I couldn’t help it. I stepped forward, eyes rapt on Lou’s face.

“A skeleton key?” she asked.

“It’s a warded lock. Those notches you see are meant for false protrusions, which prevent the mechanism from opening. A skeleton key has none. Form the key in your mind—long and narrow, with none but two true protrusions on the end. Shape them to fit the last notches, and push.”

Coco shifted from foot to foot, her expression bewildered. “I don’t understand. Why would Morgane have created simple keys and locks when she has magic?”

“Who the hell cares?” Beau hovered anxiously by the stairs, keeping watch. “It’s an enchanted lock for an enchanted door in an enchanted fucking castle. None of this makes sense. Just hurry up, will you? I think I heard something.”

Lou gritted her teeth, pale and trembling now. “If one of you had tried to open this door, you wouldn’t have seen a lock. It’s meant for La Dame des Sorcières alone, but it’s also—it’s the previous matriarchs’ magic testing mine. I can feel their challenge. Their treasures lie within, and I must—earn—entry.” Her head twitched abruptly with each word, and her eyes flew open, snapping to the doorknob. It responded with a simple click. Heavy silence descended as we stared at it.

Lifting a single finger to the wood, Lou pushed tentatively.

The door swung inward.

We stepped into a room of gold—or at least, it appeared so at first glance. In reality, the vaulted ceiling and octagonal walls had been erected from plates of mercury glass. They reflected the golden couronnes. Hundreds of them. Thousands of them. The coins spilled forth from every corner, stacked precariously into piles, forming towers of their own. Narrow footpaths wove between them as roads and alleys in a colossal, glittering city.

“This . . .” Beau craned his neck to study the highest crest in the ceiling. Built at the top of a tower, the room stretched taller than wide—cylindrical—like we’d walked into a music box. A basin of fire sat atop a pedestal in the center of the chamber. No logs fed the flames. They emitted no smoke. I inhaled deeply. Though magic coated everything, it tasted almost stale here. Like a thick blanket of dust. “Is not what I expected,” he finished at last.

Lou examined a set of rusted chains near the door, the links thicker than her fists. A dried substance flaked from the metal. Brown, almost black. Blood. “What did you expect?”

He picked up what looked like an ancient human skull. “A dusty cupboard full of creepy dolls and old furniture?”

“It’s a treasury, Beau, not an attic.” She pointed to a heap of gold across the path. A wooden figurine sat atop a stained settee. Beside it lay a golden comb and a rose-handled mirror. “Though there is a doll there. Morgane once said it was cursed.”