Hart of Winter

by Parker Foye

  As he watched someone carrying a long list in her hand, crossing things off with a flourish as she walked, a prickling sensation grew on the back of Rob’s neck. He stiffened and cast his awareness about to find the source of the sensation. Back the way they’d come, toward the tree. Had one of his family followed them? Why?

  “All done!”

  Rob started at Luc’s reappearance. He shoved the paranoia from his mind and grinned as Luc retook his hand. “What’s next?”

  Luc smirked.

  “I KNEW I’d regret letting you be mysterious.”

  Luc laughed and continued to skate backward, hands tucked behind his back as he moved confidently from one foot to the other to carve neat lines in the ice.

  “You’re an athlete! Come on, this is easy,” he said, pushing off to do a circuit of the rink.

  Rob disagreed. He disagreed strongly.

  After the shopping, where Luc purchased a silk scarf for Amandine and the ugliest sweater Rob had ever seen for Eloise, Luc led Rob away from the shopping center and around the back of a hotel. Briefly concerned something untoward would happen, Rob was only partially relieved to discover Luc intended for them to go ice skating.

  Exactly when Luc found time to reserve skates in Rob’s size, and how he did it, Rob didn’t know, but he was impressed at the sneakiness. Trading shoes for skates, Rob had wobbled onto the ice, oscillating between being thankful there weren’t many people on the rink, so he couldn’t skate into them, and being excruciatingly self-conscious without a crowd to disappear into.

  Luc, of course, took to the ice like he’d been born with blades on his feet. Rob thought it very un-British of him.

  Tentatively shifting his weight from one leg to the other, Rob managed to cross the ice toward the edges of the rink. Small children whizzed by at top speed, the pompoms on their hats whipping behind them. Little bastards. Rob bent his knees and attempted to find his center of balance. It appeared to have moved since last he checked.

  Seeming to realize he’d lost his prey, Luc finished his circuit of the rink and skidded to a showy stop beside Rob. His eyes were warm with worry.

  “Are you not having fun? I didn’t mean to make you feel bad. I’m sorry.” He chewed his lower lip, which distracted Rob from replying, then held out his hands. “Come on, let me help you?”

  Feeling like a complete prick, Rob took hold of Luc’s hands. He remembered them in the inverse position as he taught Luc to snowboard and tried to summon a similar sense of geniality. At least Luc hadn’t knocked him over, as Rob had him.

  The memory made Rob narrow his eyes. “You’re not going to push me, are you?”

  Luc frowned briefly, and then his eyes cleared. He dropped a kiss on Rob’s cheek. “I wouldn’t. Ice is a much harder landing than snow. Now come on, you can do this. Think graceful thoughts.”

  “Swans. Ballet. Swan Lake.” Rob watched his feet clunk over the ice until Luc tapped his chin to make him look up. He met Luc’s smirk with a roll of his eyes. “Dolphins. I don’t know, what else is graceful?” Luc cleared his throat pointedly, and Rob snorted. “You’re not bloody graceful, you’re—majestic. Majestic and terrifying, to be fair.”

  He knew he’d said the right thing when Luc flushed. Rob could’ve laughed, but he didn’t want Luc to take it the wrong way. How many people would be flattered to be described as “majestic and terrifying”? Only Luc Marling. Rob wanted to chase the heat from Luc’s cheeks down his chest and keep going. He wanted to spend hours discovering what compliments made Luc warm and pliable, what made him laugh with embarrassment, what made him roll his eyes.

  Luc’s attention kept darting to Rob’s mouth, which Rob noticed between moments of similar distraction. They’d come to a standstill on the far side of the rink from the hotel, and Luc suddenly seemed to realize as he shook himself and pushed off with one leg, guiding Rob to turn.

  “You’re so distracting.” Luc didn’t sound as if he minded. “How do you do that?”

  “We’re a matched pair, then. I can’t stop thinking about your mouth,” Rob said, his voice low.

  “Definitely a matched pair. Though I’ve branched out to thinking about other parts of you.”

