Page 101 of The Quarter Queen

“Ourchild.”

Marie pursed her lips but said nothing. She’d learned in the last few days to hold her tongue, no matter the urge she had to yell and scream. How easy it was for him to acknowledge this familial bond. How easy it might be for Marie to remind him that he had nearly thrown it away for bloodshed, orders of the gods be damned. The truth was, she didn’t just want to fight with Jon; she had wanted him to fightforthem. She had thought herself steadfast in her faith, but even she would do away with her devotion if it meant she might hurt her daughter. Why was it so easy for Jon to put his faith before his family?

But his eyes told her that it was not easy at all. That the dark work of death and sacrifice had changed him in ways she could not comprehend.

“Yes,” Marie said. “Our child, Jon. And today the Inquisition has called for her arrest. How long do you think we can hide here in the shadows?”

He stared at Ree’s face for a long time, and she wondered if he might be seeing the child he had lost before. The daughter the Lord of Death had claimed for his own.

That the loa might have demanded her daughter’s death as a necessary sacrifice frightened her. It frightened her more how easily Jon might have obeyed. But hadn’t God tested Abraham the very same? Hadn’t he commanded him to sacrifice his own child, his son Isaac, on an altar? Why could she so readily accept this story and not Jon’s?Because Isaac was not your child. Because you are selfish, Marie.

“We are not hiding, Marie,” Jon said finally. He was staring down at Ree, some notion working behind his eyes’ golden depths. “We are preparing.”

Suddenly Ree took her hand. Marie knew she had been listening. But there was no point in hiding things from her now.No lies.It hadbeen her promise to Jon, but now she could see it in where she had gone so wrong with Ree. If only she had not kept so many secrets, maybe they might have avoided where they were now.

Marie cast a look over her daughter, her beautifully reckless and rebellious daughter, and wondered why she had ever tried to stamp that out of her, to correct the nature that God had intended. Whatever Ree was, for all her faults, for all her differences from Marie, she was what the loa intended, what they all needed. Rebellion was in her blood. And now—Marie squeezed the hand that was in hers, laid a kiss against her damp brow—rebellion had somehow found its way into her too.

“No fighting,” Ree said as she sat up. “For fuck’s sake, I can’t take any more fighting.”

The corners of Jon’s eyes crinkled at Ree’s coarseness. He would get used to it in time.

“There will be no fighting. Not between us,” Jon said, voice darkening. “This is a time for learning.”

A smile had worked its way onto Ree’s lips. She was trying and failing to put on a brave face, to undo the damage of what she’d nearly done to herself by calling on the dead. There were hollows beneath her eyelids, and perhaps deeper scars Marie could not see. But she was the Quarter Queen now. And she would come to understand that it was a position that demanded sin as much as it gave blessings.

“Come,” Jon said as he rose to his feet. “Let me show you.”

Ree hesitated. And rightfully so. Here was her father, the man who had tried to kill her.

But he was also the very same man who had cast death’s shadow from her body, had showed her how to control this strange magic within her when no one else could. Not even Marie.

“You…” Her voice trembled; she was unable to say more.

Jon reached out, grasping her hand in his. For all Ree’s weariness, she did not pull away.

“I know,” he finally murmured. “After what happened to me, to my family…I craved revenge. War.” Old, unspeakable pain ignited behind those golden eyes, a flame that might never be fully stamped out. “And I still do. Badly. I threw myself to the gods and mademyself a weapon to their will. I’m not sorry for that. Not one bit. But those things I wanted? I never should have wanted them more than I wantedyou.My flesh and blood. My daughter.” His gaze flitted to Marie, who watched, stone-faced.Go on,she silently urged.Finish the story.“I don’t deserve your forgiveness. But I would—Iwill—spend a thousand lifetimes kneeled at your altar begging for it, if you could try, Marie Laveau the Second.”

Slowly, Ree managed a faint nod, lips trembling. So, there was grace in her yet, more than Marie had ever been capable of, despite her prayers to her many saints and to God.

Marie glanced away, tears stinging her eyes. All this time, selfishly, she had thought that her daughter had needed only her mother. But fate was a cruel mistress. She’d only ever been able to give half of herself, always more queen than mother, always more secrets than the honesty Ree deserved. And the plain truth was, Ree didn’t need just her mother, nor just her father. She needed both. She needed a family. Marie recalled Jon’s mural in the tomb with stinging clarity. A picture of what might have been. And yet, what might stillbe.

Gently, Jon helped Ree from the bed, then carried her outside into the cool of the bayou. Marie quietly followed, trailing in their shadow, her mind turned to the past. How many times had she walked this path out into the wilderness, hand in hand with Jon? How strange and beautiful it was now to see the story repeat itself.

Outside, Jon drew three symbols into the ground. The sun. The moon. The star. He drew a line, weaving them together. They made a veve that Marie had never seen before, a shape of magic that began to pulse with life anew.

“Our magic is stronger together,” said Jon. “I can promise you this: Divided we will fail. And they will pick us off one by one. But together? Together we would be…” His lips rose into something like a smile. “…limitless.”

Jon held out his hand to Ree. She slowly took it, timid in her own way, unsure still of what to make of the Conjurer, the man of myth and lore and death who was her father.

Jon turned to Marie. He held out his hand, waiting.

She thought of Corbin’s ball when he had done the same, thenagain in the Veil. Both had been invitations to more, to step into a destiny greater than she might know. She had taken it then. Marie caught his eyes and, despite everything—the pain between them, the misery, the love that might yet still exist—he winked.

Marie felt her heart stammer, that same spark of old feeling that she had not allowed herself to acknowledge for twenty-five long years. Her heart, the thing of stone. Turning like gears set to a miserable clockwork. Against her better wishes, it was coming alive again. She held Jon’s gaze a moment longer. Maybe, just maybe, it had never truly died.

Marie took the Conjurer’s hand once more, a smile playing at her lips.

She felt herself lifting from the ground. The three of them rose higher and higher, golden light threaded among them, binding them into a circle of three over the sun, moon, and star veve. Their magic thrummed through their fingertips, jumping between each of them, sparking to life like flames on a wick. As the seconds passed, she saw the color return to Ree’s cheeks, the bruises recede, the hollows in her eyes slowly fill.

Marie heard a rustling in the trees, the whisper of the ancestors and the spirits and the gods, a stirring in the wind that sounded of faint singing. Marie closed her eyes, relishing in the glory of the moment.

It was a new feeling, a safety she thought she might never find. In this trinity, she was sure that the deep wounds of the past would heal, their sins and shames forgiven, and in its magic, they might finally be made whole.