Page 98 of A Treachery of Swans

“Oh,” Aimé manages, his voice cracking, his eyes already pooling with tears. “Oh,Marie.”

Behind me, I can hear Damien shouting for the guardsmen to get to the Château, to fetch a physician, but I know it is too late. It is far, far too late.

It hits me with violent certainty. “This was my fault,” I whisper. “She came to save me, I should have known better, I should have told her not to come back, why didn’t Itell herthat—” I grab Aimé’s lapels, shaking him, and he endures it with a pitying look, brushing tears from his eyes.

I shove him away and turn back to Marie, running my fingers along her cheek. “Why did you have to come back for me?” I whisper. “Why did youalwayscome back for me?”

“Because I love you,” Marie says weakly.

It’s just like her, to break such devastating news in the most logical, matter-of-fact manner. But the words might as well be a dagger, because they embed themselves ruthlessly in my heart.

“What?”I burst out. “You fool, why—why would you do that?”

Marie laughs weakly, another ribbon of blood dribbling from her lips. “I’m not certain.” Then she seems to gather her strength, and she pushes herself up from the ground, soil sticking to her hair and smeared across her cheek. I grab her before she can fall back down again, pull her against me, carefully avoiding the dagger.

Marie’s eyes flutter closed, then open again, their usual beautiful silver clouded over with pain. “I’m not certain,” she says again, gazing at me. “Perhaps it’s because you are headstrong, and obnoxious, and conniving. Perhaps it’s because I like the way you laugh, too loud and sharp and free, like you don’t care who hears. Perhaps it’s because when I’m with you, I feel like I’m stretching my wings afteryears of being caged. I don’t know the true reason.” She smiles, her chest hitching painfully. “Isn’t that ironic?Thisis the puzzle I can’t solve.”

“That’s why you have to stay alive,” I plead, frantic. “We’ll solve it together. We’ll learn to navigate thistogether.”

“I wish we could,” Marie says, swallowing painfully. Her breathing is dreadfully shallow, her fingers cold when they brush my cheek, trying to collect the tears there. “But I fear I—I haven’t the time.”

“Marie,please—”

But her eyes are already closed again, her chest barely rising.

“Marie!” I say desperately, shaking her cruelly, trying to bring awareness into her freezing body. But there comes no reply. “Marie, open your eyes, damn you—”

Through a haze of red-hot anger, I can barely make out Damien crouching beside Aimé, reaching gently for Marie’s wrist and seeking out her pulse. Whatever he finds, it makes him draw in a rattling, harsh breath. He meets Aimé’s eyes and shakes his head, and I watch as Aimé crumples against my brother, sobbing.

“No!” I snarl, because the pain is unbearable; the pain is no longer one dagger but a thousand, and I am pierced over and over again. “No, no, she can’t be dead, don’t lie to me!”

Damien reaches for me, but I slap his arm away.

“Get away from me!” I say, because all I can feel is anger, because this is not how a story should end, because the heroes are not supposed to be the ones who die, because I don’t want to be alone again, because because because—

Because I never told her that I love her too.

I let loose a terrible growl, all my frustration and panic escaping through my teeth. I pull Marie closer against myself, tilt my head up to the sky. “Morgane!” I scream. “Morgane, I know you’re there!” I flex my fingers, imagining magic pooling between them, and I’msurprised to see them glow briefly gold.So it is back,I think numbly, and somehow the thought is cruelly punishing, because magic may be back, but Marie is dead, and I don’t know any spells that can change that.

“Morgane!” I shout again, my voice carrying across the lake’s placid waters. “I freed you, and now you owe me a debt! Come back and pay it!”

Nothing happens. No answer comes. I drop my eyes, my chest heaving. The world suddenly feels like it is tightening, compressing, grasping at me and the body in my arms.

I press my forehead into Marie’s pale curls and sob in defeat.

I cry, and the world fades out around me, silent but for the distant call of a waterbird, the sloshing of the lake against the dock, the whispering of wind over Marie’s limp wings. I cry, my shoulders seizing, my world crumbling. I cry, whispering incoherent pleas against the forehead of the girl I might have loved.

Little owl.My head jerks up at the grating, familiar voice.

Around me, the lakeside is suddenly empty. No sign of Damien, or Aimé, or the guardsmen, or the dead tarasques—there is only bristling grass and withered weeds, and a woman standing over me, beatific and impossible.

Morgane appears just as she did in the lake, though she has done me the mercy of shrinking to a regular human’s height. Her skin is cracked stone, aged and water-worn—there are pond weeds wrapped around her arms and the bones of a fish tangled in her hair. Her peeled face appears even more garish in the daylight, the gold skull beneath dull and scratched. Her eyes, too, are stone, and a ring of golden spines haloes her head, more ominous than divine.

I hear I owe you a debt.The goddess purses her lips, as though the idea leaves a sour taste in her mouth.What is it that you would ask of me?

I lower Marie’s body against my lap, gently brushing muddied hair out of her face. “I saved your life by freeing you from the Couronne. Now save hers.” I rest my hands on Marie’s chest, as though I might force it to move again.

Morgane’s response comes slow and measured.That is not within my domain, I’m afraid.

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