Serpent and Dove: Shelby Mahurin

“Undiluted by indecision, he saw the world in black and white, suffering none of the messy, charcoal colors in between. The colors of ash and smoke. Of fear and doubt. The colors of me.”

Brief Synopsis:

Lou is a young girl that’s just trying to get by without anyone noticing that she lives in the attic of a theater, spends her time with those that society probably wouldn’t really deem worthy, and, oh yeah, the fact that she’s a witch. They’re hunted all over, and Lou isn’t ready to be burnt anytime soon. She’s also denounced magic altogether, but she’s on the run from someone pretty important, so there’s a magic ring that she really wants to get her hands on. Not only will it protect her from enchantments, but it can also make her go invisible, which would be really useful for someone on the run.

Lou and her other witch friend Coco convince Bas to help them steal this ring after they overhear a conversation regarding its location. Lou and Bas had an… interesting relationship in the past, but it’s something that Lou has put behind her. This is mostly just a business venture, with the end goal being her protection. The ring is in a safe in a notable man’s home, and they know that they have to steal it quick because there’s others that are after it and now know of its location. Following the agreement that Bas will help them, they disperse and Lou finds herself caught cross-dressing by a Chasseur, who is basically a nobleman that’s also a witch hunter.

You see, Lou dresses as a man oftentimes when she’s out and about because it’s too dangerous to be a woman on her own. While he questions why she’s dressed the way she is, he ultimately decides that Lou is harmless and sends her on her way. It annoys Lou that she couldn’t help but notice how attractive this Chasseur was, but she tries to brush it off and make her way off of the busy street before the parade that’s welcoming the Prince back to the city commences. She finds a roof to hide on, but notices pretty quickly that there’s magic in the air, which can only mean one thing: trouble is coming.

The Chasseur, named Reid, also notices the magic. It leaves a distinct smell in the air. They try and tell the crowd to get away before things get going, but it’s too late. A number of witches are strolling right down the street, and they’re ready for vengeance. They attack a number of people, making them do or see awful things, and Reid is instrumental in helping to defend the royals. He’s commended for this, but he still feels like a coward. One of the witches had presented herself as a beautiful, young, pregnant woman, and Reid was intrigued despite himself. Being a good little soldier, he admits this to the Archbishop, who pretty much tells him to get it under control or get married.

Following this disaster of a day, Lou, Coco and Bas are on their way to break into a noble’s home. This noble had already lost one daughter to the witches, and his other daughter just happened to be the object of Reid’s desire. Though things begin well, and Lou gets the ring, things don’t end smoothly. Following a tip-off, Reid and the other Chasseurs raid the home and find Bas. Reid spies Lou climbing the side of the house and tries to tell her to surrender, but she gets to the roof and uses her trusty new ring to conceal herself while she escapes. Coco and Bas also end up getting away, but Coco has some bad news. They know she’s a witch now, so she has to leave town before they find her and burn her.

Lou’s on her own and she’s pretty bummed about. She’s salty with Bas because he was pretty quick to abandon her when things got serious the night before. Remember when I said she lives in the attic of a theater? Well, she wakes up the next day and remembers there’s a production that day, which really doesn’t help her full bladder and unsightly state from the climbing and fighting and magic the night before. She chances going down to relieve herself, and of course Reid is there. He apprehends her, pretty publicly, and everyone gets the wrong idea about what he was trying to do.

Nobody knows she’s a witch yet, and Lou is ready to use this to her advantage. When the Archbishop tells her she can either be arrested for being a thief, or marry Reid, the decision is pretty obvious. You see, the Archbishop thinks Reid having a wife will absolve his… urges, thus making him an even better soldier than before. Reid agrees to this, though he knows Celie (the noble’s daughter) will likely never forgive him for it. Lou is brought to the tower that the Chasseurs all reside in and finds herself very quickly bored, but ready to look for answers. She doesn’t necessarily befriend Ansel, the younger Chasseur that Reid pretty much assigns to watch her all the time, but he is certainly a lot easier to manipulate than Reid and the others. She works her way to the top of the tower where she’s told she isn’t allowed, and to her surprise, Coco’s already up there working in disguise.

She tells Lou that her coven has sworn to protect her, but Lou just isn’t ready to leave yet. For some reason, Lou feels like she needs to be there, so they agree to stay for a while undercover and see what they can discover. They’re working in an infirmary of sorts, where those that are afflicted by witchcraft are taken. There are some really nasty spells worked on people up there, and it’s almost easy to see why Reid and the others are so afraid of witches in general. Lou continues to get on Reid’s last nerve and push his buttons, but she doesn’t expect it when he tells her that they managed to capture Bas and they’re going to question him about the night they got away.

