Jittery energy coursed through me as we waited for the sun to set.
We couldn’t enter Saint-Loire for our reconnaissance until the sun went down. There was little reason to sneak into the pub if no villagers would be there. No villagers meant no gossip. No gossip meant no information.
And no information meant we still knew nothing about the world outside the Hollow.
I pushed abruptly to my feet, stalking toward Ansel. He’d said he wanted to train, and I still had Reid’s knife from earlier. I flipped it from hand to hand. Anything to keep me from reaching up—again—to tug at my hair. The shorn ends just brushed the tops of my shoulders.
I’d thrown the rest of it into the fire.
Ansel sat with the others around the dying embers. Their conversation stalled as I neared them, and I had little trouble guessing what they’d been discussing. Who they’d been discussing. Fantastic. Reid, who’d been leaning against the nearest tree, approached cautiously. He’d been waiting for me, I realized. Waiting for permission to engage. I cracked a smile.
“How are you feeling?” He planted a kiss on top of my head, lingering on the white strands. For now, it seemed my tantrum trumped his own. “Better?”
“I think my scalp is still bleeding, but otherwise, yes.”
“You’re beautiful.”
“You’re a liar.”
“I’m serious.”
“I’m plotting to shave everyone’s head tonight.”
His lips twitched, and he looked suddenly sheepish. “I grew out my hair when I was fourteen. Alexandre has long hair, you know, in—”
“La Vie Éphémère,” I finished, envisioning Reid with long, luscious locks that blew in the wind. I snorted despite myself. “Are you telling me you were a teenage heartthrob?”
One side of his mouth quirked up. “So what if I was?”
“So it’s a pity we didn’t meet as teenagers.”
“You’re still a teenager.”
I lifted my knife. “And I’m still pissed.” When he laughed in my face, I asked, “Why did you cut it?”
“Long hair is a liability in the training yard.” He rubbed a rueful hand over his head. “Jean Luc got hold of it in a sparring session and nearly made my scalp bleed.”
“He pulled your hair?” At my gasp, he nodded grimly, and I scowled. “That little bitch.”
“I cut it afterward. I haven’t worn it long since. Now”—his hands landed on his hips, his eyes glinting—“do I need to confiscate the knife?”
I tossed it in the air, catching it by the blade before sending it upward once more. “You can certainly try.”
Quick as a flash—without breaking my gaze—he snatched the knife from above my head, holding it there out of reach. His eyes burned into mine, and a slow, arrogant grin touched his lips. “You were saying?”
Suppressing a delicious shiver—which he still felt, given his rumble of laughter—I spun and elbowed him in the gut. With an oof, he bent double, his chest falling hard against my back, and I pried the knife from his fingers. Craning my neck, I planted a kiss on his jaw. “That was cute.”
His arms came around my chest, trapping me. Locking me in his embrace. “Cute,” he repeated ominously. Still bowed, our bodies fit together like a glove. “Cute.”
Without warning, he lifted me into the air, and I shrieked, kicking my feet and gasping with laughter. He only released me after Beau sighed loudly, turned to Madame Labelle, and asked if we could depart ahead of schedule to spare his eardrums. “Will I need them in Les Dents, do you think? Or can I go without?”
Feet on the ground once more, I tried to ignore him—tried to keep playing, tried to poke Reid in the ribs—but his smile wasn’t quite as wide now. The tension returned to his jaw. The moment had passed.
Someday, I wouldn’t need to hoard Reid’s smiles, and someday, he wouldn’t need to ration them.
Today was not that day.
Straightening my shirt, I extended the knife to Ansel. “Shall we get started?”
His eyes widened. “What? Now?”
“Why not?” I shrugged, plucking another knife from Reid’s bandolier. He remained wooden. “We have a few hours until sundown. You do still want to train, don’t you?”
Ansel nearly tripped in his haste to stand. “Yes, I do, but—” Those brown eyes flicked first to Coco and Beau, then to Reid. Madame Labelle paused in dealing the former their cards. Instead of couronnes, they’d used rocks and sticks as bids. Pink colored Ansel’s cheeks. “Should we—not do it here?”
