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

“Lou, you’re scaring me.” Coco’s sharp voice cut through my wonder, and unbidden, my eyes snapped open. She stood directly in front of me. In the brown of her irises, my skin reflected back at me, bright and burnished. Luminous. “What happened?”

“I—” The ache in my chest towed me forward through the trees. I couldn’t resist its pull. “I’m fine,” I called over my shoulder, chuckling at their wide eyes and parted mouths. Reid had drawn a knife from his bandolier. He regarded me with open suspicion. I couldn’t bring myself to care. “I can hide everyone. Follow me.”

Coco rushed after me. “How?”

I grinned at her. “White patterns.”

“Like the one at the blood camp?” Her hopeful expression fell. “The one that led you to Etienne?”

My smile slipped, and I shuddered to a halt, suddenly unsure. “Do you think it’s Morgane?”

“I think we should consider the possibility. Your patterns have never been white before, have they?”

“You’ve never been La Dame des Sorcières before either,” Beau pointed out. Though Coco and I both glared at him, it was too late. The damage had been done, and Reid’s menacing presence loomed behind me.

“You’re La Dame des Sorcières?”

With my newfound awareness, I could feel the weight of his footsteps. I could feel the snow and moss tamp beneath his boots. His presence was heavier than the others’, harder and stronger. Darker. I scoffed. “Barely.” Turning to Coco, trusting Beau and Célie and even Jean Luc to protect my back, I said, “It doesn’t feel like Morgane. It feels familiar, yes—almost familial—but it also feels like me. I . . . I think I trust it.”

She nodded once in understanding. But how could she? I hardly understood myself. Though I implicitly trusted the wholeness of this magic, the purity, I felt much like a rowboat at sea. The ache in my chest kept building, pulling me adrift. Dragging me beneath the current. “Then do it,” she said firmly. “Do it quickly.”

Closing my eyes, ignoring Reid’s vehement protest, I spread my awareness outward, farther and faster than before. There. A mile north, beneath the infamous bridge, a river crashed into the ocean. With the wave of my hand, the water solidified to ice, changing state of matter. The white pattern burst, and my friends and I dissolved into shadow.

With our first steps on the bridge, my body attempted to rematerialize, limbs accumulating and dispersing with violent shudders. Except it wasn’t my body at all. Gritting my teeth in concentration, I glanced down at my unfamiliar, disembodied hand. The Maiden’s hand.

“Shit.”

My whisper floated in the darkness as said hand dispersed to shadow once more. “What is it?” Coco asked sharply. I could just see her shadowed form beside Beau’s, though the finer details of their appearance—such as the expressions on their faces, the gleam in their eyes—had been lost to the enchantment. Now they simply appeared pieces of night darker than the rest. Human-shaped shadows. None would notice us unless they looked, and even then, the smoke obscured all traces of moonlight. We were near invisible.

“Nothing. I just—feel weird.” Though incorporeal, my head still swam at the magnitude of power before me. At the sheer breadth of it. How had my mother withstood this? How had it not crushed her? “It’s too much. It’s like I can’t breathe.”

“So don’t,” Reid offered.

If I’d had hands, I might’ve strangled him. Perhaps I still would’ve tried if I hadn’t looked up, past the gatehouse, to the empty expanse of mountain all around the Chateau. I blinked slowly, unable to believe my eyes. Where before a mighty forest had prospered, now only rocks and dirt greeted me. “Where are the trees?”

Someone bumped into me from behind. Jean Luc. “What do you mean?”

“The trees.” I gestured to the rocky incline above us, forgetting he couldn’t see me. “There used to be trees here. Trees everywhere. They covered this entire mountain face.”

“It’s true.” Reid’s heavy footsteps stopped beside me. “I remember.”

We all crept forward, slower and warier now. “Perhaps they chopped them down,” Beau said. “And recently. Look—no snow.”

I instantly disagreed. “They didn’t.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do.”

“There are no stumps,” Coco said, leaning forward. “See? The ground does look disturbed, though.”

“Perhaps Zenna scorched them all, then.” Beau pointed to the charred markings on the bridge, on the gatehouse ahead. Evidence of Zenna’s wrath. Still, the hair on my neck lifted. These trees hadn’t been burned. Of that, I was certain.

“They look like they just . . . uprooted and walked away.”

Reid made a low, disparaging sound at the back of his throat. I ignored him. Instead, I started for the gatehouse once more, focusing on the sound of my feet on the wood.

Whatever damage Zenna had caused with her attack, little evidence remained. The structural integrity of the Chateau remained intact, and even the facade bore little sign of fire. Magic was helpful that way. I supposed Morgane wouldn’t have liked the soot underfoot. We paused inside the crumbling entrance to listen. Though the air in the courtyard could chill bone, the temperature within felt warm and balmy, despite the overgrown ruins of the hall. And the castle—it came alive at night. Voices echoed from all around: beyond the grand stairwell, through the corridors, within the great hall. Two lovers swept past hand in hand, and soon after, a manservant bustled through with a tray of what smelled like custard tarts. A handful of witchlings passed us a moment later to make shapes in the snow outside. Though I recognized none of them, the familiarity of it all made me smile. Nothing had changed.