“Lilac,” Henri growled.
She ignored him and grabbed the drawstring corner of the bag, heart pounding. Knowing Garin, if any of this was true, it was probably a sword or relic of some kind. Surely it couldn’t be worse than Kestrel’s unopened letter awaiting her upstairs, tucked deep into her drawer.
Henri moved for the desk, but Lilac was quicker. She snatched it away from him.
“It’s mine.” There was no reason—none Henri or anyone else knew of—that she should feel so possessive over the unknown item. She reddened. “He said it was for me.”
“But if this is truly a gift from the vampires…” He passed a hand over his face as if he couldn’t believe what he was saying. “I must ensure it is not meant to harm you.”
Armand, whose hysterical demeanor had calmed into sudden relief, abruptly tried to get up. His eyes bulged when his friend took the bag from her. “N-no. It must be her. It must be Lilac.”
“I won’t look,” Henri said quietly, doing his best to ignore the shouts of his friend. “We’ll do it together.”
In her absence, Sinclair had told everyone she’d run off with the vampires by choice. Did Henri believe any of it? Or was he just grateful she’d been returned alive and mostly unscathed?
Lilac exhaled sharply. “Fine.”
Henri shifted closer, his hands on the lip of the bag. She nodded at him, then he tugged it open and tipped it out over the desk.
Something limp slid out, landing with aplop.
Her heart nearly stopped.
At first she couldn’t tell what it was. For a second, she wondered if Garin had given her a large parsnip, but then her vision focused on the glinting materials that adorned one pale end and the nub of rot and filth at the other.
The stench made her gag immediately. “It’s—oh my?—”
It was an arm. A bruised forearm, chopped clean at the elbow.
She stumbled backward and nearly fell over Henri, who was already bent at the hip, vomiting. The councilmen had scuttled into the far corner of the room, one of them fumbling over what appeared to be his rosary. Madame Kemble was wide-eyed and entranced by the limb, not seeming as jarred as the others. Her face twisted in a mixture of disbelief and disgust as she made her way to the desk.
Armand had turned white as a ghost and was moaning loudly into a handkerchief one of the guards had pressed against his mouth. He was shaking violently again; suddenly he lurched away from the guards and his hands slowly raised—on their own accord.
“What’s happening?” Armand shrieked. An invisible force lifted him as the guards retreated in panic, stumbling over each other.
The duke suddenly quieted, his groans reduced to whimpering as his shoulders shifted and the guards at his side began backing away. He was supporting himself, kneeling.
Everyone was distracted by the limb on the desk and the putrid aroma lifting from it. No one, and certainly not the spooked guards, anticipated the duke reaching into his shirt. Only Lilac seemed to register the rusted blade he pulled out.
Armand looked around the room one last time before he pointed the blade inward, on himself.
She choked out in anguish when he muttered something under his breath—a prayer, a last plea—before he looked up at her, eyes filled with terror, and cried, “Save me, Your Maj—” before cutting himself short, sinking the blade halfway into his own chest.
2
The surrounding guards lowered their drawn blades as the duke slumped over, the life still fading from his twisted face when he hit the floor and rolled, the hilt of the smallsword sticking out of him.
They stood, listening, watching him suffocate on his own blood. It trickled from his mouth, some soaking the front of his shirt. Eventually the wretched sound of his rasping breath faded, and there was a brief moment where it felt like a breeze swept through the closed room, a sigh of relief that the magic had departed.
John, who’d been still documenting the scene to her left, exchanged glances with her; at the look on her face his eyes widened, and he set the quill and paper down. It hung off the edge of the desk, his scratched scrawl spanning at least half a meter.
Sweeping the strands of her escaping hair off her cheeks, Lilac extended an arm and put her hand out. It eerily mirrored the hand on the table, whose jewel-adorned fingers curled daintily inward.
“Give it to me.”
“B-but is court still in session, Your Majesty?”
“It is clearly over.” She flexed her palm and he handed it to her, then scuttled away from the arm as if he’d been so immersed in jotting downevery detail that he was noticing it for the first time. She grabbed it and marched to the top of the stairs. No one protested when she chucked the length of it into the roaring fireplace, where it was engulfed in flames.