Beau didn’t look up from his cards. Indeed, he stared at them a bit too fixedly to be natural. “Don’t presume we care what you’re doing, Ansel.”
Following Beau’s lead, Coco offered Ansel a reassuring smile before she too returned to their game. Even Reid took the hint, squeezing my hand briefly before joining them without a word. No one turned in our direction again.
An hour later, however, they couldn’t help but watch covertly.
“Stop, stop! You’re flailing, and you’re focusing too much on your upper body, anyway. You aren’t Reid.” I ducked beneath Ansel’s outstretched arm, disarming him before he could sever a limb. Likely his own. “Your feet are for more than just footwork. Use them. Every strike should utilize both your upper- and lower-body strength.”
His shoulders drooped in misery.
I lifted his chin with the tip of his sword. “None of that, mon petit chou. Again!”
Readjusting his form once more—twice more, a hundred times more—we parried through the greater part of the afternoon and into the evening. Though he showed little improvement, I didn’t have the heart to end his lesson, even as the shadows around us deepened. When the sun touched the pines, he finally managed to knock my blade away out of sheer determination—and nick his own arm in the process. His blood flecked the snow.
“That was—you did—”
“Horrible,” he finished bitterly, throwing his sword to the ground to examine his wound. Face still flushed—only partly from exertion—he shot a quick look in the others’ direction. They all hastened to appear busy, gathering the makeshift plates they’d used for dinner. At Ansel’s request, we’d trained right through it. My stomach grumbled irritably. “I was horrible.”
Sighing, I sheathed my knife in my boot. “Let me see your arm.”
He shook his sleeve down with a scowl. “It’s fine.”
“Ansel—”
“I said it’s fine.”
At his uncharacteristically sharp tone, I paused. “Do you not want to do this again?”
His face softened, and he dropped his head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped at you. I just—I wanted this to go differently.” The admission was quiet. This time, he looked to his own hands instead of the others. I gripped one of them firmly.
“This was your first attempt. You’ll get better—”
“It wasn’t.” Reluctantly, he met my gaze. I hated that reluctance. That shame. I hated it. “I trained with the Chasseurs. They made sure I knew how terrible I was.”
Anger washed through me, hot and consuming. As much as they’d given him, they’d taken even more. “The Chasseurs can eat a bag of dicks—”
“It’s fine, Lou.” He pulled his hand away to retrieve his fallen knife, but paused halfway down, gifting me a smile. Though weary, that smile was also hopeful—undeniably and unapologetically so. I stared at him, struck momentarily speechless. Though often naive and occasionally petulant, he’d remained so . . . pure. Some days I couldn’t believe he was real. “Nothing worth having is easy, right?”
Nothing worth having is easy.
Right.
Heart lodged in my throat, I glanced instinctively at Reid’s back across camp. As if sensing me, he stilled, and our eyes met over his shoulder. I looked away hastily, looping my arm through Ansel’s and squeezing tight, ignoring the cold fist of dread in my chest. “Come on, Ansel. Let’s end this wretched day with a drink.”
Claud Deverau
x
Reid
“I’m not drinking that.”
I eyed the tumbler of liquid Lou offered me. The glass was dirty, the liquid brown. Murky. It suited the oily barkeep, the disheveled patrons who laughed, danced, and spilled beer down their shirts. A troupe had performed this evening as it passed through Saint-Loire, and the actors had congregated at the local tavern afterward. A crowd had soon followed.
“Oh, come on.” She wafted the whiskey under my nose. It smelled foul. “You need to loosen up. We all do.”
I pushed the whiskey away, still furious with myself. I’d been so hell-bent on convincing the others to gather allies, to confront Morgane—so blinded by my pathetic emotions—I hadn’t considered the specifics.
“We aren’t here to drink, Lucida.”
The thought of leaving her filled me with visceral panic.
“Excuse me, Raoul, but you are the one who insisted we reconnoiter at a tavern. Not that I’m complaining.”
It was the kind of panic that consumed everything, required every bit of my focus to contain. I wanted to scream. I wanted to rage. But I couldn’t breathe.
It felt a lot like drowning.
