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

“No.” She lifted her chin stubbornly before wrenching her foot free. More rocks skittered from the path and tumbled into the sea below. “We need my carriage.”

“Your father’s carriage,” Coco muttered. She kept one hand on the sheer cliff face to her left—the other clenched tightly around La Petite Larme—and edged past. Beau followed carefully, picking his way through the uneven terrain as the path narrowed and spiraled upward. At the back of the group, I kept my own hand fisted in the fabric of Lou’s cloak.

I needn’t have bothered. She moved with the grace of a cat, never slipping, never stumbling. Each step light and nimble.

Color rose high on Célie’s cheeks as she tried to maintain our pace. Her breathing grew labored. When she stumbled again, I leaned around Lou and murmured, “Beau was right, Célie. You can wait in the chapel while we deal with the cauchemar. We’ll return for you before we leave.”

“I am not,” she seethed, skirt and hair whipping wildly in the wind, “waiting in the chapel.”

Sweeping past Célie, Lou patted her on the head. “Of course you aren’t, kitten.” Then she cast a sidelong look down her right shoulder, to where the sea crashed below. “You needn’t be worried, anyway. Kittens have nine lives.” Her teeth flashed. “Don’t they?”

My hand tightened on her cloak, and I tugged her backward, bending low to her ear. “Stop it.”

“Stop what, darling?” She craned her neck to look at me. Eyes wide. Innocent. Her lashes fluttered. “I’m encouraging her.”

“You’re terrifying her.”

She reached back to trace my lips with her pointer finger. “Perhaps you don’t give her enough credit.”

With that, she twisted from my grip and strode past Célie without another look. We watched her go with varying degrees of alarm. When she vanished around the bend after Coco and Beau, Célie’s shoulders relaxed infinitesimally. She took a deep breath. “She still doesn’t like me. I thought she might after . . .”

“Do you like her?”

A second too late, she wrinkled her nose. “Of course not.”

I jerked my chin to indicate we should continue. “Then there isn’t a problem.”

She said nothing for a long moment. “But . . . why doesn’t she like me?”

“Careful.” I moved to steady her when she tripped, but she jerked away, overcompensating and falling hard against the cliff. I fought an eye roll. “She knows we have history. Plus”—I cleared my throat pointedly—“she heard you call her a whore.”

Now she whipped around to face me. “She what?”

I shrugged and kept walking. “At the Saint Nicolas Day celebrations, she overheard our . . . discussion. I think she took it well, all things considered. She could’ve murdered us on the spot.”

“She . . . she heard me . . . ?” Eyes widening with palpable distress, she lifted a hand to her lips. “Oh, no. Oh, no no no.”

I couldn’t resist this time. My eyes rolled to the heavens. “I’m sure she’s been called worse.”

“She’s a witch,” Célie hissed, hand dropping to clutch her chest. “She could—she could curse me, or, or—”

“Or I could.” The smile that carved my lips felt harder than usual. Like it’d been hewn from granite. Even after Lou had risked life and limb to save her in the catacombs, Célie still considered her an enemy. Of course she did. “Why did you follow us, Célie, if you disdain us so?” At her expression, I shook my head with a self-deprecating laugh. A brittle one. Hers wasn’t an unprecedented reaction. If Coco hadn’t set the tunnels ablaze, would the denizens of La Mascarade des Crânes have returned for us? Would they have brought fire of their own? Yes, they would’ve, and I couldn’t blame them. I’d have once done the same. “Forget it.”

“No, Reid, wait, I—I didn’t mean—” Though she didn’t touch me, something in her voice made me pause. Made me turn. “Jean Luc told me what happened. He told me . . . about you. I am so sorry.”

“I’m not.”

Her brows lifted, puckered. “You’re not?”

“I’m not.”

When I didn’t elaborate, her frown deepened. She blinked rapidly. “Oh. Of . . . of course. I—” Blowing air from her cheeks, she planted an abrupt hand on her hip, and her eyes sparked again with that unfamiliar temper. “Well, I’m not either. Sorry, that is. That you’re different. That I’m different. I’m not sorry at all.”

Though she’d spoken in frankness rather than spite, her words still should’ve hurt. They didn’t. Instead, the nervous energy thrumming just beneath my skin seemed to settle, replaced by peculiar warmth. Perhaps peace. Perhaps . . . closure? She had Jean Luc now, and I had Lou. Everything between us had changed. And that—that was okay. That was good.

When I smiled this time, it was genuine. “We’re friends, Célie. We’ll always be friends.”

“Well then.” She sniffed, straightening and fighting her own smile. “As your friend, it is my duty to inform you that your hair is in dire need of a cut and that your coat is missing two buttons. Also, you have a hickey on your throat.” When my hand shot upward to the tender skin near my pulse, she laughed and strode around me, pert nose in the air. “You should cover it for propriety’s sake.”