Except it wasn’t funny. It wasn’t funny at all.

Stumbling backward, she thrust Célie away with a noise of surprise and—and glanced down. I followed her gaze.

A quill lodged deep in her thigh, its syringe quivering from impact.

An injection.

I stared at it in shock. In relief. In horror. Each emotion flickered through me with wild abandon. A hundred others. Each passed too quickly to name. To feel. I could only stare, numb, as she slid to her knees in a smooth, fluid motion. As her hair rippled down her shoulders, less silver now than bloody scarlet. Eyes still rapt on the syringe, she slipped sideways. She didn’t move.

Cold metal touched my palm, and Célie’s voice drifted from afar. “Do you need me to do it?”

I felt myself shake my head. My fingers curled around the hilt of her dagger. Swallowing hard, I approached my mother’s limp body. When I brushed her hair from her face, her eyes rolled back to look at me. Pleading. I couldn’t help it. I pulled her across my lap. Her throat worked for several seconds before sound came out. “Daugh . . . ter . . .”

I memorized those emerald eyes. “Yes.”

Then I drew Célie’s blade across my mother’s throat.

It Ends in Hope

Lou

The first time I’d slept beside Reid, I’d dreamed of him.

More specifically, I’d dreamed of his book. La Vie Éphémère. He’d gifted it to me that day. His first secret. Later that night, after Madame Labelle had issued her warning—after I’d woken in a fit of tangled sheets and icy panic—I’d crawled next to him on the hard floor. His breathing had lulled me to sleep.

She is coming.

Fear of my mother had literally driven me into his arms.

The dream had crept over me slowly, like the wash of gray before dawn. As in the story, Emilie and Alexandre had lain side by side in her family’s tomb. Their cold fingers had touched forevermore. On the final page, their parents had wept for them, mourning the loss of life so young. They’d promised to set aside their blood feud, their prejudice, in the name of their children. It was of this scene I’d dreamed, except it hadn’t been Emilie’s and Alexandre’s bodies, but mine and Reid’s.

When I’d woken the next morning, unease had plagued me. I’d blamed it on the nightmare. On the memory of my mother.

Now, as I held her in my arms, I couldn’t help but remember that peaceful image of Emilie and Alexandre.

There was nothing peaceful about this.

Nothing easy.

Yet still Reid’s voice drifted back to me as he’d clutched La Vie Éphémère in hand . . .

It doesn’t end in death. It ends in hope.

Pan’s Patisserie

Reid