  “Then maybe we should—bollocks.” Rob stiffened, nearly overbalancing. Only Luc’s grip on his hands kept him upright. A small furrow appeared between Luc’s brows as Rob stopped moving.

  “Are you all right?” Luc asked.

  “There’s someone watching us.” Rob wasn’t certain earlier, at the shops, but someone watched them now. “Behind the guy with the camera. Don’t look.”

  Luc’s eyes flashed, and a muscle in his jaw clenched, but he didn’t turn. Rob thought, as he kept doing, of the gnarled tines of Luc’s antlers, the weapon he carried within him.

  “Is it that fucking collector?” Luc asked, glaring over Rob’s shoulder. He tightened his fingers around Rob’s. “I told her already. I’m not taking this shit anymore.”

  “It’s not her. It’s an older guy. I recognize him from somewhere but—Luc!”

  Setting his jaw in an attractive if intimidating line, Luc dragged Rob to the edge of the rink. Despite himself Rob was impressed by the display of coordination and strength as Luc managed to skate backward and navigate the flow of speedy children and less-confident adults while pulling Rob along. Rob let himself go lax and trusted Luc’s confidence, occupying his mind with daydreams about taking Luc’s serious face apart with kisses.

  Rob could focus, all right, but Luc made it difficult.

  They reached the edge of the rink, and in a flash, Luc switched his skates for shoes, surely using magic of some kind, and then he was off and running. Swearing lowly, Rob struggled to get on his own shoes, then returned the skates to the rental person and smiled blankly at whatever they said in French.

  “Merci!” he yelled.

  He raced after Luc.

  Chapter Eleven

  LUC ran through the streets of Les Menuires without giving two shits for anyone in his way. Shoppers, skiers, carol singers, whoever else had ventured out; he barely noticed them. Speed mattered more than people. More than anything. He briefly considered dropping his Solstice gifts, and only the distant dread of having to shop again prevented him from throwing everything away in pursuit of the—surprisingly spritely—older man from the tree lighting.

  Whoever he really was.

  Luc got a glimpse of the man when Rob pointed him out, though it took a second to place the face. But when he did, he noticed something only evident from a distance: the man had the same arrangement of features Luc recognized from the mirror and which he shared with his mother and Tante Corinne. Rapidly on the heels of that realization came the memory of the Dufour tapestry and its absence where a date should be.

  The man must’ve read a similar story in Luc’s face, because he bolted a beat after their gazes locked.

  Breath coming hard, Luc jumped over a terrier in a tartan jacket, nearly colliding with its human as he did. The woman yelled, but Luc kept running, following the man around a corner at the back of L’Arbre, which led to the edge of the village. One of the older chalets dominated the clearing, looking like a picture from the front of a chocolate box, and beyond that loomed the mountain. Luc’s feet ached from running in his shopping boots, and he didn’t want to think of the damage to the leather, but the race was almost done. The man had nowhere to hide.

  Focused on not skidding down L’Arbre’s loading ramp, which was covered with a thin layer of snow from the morning’s shower, Luc collided with someone at full tilt. His shopping went every which way, and Luc yelped in surprise as he landed heavily on his arse. He let out a snarl of frustration and drummed his heels against the ground.

  “Why does this keep happening to me?”

  “I would guess because you don’t watch where you’re bloody going,” said the last person on the mountain Luc wanted to meet.

  Harriet “what’s a stronger word than fucking?” Nessom.

  Luc scrambled
to his feet, searching as he did for the man he’d been following. He snarled again and snatched up his bags, glancing around for somewhere to stash them. Nessom moved deliberately into his line of sight.

  “Step aside,” he bit out. “I don’t have time for you.”

  “No can do, I’m afraid.”

  “You’re gonna have to fucking do, or else I’m going to do something deeply unpleasant.” Like have an enormous temper tantrum. Frustration had its claws in Luc’s skull, and he wanted to scream so badly, he didn’t know if he was capable of anything else, but Nessom didn’t know that. He drew himself to his full height and thought hard about antlers.

  “You’re looking for the old man, right?” she asked.

  The words cut through the tethers of Luc’s frustration like a knife. He whirled on Nessom, feeling his eyes go wide. Nessom arched her eyebrows and folded her arms, the leather of her jacket creaking.

