Perci cocked a brow at him. “Persinette’s tale came first, but yeah. That’s basically the story.”
Jack wiped the back of his hand over his mouth, the remnants of the story coming to him. A tower. There was a tower. The long hair. “She was locked in a tower by a witch,” he murmured.
Perci looked away. “There was a tower, yes. But she wasn’t a witch. She was my husband’s mother.”
“Your…” He set his jaw. Even as he tried to wrap his mind around that bit of information, he had an image in mind. A man, tall and slender—the one he’d seen with Perci before—in images that seemed like memories.
Luc. She called him Luc.
“Your husband,” he finished, his voice rough as gravel, tight and harsh.
“Yes.”
“His mother.” Jack closed his eyes.
Another image slammed into his mind. This time a woman…older, but not unattractive with it. Grief lined her face, and then the grief pushed her to madness.
Cosette.
Her name is Cosette and I must protect Persinette from her.
“Why did she lock you in a tower?” He sat rigidly, but Perci barely seemed aware.
She slid off his lap and stared off into the distance. “Because I wouldn’t heal her husband. Not Luc’s father. He had already died. This was her new husband and he was ill. I’ve always been able to heal. But he had an illness I couldn’t heal. I didn’t know what it was at the time, but it was cancer, deep, deep inside him and trying to heal that would have killed me…and the child I carried.”
The child.
Luc.
Abruptly, Jack didn’t want to hear anymore. But when he looked up, he saw there were tears rolling down her pale cheeks and her eyes were a silent, screaming hell. “You were pregnant,” he said. He knew that—he knew.
And somehow, he knew how the high, hard mound of her belly felt under his hand.
“Yes. It was our first…twins, although I didn’t know that until later.” A sad, bittersweet smile curled her lips and she turned her head toward him. “Too late.”
I don’t want to know this.
“She kept me locked away. My husband, Luc, he was fighting in the war.” The sad smile on her face turned bitter and angry. “Such a useless war. So many useless wars, you mortals fight. It took my husband away, because it was the noble thing for him to do. And when he returned to me, that crazy bitch of a mother had killed our children while I still carried them in my womb.”
She closed her eyes and bowed her head. “It was slow, you know. I did not even know how to recognize the symptoms of illness in my own body. I never took ill and I thought it was just being with child, and what she was doing—locking me away…”
“What are you talking about?”
Perci lifted her head and stared at him. Her eyes glittered, with grief, rage, and a pain that all but stole his breath away. “She was poisoning me. Not enough to kill me…but she was a wise woman. Far wiser than many of the time, and she knew whatever I ate or drank would affect the children. I’m not sure, but I think she was putting arsenic in the water that was brought to me. Slowly, over time, it killed the babies, and it weakened me. When Luc returned…”
A sigh shuddered out of her. She walked to the window and stared out at the endless expanse of blue water. With her brow pressed to the glass, she said, “She knew he was coming. And she lay a trap for him. She had all of his men killed. I heard him fighting, struggling to get to me…and then I went into labor. While I struggled to deliver the babies, he was struggling to get to me.”
Jack came off the bed and came up behind her, wrapped her in his arms. A harsh, bitter sob wracked her body and then, her voice eerily calm, she said, “The babes were stillborn. And…then…I lay there, and I was dying, listening to Luc scream. They kept him alive, just to torture him, so I could hear him screaming, and I knew Cosette would keep him alive as long as I lived.”
She was silent for the longest moment.
“So I decided not to live anymore.”
He tightened his arms. Dread gripped his heart.
“I was climbing up to jump out the window… Cosette never thought I would do that. But she didn’t know me well, I guess. My death would end Luc’s suffering and I wasn’t going to listen to her torment him.” She spoke in a monotone now, her voice so dispassionate and empty, it was as though she discussed the weather. “That was when Will arrived. I hadn’t met him before that and he caught me just as I would have made that jump. He told me my life would be worth more than that, and that by ending my life, I let her madness win. Did I allow her to win, or did I try to save my husband?”
Perci turned in his arms and rested her head against his chest. “I wanted to let her win. More than I can explain, because I wanted that pain to end. But if I could save him…if there was a chance. So I listened. I…I already knew about the Grimm. One had already come to us, told us about them. But I’d…well, forgotten.”
Gaze locked on her face, he stared at her, waiting.
“We’re given a choice…do you know about that as well?”
He gave a short, terse nod.
“Why am I not surprised? Okay, then. So I made my choice, and then…” Perci grimaced. “Then I jumped. Will was pissed. Apparently that wasn’t quite how he’d planned it, but since I was grieving, ill and not entirely right in the head after what Cosette had done, well…the lines of communication weren’t all that clear, I guess. He brought me back, but—”
“You jumped.”
In his mind’s eye, he could see that tower.
Whether it was real or not no longer mattered, not in this moment.
He could see her hovering there, lost in grief and despair, and his heart wanted to shatter. Closing his hands around her upper arms, he eased her back and stared at her face.
“You jumped,” he said again.
“Yes. I don’t remember much of it. I think I thought that was what I needed to do to pay Cosette back, although it wasn’t about paying her back.”
