Page 21 of Across Eternity

She is pale. “How can you be so calm?” she asks.

I’m hardly calm right now, but admitting it won’t help. So much can go wrong—the possibilities are endless—and I’d prefer she not realize it.

“Because this is going to work,” I reply. “You’re about to be wealthy.”

She gives me a brisk, uncertain nod, and then opens her bag.

I gently place A and B on top of the dirty laundry, both of them so still it gives me qualms. Dosing them with a bit of the drug was necessary, but I pray to God as I kiss their foreheads that I haven’t given them too much. Together we arrange clothes on top of them so they’re mostly covered but can still breathe.

“You’re sure she’ll pay?” Mathilde asks.

The question makes my heart rate increase. She has drugged babies in the bag she carries, their faces covered with dirty laundry, and her worry is the payday. I’m still not convinced she doesn’t have some scheme in mind…take the babies, tell the guards, give Madame Durand some other children.

“As long as she receives these two babies, she’ll pay,” I caution. “She’ll know if you’ve given her other children, believe me.”

She looks shocked that I’d even imply she might do anything else. “You really take me for someone who’d steal other babies and leave these two to die?”

I would like to point out that her character is hardly unimpeachable, given what she’s done, but I refrain. “Of course not,” I say diplomatically.

She walks out and I listen with my stomach knot-tight, waiting for the sound of some argument, some distress. I hear none, and then there is the creak of the door being opened and the echo as it slams shut. She is out. She’s done most of her part. Now it’s time for mine.

I open the bag Mathilde left, and remove the tiny skeletons. I don’t want to know where she located two dead infants, but I feel nothing as I swaddle them in blankets and place caps over their heads. Who have I become, that I don’t care that these children are dead? Will I recover who I was if I manage to live? Could Henri possibly still want me if I don’t?

I place them in their cribs and go to serve dinner. The whole time I wait for a guard to storm in, crying that the babies are gone, but the night is quiet.

I return to the room and wait for Iris to lock me in for the night. “You don’t appear to be working especially hard,” she says when she opens the door.

“The children are sleeping,” I reply, jumping to my feet. “Are you ready? It must be hard to impress a man like Mr. Coron. He’s probably used to a different standard of living than we are. Fine clothes and jewelry.”

Her eyes narrow a bit. “He likes me just fine,” she says, but her eyes hone in on my necklace, just as I predicted. She’s looked at it many times before.

I follow her gaze, and then I hold it out for her to see. “Would you like to…borrow it? For tonight? The diamonds are real.” I have no idea if this is true, but, obviously, neither does she.

Her mouth turns up in a slight smirk she immediately restrains. “Yes,” she says with the air of a queen, as if she’s done me a favor. I unclasp it and hand it to her, praying she won’t notice my shaking hands.

She takes it and begins to clasp it around the back of her neck, walking to the mirror to survey herself. That’s when I reach for the knife I took from the kitchen, lying under a pile of blankets behind me. Aside from childhood skirmishes with my brother, I’ve never even hit someone before, and now I’m about to kill. For a moment, watching her smile at her reflection, I’m not sure I can go through with it. She is a pretty girl, a silly girl, besotted with a powerful man, believing she’s in love and feeling as if a glorious future is just within reach.

But she is also the one who had those women killed after their children were delivered. She’s the one who instructed Mathilde to increase the amount of poison, who didn’t just allow but orchestrated the rape of Katrin and Luna.

Rage clogs my throat, giving me the adrenaline I need. She turns and I lunge, shoving the knife into her heart so fast her mouth doesn’t open until my hand is already covering it. Her eyes go wide and she struggles, but she is no match for me.

With my free hand I hold onto the knife for dear life, and feel the power as it surges through me. Her power. Her spark. Now mine. My limbs are gaunt but they sing with life and energy. I’ve never felt stronger than I do now, energy coiling inside me as I hold onto the knife. I remain like that until I’m certain I will explode with the excess adrenaline, and then I spring from the floor like a wild animal, buoyed by her spark.

That’s when I finally look around the room, seeing it through the eyes of someone else. Perhaps through the eyes of the girl I was when I arrived here. There are skeletons in the cribs and Iris’s body on the floor. We are both covered in blood.

And it’s all my doing. Does that make me like her? I don’t know. But there’s no time to worry about that now.

I grab her keys and then I set the curtains and crib ablaze. With one last glance, I run from the room, locking the door behind me.

I hide in the closet across the hall and wait for the guards to discover the fire. They’re hardly a selfless bunch. They won’t try to put out the fire for long before they unlock the door and run, which is when I will follow.

It takes them longer than I expected, though. The room I wait in and the hall outside are full of smoke before I hear them shouting in the distance. Footsteps echo, back and forth, but they don’t seem to be leaving.

Why the hell are they still here?

The hall is so full of smoke I can barely see. I open my door, and that’s when I finally hear what they’re saying.

“Find Grenoir!” someone screams. “He’s the only one with the key!”