For three hundred years she’d had to sit by and hope humans used the resolve she gave them. Her reward was pain and suffering and chaos. But if they failed, she was left hungry—as helpless as a starving street urchin, begging for a crust of bread. That was what the humans had called the offspring of the Nixen—urchins—as if they knew and laughed at the power they wielded over these demi-demons. And yet, here she was, bearing in her hands the power of death, to deliver as she saw fit. She smiled. Perhaps she would stay a little longer than Marie-Madeline intended.

Hearing her footsteps, Marie-Madeline’s father turned. “You didn’t need to bring that yourself.”

She curtseyed. “It is a daughter’s duty, and privilege, to serve her father.”

He beamed. “And it is a father’s joy to have such a dutiful daughter. You see now that I was right about Gaudin Sainte-Croix. You belong with your husband, and with your father.”

She bowed her head. “It was a passing fancy, one that shames me all the more for the shame it brought on my family.”

“We will speak no more of it,” he said, patting her arm. “Let us enjoy our holiday together.”

“First, you should enjoy your soup, Father. Before it grows cold.”

For the next four days, d’Aubrey suffered the agonies of a slow death. She stayed at his side, genuinely doing all she could for him, knowing it wouldn’t save him, using the excuse to linger and drink in his suffering. At last, he lay in her arms, a hairsbreadth from death, and he used his last words to thank her for everything she’d done.

“It was my pleasure,” she said, smiling as she closed his eyes.

It took six years for the Nix to grow bored of Marie-Madeline, and exhaust the possibilities of her silly little life. Time to move on, to find fresh opportunities…but not before she had wrung the last bit of merriment from this one.

First, she’d killed Sainte-Croix. Nothing personal in that. He’d been a fine lover and a useful partner, but she had no more need of him, except to let him play his part in the last act of the drama. He’d died in his laboratory, an apparent victim of his own poison, his glass mask having slipped off at an inopportune moment.