Poison Priestess by Lana Popovic (some good books to read TXT) 📗

hands into my lap, chafing them briskly as I’ve done so many times before. Out of the two of us, I have always run much hotter, though her hands have never been quite this icy or frail.

“Thanks,” she says, stiff as a stranger, eyeing me askance. “It is damnably cold. Normally I would not mind bidding all that summer stench and scorch adieu. But this year, well … this winter promises to be rather worse than most.”

“Why?” I ask, squeezing her hands. “What has you so run down?”

“The vagaries of life, ma belle,” she retorts with a wry twist of her lips. “Or have you quite forgotten how pressing those can be?”

“It must be more than that,” I say quietly, giving her a level look. “The Marie Bosse I know is more than equal to such predicaments.”

“The Marie Bosse you know has never been nearly penniless, nor hunted by the king’s men,” she spits, turning to stare blackly out the window. “Have you truly become so sheltered that you have heard nothing of the recent police raids on the cité?”

“Raids?” I reply blankly. “Beyond the Palais Royal, why would the king even concern himself with Île de la cité?”

“It is not the Île on the whole, but the cité itself that offends him,” she replies, withdrawing her hands from mine. She tilts her temple against the window, fingernails tapping a nervous tattoo against the glass. “The cité’s welter of magicians and sorcerers, that is. We criminals and so-called charlatans who deal in something so vulgar as magic. His Majesty means to stamp us out.”

I lean back into the cushions, awash in sudden understanding. From what I’ve heard from his courtiers, the Sun King prizes logic and reason over anything that smacks of the arcane. The new Royal Academy of Sciences enjoys his august patronage, and he has equipped its observatory with a telescope so powerful it can surveil the stars themselves. Rumor even has it that when one of the royal menagerie’s elephants died, Louis not only donated it to the academy for dissection but insisted on being present for the procedure, so fascinated was he with the physicians’ expertise.

Of course a king who so esteems science and disdains superstition would wish to grind the cité’s havens under his heel. Even as his own maîtresse-en-titre keeps a sorceress and his courtiers flock to my Black Mass. I know from the marquise that the king only indulges his beloved mistress’s darker games to keep her content, even as her tastes run against his own grain. But what it amounts to, in the end, is the same disparity that always defines the gaping schism between the poor and the rich.

As ever, the rules imposed upon the lowborn do not apply to the noblesse.

“Quelle pagaille,” I murmur, shaking my head. “What a terrible mess.”

“It is much worse than a mess,” Marie responds bleakly. “Not only is he tossing us into Vincennes and the Conciergerie upon mere suspicion of wrongdoing, he is stealing our livelihood. We are mostly too busy evading his patrols to properly ply our trade. I’ve barely been able to see even my regulars, not when everything is so deuced uncertain.”

“Do you need money?” I ask, reaching for my coin purse. “I could—

” “No.” She cuts me off with a slicing gesture, her tone hardening. “Or rather, I do, but not from you, Catherine. Not when I no longer even know what we are to each other.”

I drop my eyes and roll my tongue along the inside of my cheek, burning with some ambiguous shame. I suppose I do not know what we are to each other, either. And I certainly do not know how I am to bridge this new rift between us, without sacrificing everything that I have gained.

As if she can sense my turmoil, her face turns a touch more gentle. With a wistful ghost of our old fondness, she leans into the space between us to tip a finger under my chin.

“Is this truly the life you wish, ma belle?” she asks softly. “Everything you’ve told me of the noblesse, their schemes and plots against each other … do you really want to build up your life so entwined with them, ever pandering to their endless treachery? I know you worry for Antoine, but he would find his own way even if the marquise demanded a return of her sum. Men like him, they always do, when their hides are on the line. You could still come back to the cité, if you wanted. You could come back to me.”

“Oh, Marie,” I whisper, tears leaping into my eyes even as I avert them, unable to withstand the intensity of her gaze. “You are my … the dearest friend I’ve ever known. But—”

“ ‘Friend,’ ” she echoes with a bitter shake of her head. “How long will you cling to this tired fiction? Why do I even bother to try, when you are so unwilling to admit how much more lies between us besides friendship?”

I take a deep breath, uncertain how to respond. “Perhaps you are right. Perhaps I am afraid. But even if we set us aside, it is not only concern for Antoine that keeps me here. Life with the marquise … it gives me room, Marie. Room to become someone I could never have been before. Someone strong. Someone free.”

She closes her eyes for a long moment, shaking her head slowly. “Can you not see how such a freedom will consume you, Catherine? If you can even call it that in the end?”

“But I am only doing what I must,” I argue. “Surely you of all people can understand as much, after all you’ve done to survive.”

She shakes her head ruefully, thumping the carriage’s roof to signal the coachman to stop.

“Except that I would never willingly rid myself of you, ma belle,” she says. “No matter the cost of keeping you. But that is you, is it not? By hook or by crook, ma belle