“I love you,” I told him, and I swore I saw a tear slide down his perfectly smooth scarred cheek.
“I know.”
Stuffing my fist against my mouth, I spun away from him, ripping my heart from my chest in the process and leaving it inside the church with him while I stumbled for the door.
I needed to get help.
I couldn’t lose him.
My lungs soaked in the fresh air with rapid gasps. I dragged in air not to save myself, but to find my voice.
With one more long, beautiful breath, I belted at the top of my lungs, “Help!”
The cry pierced through the night. Through the fire. Through the sounds of emergency and the cries of a city. The word felt like a hot poker ripping through several cords in order to strike against new. I screamed bloody murder—and that’s what it was. A murder of history. A murder of heritage. A murder of a hero.
It set my throat on fire and took the last of what I had in me. But I would give it all to save him.
I blinked, and I was surrounded by them—firemen and emergency crews. I was doused with questions as the paramedics were called, trying to assess my injuries.
“Not me!” I screamed at them. “He’s still in there. You have to go in there!”
“Who, ma’am? No one was reported as being in the church.”
Another two firemen jogged over at that moment, one exclaimed, “Mon Dieu, he was right. There was a woman in there.”
“You saw him?” I breathed out. This time when I blinked I felt the tears drip down my cheeks.
He nodded gravely. “He told us where to aim the water to keep Notre Dame standing. Just like he told us you were in there.”
I let out the breath held in my lungs, my hand resting behind me as I sagged against the stone. Every ounce of strength evaporating from me like water under a flame.
“He’s still in there. You have to save him. Please,” I begged. My eyes drifted closer and closer to falling shut. I wasn’t going to last much longer.
“Madame.” I was brought to attention again. “Who is he?”
My lips cracked open to try and respond. I’d never know if I had the strength to or not because it was the fireman who was still next to me that replied.
“He’s the man who saved Notre Dame.”
Not a monster. Not a terrorist. A savior.
My eyes drifted shut as my heart burst, and I gave into the darkness that was calling, unable to stop it from claiming me completely.
Quinton
I felt them on my face first. One after another. Light as feathers as they fell and disintegrated on my cheeks.
Snow.
My nose twitched, the movement setting off a chain that would bring the rest of me back to life. Slowly, with each waking limb, I realized how much damage I’d done and how much pain I was—so much that it was hard to tell if there was anything left of my body except the pain of its broken pieces.
The snow made my nose sniff, so I finally pried open my swollen eyelids to the light above me.
And that was when I realized the pain in my body was nothing compared to what the sight above me inflicted.
That was when I realized it wasn’t snow.
It was ash.
Bits and pieces of my recent memory fell back into place unlike the tiny burning bits of the cathedral above me that never would.
Esme.
My heavy eyelids drooped. At least I would die knowing I saved her.
My stare dragged back to the towering cathedral in front of me. Big black wafts of smoke still billowed above me, darkening an already night sky.
“Notre Dame…”
My eyes squeezed back shut, unable to look at the destruction wrought from my failure. Notre Dame had burned because of me—because I hadn’t been able to stop Méchant.
Exhaling, I thought that might be the final thought I took with me when I left this life, but then I heard them.
“Ave Maria, pleine de grâce. Le Seigneur est avec vous.”
Holy Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with you.
I thought I was hallucinating—I was certainly in enough pain to do so. But it didn’t stop.
Maybe it was my injuries, maybe silence of the tomb-like shell of the cathedral underneath the orange hue of the still-burning pyre. But over the blaze. Over the sirens. Over the blast of the water cannons… over it all, I heard them singing. Everywhere.
I closed my eyes and I saw them—all of Paris standing on the banks of the Seine, lining the streets, flooding the arrondissements, holding hands, kneeling, with tears running down their faces as they chanted the hymn into the night.
Mon Dieu, it was all I could hear. Not just a song. Not just a hymn. Not something religious or exclusive.
It was a heartbeat.
It was our heartbeat.
Tonight, it wasn’t just a church that had been attacked.
It wasn’t a tourist attraction nor a historic heritage site that fought against the very brink of utter destruction.
It was a heart that burned in front of us.
It was a monument to the love of a people who’d dedicated their lives to creating something that would outlast them—who gave of everything they had to build this edifice with no expectation of living long enough to see it finished.
And it was fortified by the love of a people who came after. Who saw it survive centuries of change. Of war and peace. Who came and worshipped not solely because of the God it was built for nor the religion it supported.
They came because it stood for a people—a people who had come together for a greater good, a sentiment that seemed to fade with every passing generation.
They came because Our Lady of Paris stood strong for so many kinds of love, including some of the most important ones that we had begun to lose.
Because what more can we do in this life than create a love that outlasts time?
My mouth parted as it became difficult to breathe, the song seeping into every corner of my lungs and heart, replacing the air my broken body no longer needed.
“Sainte Maria, Mère de Dieu, priez pour nous, pauvres pécheurs.”
“Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us poor sinners.”