  “Right?” she repeated.

  Luc nodded jerkily. “Did you see him?”

  “I know him.”

  “You know him? How do you know him?” Panic beat hard in Luc’s chest, and he shifted in place, trying to dispel his nervous energy. “Like collecting him know him?”

  “We’re not—Look.” Nessom narrowed her eyes. “I get what you’re thinking, but we’re proper hunters, me and my dad. We’re not like that. We’d never.”

  “You’re the one who called yourself that!”

  Nessom exhaled sharply in frustration. “The man you’re after is Thierry Dufour, right? Born in Les Menuires, two sisters. Family curse involves—”

  “For hells’ sake, keep your damn voice down,” Luc whispered, looking around nervously. No one had stuck out their head from the chalet or hotel yet, but there were plenty of windows that could be opened to overhear Dufour family business. The panicked bird trapped in his chest beat its wings furiously. Luc wondered what a heart attack felt like.

  Ignoring Luc, Nessom continued. “Look, I thought you’d be able to link me in with the Lentowiczs, to help the old man, like, but when you completely flipped—”

  “I didn’t flip—”

  “—I started following you. I saw you change, like he does. I asked him about it, but he went funny and shy, and I thought, bugger this for a lark. And here we are.”

  Throughout her speech, Nessom’s expression didn’t change from one of general disdain at Luc and everything he represented. Luc very much didn’t want her and Amandine to meet, but suspected the meeting might be inevitable since apparently Nessom knew their uncle better than they did.

  Gods. His uncle truly lived. Luc touched his wrist where his remaining cuff had, until thirty seconds ago, been the only part of Thierry Dufour he knew for certain remained in the land of the living. He felt very young and wanted his mother to tell him everything would be all right. He felt old and wanted to turn his back on Les Menuires and keep walking until the decisions other people had made no longer weighed on him.

  He wanted a fucking hug was what he wanted.

  Luckily Rob finally caught up with them. He’d been hanging back, waiting near the corner where Luc had his fall, being unobtrusive. When Luc held out his hand, Rob strode quickly across the distance between them and took hold. Luc breathed easier at once.

  “I wasn’t sure if I should be here,” Rob said. His gaze darted to Nessom and back. “But I didn’t want to leave you alone.”

  “Did you hear? About my—my uncle?” Luc could barely say the words.

  “I heard.”

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  Before Rob could reply, Nessom loosed a derisive snort. “You could talk with him?” She curled her lip. “Or stay here and whine about your feelings some more. But it’s nearly Solstice. Isn’t that meant to be for family?”

  Whatever else Harriet Nessom might have been, she was mean. Luc’s fear gave way to pique, and he stepped jerkily forward, only Rob’s grip preventing him swinging for Nessom.

  “There’s no bloody call for—”

  “Luc—mate, Luc! She has a point,” Rob said. When Luc glared at him, Rob nodded at Nessom. “She’s not armed, magic or mundane that I can see. Where’s the harm in going with her?”

  Frowning, Luc turned back to Nessom. Though she glowered, Nessom still had her arms folded and her shoulders curled inward, like she didn’t want to seem intimidating. Which couldn’t be right. Luc’s brain hurt.

  He’d been so scared of her—so scared of everything—but Nessom wasn’t like the bastards who tried to steal Luc away as a kid, and he couldn’t keep treating her as if she was. He didn’t have to like her, but he didn’t have to fear her either. All Nessom seemed to want was help with her friend. Her friend, Luc’s uncle Thierry, who was alive and living in Les Menuires.

  Luc ached with exhaustion as the fear that had been driving him deserted him all at once. But he didn’t have time for a nap.

  In times of trial, Luc fell back on his favorite tactics: flippancy, bitchiness, and repression. He’d never been to counseling as a kid, but he spent enough years on the internet to recognize his coping mechanisms and embrace them.

  Squeezing Rob’s hand, Luc tossed back his hair and leveled a look at Nessom like she was yet another craft community arsehole with pinups of mages on their wall. Someone who thought discovering a generational curse would get them on television. He could picture the exact type, having met enough of them over the years. Hells, he’d had sex with most of them.

