The Beautiful

by Renee Ahdieh

  Tread carefully, Sébastien Saint Germain.

  Damn her audacity. For matching him in all ways.

  “You don’t owe me anything,” Bastien said, his tone imbued with warning. “Just as I owe you nothing in return.”

  “When are you going to—”

  “You wanted answers. All you need to know is this: there are demons in the night that want nothing more than to drain you of your blood and leave behind a lifeless husk.” Bastien cut her off before she could say anything. “It doesn’t matter what they’re called. It doesn’t matter how they are killed. It only matters that they will kill you. The best advice I can give you is to stay away and leave these matters to those equipped to handle them.”

  Celine choked through a bout of dark amusement, her pulse fluttering beneath the thin skin along her neck. “If you’re equipped to handle this demon, then why is it still wreaking havoc on us? I deserve to know how to defend myself. Odette would—”

  “Did you not hear a word I said?” Bastien drew himself up to his full height, intentionally towering over her, though he continued speaking in a measured tone. “Stay away from everyone in the Court of the Lions. Don’t trust me. Don’t trust anyone around me, including Odette. Whatever you hear, believe none of it. Whatever you see, believe less than half.”

  “You—promised me the truth.” Her eyes narrowed to slits.

  He lifted a dismissive shoulder. “I lied.”

  Fury mottled Celine’s face, the flakes of gold along her cheekbones flashing. To Bastien’s eternal frustration, it made her appear even lovelier, her eyes like gemstones, her teeth bared like weapons. “Then you brought me here just to—”

  “You should have run away when you had the chance. There is—”

  “Stop interrupting me, you fils de pute.” Celine shoved him, her palms like brands against his chest. “And for your information, I already tried to run.”

  “Liar.” Bastien brushed aside her hands as if he were swatting a fly. “If you meant to run, you would have fled this place long ago. Don’t tell me you tried. Selfish bastards like you and me don’t try. We do.” The words felt like acid on his tongue, the truth searing through to his soul.

  Celine recoiled from it, her lips parting. A look of understanding smoothed across her beautiful face. “You’re trying to scare me. It won’t work.”

  Bastien wrapped a careful hand around her throat, pulling her closer, her unbound curls tickling his wrist, distracting him for another maddening instant. “Then you’re a fool.”

  “Why won’t you help me?” Celine’s voice cracked at the last, the first sign he’d caused her demonstrable pain.

  It struck Bastien like a battering ram to his stomach. “You worry about the creature who might kill you?” A cold spate of laughter fell from his lips. “You should worry about the demon who will. For I’ll kill you myself if you don’t stay away.”

  “Liar. You wouldn’t hurt me.” Despite everything, Celine Rousseau still refused to retreat.

  Bastien could not admire her for it. He would not admire her for it.

  “You don’t know anything about me,” he said. “I’ve killed before, Celine. Countless times. And relished in doing it, never once asking for forgiveness.” He meant to terrify her with this admission. To seal their fate once and for all.

  Celine exhaled slowly, her breath shaking as it left her lips. “So have I.”

  Bastien’s hand dropped from her throat, tension flowing from beneath his skin, his chest tight with surprise. He thought about accusing her of lying. But she wasn’t lying. He knew her well enough to realize a revelation like this could not be a lie. It was too brutal, like truth often was.

  Celine raised her pointed chin. Angry tears welled in her eyes. “I killed a man with my own two hands.” Her fists balled at her sides. “It’s why I ran away from Paris.” She inhaled, her body trembling. “And I don’t feel sorry for it, not in the slightest. I’m not afraid of death, Sébastien Saint Germain. Nor am I afraid of you. It is you who should be afraid of me.” She shoved him once more, the tears spilling down her cheeks.

  Bastien grabbed her hands. Steadied her as she took in another ragged breath. His thoughts roiled through his mind, questions collecting on his tongue. “Who?”

  “I killed the boy who tried to rape me.”

