Her shoulders twitched. “Noth–” The lie stuck in her throat.

Cécile came around me, arm outstretched. “Vincent?”

“Leave him be!” Victoria knocked her hand away, and Cécile gasped, more in surprise than in pain. “But he’s better,” she whispered. “I used Tristan’s magic. The wound healed.”

“Vincent?” I felt Victoria’s magic burning with the heat of her distress, and I pushed Cécile behind me. “Vincent, answer me.”

He didn’t respond, didn’t even seem to hear. Brushing aside Victoria’s hand, I stepped in front of the friend who’d been like a brother to me. Who’d guarded my back, supported my plans, and made me laugh even in the moments when all seemed lost. “Look at me,” I said, and when he did not, I forced his chin down until his eyes met mine.

There was nothing in them.

Vincent was gone.

Chapter Forty-Four

Cécile

Never in my life had I felt like a greater failure.

I sat in the sled with the bound form of my enemy, wishing I could tear open the wound I’d so casually healed and watch him slowly bleed to death. To make him pay for what he’d done.

To make him pay for what I’d failed to fix.

Tristan ran on silent feet behind me, and the twins before, Vincent mindlessly following his sister’s guiding hand. Angoulême hadn’t just ended one life when he’d detonated that staircase, he’d ruined two, because there was no life for Victoria without her brother. Part of me wondered if they’d have been better off if I’d let them die.

“Chris took Martin back to camp,” Tristan said, and I jumped. It was the first thing he’d said since we departed the tombs.

“His body, you mean?”

He shook his head. “He was alive when they left, but Cécile…” I turned in my seat in time to see him swallow, his throat convulsing as though what he had to say made him sick. “Angoulême dismembered him.”

All the blood rushed away from my skin. Martin, poor dear Martin, who’d wanted nothing more than to bury himself in books until that fateful day I’d walked into the library looking for a way to break a curse.

“Don’t,” Tristan said. “It’s not your fault. He made his choices, and he has to live with the consequences, just as we do.”

“Will they grow back?” I whispered. The idea of it made my stomach twist, but the trolls could recuperate from so many things.

“No.”

Recuperate from almost anything. Except for dismemberment. And injuries to the brain.

And iron.