Absalon. I stroked a finger down his back, disgruntled when he began to purr. I am not troubled.
I stared up at the trees once more, convincing no one.
Lost in the paralysis of my thoughts, I didn’t notice when Lou began to stir several moments later. Her hair tickled my face as she rose up on an elbow, leaning over me. Her voice was low. Soft with sleep, sweet from wine. “You’re awake.”
“Yes.”
Her eyes searched mine—hesitant, concerned—and my throat tightened inexplicably. When she opened her mouth to speak, to ask, I interrupted with the first words that popped into my head. “What happened to your mother?”
She blinked. “What do you mean?”
“Was she always so . . . ?”
With a sigh, she rested her chin on my chest. Twisted the mother-of-pearl ring around her finger. “No. I don’t know. Can people be born evil?” I shook my head. “I don’t think so either. I think she lost herself somewhere along the way. It’s easy to do with magic.” When I tensed, she turned to face me. “It’s not like you think. Magic isn’t . . . well, it’s like anything else. Too much of a good thing is a bad thing. It can be addictive. My mother, she—she loved the power, I suppose.” She chuckled once. It was bitter. “And when everything is a matter of life and death for us, the stakes are higher. The more we gain, the more we lose.”
The more we gain, the more we lose.
“I see,” I said, but I didn’t. Nothing about this canon appealed to me. Why risk magic at all?
As if sensing my distaste, she rose again to better see me. “It’s a gift, Reid. There’s so much more to it than what you’ve seen. Magic is beautiful and wild and free. I understand your reluctance, but you can’t hide from it forever. It’s part of you.”
I couldn’t form a reply. The words caught in my throat.
“Are you ready to talk about what happened?” she asked softly.
I brushed my fingers through her hair, my lips against her forehead. “Not tonight.”
“Reid . . .”
“Tomorrow.”
She heaved another sigh, but thankfully didn’t press the issue. After reaching over to scratch Absalon’s head, she lay back down, and together, we stared up at the patches of sky through the trees. I drifted back into my mind, into its careful, empty silence. Whether moments or hours passed, I didn’t know.
“Do you think . . .” Lou’s soft voice startled me back to the present. “Do you think there’ll be a funeral?”
“Yes.”
I didn’t ask whose she meant. I didn’t need to.
“Even with everything at the end?”
A beautiful witch, cloaked in guise of damsel, soon lured the man down the path to Hell. My chest ached as I remembered Ye Olde Sisters’ performance. The fair-haired narrator. Thirteen, fourteen at most—the devil herself, cloaked not as a damsel, but a maiden. She’d looked so innocent as she’d delivered our sentence. Almost angelic.
A visit soon came from the witch he reviled with the worst news of all . . . she’d borne his child.
“Yes.”
“But . . . he was my father.” Hearing her swallow, I turned, wrapped a hand around the nape of her neck. Held her close as emotion threatened to choke me. Desperately, I struggled to reclaim the fortress I’d constructed, to retreat back into its blissfully hollow depths. “He slept with La Dame des Sorcières. A witch. The king can’t possibly honor him.”
“No one will be able to prove anything. King Auguste won’t condemn a dead man on the word of a witch.”
The words slipped out before I could stop them. A dead man. My grip tightened on Lou, and she cupped my cheek—not to coerce me into facing her, but simply to touch me. To tether me. I leaned into her palm.
She stared at me for a long moment, her touch infinitely gentle. Infinitely patient. “Reid.”
The word was heavy. Expectant.
I couldn’t look at her. Couldn’t face the devotion I’d see in those familiar eyes. His eyes. Even if she didn’t yet realize—even if she didn’t yet care—she would someday hate me for what I’d done. He was her father.
And I’d killed him.
“Look at me, Reid.”
The memory flashed, unbidden. My knife embedding in his ribs. His blood streaming down my wrist. Warm and thick and wet. When I turned to face her, those blue-green eyes were steady. Determined.
“Please,” I whispered. To my shame—my humiliation—my voice broke on the word. Heat flooded my face. Even I didn’t know what I wanted from her. Please don’t ask me. Please don’t make me say it. And then, louder than the rest, a keening wail rising sharply through the pain—
Please make it go away.
A ripple of emotion flashed in her expression—almost too quick for me to see. Then she set her chin. A devious glint lit her eyes. In the next second, she whirled to straddle me, brushing a single finger across my mouth. Her own parted, and her tongue flicked out to wet her bottom lip. “Mon petit oiseau, you’ve seemed . . . frustrated these last few days.” She leaned lower, brushing her nose against my ear. Distracting me. Answering my unspoken plea. “I could help with that, you know.”
Absalon hissed indignantly and dematerialized.
When she began to touch me, to move against me—lightly, maddeningly—the blood in my face pitched lower, and I closed my eyes, clenching my jaw against the sensation. The heat. My fingers dug into her hips to hold her in place.
Behind us, someone sighed softly in their sleep.
“We can’t do this here.” My strained whisper echoed too loud in the silence. Despite my words, she grinned and pressed closer—everywhere—until my own hips rolled in response, grinding her against me. Once. Twice. Three times. Slowly at first, then faster. I dropped my head back to the cold ground, breathing ragged, eyes still clenched shut. A low groan built in my throat. “Someone might see.”
She tugged at my belt in answer. My eyes flew open to watch, and I flexed into her touch, reveling in it. In her. “Let them,” she said, each breath a pant. Another cough sounded. “I don’t care.”
“Lou—”
“Do you want me to stop?”
“No.” My hands tightened on her hips, and I sat forward swiftly, crushing her lips against mine.
Another cough, louder this time. I didn’t register it. With her hand slipping into my undone trousers—her tongue hot against mine—I couldn’t have stopped if I tried. That is, until—
“Stop.” The word tore from my throat, and I lurched backward, wrenching her hips in the air, away from my own. I hadn’t meant for it to go this far, this fast, with this many people around us. When I cursed, low and vicious, she blinked in confusion, hands shooting to my shoulders for balance. Her lips swollen. Her cheeks flushed. I clamped my eyes shut once more—clenching, clenching, clenching—thinking of anything and everything but Lou. Spoiled meat. Flesh-eating locusts. Wrinkled, saggy skin and the word moist or curd or phlegm. Dripping phlegm, or, or—
My mother.
The memory of our first night here flashed with crystalline focus.
“I’m serious,” Madame Labelle warns, pulling us aside, “absolutely no sneaking away for any secret rendezvous. The forest is dangerous. The trees have eyes.”