  The fire left his body in a soul-stealing rush. It was the same as always. Whenever Bastien was about to destroy something, he felt ice, not fire. “Good,” he said, not trusting himself to say more.

  “Maybe we’re not so different, you and I.”

  It was so far from the truth. So close to what his heart longed to believe. Bastien couldn’t help himself. He shifted a palm to her face, brushing away her tears with his thumb.

  “Tell me why you have Anabel’s ribbon,” Celine said, her green eyes shimmering. “Please.”

  Bastien’s grip tightened, his hands cradling her chin. He abhorred the need to explain himself. Despised the meaning behind it. “Reach into my left breast pocket.”

  Her brow furrowing, Celine withdrew a length of butter-yellow silk from its place over his heart. Stitched on one corner of the worn handkerchief was a set of initials:

  ESG

  Confusion gathered along the bridge of her nose. “What—”

  “It belonged to my sister, Émilie,” Bastien said. “She gave it to me the day she died.” He took a breath, the air burning through his lungs the instant he uttered her name. “I carry it with me always. It gives me strength.”

  A moment passed in silence. Celine waited for him to speak, as if she knew no pithy words of condolence would make a difference, even after more than a decade.

  “She died for me.” He fought to conceal his pain, as he always did. To make light of it, so no one would know how the memories of his past still haunted his present.

  Celine cast him a searching glance. “You shouldn’t hide how you feel, Bastien. Not from me. I promise never to judge you for it.”

  “And why would you make such a promise to a boy you barely know?”

  “I think you know why.” She did not look away.

  Again he was held in thrall. Here was true power. The power to captivate without a word.

  In that moment, Bastien no longer wished to hide from Celine. Not anymore. With her, his pain was not a weakness for an enemy to exploit. It was a strength, just as Émilie would have wanted.

  “I feel . . . shattered when I think of my sister,” he said, his voice graveled with unchecked emotion. “Like my heart is made of glass, the pieces splintering through my chest.” Each word was an unburdening. A truth longing to be set free.

  Celine nodded, her expression wistful. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could all have hearts made of diamonds?”

  “Unbreakable.” Bastien’s lips crooked into a half smile.

  In her eyes, he saw an answered question.

  Love is an affliction.

  “We shouldn’t,” he said softly.

  “But we will.”

  “No.” Still Bastien could not stop himself from touching her. From letting his fingers slide along her heated skin. “We won’t.”

  “Yes, we will. Just like you’ll help me set my trap at the masquerade ball.”

  “I will not.”

  Celine leaned into his caress. “Such a liar.” She pressed the full length of her body to his, a flame igniting in her gaze. “And a coward,” she breathed beneath his chin, the sensation curling down his spine.

  Before Bastien could offer a rejoinder, Celine surged onto her toes and slanted her lips to his. The instant they met, she softened in his arms, molding against him. He surrendered, the rest of the world melting away. When her tongue brushed across his lips, Bastien groaned, no longer capable of restraint.

  This was not a kiss of curiosity, nor was it one of tentative exp
loration. It was wild. Reckless. And Bastien could do nothing but respond in kind. He’d wanted this the first night they met. When Celine had grabbed his cravat. When she’d stared him down—expecting Sébastien Saint Germain to cower in fear—she’d stolen his splintered heart.

  All in one perfect instant.

  Bastien lifted her from the floor, his hands hardening as they wrapped her legs about his waist. He pushed through the double doors with Celine in his arms, swallowing them in sudden darkness. Barely aware of his surroundings, he crossed the room toward his uncle’s four-poster bed. Amusement flared through him, hot and fast. Uncle Nico would no doubt rage about this lack of respect.

  It would be worth it.

  They sank onto the cool sheets. Bastien kissed Spanish words into the skin of Celine’s throat, promises no mortal man could keep, vows of a poetic fool. His fingers loosened the pins buried in her crown of midnight curls, the metal pieces flying free, her hair coiling about them like a cloak of darkness. She tore at the buttons of his shirt, the sound of rending fabric causing Bastien to smile into her bared shoulder.

