Gods & Monsters (Serpent & Dove #3) by Shelby Mahurin

This is going to get very ugly, very quickly.

“Yes.” Not for the first time, Estelle’s anguished face skipped through my mind’s eye. Her limp body. A boot on her cheek and a fist in her hair. Other faces quickly followed, other whispers. Viera Beauchêne escaped after they tried to burn her and her wife—acid this time instead of flame. An experiment. And— “I believe His Majesty has an affinity for rats.”

“I’ll do what I can to protect you, but . . .”

“If this is to work, your performance must be believable,” Reid finished for him, voice hard. “All of ours must.”

Jean Luc nodded. “It’s going to hurt.”

“Pain is fleeting.” I didn’t know where the words came from, but they held true. “And if we slip up—even for a moment—the pain will be much worse. The stake will be much worse.” Heavy silence descended as I remembered the torment of flames licking up my limbs, of blisters rupturing my skin, of heat peeling muscle from bone. I shuddered slightly. “Trust me.”

When we grew close enough to see individual buildings—to see people bustling like ants between them—Jean Luc tossed us the rope. He didn’t look at any of us. “It’s time.”

“Do it tightly,” I told Reid, who wrapped it around my ankles a moment later. Crouched before me, he kept his touch gentle, too gentle, and seemed loath to tighten the binds. His thumb traced a small vein in my foot up to my ankle, where it disappeared. His thumb kept traveling, however. He stared at it in concentration.

“You’ll be feigning incapacitation,” he muttered at last. “I don’t need to cripple you.”

“It needs to be convincing.”

“No one will be looking at your ankles.”

“Reid.” When I sat forward to cup his cheek, he reluctantly met my gaze, and his composure slipped. Just a little. He leaned into my palm, unable to help himself, as emotion finally stirred in his eyes. It looked like dread. “If this goes poorly, I won’t be the only one to burn. Your mother will. You will too. And that—that is unacceptable.”

His throat bobbed. “It won’t happen.”

“You’re right. It won’t. Now”—I offered a halfhearted smirk—“can you bind me like a Chasseur binds a witch, or shall I have Coco do it?”

Reid stared at me for a single heartbeat before glancing over his shoulder. Behind us, Coco helped Beau with his own binds while Célie fluttered around them, trying and failing to help. He lowered his voice. “Tell me how to remember.”

A pulse of silence—of shock—both mine and his.

“What?” I asked dubiously, sure I’d misheard him amidst the commotion. The wind swept past in a gale as we approached shore, and voices rose from the docks. Seagulls cried overhead in the bright morning sunshine. And my heart—it nearly pounded from my chest. “Did you say you want to—?”

“Remember, yes.” Again, he looked to Coco and the others, shifting himself slightly to block their view. “You said—earlier, you said only magic could help me. My magic. You said I could reverse the pattern. What does that mean?”

“It means”—I forced a deep breath, nodding to him, to myself, to God or the Goddess or anyone who might’ve been playing such a heinous joke on me—“it means that you—”

“It means nothing for now,” Coco said, dropping beside us abruptly. She squeezed my hand before turning to Reid. “Please, think about this. We don’t need Morgane to remember Lou while we’re all in the city. We have enough working against us without adding vengeful mother to the list.”

“But—” I said desperately.

“When you remembered Bas, it almost killed you both.” Coco grasped both of my hands now, her expression earnest. Perhaps just as desperate as I was. “We’re mere moments away from Cesarine’s shore, and we have a plan in place to rescue Madame Labelle. Afterward, if this is what you both choose, I’ll help him remember any way I can. You know I will. Right now, however, we need to get you both bound, or all seven of us will see the stake before nightfall.”

All seven of us.

Shit.

Swallowing hard, I kept nodding even as Reid scowled and began tying his own ankles. This was bigger than us now. It’d always been bigger than us. “There will be an after, Lou,” Coco whispered fiercely, turning to bind my hands behind my back. She did the same for Reid. “We’ll get through this together—all of us—and we’ll start anew. We’ll carve out that piece of paradise. Together,” she repeated firmly. “I promise.”

Together.

I let my body go limp against the floorboards as she slipped belowdecks, as voices called out to Jean Luc in recognition, as our small boat slipped into port and men leapt aboard to help him tie it down. Reid pressed his head atop mine. The only show of comfort he could give me. Heightened sensation rose like needles along my skin as my magic fought to rise, to protect him, to protect my home, but I tamped it down. It was too late to turn back now. We’d entered the belly of the beast.





All Seven of Us


Lou

Mostly everything went according to plan.

It took a moment for anyone to notice us there, lifeless and forgotten on the floor, but when a hook-nosed gentleman nearly trod on Reid’s foot, he yelped in surprise—then yelped louder in fear, recognition dawning over his swarthy features. “Is that—that isn’t—?”