I refocus on Nicholina, on the darkness, before the melancholy swallows me whole. It does little good to dwell on such things, yet debilitating cold creeps through the mist, my subconscious, at another unwelcome thought: how could they have noticed? Even before La Voisin and Nicholina betrayed us, I wasn’t myself. I still feel those splintered edges, those fissures in my spirit I broke willingly.

One bites deeper than the rest. An open wound.

I shy away from it instinctively, though it pulses with whiskey-colored eyes and curling lashes and soft, lyrical laughter. It aches with a lanky arm around my shoulders, a warm hand in my own. It throbs with empathy, with a feigned accent and a stolen bottle of wine, with shy blushes and not-quite birthdays. It burns with the sort of loyalty that no longer exists in this world.

He didn’t make it to seventeen.

Ansel sacrificed everything, cracked me wide open, and I allowed Nicholina to slither into that crack. That’s how I repaid him—by losing myself entirely. Self-loathing churns, black and noxious, in the pit of my consciousness. He deserved better. He deserved more.

I would give it to him. As God or the Goddess or just the dark of my fucking soul as witness, I would give it to him. I would ensure he didn’t die in vain. In response, an unfamiliar voice startles me by murmuring, Oh, bravo.

The inky mist contracts with my fright, but I push against it viciously, searching for the new presence. This isn’t Nicholina. This certainly isn’t me. And that means . . . someone else is here.

Who are you? I ask with feigned bravado. Mother’s tit, how many people—or spirits, or entities, or whatever—can possibly fit within a single body? What do you want?

You needn’t be frightened. Another voice this time. As unfamiliar as the last. We cannot hurt you.

We are you.

Or rather, a third adds, we are her.

That’s not an answer, I snap. Tell me who you are.

A brief pause.

Then a fourth voice finally says, We don’t remember.

A fifth now. Soon you won’t either.

If I had bones, their words would’ve chilled them to the marrow. How . . . how many of you are there? I ask quietly. Can none of you remember your name?

Our name is Legion, the voices reply in unison, not missing a beat. For we are many.

Holy hell. Definitely more than five voices. More like fifty. Shit, shit, shit. Vaguely, I remember the verse they recited from a passage in the Archbishop’s Bible, the one he loaned me in the basement of Chasseur Tower. The man who spoke it had been possessed by demons. But these—these aren’t demons, are they? Is Nicholina possessed by demons?