  “I liked that shirt,” he rasped beside her ear.

  “Then say a prayer for its immortal soul.”

  Bastien laughed. Every touch of her skin, every brush of his hand, sent another wave of desire coursing through his veins.

  In the farthest reaches of his mind, Bastien considered what this would mean. He risked little by taking Celine to bed. She risked everything. Her reputation, her future, possibly even her well-being. It was something Odette often remarked upon. The injustice of it all.

  He thought about stopping, even as he gathered her skirts in his hands. “Celine.”

  “Bastien.” She arched into him, her nails raking down his arms, the sensation turning his sight black. He gripped behind her knees, relishing the shock in her gasp.

  He should put a stop to this. He knew he should. “Is this all right?”

  “Yes.”

  His hands grazed higher. “This?” The blood roared through his chest.

  “Yes.”

  His thumbs brushed across the soft skin between her thighs. “And . . . this?”

  “Bastien.” Celine’s head fell back, her body trembling. “Please, I . . . what?”

  The question in her voice caught his attention. She sat up abruptly, squinting through the shadows on the opposite wall. Then she pushed Bastien away, a bloodcurdling scream ripping from her throat.

  Bastien whirled to his feet, reaching for his revolver in a seamless motion. Then he followed her gaze.

  The darkness across the way was thick and deep. The contrast of light streaming from the open doors at the entrance of the chamber made it difficult to see past the end of the bed. It took a moment for Bastien to detect the source of Celine’s scream. To realize what tore a wrenching sob from her now.

  Bastien stumbled to his knees, his revolver clattering onto the Aubusson carpet.

  It always ends in blood.

  There—along the balcony of books high above head—lay the remnants of an arm wrapped in broken willow branches, blood dripping from its torn socket. Resting atop the banister sat the crimson remains of a severed human head, its features mauled by the claws of an animal.

  But it didn’t matter. Nothing could hide the truth of his identity. Not from Bastien.

  Nigel.

  On the wall above the pool of blood was another symbol:

  HIVER, 1872

  RUE BIENVILLE

  NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA

  The ice grows thinner beneath my enemy. Beneath all his kith and kin.

  Now he knows I will take from him those he holds dearest in the world. I will show them no mercy. I will take and take and take until there is nothing left for them to lose.

  Soon they will understand there are no limits to my reach. For I have breached Nicodemus’ wall of protectors. His last remaining bastion. Now there can be no succor. Not from my wrath.

  He will endeavor to protect his family—as he has for centuries—but there can be no doubt who will emerge victorious in this battle. I alone hold all the cards. No doors are barred to me. There is no mountain too high to climb. There are no reaches in this Hell.

  I stand in the shadows, staring up at the Hotel Dumaine. I watch his Court of the Lions skulk through the darkness. Bear witness as an impotent force of police officers descends on the stately edifice. I listen as they speak. As she cries and he rages. As they all wail for what once was.

  The loss stings, does it not?

  No more than it stung when I lost everything I held dear. When all I valued shattered to pieces, trampled to dust beneath their feet.

  My skin is electrified by their torment. My soul flies free.

  He knows it is personal now. When his trust is taken from him—when the one he most loves is marked by Death’s lasting kiss—he will know why it was done. Whom to blame.

  There is no way for us to turn back. The tinder has been collected. The match has been struck.

  Only one of us can survive the fires of Hell.

  THE PIANTAGRANE

  Celine sat on the edge of the rickety cot in Michael’s office at police headquarters. The ticking of the nearby clock reverberated through her brain, the sound growing louder with each passing second. Rays of filtered light cut across the wooden floorboards beneath her feet, the sun warming in preparation for its grand finale.

