He eased away and it took a long moment before I felt I could remember how to work the door handle. “I’ll get out here. You definitely can’t be on campus right now with all the extra hunters and Huntsmen. On the plus side, I’ll be perfectly safe.”

“Text me anyway when you get inside.”

“Okay. And I’ll be at the farm at sunset for when Solange finally wakes up.”

“Don’t you have class?” he asked, his hair tousled from my touch. “And detention?”

I snorted. “Yeah, like that’s going to stop me.”

Chapter 22

Solange

“I was in love,” Viola said, looking melancholy and defenseless. “Surely I have a right to be happy. Madame Veronique stole that from me.” A single tear trembled on her lower lash before falling down her cheek. “I didn’t even know what she’d done to my beloved Tristan until I was already dead, until there was no hope for us at all.”

I’d feel a lot sorrier for her if she wasn’t such a psychotic bitch.

“What about all those people at Bornebow Hall?” I asked.

“That was . . . an accident.” Her regret seemed genuine, even if it weighed a lot less than her selfish need for Constantine. Her lower lip trembled. “I didn’t know what I was. I woke up covered in blood.”

That part I could almost forgive. If she’d had no idea she was changing, how would she know how to leash the hunger? I was still struggling and I’d had centuries of practice essentially encoded in my DNA. Mind you, I’d been dealing with both of our needs without even realizing it.

“I saw what you did,” I replied steadily. “Even before Veronique was involved.”

“We could be great together,” she said. “We could be queen. Not even our grandmother could stop us.”

“I have no intention of being stuck with you forever,” I told her, the light flaring through my silver cord. It felt like tiny electrical shocks pinging through my belly, like someone was yanking it from the other end. “And how many times do I have to say it? I don’t want to be freaking queen of the freaking vampires.”

“Forget the crown then,” she said, proving that it was secondary to her plans. We’d been right in thinking the crown was just a symbol, something that focused her will. That’s all magic is, in the end. Focused will. I remember Isabeau telling me that once. “I only want Tristan. We deserve a chance to be together.”

“Not more than Kieran and I deserve to be together. Not more than my family and my friends deserve their own happiness.”

Her maiden-in-distress mask crumpled like poorly fired clay. “She took him from me,” she hissed. Bats circled, squeaking. She flicked her fingers, sending them dive-bombing my way. I held up my palm and they stopped as if hitting an invisible wall. If I had to carry her sins, I’d damn well take my compensation with her other gifts. She snarled. “She killed me, did she tell you that?”

“Madame Veronique didn’t tell me anything about you,” I murmured, watching blood pour out of the tree behind her. It trickled through the grass toward her feet, staining the hem of her kirtle. I remembered her walking through the tournament camp looking very similar. “She was ashamed of you and erased your name from our family tree.”

I knew it would enrage her. I’d spent long enough walking through her memories and trapped in her head to know which buttons to push. And Dad always says, if you act in anger you lose the battle.

“I only did what she made me do.”

“My dad has a whole responsibility speech you should hear,” I said. “Only I really don’t want to be here for a second longer.”

“Agreed.” Her hands curled like claws as she closed them around a sword hilt she plucked from one of her knights. The blade was starting to rust, shedding copper-colored flakes. She swung at me and I leaped back, easily avoiding the strike. She wasn’t very good. I parried the next stab and spun around, elbowing her in the face. She howled and swung blindly.

And then I realized she wasn’t trying to run me through.

She was trying to sever the silver cord that linked me to my body, to cut off my only way home.

I blocked another lunge and pushed at her arm so she was forced to continue the movement, angling away from me. I drove the sword hilt into the back of her neck and she stumbled, shrieking. The flowers in her hair were wilting and the fine embroidery was unraveling off her sleeves. Only the pendant stayed polished and perfect, the painted happy couple mocking me with every sway.

I waited for her to spin back around to face me and as it lifted in the air, I swung at it. The sharp blade sliced through the chain. Before the pendant landed, our swords clashed again, viciously and brutally. Bits of iron and rust exploded.

The pendant fell into the grass between us.

For a moment everything faded to shades of gray, as if the pendant had leeched all the color out of the world and kept them for itself. The painted dress, Constantine’s violet eyes, Viola’s red lips.

Her gaze shot to mine, showing real fear for the first time.

We both lunged for it simultaneously. She pulled up abruptly, clotheslining me even as I dove for the pendant. The force of her arm across my throat had me gagging and seeing stars. As I fell, I flipped in midair, slamming the soles of my feet into her chest. We crashed to the ground so hard it trembled under us. Stones toppled from the wall as moss and ivy began to grow between them, pulling apart the mortar. Viola bared her teeth at me as she tried to push up on her elbows, glancing around for help that wasn’t coming. Isabeau had demolished her backup.