Lou studied Manon’s face wistfully for a moment—regretfully—before rising to her feet. “You’re wrong. There are very few choices in life that can’t be unmade, and the time has come for you to make another one. I won’t restrain or otherwise harm you. Go. Tell Morgane you saw me if you must, but don’t try to stop us. We’re leaving.”

Manon didn’t move.

Lou stalked to the furniture without another word—then hesitated. She glanced over her shoulder. Instead of Manon, however, her eyes found mine, and she spoke in a murmur. “You’ve stalled long enough, Reid. Climb up. I promise you won’t fall.”

I swallowed hard. Somehow, she knew my chest had tightened and my vision had narrowed. She knew my palms had started to sweat. She knew I’d hesitated beside Manon not to protect the group from her wrath, but to prolong the inevitable. To think of some way—any way—out of this room except the window. And that meant she knew my weakness, my vulnerability. Anger blazed through the thick paralysis of my thoughts, spurring me toward the furniture.

“Why did you get to keep yours?” Manon whispered behind us.

Sadness clouded Lou’s face as she gazed back at me. “I didn’t.”

One by one, we squeezed through the window onto the roof. My head pounded. My heart raced. Twice on the furniture, my foot had slipped, and I’d nearly crashed to the floor. Though Lou had maintained a steady stream of encouragement, I longed to wring her neck. This rooftop could’ve been a steeple, a needle, so pitched was its slope.

“I will kill you for this,” I promised her.

Crouching low, she peered over the eave to where the others scaled rock with their knives. Their limbs trembled with effort. With strain. “I look forward to it, believe me.” She slipped her own knives from her boots. “Until then, do you think you can reach that turret?”

I followed the direction of her knife. Directly below us, at the base of the tower, a spire jutted from the side of the castle. It looked likely to collapse at any moment. “This is madness.”

“You go first. I’ll follow.”

Peeling each finger from the shingles—they’d become my lifelines—I scooted down the slope. Lou crab walked beside me. “That’s it.” She nodded with excessive cheer, her eyes too bright. Her smile too wide. She either worried more than she said, or she enjoyed this more than she should. Both were unacceptable.

When I inched over the eave, my foot slipped a third time.

A rush of wind.

A sickening, weightless sensation.

And a hand.

Her hand.