Page 113 of The House Saphir
She knew it could be a trap. She knew it could be an illusion.
But she set down her makeshift lantern and drove forward anyway. As her fingers seized the first ring, the scream of grating iron echoed through the chamber, so shrill that Mallory ducked, pressing her hands to her ears.
Fitcher and Constantino cried out. The gate had come alive and bent around them, trapping them against the stone walls. Mallory threw herself at the bars, yanking and pulling. She had visions of the gate squeezing her companions, crushing their bones, bars cutting into flesh—but the gate had solidified once more.
“It’s all right,” said Fitcher. “He needs to kill you, not us.”
“That isn’t a comfort.”
“Mal… lory…”
Mallory spun around, heart in her throat.
Julie’s eyes were open. Her skin was ashen. A drop of blood clung to one side of her mouth.
“Help…”
“Great gods,” Mallory whispered, horrified at the pain etched onto the girl’s features. Gripping her knife, she made quick work of cutting the ropes that bound Julie’s wrists to the hook, ready to catch her body when she collapsed.
But when Julie fell—her body slipped right through Mallory, landing on the stone floor. Her form no longer that of a living person, but once again with the vague haziness of a ghost.
The other wives remained motionless, suspended in time.
The shadows at the edges of the room began to shift, drawing inward. Mallory knelt beside Julie, who was crooning in pain, wishing she could do something to comfort the girl, but she couldn’t even lay a hand upon her shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, overcome with sudden, maddening guilt. This was her fault. “I’m so sorry.”
The shadows converged into an inky figure that rose into a slender column, slowly taking form. Mallory was not surprised when Monsieur Le Bleu stood before her again, though she noted that he was more unkempt than before. His blue-tinted beard had grown wiry and long, his hair unruly, deep wrinkles carving themselves into the planes of his once-handsome face.
Mallory stood to face him.
“Oh, fabulous,” Constantino muttered. “He’s back again, isn’t he?”
“Do you still think to plot against me?” Bastien said. “Or have you begun to realize how futile that would be?”
Mallory drew on every ounce of courage as she faced him. “What are you going to do?” She scoffed. “You might be able to crush me under rubble or incinerate me with your creepy sorcerer fire, but if you want a proper sacrifice, you need to drive that sword through my heart. And you can’t do that. Not without Armand.”
“Oh, I don’t have to kill you, Mallory Fontaine.” His grin widened. “You are going to do that for me.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
“Sacrifice myself?” She let out a peal of anxious laughter. “You really are mad.”
“Once you are dead,” he went on, as if she hadn’t spoken, “the pieces will be in place. I had hoped you’d make this easy for me, and you never fail to disappoint.”
She ground her teeth. He could threaten all he liked, but Bastien had not yet made his fifth sacrifice, and he did not have Gabrielle’s ring.
He hadn’t won, not yet. She searched for a way out. There was that other door, iron and ominous, but Bastien was blocking her path, and she couldn’t leave Fitcher and Constantino down here.
Could she?
A voice told her that she could. She would leave them at the first chance she had to save herself. She barely knew these two men. She owed them nothing. She would choose survival, as she always had.
And yet… she wasn’t sure if it was true.
Julie grimaced and curled into a ball, hands pressed over the wound in her chest. She let out a sob, as if she were dying all over again.
The sound frayed the ends of Mallory’s nerves.
