“If this is to work, your performance must be believable,” Reid finished for him, voice hard. “All of ours must.”

Jean Luc nodded. “It’s going to hurt.”

“Pain is fleeting.” I didn’t know where the words came from, but they held true. “And if we slip up—even for a moment—the pain will be much worse. The stake will be much worse.” Heavy silence descended as I remembered the torment of flames licking up my limbs, of blisters rupturing my skin, of heat peeling muscle from bone. I shuddered slightly. “Trust me.”

When we grew close enough to see individual buildings—to see people bustling like ants between them—Jean Luc tossed us the rope. He didn’t look at any of us. “It’s time.”

“Do it tightly,” I told Reid, who wrapped it around my ankles a moment later. Crouched before me, he kept his touch gentle, too gentle, and seemed loath to tighten the binds. His thumb traced a small vein in my foot up to my ankle, where it disappeared. His thumb kept traveling, however. He stared at it in concentration.

“You’ll be feigning incapacitation,” he muttered at last. “I don’t need to cripple you.”

“It needs to be convincing.”

“No one will be looking at your ankles.”

“Reid.” When I sat forward to cup his cheek, he reluctantly met my gaze, and his composure slipped. Just a little. He leaned into my palm, unable to help himself, as emotion finally stirred in his eyes. It looked like dread. “If this goes poorly, I won’t be the only one to burn. Your mother will. You will too. And that—that is unacceptable.”

His throat bobbed. “It won’t happen.”

“You’re right. It won’t. Now”—I offered a halfhearted smirk—“can you bind me like a Chasseur binds a witch, or shall I have Coco do it?”

Reid stared at me for a single heartbeat before glancing over his shoulder. Behind us, Coco helped Beau with his own binds while Célie fluttered around them, trying and failing to help. He lowered his voice. “Tell me how to remember.”

A pulse of silence—of shock—both mine and his.

“What?” I asked dubiously, sure I’d misheard him amidst the commotion. The wind swept past in a gale as we approached shore, and voices rose from the docks. Seagulls cried overhead in the bright morning sunshine. And my heart—it nearly pounded from my chest. “Did you say you want to—?”

“Remember, yes.” Again, he looked to Coco and the others, shifting himself slightly to block their view. “You said—earlier, you said only magic could help me. My magic. You said I could reverse the pattern. What does that mean?”

“It means”—I forced a deep breath, nodding to him, to myself, to God or the Goddess or anyone who might’ve been playing such a heinous joke on me—“it means that you—”