And I remembered the hymn was always my mother’s favorite. When I was young, I thought it was because her name was Maria; it seemed the most likely explanation. But it was the one she never bothered to open the hymnal in church for. It was the one I’d catch her humming while she cooked or as she sat and helped me with my homework.
For years, I’d blamed myself for her death, sometimes more than Méchant. And I believed fighting to stop him would secure my absolution.
But now, about to be consumed and buried by my own blaze, I realized what she had felt that night. I realized she knew what she was sacrificing when she walked into that church to try to warn me—to try to save me. She knew there was a chance she wouldn’t make it out alive, and she did it anyway.
Just like the men and women who built the cathedral had done so knowing they wouldn’t live to see its completion, but they did it anyway.
Just like Esme had demanded a place in my life knowing it would be at the risk of her own, but she did it anyway.
Just like I knew I might not make it out alive when I barged into Notre Dame to save the woman I loved, but I did it anyway.
That’s what life was—that’s what love was.
Love was knowing the sacrifice and doing it anyway.
To Be Continued…
Quinton and Esme’s story continues in the second book of the Sacred Duet, The Heartbreak of Notre Dame.
Keep reading for the first chapter.
PREVIEW OF THE HEARTBREAK OF NOTRE DAME
Two months later…
It was always the same dream I awakened to.
When the darkness ebbed from my mind, the same delusional dream flowed in.
Lying in a field of ash, I was floating and trapped at the same time. My limbs were heavy though what held them down was a ligh
t and as cold as snow. The sky above me burned as brightly as my last memory, the forest eaten away by the gluttonous blaze. In the distance, I heard voices, but they were always drowned out by the mourning tenor of Ava Maria.
I’d died that day in Notre Dame. I’d burned with her—my lady. And this was my punishment, to forever drift in an unsettled purgatory of broken promises.
I’d sworn to protect her. I’d failed.
But at least I’d saved Esme.
For the first time, the sky opened and bright green eyes stared back at me. Vibrant. Alive. Full of ache.
“Quinton.” Her full lips moved around my name… but it wasn’t her voice that spoke.
I gasped, air filling lungs that felt as though they’d been empty for some time. But it wasn’t just oxygen that flooded them. It was pain. The most exquisite pain I’d ever known, even more than the night Méchant had burned my face.
“La morphine! Tout d’suite!”
Esme was gone, but it was the same voice who spoke. Rough but sure. Soft but strong.
My eyelids felt like they were digging through quicksand in order to open. They pushed aside the weight and the pain from the light and my—very real—surroundings over and over again, gasping for more information—a clue to where I was. A clue to what I was.
Because I couldn’t be alive. It wasn’t possible. Not when Notre Dame buried me with her.
Venerable stone walls were blocked by the sleek steel medical equipment surrounding my bed. The hymn I’d heard in the background came from a distant organ. And the man above me—his bald cut and brown-robed garb as unmistakable as it was unbelievable.
“Arrêtez-vous, Monsieur Quinton.” The voice belonged to a middle-aged man with small glasses, sharp eyes, and a bald head. He grabbed a syringe someone else had brought him and commanded, “Relâchez.” I didn’t feel the prick of the needle. “Relâchez,” the monk repeated, and then the drugs didn’t give me any other choice.
Three weeks after…
I wasn’t dead.
Between the prick of needles and the fog of my never-ending dream, I’d come to realize the fire hadn’t ended my torment. That day in the cathedral, Notre Dame had wasted a miracle on me, saving me from the conflagration that destroyed her.
She should’ve let me remain forgotten.
Though I wasn’t dead, it was still debatable whether or not I was alive. My body was wrapped and bandaged and drugged in such a way I wondered how anyone could’ve thought it worth it to save such a mangled mess, but I’d yet to have the strength to ask anyone.
Any of the monks.
Wherever I was, it wasn’t in Paris, and whoever they were, they might live in peace, but they certainly knew how to handle war—to handle death. They came and went from my room with silent efficiency, slowly bringing me back from the brink of death. And I needed to know why.
My eyes were heavy but I forced them open—the small but only movement I was able to make. And even that felt like the burden of an ant having to carry a leaf that was three-times its weight. The older monk—the doctor—entered my room, his can tapping on the stone floor as he walked to the side of my bed. He came to check on me every day at the same time—when the sun’s shadow cast on the wall to my right. There were no clocks. No TVs. No papers. Nothing to pin my thoughts to something temporal.
Time had passed since the fire. Several weeks at least, judging by the severity of my injuries and how they healed. But that was all I knew. I was stuck in this limbo—a purgatory of recovery where the world went on without me.
The monk approached my bed side, examining my chart on the table next to it before checking all the monitors.
“Qui?” A single whispered word was all I could manage. Who?
His gaze snapped to my face, surprise widening his eyes. “Pierre,” he replied with an age-wearied voice, informing me, “You shouldn’t be speaking. Your vocal cords were severely damaged by the smoke. You need to rest.”
I was tired of resting.
“Where?” I ignored his instruction.
He huffed and shook his head, muttering about God and disobedience before replying. “Abbaye does Pères Oubliés.” Monastery of Forgotten Fathers. He sniffled. “Biars-sur-Cère.”