Paying Cosette back—how many years of my life had longed to do just that?
A snarl twisted my face and I pulled away from Jack to pace the bedroom. “I wanted to pay her back. She’d killed my babies. Driven me to madness…and by the time I emerged from Will’s healing, Luc was past anything I could do to help him. I tried, but…” I reached up, touched my face, remembered the brutal punch of pain that had wracked me when I’d tried to heal his eyes.
That was what she’d done first.
After she’d managed to capture him, she’d used a scalding hot blade and pierced his eyes with it. Blinded him. The same blade had been used to carve up his chest like a Thanksgiving turkey.
Blinded, tortured…and the sad thing was, he would have done it all again because he loved me.
Sadly, I whispered, “I failed him so miserably. Luc, my babies. Everybody who depended on me. I failed them.”
“You’re wrong,” Jack murmured, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me back against him.
The feel of his nude body against mine didn’t send shivers of want and lust and need running through me this time. It was warmth…and comfort. And I desperately needed both.
“I did fail them.”
“How?” He pressed his lips to my brow. “You were victimized by a woman who went mad with grief, and after she murdered your children, she murdered your husband. You were sick with grief yourself, but you didn’t go mad and decide to kill innocents, or torment an innocent woman. You hold no blame here.”
“People have told me that for years,” I said quietly. “And I still can’t let go of the guilt.”
“Maybe it’s high time you do.” He swept me into his arms, carried me back to the bed and settled down against the headboard with me in his lap. There, he wrapped the blanket around me before he cupped my chin and made me look at him. “How long ago was it?”
I looked up at him. “A long time ago…and only yesterday.”
The compass
ion in his gray eyes was enough to nearly level me, and I didn’t know how to handle it. It could have leveled me. Almost did. Reaching up, I laid my hand along his stubbled cheek and forced a smile.
“Three hundred years ago,” I said quietly. I watched his eyes, waiting for the disbelief, the shock.
It didn’t come.
He just nodded. “You’ve kept all that pain, all that guilt hidden inside. All this time.” He tipped my chin back and kissed me gently. “No wonder I keep seeing this heartbreak inside you.”
Heartbreak.
He saw heartbreak inside me? And I thought my shields were so thick and solid. But he saw deeper than I’d realized—there were more to him than I’d suspected. A lot more.
Drained, emotionally and physically, I rested my head on his shoulder. I wanted to curl up around him and sleep for weeks. Just sleep. But although my heart and my body were weary, my mind wasn’t ready to shut down.
I still needed to address some things with Jack. Things that I had been putting off too long. Sighing, I reached up and stroked a hand down across his chest, once more stroking the scar over his heart.
Under my hand, his heart jumped and his muscles flexed and rippled. And although I had the best of intentions, I couldn’t help but stare a minute.
I guess I was feeling better.
Man, but I loved his body. What in the hell was up with me? Nobody had ever reduced me to a puddle of drooling female flesh before, but Jack was pretty damn close.
“You’re doing bad, bad things to my head, Jack Wallace,” I said softly. “You know that?”
“Am I?” A grin slashed across his face and he dipped his head and kissed the tip of my nose. “Can’t say I mind hearing that, because you’ve totally managed to screw my head up to hell and back, Perci.” Then he eased me off his lap, pausing to tuck the blankets around me.
The show of consideration touched my heart in the weirdest way. It wasn’t that it was cold in his house. It wasn’t. The misery of the memories and my grief had left me chilled through. There was just something comforting about having the blankets, warmed from our bodies, wrapped around me.
Small kindnesses. At first glance, somebody who looked at him might not expect them from him. I closed my eyes, smiling a little to myself. Those small kindnesses didn’t surprise me.
Something flashed through my mind—
Lying in the bed, sick with the babe I carried…the man at my side wiping down my brow with a cool, wet cloth. “It will pass, Persinette. It will pass.”
Beautiful, misty gray eyes that watched me so very closely—
With a gasp, I tore myself out of that memory.
Jacques.
“Perci?”
I blinked and looked up at Jack. He was staring at me, his gaze worried, a scowl drawing that rough-hewn face tight. “Are you okay?”
Breathing raggedly, my heart pounding in my chest, I rolled out of the bed and stumbled to the bathroom. “A minute,” I muttered over my shoulder.
Between my breasts, my pendant suddenly felt terribly heavy, terribly cold.
What the hell…
Kicking the door shut behind me, I made my way to the sink and bent over it. It took three tries to get the cold water on, my hands shook so badly.
What the hell…
What was going on? So familiar. Something about him had seemed so familiar, almost from the beginning. Not his face, even though his eyes had captured me from the beginning. No, it had been something deeper.
“Am I going crazy?” I muttered.
The door opened and I lifted my head and stared at Jack’s reflection in the mirror.
“What’s wrong?” he asked flatly.
Numb, I shook my head.
“Then why in the hell are you staring at me like you just saw a ghost?”
Chapter Eleven
For the briefest minute, when she’d looked at him, it had been like… Hell. Jack had felt like a ghost. Felt like everything and everybody and everywhere…shit, even time had fallen away.
