“We cannot do this,” she muttered, following her mistress from the tent. Her face and shoulders twitched in agitation. “Not the children.”

La Voisin turned without warning and slapped her roundly across the cheek. “We do what is necessary. Do not forget your place, Nicholina. You wanted a cure for death, and I gave you one. My benevolence extends only so far. You will follow me, or I will revoke my gift. Is that what you want?”

Nicholina thrashed in humiliation and hurt, tearing us from the memory. You see? My voice echoed cruelly even to my own ears. But we couldn’t continue this way forever. The time had come for one of us to end—and one of us would end. I would die before I returned to the surface with Nicholina. She doesn’t love you. She isn’t a sister or mother or family at all. You mean nothing to her. Give up, and go peacefully. You have nothing to fear in death, Nicholina. Mathieu will—

She lashed out viciously then, pulling me along the coldest current of all.

Glittering masks.

A cavernous open space.

And—and Ansel.

My stomach bottomed out at her intent. My nails bit into the skin of her arm. No longer to harm her, but to escape. Every fiber in my being recoiled from the memory, but it didn’t matter. I couldn’t stop it.

And I would drown, after all.

She alighted, catlike, at the bottom of the amphitheater, and I landed sprawled at her feet. Dazed, I scrambled away before she could touch me, before she could force my gaze to the group at the center of the primitive stage. But I couldn’t look at them. I couldn’t spend these last precious moments staring at myself, at Coco or Beau, even at Reid—at the hideous relief on all our faces. We’d thought we’d won. We’d thought Claud had swooped in to save us, that we’d eluded Coco’s prophecy, that we’d defeated my mother at last.

We’d thought so many things.

Morgane inched toward the back tunnel, where Ansel stood near. Too near. His beautiful face contorted with concentration as he looked from her to Claud to me.

He’d looked to me, and I hadn’t seen it.

I bolted toward him now.

Rationally, I knew this memory would play out regardless of my presence, my interference. My feet, however, weren’t rational. My heart wasn’t either. Both carried me forward with foolish urgency as Morgane began to applaud. Skidding to a stop in front of him, I looked around wildly for anything I might use to shield him, to protect him. My eyes landed on the fallen knife. I bent to snatch it up, triumphant, but my fingers passed through the hilt, billowing into smoke before re-forming.