The name rang a bell.
“Le sud?” I coughed, pushing the limits of my weak and wounded throat that hadn’t spoke for so long.
“Five hundred kilometers from Paris, oui.” He nodded. “You should stop before you damage your throat and we start this all over again, Monsieur Bossé.”
And he knew who I was.
Well, he knew my name. If he knew who I was, he would’ve known that telling me to stop when he’d only just given me a taste of the information—the answers I needed—was a direction I would never heed.
“How?” My throat burned, but I ignored it. “Why?”
Closing my chart, the monk fully faced me, linking his hands in front of him. He was going to give me answers, but not a lot of them. I knew because there was a plain wooden chair against the wall directly behind him, but he didn’t pull it out and take a seat; he chose not to give his legs some rest while he spoke because he knew he wouldn’t be staying long.
If I had to guess, he would need to leave for evening prayers before their meal.
“L’Abbaye has worked with the Valois for many decades—all the way back to when they would smuggle Jews out of Paris and shelter them here with us for safety until they could flee. For a long time, we’ve taken in the forgotten. The abused and broken. Those who are forced to live their lives in the shadows.” He paused. “Those like you.”
I knew only in general terms that the Valois network extended outside of Paris, though a majority of their operations were within the city limits. I knew tales of their history, protecting the unprotected, sheltering the sought-after. But I never expected to come face-to-face with it like this.
“Your father sent men into the cathedral to find you… what was left of you,” he went on. “Of course, it wasn’t safe to keep you in Paris. Not with your injuries… not with the state of things. So, they brought you here. To me.” He reached for his cane and my fingers trembled with the need to reach out and stop him from leaving. “And here is where you will stay until you are healed and then you will be free.”
The tap of his cane was like the timer on a bomb—one that would have my brain exploding with thoughts and questions as soon as he left the room.
“When?” The word ripped a new wound in my throat.
The monk paused, gripping both hands on the head of his cane and looked at me. “Three months, Monsieur Quinton. The fire… the heartbreak of Notre Dame was three months ago.”
I didn’t hear his cane. I didn’t even hear the door close. I blinked, and he was gone.
Three fucking months.
Not dead. Not alive. Just forgotten.
I blinked and my throat wasn’t the only part of me that was burning. My head. My heart.
My father had saved me—he’d saved me in order to free me. The shadows of my former life, the dangerous men who’d known I existed, all believed me dead. My eyelids drifted shut. And maybe that was where I should stay, me back in the darkness I was familiar with.
Three weeks after…
“I didn’t save your life, Monsieur Quinton, only for you to jeopardize it while still under my care,” Brother Pierre muttered, his cane clattering as he rushed to my side.
I held up a hand for him to stay back, panting roughly from where I’d fallen on the floor. When I was left alone, I’d taken the time to build up my strength—pushups on the stone floor, pull-ups on the massive ancient door frames. Frère Pierre knew. He’d return to new bruises and fresh cuts from when I’d slip and stumble at the limit of my fatigued muscles. Like now, when my strength gave out on one last pull-up and I’d stumbled back, catching my heel on one of the uneven stones and crashing onto the floor with a rough curse.
Recovery was a mountain—a mountain to heal the burns and the smoke scar
red into my lungs. A mountain taken in slow steps up to the peak where I’d learned that Notre Dame’s fire was almost three months ago. And once I reached that peak, recovery spiraled down the backside of the mountain like a savage avalanche.
I healed faster because I refused to be a bystander. I needed to get better. I needed to get out of here.
In the three weeks since Brother Pierre broke the glass veneer of my dream-like coma, I’d worked for more facts—more knowledge. The monk was reluctant, wanting me to save all my energy and my worry for healing my body. But he didn’t know this body was used to being burned and broken beyond repair; it was only my mind that kept me improving.
“I’m fine, frère,” I said gruffly, pushing myself up.
“I promised your father I would keep you alive,” he replied. “You make that difficult.”
“You made a difficult promise,” I told him, shooting him a glance.
Le frère told me my father had died. The great Henri Lautrec had succumbed to the cancer in his lungs, but not before he saved me one last time.
And the expanse of pain in my chest was surprising considering how superficial and fleeting our relationship had been. He’d been more of a boss than a father right up until he knew he didn’t have much time to live. Then I saw the man who’d cared for his son in the only way his duty would allow until he realized its greatest cost—love.
And death cared nothing for duty, but everything for love. And that was why he’d sacrificed his loyalty to the Valois by giving me the means and the direction to leave it.
But it was too late for that. Without the Valois, what purpose did I have any longer?
What purpose did I have without her?
While my days were focused on strength and recovery, with piecing together facts of the world I was orbiting the rim of, my nights were all hers. I lived in the memory of her scent and smile. I heard the bells of the monastery toll and remembered all the times I’d made her mine. I found her and loved her in my dreams, knowing that was where she’d only ever be because, as the sun rose, her glittering eyes reflected fire. Her smile turned into screams.
The Gargoyle and the Gypsy: A Dark Contemporary Romance (The Sacred Duet Book 1) Page 40