  Her pulse thudded in her ears as she studied the large slate chalkboard across the way, covered with endless lists and meticulous diagrams Michael had constructed since the night of the first murder along the docks less than one month ago. She paused on the weather-beaten map affixed to a corner of the smooth grey surface. Peered intently upon the details she’d shared of the evening the killer had trailed her down a darkened city street. The things the demon had said to her, both that night and the night William had been killed. The threats the creature had snarled in her ear:

  Welcome to the Battle of Carthage.

  You are mine.

  Death leads to another garden.

  To thine own self, be true.

  Die in my arms.

  She shuddered at the memory of how the demon’s cool breath had rippled down her back. Of the warm copper scent he’d left behind after raking his bloodstained fingers across her face. Celine looked away, her eyes catching on the chalkboard’s most recent addition: the one pertaining to Nigel’s murder last night in the suite at the Dumaine. The tallying of another horrific clue to their collection of symbols.

  She sighed, her shoulders bowing forward as if burdened by an invisible weight.

  It was the same as it had been for the last few hours.

  Celine could make neither heads nor tails of it.

  The letters themselves could be as they appeared at first glance: an L, an O, and a Y. But strung together, they held no meaning for Celine, nor did they appear to resonate with Michael or any other member of the Metropolitan Police. They could be initials. Or directives. Or utter nonsense meant to worry them to distraction.

  If they were in fact another kind of script altogether, their significance remained beyond Celine’s reach. The first letter could be a backward or sideways L, in either ancient Greek or Latin. Or perhaps even a C? Maybe the killer had written it incorrectly, or perhaps the perspective had been skewed. The second letter was arguably an O, if it was indeed a letter at all. And the last? It could be any number of letters. A or Y or W. Perhaps a U, depending on its origins. It could even be from a language that predated ancient Greek.

  Maybe they weren’t letters at all, and Michael had been right to assign them mathematical meaning.

  It was exhausting. All the unending possibilities had plagued Celine well past dawn. As the hours had passed, the events of last night had tangled through her mind, leaving behind an eerie mélange of memory. Wh
at struck Celine most was the contrast of coldness and warmth. Of darkness and light. The way the air had felt in the maze, thick and heavy. The remembrance of the young girl spilling cool champagne down the skin of her throat, the sparkling glass in the garden silhouetting her shape. The way Celine’s nerves had iced at any threat, her bones pulling taut as if she’d stepped into a bracing winter’s night. The feel of Bastien’s hands searing across her skin, his lips a brand in the hollow of her throat. The delicious warmth pouring down her body even now at the thought. That horrifying moment when a scream had frozen on Celine’s tongue.

  The warm smell of blood.

  The bitter cold of death.

  She clutched the silly note tighter in her palm. The one handed to her in passing by a stone-faced Odette a mere minute after Michael had separated Celine and Bastien upon his arrival to the hotel, intent on squirreling her away to the tri-storied police headquarters in Jackson Square beside Saint Louis Cathedral.

  Wherever you are, I will find you at midnight.

  —B

  It shouldn’t have mattered to Celine that Bastien had thought of her moments after discovering his murdered friend. But it mattered more than she could find the words to say. The note she held in her palm proved they were not simply the “passing acquaintances” they’d agreed to be only days before. They were beyond such inanities. Perhaps it mattered to someone somewhere that Celine was not a proper match for Bastien, nor was he at all the proper suitor she’d envisioned for herself.

  But it no longer mattered to them.

  Celine saw past Bastien’s masks. He looked beyond her lifetime of artful lies. And when confronted with these truths—the worst things that had happened to them, the worst things they had done—Bastien did not flinch nor did Celine turn away.

  These were the only truths that made sense amid such chaos.

  Hooking an errant curl behind an ear, Celine strode toward the slate chalkboard to take a closer look at the worn map, pockmarked with metal pins from prior investigations. Again she struggled to understand what had made the killer shift his attentions to her. What had driven him to murder that poor girl along the docks weeks ago. Whether everything was connected and, if so, what the killer’s next step might be. Her gaze caught on the name of the street running in front of the police station, Rue de Chartres.