My mice hiss and whisper their uncertainty. She knows nothing, I croon to them. Hush now, mouses. “The dead should not remember, beware the night they dream. For in their chest is memory—”

The huntsman jerks us forward viciously, and we stumble. A crow startles from a nearby fir.

It has three eyes.

You know what’s coming, Nicholina. It isn’t too late to stop it. You can still relinquish my body, ally with us before Morgane and Josephine betray you. Because they will betray you. It’s only a matter of time. Me, Reid, Coco, Beau—we could protect—

Bitterness pulses through us at the promise. Promises, promises, empty promises. They taste black, acrimonious, and we shall choke her with them. We shall fill her throat with eyes, eyes, eyes until she cannot breathe beneath their weight. Her consciousness does not flinch under our pressure. We push harder. We restrict and contract and compress until at last she recoils, hardening into a small, hopeless blemish. A blight in our nest. You think you are clever, we hiss, but we are cleverer. Oh yes. We shall kill them all—your precious family—and you shall forget each one.

NO—

But her panic means nothing. It tastes empty, like her promise. She is already dead.

Her friends will join her soon.

A Murder of Crows

Reid

Nicholina stopped walking abruptly. Her face twitched and spasmed as she muttered what sounded like nasty over and over again. Her mouth twisted around the word. “What’s nasty?” I asked suspiciously, tugging her forward. She yielded a single step. Her eyes fixed on a distant tree at the edge of the forest. A fir. “What are you looking at?”

“Ignore her.” Coco glanced at us over her shoulder, huddling deeper in her cloak. Along the coast, the wind blustered stronger than in La Fôret des Yeux. Colder. “The sooner we reach a village, the sooner we’ll find black pearls for Le Cœur Brisé.”

“Pearls.” Beau scoffed and kicked a rock into the sea. “What a ridiculous payment.”

“Le Cœur guards L’Eau Mélancolique.” Coco shrugged. “The waters are dangerous. They’re powerful. Without payment, no one broaches their shores.”

Beside Thierry, Célie wrinkled her nose as I forced Nicholina another step. Two. “And you think we’ll find these . . . black pearls in the next village?”

“Perhaps not the next one.” Coco marched back to prod Nicholina along. She’d seemed to grow roots. She still stared at the fir tree, tilting her head in contemplation. I looked closer, the hair on my neck rising. A solitary crow perched there. “But there are a handful of fishing villages between here and L’Eau Mélancolique.”

Worse still—the white dog had reappeared, stalking us with those eerie, silent eyes. With a panicked curse, Beau kicked another rock at him, and he disappeared in a plume of white smoke.

“Aren’t black pearls . . . rare?” Célie asked delicately.