. He’ll finally see you for who you are instead of who you remind him of or the shadow he’s always wanted you to fill up."
He considered that in silence.
The infirmary door then opened.
Lysander stepped inside with the unmistakable look of someone who had been hurrying for long enough that he was trying very hard to pretend he hadn’t. His jacket sat crooked across one shoulder, and a faint flush colored his face.
"I am so sorry," he said. "I could’ve sworn I left earlier. These corridors are somehow longer than I remember."
"You’re not late," I assured him. "We’re still here."
He glanced between the healer and me.
"Are we ready?"
The healer closed the final buckle on his bag and straightened.
"We are."
The four of us left together.
Two sentinels slipped into formation behind us without a word.
The car waited at the foot of the steps, its engine already humming.
I settled into the back seat and looked through the window toward the estate.
Étienne remained where we’d left him, hands tucked into his pockets, watching us from the top of the steps.
He raised one hand.
I lifted mine in return.
The car rolled forward.
I watched him shrink in the rear window, becoming smaller with every turn of the wheels until the drive curved through the trees and the estate swallowed him from sight.