Though Coco reached for me in horror, Nicholina pounced, giggling when Coco sprayed blood across her face—then punching her fist into Coco’s rib cage. No. Through it. Straight toward her heart. Choking on a gasp, Coco clawed at Nicholina’s wrist, her eyes wide and unseeing.

When Nicholina squeezed, she fell frighteningly still.

“Nicholina.” Josephine’s deep voice cut through the night. “Enough.”

Nicholina glanced back at her mistress, laughter fading. They held gazes for a second too long before—reluctantly—Nicholina withdrew her hand from Coco’s chest cavity. The latter’s eyes rolled, and she collapsed, unconscious, to the ground. “Nasty,” Nicholina muttered.

Josephine didn’t react. She only stared at me. No longer impassive, she lifted her chin with the chilling words, “Bring me her heart.”

If Nicholina hesitated—if a shadow crossed her expression—the movement was near indiscernible. I could do nothing but watch, delirious with pain, as she took a single step in my direction. Two. Three. My heart pounded savagely, pumping more of Josephine’s blood through my veins. More poison. I wouldn’t close my eyes. She would see her reflection in their depths. She would see this monster she’d become, this perversion of the person she’d once been: her own features, her son’s features, twisted into something sick and wrong. Four steps now. Coco’s blood still dripped from her hand. It scorched the skin there.

She ignored it.

On the fifth step, however, her eyes flicked to the Doleur. It wound behind us though the city, the river where the Archbishop had almost drowned me, where Reid and I had spoken our vows. Josephine followed her gaze, snarling at something I couldn’t see. I strained to hear, but the dull roar of the water revealed nothing. “Do it,” Josephine said quickly. “Do it now.”

Though Nicholina moved with renewed urgency, her entire body shuddered with the next step. Her foot lurched. Slipping, she crashed to her knees in a graceless movement. Confusion warped her ghastly face. Confusion and—and panic. Gritting her teeth, she struggled to stand as her muscles spasmed. As they rioted against her.

I stared at her now, hardly daring to hope.

“Naughty, nasty.” Each word burst from her in a sharp exhale, as if she suffered terrible pain. Her entire body bowed. Still she crawled forward, her nails tearing through earth. “Tricky—little—mice—”

“Useless.” Lip curling with disgust, Josephine strode toward me, kicking Nicholina’s ribs as she went. Hard. “I will do it myself.”

Nicholina’s head lifted with a frighteningly blank expression.