“It’s the best place to gather information.” With a twitch in my jaw, I glanced across the room to where Madame Labelle, Coco, and Beau sat amidst the raucous traveling troupe. Like Lou and me, Beau had hidden his face within the deep hood of his cloak. No one paid us any notice. Our ensembles were nothing compared to those of the performers. “We can’t—” I shook my head, unable to collect my thoughts. The closer we drew to midnight, the wilder they ran. The more riotous. My eyes sought anything but Lou. When I looked at her, the panic sharpened, knifed through my chest and threatened to cut me in two. I tried again, mumbling to my fingertips. “We can’t continue with Madame Labelle’s plan until we assess the situation outside camp. Alcohol loosens lips.”
“Does it, now?” She leaned forward as if to kiss me, and I recoiled, panic rising like bile. Thank God I couldn’t see her face properly, or I might’ve done something stupid—like carry her into the back room, bar the door, and kiss her for so long she forgot her inane plan to leave me. As it was, I kept my muscles locked, clenched, to prevent me from doing it anyway. She slumped back in her seat with disappointment.
“Right. I forgot you’re still being an ass.”
Now I wanted to kiss her for a different reason.
Night had fully fallen outside. Only the fire in the grate illuminated the grubby room. Though we sat as far away from it as possible, masked in the deepest shadows, its dim light hadn’t hidden the wanted posters tacked to the door. Two of them. One with a sketch of my face, one with a sketch of Lou’s. Duplicates of the ones littering the village streets.
Louise le Blanc, under suspicion of witchcraft, her sign had said. Wanted dead or alive. Reward.
Lou had laughed, but we’d all heard it for what it was. Forced. And under my picture—
Reid Diggory, under suspicion of murder and conspiracy. Wanted alive. Reward.
Wanted alive. It still didn’t make sense in light of my crimes.
“See? All hope isn’t lost.” Lou had elbowed me halfheartedly upon seeing my indictment. In a moment of weakness, I’d suggested fleeing for the nearest seaport, leaving this all behind. She hadn’t laughed then. “No. My magic lives here.”
“You lived without magic for years.”
“That wasn’t living. That was surviving. Besides, without . . . all of this”—she gestured around us—“who am I?”
The urge to seize her had been overwhelming. Instead, I’d leaned low—until we were eye to eye and nose to nose—and said fiercely, “You are everything.”
“Even if witches weren’t watching the ports, even if we somehow managed to escape, who knows what Morgane would do to those left behind. We’d live, yes, but we couldn’t leave everyone else to such a fate. Could we?”
Phrased like that, the answer had sunk like dead weight in my stomach. Of course we couldn’t leave them. But she’d still searched my eyes hopefully, as if awaiting a different answer. It’d made me pause, a hard knot twisting in my stomach. If I’d maintained we should leave, would she have agreed? Would she have subjected an entire kingdom to Morgane’s wrath, just so we might live?
A small voice in my head had answered. An unwelcome one.
She’s already done that.
I’d pushed it away viciously.
Now—with her body angling toward mine, her hood slipping—my hands trembled, and I resisted the urge to continue our argument. Too soon, she would leave for the blood camp. Though she wouldn’t be alone, she would be without me. It was unacceptable. It couldn’t happen. Not with both Morgane and Auguste after her head.
She can look after herself, the voice said.
Yes. But I can look after her too.
Sighing, she slumped back in her chair, and regret cleaved my panic. She thought I’d rejected her. I hadn’t missed the way her eyes had tightened by the pool, then again in camp. But I wasn’t rejecting her. I was protecting her.
I made stupid decisions when she touched me.
“How about you, Antoine?” Lou thrust the tumbler toward Ansel instead. “You wouldn’t let a lady drink alone, would you?”
“Of course I wouldn’t.” He looked solemnly to the left and right. “But I don’t see a lady here. Do you?”
Lou mustered a cackle and dumped the amber liquid over his head.
“Stop it,” I growled, tugging her hood back in place. For just a moment, her hair had been visible to the pub. Though she’d sheared it, the color remained startlingly white. Distinct. It wasn’t a common color, but it was a notorious one. An iconic one. None would recognize it on Lou, but they might mistake her for someone altogether worse. Even Lou had to see the similarities between her and her mother’s features now.
