Chapter 151: Suffer not a witch
MARGAUX
"Arrest her," Céline said the moment the sentinels poured through the broken doorway, her voice snapping back into authority with a speed that would have been impressive under different circumstances. "She attacked me."
"Unbelievable." I squared my shoulders, meeting her gaze head-on. "He saw right through you, didn’t he?"
"Fuck you!" The composure she had maintained across every interaction since I arrived in this estate finally collapsed entirely, leaving something rawer underneath it. "You do not understand anything, you male-centered bitch."
The sentinels shared a fleeting glance, so quick it nearly slipped past me, but I caught the flicker of doubt.
Céline caught it too.
"I am acting Luna," she said, her voice sharpening into something that expected immediate compliance. "How dare any of you hesitate."
They moved.
I lifted a single finger, commanding the room’s attention.
"Let me give you the most male-centered argument available, then," I said, turning first to Céline and then slowly to the sentinels standing behind her. "I am Theodore’s mate. Céline may currently hold temporary authority in this estate and pack, but let us be honest with each other, and I am certain that word gets around. She will never hold it for long." I let that settle before continuing. "What is a leader without followers? I will tell you. A fucking vagabond. So before any of you lay a hand on me at this woman’s instruction, I suggest you consider carefully that she might be lying, and that when Theodore reclaims what belongs to him, he will not be merciful about who was simply following orders."
Every sentinel in the room went completely still.
Céline stared at me like I had grown a second head. "What the fuck?"
She turned back to face them too. "Why are you standing still? Get to it! Arrest her!"
"You know they will not," I told her.
"And why not?"
"The machine," I said, turning back to her. "The wheel. It just keeps turning. With no care because it cannot be stopped. That is why. Even you know it."
She laughed then, sudden and slightly unhinged, the sound bouncing off the walls of her own study. "We genuinely cannot escape it, can we? We still have to be bound to a man to have any voice at all."
"There is always a ceiling," I said. I gestured toward the sentinels. "They have it worse than either of us, actually. They suffer regardless of which Luna wins this particular argument, so they do what anyone rational does when caught between two painful options. They choose the softer pain." I looked at her directly. "That is all anyone ever does. Omegas do it every day. So do we. Your brother did too. This system does not discriminate about who it grinds down."
"You do not get it."
"I do," I said. "I think this started in good faith. Some genuine desire to beat the machine, to carve out space for yourself inside a structure that was never designed to accommodate you. But eventually the machine got into you too, covered you so thoroughly in it that all you had left was the hunger, and you had forgotten what you originally wanted it for."
Something shifted in her face.
She dropped to her knees, and for a moment it could have passed for true defeat, if I had not learned to spot the calculation flickering beneath her every move.
"You cannot tell him," she said. "Please. You do not understand what happens to me if my father finds out I was the one who pushed Theodore to the edge. I would be in hell."
"I would call that karma."
The begging died in her face like a candle going out. The mask dropped entirely, replaced by something colder and more familiar.
"You have courage now because things did not go the way I predicted," she said. "You did not suffer as thoroughly as I planned. But it changes nothing at the end of the day. He has already started his revenge work, gathering heads, and your family will eventually join that list." Her eyes held mine steadily. "You will have to choose. Their heads or his. I might suffer consequences from my father. But my father will not kill me. Can you say the same for your own people?"
"Coupled with the poisoning," I said, "I genuinely do not know how many options your father will feel generous about."
Her eyes widened.
"Get out!" She spun toward the sentinels, her voice cracking. "Everyone out, now!"
I studied her face as she barked the order, catching the undercurrent of fear and the quick math that the sentinels might piece things together if they lingered.
They filed out.
We stood alone amid the ruins of her study: shattered vase, torn forget-me-nots, and a silence thick with everything unsaid and broken.
"We could be allies," she said, her voice dropping to something quieter and more controlled.
"What stage of grief is this?" I asked.
"Listen to me, please..."
I thought about the threads I had seen wrapped around her hands at the dinner table. The inky black ones that connected her to everyone else and the stark gold one that connected her to me. It had been odd at the time, but I got it now, in some sense.
She was my mirror.
"You are a dangerous person," I said. "That thread was not a fluke. I understand that now."
She ignored everything that I had said and moved.
She lunged, swift and unflinching, her hands slicing toward my face with the resolve of someone finished with words.
Her finger bent backward before she reached me.
The snap was barely audible. The scream that tore out of her was anything but.
She dropped to the floor clutching her hand, her face white. "Why? Why is the world doing this to me?"
"That is not the world. That is your brother’s protection," I said. "And a reminder of the reason I am doing this the way he wanted, instead of the alternative he actually preferred." I looked down at her. "If consequences frighten you this badly, you are allowed to run. Though you should know wolves love a chase. And when meat is on the menu, they rarely stop early."
I left before she could twist the moment to her advantage again.
The corridor hit me with a rush of cooler air, and I moved fast, my mind already running ahead to where Étienne was likely to be, when someone stepped directly into my path, and I barely avoided a second collision in the same morning.
Shanelle.
"Margaux." Her eyes swept over me, taking in whatever state my face was in after the last twenty minutes. "I have been hearing things all morning. Are you alright? What is actually happening in this place?"
"I am fine." I kept moving, slowing only enough to stay beside her for a few steps. "We will talk properly later. Go keep Chris company in my room, please."
"What is he even doing in your—"
I pressed one finger briefly to my lips.
"Not the time, Elle." I met her eyes. "Just trust me and go."
She looked at me for one more second, then nodded.
I quickened my pace, nearly running as I reached the infirmary corridor. The thought Theodore had planted before he vanished pressed against my chest, urgent and desperate to be spoken to the right person.
Séverine was the witch.
It was madness. Utter, structural madness. Yet every fragment I had gathered over the past two days suddenly snapped together into a pattern that was both horrifying and inescapably clear.
I hit the infirmary door with my palm and pushed it open.
Étienne stood at the window, looking out at the estate grounds with his back to the room, and he turned the moment I came through the door, his eyes widening at whatever he saw on my face.
"What are you doing here?"
I opened my mouth.
Movement at the edge of my vision stopped the words before they reached my mouth. The head healer stepped out of one of the side rooms, bowing slightly when he saw me, and in the room behind him, visible for only a fraction of a second before it registered in my eyes and vanished entirely, was the familiar.
Blue eyes. The specific glow of them even in a lit room.
I pointed, my arm shooting out, my whole body gone cold.
"He was here," I said. "Right there. He was in that room."
Étienne crossed to me immediately. "Who?"
"The invisible man. The one from the corridor." I grabbed his arm. "He is not a witch, Étienne. He is a demon. A familiar, bound to a witch. Everything I have been seeing, the invisibility, the way he could affect things physically, it is because he is a familiar. A witch’s familiar."
Étienne looked at the head healer. Something passed between them.
"That means Prim was never the witch," I said. "She was framed. The witch is still somewhere in this estate right now."
"I know now that Prim is innocent," he said. "The healer found something in the DNA, and I have reached out to Laurent to call off the haunt and just ensure that the Omega is safe. But that means—"
"Where is Séverine?" I looked around the room. "Where is she?"
"She left. She said she was going back to her room. It is—"
"It is her." I looked him directly in the eyes, my voice coming out steadier than I felt. "Étienne. Séverine is the witch."