Only Perci had remained and she hadn’t been sitting on the bed in his room.
She had been lying on a bed in a dark chamber, a long, white gown twisted around her, clinging to her. She had been ill. Her face was pale, slick with perspiration, and her eyes were glassy.
Nausea had gripped her and although Jack didn’t know how he knew, he knew she’d been pregnant—it hadn’t shown, not yet. But she’d been sick from a child, and even though he had known she shouldn’t have tried to heal anybody while she carried the babe, he had also known she wouldn’t turn away from a child she could save.
Push the pain into me, madam. Release the pain into me. You can…take my hand, release the pain. It will flow into me. You cannot bear this pain without risking your health, the health of your child.
His heart had broken for her, even as it swelled for the love he felt for her…for the child she carried. A child that wasn’t his. He had no right to her, to that child, and yet he’d wanted—
Then the moment shattered and she was sitting on the bed in his room, staring at him. Like she’d seen a ghost. And her mouth had formed a name…
Jacques.
Fuck.
She had all but ran into the bathroom, leaving him there to stare at her back and wonder what in the hell was going on.
Acutely, he was aware of the pain in his neck, slashing through his throat.
Acutely, he remembered the dream.
And Will’s words…
The mind forgets… But the body doesn’t.
The body doesn’t forget what?
Dying.
Dying.
Feeling savage, half-insane—and although he wouldn’t admit it, somewhere deep inside, there was a flickering warmth—Jack stormed to the bathroom, shoved the door open and stared at Perci’s reflection in the mirror.
She was pale, and when she looked up and met his reflection, he saw that she looked as shaken as he felt.
“What’s wrong?”
She just shook her head.
“Then why in the hell are you staring at me like you just saw a ghost?”
“Was I?” she asked, and her voice was just a little too cool. A little too controlled.
He advanced on her. She watched him in the mirror, her eyes unreadable, her face calm. Between her breasts, the pendant she wore was beginning to glow ever so slightly.
“What did you call me?” he asked gruffly.
“When?”
Gently, he reached up and lay his hands on her shoulders. “Don’t play dumb with me, Perci.” He stroked his hands down her arms and gripped her wrists. “It doesn’t suit you and I won’t buy it.”
“I don’t believe in playing dumb, Jack,” she replied. Then she leaned back against him, holding his gaze in the mirror. “Stop the brooding, intimidating male bit. I’ve seen it too many times to be impressed. You wanted to know my story, and there you have it. Now…there’s more talking we need to do. Or would you rather fight?”
He bent down, bracing his hands on either side of her, and stared into her eyes in the mirror. She had that damned smirk on her face now—the one that made him want to haul her against him and kiss it off. But not right now. She was trying to distract him and he wanted a fucking answer.
Jacques.
She had called him Jacques.
And it was like she’d thrown a stone in a still lake. The ripples were still echoing through him, but instead of fading, each ripple grew stronger, weighing down on him, pressing on him, harder. Harder. Harder.
“Perci, what in the fuck did you call me?” He was hard-pressed not to haul her around and force her to look at him.
She straightened away from the counter, reached up and twined her arms up and back, curling them around his neck as a smile curved her lips. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. But if there’s something you’d like me to call you, just tell me. Want me to call you something special, lover?”
Blood roared in his ears. His
heart pounded.
Jacques.
Gripping her waist, he muttered, “Damn it, Perci. I want an answer. I don’t want…”
She wiggled her hips, pressed her ass snug against his rigid cock. “Want to bet? You definitely want.”
But then she sighed, and let go, disentangling herself from his hands.
“We have things to talk about, Jack, and it’s important we get it done now.”
And before he could press his issues any further, she dropped a bombshell in his lap.
“Why in the hell do you think I’ve put in your life, Jack? Have you taken five seconds to really think it through?”
Those dark gray eyes locked on my face, and if I had been the type to get intimidated? That look would have done it. There was just something about the way he stared at me. Something about being the focus of that heavy-lidded, intense gaze. It was…disturbing. It was almost eerie.
And damn it, I have to be sick, because it was also erotic as hell. As my nipples stiffened, I folded my arms across my chest and tried to think why I’d thought I could have this conversation while the two of us were naked.
Clothing, or the lack of it, hadn’t ever much bothered me in the past few centuries, but then again, in the past few centuries, I’d rarely felt the draw of sex and when I did…
No, not thinking of that right now.
I was trying to face too many demons, own up to too many wrongs today. Instead of thinking about the fuck-ups of my past, I faced the present dilemma of my future and tried not to think about how much I wanted to shelf the conversation.
He wasn’t going to take this well. I already knew it.
“What are you talking about?” he demanded, his voice a harsh, demanding snarl.
“I’m not here just because I want to see your pretty face or take advantage of you again,” I said. Then, because I couldn’t stop myself, I added, “Although I got to admit, I really do like taking advantage.”
A gleam lit his eyes, and despite the tension mounting in the air, he said, “You feel free to take advantage of me all you want, princess…after you explain what you’re talking about. And after we finish the conversation you just put off.”
Tarnished Knight: Grimm's Circle, Book 4 Page 10
