One of the dogs trotted up to the front door, licking its chops. “Baited the damn dogs off,” he muttered. “Blasted things wouldn’t know a threat if it bit them on the ass.”

“Keep her here.” I pulled on my boots and went out onto the step, illuminating the yard with brilliant light as I went. There was an ironbound chest sitting in the middle of the yard, but there was something odd about it. It looked bowed out, the wood splintered in places, almost as though something of great strength had been locked inside and had tried very hard to get out.

My heart beat faster as I made my way down the steps toward it.

“Tristan!” I glanced over my shoulder and saw that Louie had Cécile firmly by the shoulders. She looked so young standing there in a childish nightgown, her hair loose and mussed, eyes wide. Whatever was in the chest, I was quite sure I didn’t want her to see it.

I stopped a pace away. There was an iron lock holding the lid in place, and I wrenched it off with a squeal of metal. I did not want to look inside. Did not want to see. Because it was not a matter of what I would find. It was a matter of whom.

Drawing in a deep breath and ignoring the icy tightness in my gut, I reached forward, and with one hand, flipped back the lid.

Chapter 47

Cécile

The ground trembled and shook, the shutters rattling against the house. The fresh snow around Tristan melted into a muddy soup, spreading out in a circle away from him. The air was as warm as the height of summer, and water gushed off the house and barn in torrents.

“God in heaven,” my father whispered, letting go of me with one hand to steady himself.

Tristan fell to his knees next to the chest, holding someone against him. A woman dressed in grey, her long dark hair spilling over his arm. She wore a dark cloak I recognized because she’d been wearing it the last time I saw her.

“Let me go.” I choked the words out.

“Cécile, no.” My father’s fingers clamped tighter around my arm.

“Let me go!” The words ripped from my throat, loud and full of power. Not caring that I’d just compelled my own father, I sprinted down the steps toward Tristan. The mud oozed hot and slippery between my bare toes, splattering up onto the white of my nightgown. But what did any of that matter?

“Élise…” Reaching out with one hand, I brushed back her hair, bile rising in my throat at the sight of her blank and unseeing eyes. “How?”

“Because she is dead.” Tristan’s voice was thick with a fury that rendered it almost unrecognizable. “And the curse cares naught for corpses.”

I let my hand drop to my side, my eyes taking in the chest, the damage done to it telling me all I needed to know about what had been done to her. To my friend, who was so terrified of confined spaces that she could not even bear the mines.