Snatching my hand away before I could caress her cheek, I mopped up the whiskey with my cloak. “This is exactly why Madame Labelle didn’t want you out in public. You draw too much attention.”
“You’ve known your mother for approximately three and a half seconds, and already she’s the authority. I can’t tell you how exciting this is for me.”
I rolled my eyes. Before I could correct her, a group of men seated themselves at the table next to us. Dirty. Disheveled. Desperate for a drink. “Fifi, love,” the loudest and dirtiest of them called, “bring us a pint and keep ’em comin’. That’s my girl.”
The barmaid—equally filthy, missing her two front teeth—bustled off to comply.
Across the bar, Beau mouthed something to Lou, tapping his own teeth, and she snickered. Jealousy radiated through me. I moved closer instinctively, stopped, and scooted back once more. Forced myself to sweep the perimeter of the room instead.
“Migh’ wan’ a take it easy, Roy,” one of his companions said. “Early morn tomorrow, and all.”
Behind the disheveled group, three men in dark clothing played cards. Swords at their hips. Mead in their cups. Beyond them, a young couple chatted animatedly with Madame Labelle, Coco, and Beau. Fifi and a powerfully built barkeep tended the counter. Actors and actresses danced by the door. More villagers spilled in from outside, eyes bright with excitement and noses red with cold.
People everywhere, blissfully unaware of who hid in their midst.
“Bah.” Roy spat on the floor. A bit of the spittle dripped down his chin. Lou—seated closest to him—scooted her chair away, nose wrinkling. “Horse broke ’er leg yesterday eve. We won’ be goin’ ta Cesarine after all.”
At this, the three of us grew still. Unnaturally still. When I nudged Lou, she nodded and took a sip of her drink. Ansel followed suit, grimacing when the liquid hit his tongue. He tipped it toward me. I declined, quickly tallying the distance from Saint-Loire to Cesarine. If these men planned on leaving in the morning, the Archbishop’s funeral was in a fortnight.
“Lucky, you are,” another said as Fifi returned with their mead. They drank greedily. �
�Wife won’ let me outta it. Says we have ta pay our respects. Bleedin’ ’alfwit, she is. Old Florin never did me nothin’ but peeve the wee ones durin’ harvest.”
The sound of his name hit me like a brick. These were farmers, then. Several weeks ago, we’d been dispatched to deal with another lutin infestation outside Cesarine. But we’d been helping the farmers, not hindering them.
As if reading my mind, one said, “His blue pigs did kill ’em, though, Gilles. That’s somethin’.”
Blue pigs. Fury coiled in my throat at the slur. These men didn’t realize all the Chasseurs did to ensure their safety. The sacrifices they made. The integrity they held. I eyed the men’s rumpled clothing in distaste. Perhaps they lived too far north to understand, or perhaps their farms sat too far removed from polite society. None but simpletons and criminals referred to my brotherhood—I winced internally, correcting myself—the Chasseurs’ brotherhood as anything but virtuous, noble, and true.
“Not all o’ them,” Gilles replied gruffly. “We had a righ’ proper riot after they lef’. The little devils dug up their friends’ corpses and shredded my wheat in one nigh’. We leave out a weekly offerin’ now. The blues would burn us if they knew, but wha’ can we do? Cheaper than losin’ another field to the creatures. We’re caught between the rock and the hard place. Can hardly put food in our bellies as it is.”
He turned to order another round from Fifi.
“Aye,” his friend said, shaking his head. “Damned if we do, and damned if we don’.” He returned his attention to Roy. “Migh’ be for the best, though. My sister lives in Cesarine with ’er whelps, an’ she said Auguste ’as set a curfew. People ain’t allowed out after sundown, an’ women ain’t allowed out at all without gentlemanly chaperones. He’s got his soldiers patrollin’ the streets day an’ nigh’ lookin’ for suspicious womenfolk after wha’ happened to the Archbishop.”
Chaperones? Patrols?
Lou and I exchanged looks, and she cursed softly. It’d be harder to navigate the city than we expected.
Gilles shuddered. “Can’t say I rightly mind it. Wee folk are one thing. Witches are another. Evil, they is. Unnatural.”
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