  “I have more important things to do today than revisit my childhood trauma. Show me where the old man is and let me get on with repressing everything that’s happened today, okay? Come along. Chop, chop,” Luc said. He felt Rob looking at him but didn’t want to see the expression on Rob’s face.

  Nessom eyed him before shrugging and jerking her head. “Follow me.”

  Expecting to be led on another merry chase and already annoyed about it, Luc nearly tripped over his own feet when Nessom led them around the far side of the chalet to a less ostentatious door than the main entrance. In hindsight Luc should’ve guessed. Where else could the man have gone?

  He could’ve run off on four legs, maybe.

  Luc wrinkled his nose at the thought, shaking his head when Rob raised his eyebrows in silent question. Nessom rang a bell beside the door and turned around.

  “Here he is,” she said. She took a step back. “Don’t tell him I brought you. Bye!”

  Luc started. “Wait, what the f— Quite the runner, isn’t she?”

  Nessom had sprinted away like she had charms on her shitkicker boots, disappearing around the side of the chalet before Luc or Rob could do more than blink. Luc couldn’t muster the energy for surprise. He leaned in to Rob and smiled when Rob simply braced himself. Luc nuzzled into Rob’s firm shoulder as emotions collided inside him like stars and twice as bright. He felt as if he were being remade merely by standing on the doorstep of Oncle Thierry’s house. Waiting to be born.

  If Thierry had lived with the curse, without the cuffs, Luc could too.

  What would that life look like? It was too big to imagine.

  “Sorry I’m screwing everything up,” Luc muttered.

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  “What, sorry?”

  Rob rolled his eyes. Luc didn’t see, but it definitely happened. “Stop being obtuse.”

  “I—I don’t think I can do this.”

  Rob carefully dislodged Luc’s head from his shoulder and moved to stand in front of him. He took Luc’s shopping from his lax fingers. His eyes were warm. “You don’t have to,” he said.

  Luc wanted to have the afternoon he’d planned, where they went to the ice rink, had lunch, then went to Rob’s room. He could be in bed with Rob rather than standing on a doorstep hoping answers would open the door.

  Luc ducked his head and let his hair cover his eyes. “I’m scared,” Luc said in a voice so small, he half hoped Rob didn’t hear.

  Rob pressed a kiss to the side of Luc’s head. Luc imagined it
getting caught in his hair, trapped in the windswept mess he made running across half the village. He nearly groaned at the thought of Eloise and Amandine demanding explanations, and only the warm memory of Rob’s kiss kept him from wholesale despair.

  “Do you want me to come in with you?” Rob asked.

  Luc did. He definitely did. But he shook his head. “I need to do this alone. But—will you wait? Can you wait?”

  “As long as you need.”

  The door opened.

  AFTER letting Luc into the chalet, the man led Luc through a short hallway into a living room and took a seat at a table set below the bay window. He left his back to Luc.

  He hadn’t said a word.

  Swallowing around the hard lump in his throat, Luc examined the room, trying to memorize it to tell Eloise and Amandine every detail later. He thought about taking a photograph of the bulging bookcase, the armchair with delicate reading glasses perched on the arm, the brazier with iron tongs nearby; a photograph would prove the place existed. He didn’t reach for his phone. He wasn’t sure he wanted to capture the warring feelings of hope and betrayal that tasted like bile on his tongue.

  Taking another step into the room, Luc turned his attention to the man. He had narrow shoulders and silver hair brushed neatly back, and he sat with a weary posture. He must’ve known Luc watched him, and yet he didn’t move, letting Luc take his fill.

  Luc grew up as an outlier in his family, which was his world, and with every mile his world expanded, he only found more reasons to underscore that truth. Metaschemata Alliance groups at university weren’t for him, and nor were the craft-oriented societies. He didn’t fit with non-craft types, as much as he tried, because humans had developed pattern recognition as a survival skill, and they knew Luc didn’t fit.

  As he got older, Luc reveled in not fitting in. Not fitting in became his entire point.