She knows Bas will sell her and Coco out and she isn’t about to let that happen. She uses magic to manipulate Ansel and the guards protecting Bas. She then wipes not only Bas’s memory of her and Coco, but Ansel and the guards’ memories of the situation. They barely get away, hiding in the library and having Coco corroborate their story for why they smell like magic, but was it too close?

When the madame of the brothel, Madame Labelle, shows up at the tower and insists that she talks to Lou, Lou is very hesitant. The others aren’t ready to let her either, and so the madame panics, grabs Lou, and tries to tell her before she’s taken away. All Lou knows is one thing: the one that she’s been hiding from is coming, and the madame knew the whole time somehow. Then her story begins to come forward. Lou was supposed to die when she was 16, it was some sacrifice for her particular coven. She thought she was ready, but then she fled the ceremony and barely made it out alive. Oh yeah, and the person she’s terrified of finding her? It seems like it’s her own mother.

Reid and Lou continue to grow closer, despite the impossible circumstances. He takes her to the theater, and while they’re there, she realizes that one of the women in the production are in her coven. She tries to end the night quickly, but it’s too late. She’s been spotted. The witch attempts to take her back to the coven, and Reid intervenes and captures her. Lou feels absolutely wretched when she’s sentenced to burn, and takes the pain into herself rather than let the witch feel it herself. Reid doesn’t witness this, but Ansel does, and when he realizes she’s a witch he doesn’t turn her in. He continues to protect her. This seriously made me love Ansel so much and now I’m just waiting for his really sad death because we all know characters like him aren’t allowed to live.

Lou is stuck in depression and a weak body from the internal burning for a while, and Reid doesn’t know what to do to help. Lou convinces him to take her out to shop for presents for one another, as Christmas approaches. While they’re out, they end up splitting up, and Lou is sold out to two of the men that are also thieves. They attack Lou for the ring and are ready to kill her, so she has no choice but to use her magic and intervene. She kills them, and is able to cover up the scent before Reid finds her. Still determined to have a good night, she takes Reid to the theater where she used to live.

They end up on the roof and they end up finally consummating their marriage. I know, on a roof!? Go, Reid. I guess he’s not always so uptight. Except… things go really wrong from there. Remember when I said that Lou and Coco were helping those afflicted by magic? One of them had broken out and he finds Reid and Lou, attacking Lou and telling her something that makes her realize that the witch that had be-spelled him was… her mom. There’s a troupe that comes to perform after this and too late, Lou and the Archbishop both realize they’re telling the story of his life. The Archbishop apparently had an affair years ago with a witch, who bore his baby. Yep, you guessed it. Lou is his baby.

More than that. Reid is the child of Madame Labelle and his father is THE KING. When the witches attack, one ends up in a room with Reid, Lou and Ansel. Reid finally finds out that Lou is a witch when she has to use her magic to defeat the other, and he says some really awful things to her, including that she isn’t his wife. She flees, and of course she’s captured by her mom and taken back to her original home to finally be sacrificed. Apparently, by sacrificing Lou, the king and his whole line will die and the witches can take over again. If we’re keeping track here, that means that Reid will die too since his father is the king.

Lou can’t see any way out of it and doesn’t think that Reid will find her important enough to come after. She’s wrong, though. Ansel helps Reid pull his head out of his ass and go after her, along with Coco, the madame and the king’s son Beau. When the night of the ceremony comes, Labelle provides all of them but herself with disguises and they work their way into the ceremony fairly easily. A lot of things happen, including Labelle being captured and stabbed and Beau taking off his clothes and singing lewdly to provide a distraction, but one of the most surprising is that Reid… he’s also a witch.

Or, at least, he has power. Morgane, Lou’s mom, succeeds in slitting her throat, but in that moment Reid finds a thread connecting Lou with the Archbishop, who was also captured, and he kills him to bring Lou back. They flee, and all amazingly end up getting out with their lives intact, and Coco tells them all that it’s finally time to go to her coven.

My Rating:

10/10. I just KNEW that I was going to love this story and it has been a true delight so far. I’m also just so shocked that Ansel has lived so long, my precious little curly haired, soft-hearted protector.

Devastation Rating:

6/10. I hated seeing the Archbishop killed, and Estelle, and some of the other awful things that came about. But I’m sure as the story goes on it’ll just get worse.

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Until next time <3