Page 86 of A Treachery of Swans

“Odile, what’s happening?”

That’s when I realize who it is that’s standing beside me, his hands extended hopelessly, his eyes wide and earnest—and oh, I’m going tokill him.

“You.” I whirl on Damien, wiping my mouth, my chest hot. “What are you doing here?” I reach into my pockets for Buttons and come up empty-handed, my panic only amplifying as I realize I’m defenseless. “How did I get here?”

My chest heaves. My vision spins. I don’t know who I’m angriest at—Morgane, Damien, myself, or the fact that I have just drowned in my own dreams.

Distantly I recognize my surroundings—this is the uppermost room of the Théâtre, beneath the cupola. In the middle of the floor is the hole through which the Théâtre’s chandelier can be pulled up. It feels almost manipulative that Damien has brought me here of all places, to a spot I remember so fondly.

Damien stands swiftly before me. He looks uncharacteristically disheveled—his black hair is mussed and unruly, there are bags under his eyes, and he’s gone unshaved for at least two days now. He’s still wearing his guard’s uniform, cape and all, but even that is grimy, the edges frayed.

He holds his hands up slowly, as though to surrender. “I’m not going to hurt you. Mademoiselle d’Auvigny brought you here. She’s been helping me keep you safe.”

“Where is she now?” I demand. I remember the haze of my rescue. The feeling of white wings wrapping around me. The feeling offlying.“Where is Marie?”

“She’s gone to gather information. She’ll be back soon.” Damien makes a placating gesture. “Please, Odile, I can explain everything.”

“You don’t need to,” I snap. “You explained enough when you betrayed me to the Regent and got me arrested, you absolute asshole—”

“I know,” Damien interrupts. “What I did was stupid. I waswrong. I didn’t—I’d spent days fermenting in anger and doubt. All I knew was this: The night after you arrived at the palace with some sort of covert mission, I found the King disemboweled by the lake. Then I was seized and blamed and thrown in a dungeon and told I would be executed. What was I supposed to think? Especially after you came to see me with Aimé, seemingly for no purpose other than to gloat.”

“Gloa—? I was trying to help him find the killer, you dunce.”

“I couldn’ttell.I hadn’t seen you in five years. I wasn’t sure who you were anymore.” He looks away. “Before I knew it I was being transferred to the city prisons, to a tiny, crowded cell, where I rotted in uncertainty. Until Aimé showed up, saying my name had been cleared, because the Queen had been killed by the same sorcier that killed his father, and he thought I might know how to find her, and I—”

“You thought it was me,” I say, dismayed.

He runs a hand across his face. “You were acting so cryptic!”

“Right, so you thought to yourself, oh, my sister is surely transforming into a horrifying beast and going around ripping out people’s organs. Averylogical conclusion, of course.” I give him a scathing smile. “But you’ve always assumed the worst of me, haven’t you?”

“Dilou…”

“Don’t call me that,” I growl. Now that I’m properly awake, I become slowly aware of the aches of my body—the throbbing at the back of my skull, the protests of my wounded knees where they’re bent beneath me. I look down to see that they’ve been bandaged. The previous day returns to me in a blur—Regnault turning the Duke of Marsonne into a statue, my attempt at stealing the Couronne, and the disaster that followed. The reminder only fuels my anguish.

“Don’t pretend you’ve changed your mind about me,” I snarl at Damien. “You made it clear when you left five years ago.”

“Mademoiselle…” A new voice joins in hesitantly. I whirl to meet the wide, soft eyes of Aimé-Victor Augier, who has been sitting behind me all along, watching everything unfold with nervous worry. His golden hair tumbles loose around his shoulders, and he’s wrapped in a blanket I recognize distinctly as having once belonged to Damien. He’s still wearing his white clothes from the wedding, but there isn’t a claw or tusk in sight.

In normal circumstances, I might have been relieved to see the Dauphin. But I’m still rattled from the nightmare, shaken by my father’s brutality, and all I can remember is how he’d spoken about me to Marie right before the wedding.

I am acutely aware that both Aimé and Damien were responsible for putting me behind bars, and Regnault, the only person I thought Icouldtrust, turned out to be the greatest liar of all. I feel like a caged animal, surrounded by hunters on all sides. So I turn on Aimé-Victor Augier, hackles raised. “Bold of you to interject, considering everything that’s happened,” I say. “Last time I saw you, you were busy slaughtering innocents, committing all the crimes you locked me up for.”

Aimé pales immediately, and my brother shouts, “Odile! How could yousaythat?”

“N-no,” Aimé says painfully, “she’s right. And the truth is I… I simply didn’t know. I had no memory of when I—when… Anne hid it from me my whole life. She told me that the gaps in my memory were… episodes. Because of… nerves. And that night in her study, all I remembered was seeing you transform. Next thing I knew Anne was dead, and everyone was blaming a sorcier. So I thought—”

“Yes, I know what you thought,” I interrupt darkly, something inside me twisting and shattering. “You made thatperfectlyclear.”

Aimé recoils as if stung. I have to shove my teeth into my lower lip to keep a sob from breaking free.

“Dil—Odile,” my brother tries cautiously. “You know that isn’t fair. You aren’t exactly the victim in this situation. What happened to you was a mistake, but you…”You brought it upon yourself.He doesn’t say the words, but he might as well have screamed them.

I march up to him, ignoring the protests of my bruised knees. “You know very well none of this would have happened if you hadn’t abandoned me five years ago. If you hadn’t left me, just like our parents did.”

Damien blanches. “You—youtoldme to leave!”

“Yes, because you said you didn’t want to be around someone as cruel and vindictive as me!” I shout. Damien looks stricken. Before he can say another word, I turn and rush for the door.

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