The Last Days of Pompeii by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton (best book reader .txt) 📕

“Pardieu, what have I become?” I whisper to myself, burying my knuckles into my eyes. Sobs rack through me with a tearing force, fit to split me asunder. Here, then, are all the tears I have not cried since my days at the fabrique, coming upon me all at once. “What bane, what fiend? What bedamned monstrosity?”

And I know at once that I cannot do it. Dieu keep me, but I cannot kill the marquise.

I cannot kill anyone again.

Villainous as the marquise doubtless is, I cannot continue to gather power as others’ bodies continue to tumble around me; victims fallen to my ambition, innocent and deserving all alike. Though I appease my conscience by styling myself a Fury—for dispensing justice that was never mine to administer at all—in truth, I have killed largely for my own benefit. How many more Claudes must I fell to secure my place beside the king? And when I am finally on that mountaintop, how could I possibly be any better than the marquise?

How would I not be even worse than the dead Prudhomme himself?

I have succumbed to my own hubris like Icarus, flown too close to the king’s dread sun. And all of it, for what? I ask myself through tears, keening into my pillow. For the false power of being in a powerful man’s thrall, when he may discard me whenever he likes?

I do not want to be this person anymore; seizing for myself at any cost, telling myself whatever lies I need to hear. Perhaps I never truly wanted it at all, at least not in the easy and guiltless way that Adam does.

Maybe playacting the part of Satan’s priestess in the Messes had some part in this dread transformation, nudged me to stray so far from any path of sanity and reason. Perhaps with all my false prayer and ritual, I truly summoned something infernal and took it into myself.

Or more likely, I think bitterly as I unwind myself from the sheets, this is merely me. The bitter dregs at my own bottom, all the very worst of myself given its head.

I fling myself from my bed, a pall of dread settling over me as I consider the extent of my predicament. Should the investigation of the poison affair continue, certainly the king will not save me from La Reynie, not once I have incurred his wrath by defying him.

Even if the inquiry does not continue, thinking of the frosty rage in Louis’s eyes at the marquise’s betrayal convinces me that should I thwart the king’s desires, I will not have long to live.

There are no two ways about it.

If I do not kill the marquise, I will likely die myself.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The Predicament and the Plan

I sit on the floor for hours, my back huddled against the bed with my arms around my knees. My mind swooping and darting like a cornered bird at the mercy of a broom.

There must be a way out of this, I exhort myself. There always is, even when there seems to be no apparent escape; even walls closing in should not be able to contain a clever enough divineress. Agnesot herself was proof of that. And though I am less inclined than ever to follow in her footsteps by entreating the devil in earnest, for fear of further blackening my already tainted soul, I still have my wits at hand, along with everything I’ve learned of trickery under Adam’s tutelage.

Finally a notion occurs to me, a tiny flame of hope kindling in my chest. It is smaller than a feather, and about as substantial. But it is enough to keep the scourging wind of hopelessness away.

There is one thing, after all. One possible way.

Within an hour, I am knocking on the door to Marie’s little garret in the cité. As I wait on her doorstep, bouncing on my toes, I am wreathed in fear and uncertainty, unsure that Marie will even let me in.

And why should she, with everything I have cost her, with how little I’ve given back?

“Catherine?” she exclaims when she finally opens the door, her mouth rounding into an astonished O at the sight of me. “What in damnation are you doing here?”

“I am so sorry to come bursting in on you like this,” I say, my chest welling with trepidation, lifting a hand to gnaw nervously on my knuckles. “I know I deserve no succor from you, after all the grievous wrong you’ve suffered on my account.”

“Like the gaol, you mean?” she asks flatly. “I rather suspected you had some hand in my imprisonment. But then the warden informed me that I owed my freedom to you as well … so, thank you, I suppose? Truly, the protocol escapes me.”

“I would never have let you languish there,” I say. “No matter what I had to do. Even so, I do not deserve your help. But I need it, Marie, more desperately than ever. And there is no one else that I would trust, in any case. Not when it comes to my own life.”

“Your life?” she exclaims, her face darkening. “How in the world has it come to that?”

“I’ve made mistakes,” I say simply, biting my cheek against the tears that spring to my eyes. “Bad ones. The very worst. And now I am afraid it has come time to pay.”

She scrutinizes me for a moment longer, her mouth drawn to the side, hands on her hips. Still far too thin, but so beautiful, more beautiful than I even remember. Though I have forfeited any right to her affection, I yearn to close the distance between us, to crush her into an embrace. To press my cheek against hers, bury my face into the achingly familiar scent of her hair.

“Very well, then. I may as well hear you out,” she says, stepping to the side and beckoning me in. “I suppose I owe you that much, at least.”

As I follow her into the tiny garret,