They both had the decency to look apologetic.
“Ah.” I batted my lashes as Beau offered the bottle to Madame Labelle, who shook her head curtly. She waited for my answer with pursed lips. “Ask me no questions, mon amour, and I shall tell you no lies.”
When he clenched his jaw, clearly battling his temper, I braced myself for the inquisition. Though Reid no longer wore his blue uniform, he just couldn’t seem to help himself. The law was the law. It didn’t matter on which side of it he stood. Bless him. “Tell me you didn’t steal it,” he said. “Tell me you found it in a hole somewhere.”
“All right. I didn’t steal it. I found it in a hole somewhere.”
He folded his arms across his chest, leveling me with a stern gaze. “Lou.”
“What?” I asked innocently. In a helpful gesture, Coco offered me the bottle, and I took a long pull of my own, admiring his biceps—his square jaw, his full mouth, his copper hair—with unabashed appreciation. I reached up to pat his cheek. “You didn’t ask for the truth.”
He trapped my hand against his face. “I am now.”
I stared at him, the impulse to lie rising like a tide in my throat. But—no. I frowned at myself, examining the base instinct with a pause. He mistook my silence for refusal, shifting closer to coax me into answering. “Did you steal it, Lou? The truth, please.”
“Well, that was dripping with condescension. Shall we try again?”
With an exasperated sigh, he turned his head to kiss my fingers. “You’re impossible.”
“I’m impractical, improbable, but never impossible.” I rose to my toes and pressed my lips to his. Shaking his head, chuckling despite himself, he bent low to fold me in his arms and deepen the kiss. Delicious heat washed through me, and it took considerable self-restraint not to tackle him to the ground and have my wicked way with him.
“My God,” Beau said, voice thick with disgust. “It looks like he’s eating her face.”
But Madame Labelle wasn’t listening. Her eyes—so familiar and blue—shone with anger. “Answer the question, Louise.” I stiffened at her sharp tone. To my surprise, Reid did too. He turned to look at her slowly. “Did you leave camp?”
For Reid’s sake, I kept my own voice pleasant.
“I didn’t steal anything. At least”—I shrugged, forcing myself to maintain an easy smile—“I didn’t steal the wine. I bought it from a peddler on the road this morning with a few of Reid’s couronnes.”
“You stole from my son?”
Reid held out a calming hand. “Easy. She didn’t steal anything from—”
“He’s my husband.” My jaw ached from smiling so hard, and I lifted my left hand for emphasis. Her own mother-of-pearl stone still gleamed on my ring finger. “What’s mine is his, and what’s his is mine. Isn’t that part of the vows we took?”
“Yes, it is.” Reid nodded swiftly, shooting me a reassuring look, before glaring at Madame Labelle. “She’s welcome to anything I own.”
“Of course, son.” She flashed her own tight-lipped smile. “Though I do feel obligated to point out the two of you were never legally wed. Louise used a false name on the marriage license, therefore nullifying the contract. Of course, if you still choose to share your possessions with her, you are free to do so, but do not feel obligated in any way. Especially if she insists on endangering your life—all our lives—with her impulsive, reckless behavior.”
My smile finally slipped. “The hood of your cloak hid my face. The woman didn’t recognize me.”
“And if she did? If the Chasseurs or Dames Blanches ambush us tonight? What then?” When I made no move to answer her, she sighed and continued softly, “I understand your reluctance to confront this, Louise, but closing your eyes will not make it so the monsters can’t see you. It will only make you blind.” Then, softer still: “You’ve hidden long enough.”
Suddenly unable to look at anyone, I dropped my arms from Reid’s neck. They immediately missed his warmth. Though he stepped closer as if to draw me back to him, I took another drink of wine instead. “All right,” I finally said, forcing myself to meet her flinty gaze, “I shouldn’t have left camp, but I couldn’t ask Ansel to buy his own birthday present. Birthdays are sacred. We’ll strategize tomorrow.”
“Really,” Ansel said earnestly, “it isn’t my birthday until next month. This isn’t necessary.”
“It is necessary. We might not be here—” I stopped short, biting my errant tongue, but it was too late. Though I hadn’t spoken the words aloud, they reverberated through camp all the same. We might not be here next month. Shoving the wine back at him, I tried again. “Let us celebrate you, Ansel. It’s not every day you turn seventeen.”
His eyes cut to Madame Labelle’s as if seeking permission. She nodded stiffly. “Tomorrow, Louise.”
“Of course.” I accepted Reid’s hand, allowing him to pull me close as I feigned another horrible smile. “Tomorrow.”
Reid kissed me again—harder, fiercer this time, like he had something to prove. Or something to lose. “Tonight, we celebrate.”
The wind picked up as the sun dipped below the trees, and the clouds continued to thicken.
Stolen Moments
Reid
Lou slept like the dead. Cheek pressed to my chest and hair sprawled across my shoulder, she breathed deeply. Rhythmically. It was a peace she rarely achieved while awake. I stroked her spine. Savored her warmth. Willed my mind to remain blank, my eyes to remain open. I didn’t even blink. Just stared, unending, as the trees swayed overhead. Seeing nothing. Feeling nothing. Numb.
Sleep had evaded me since Modraniht. When it didn’t, I wished it had.
My dreams had twisted into dark and disturbing things.
A small shadow detached from the pines to sit beside me, tail flicking. Absalon, Lou had named him. I’d once thought him a simple black cat. She’d quickly corrected me. He wasn’t a cat at all, but a matagot. A restless spirit, unable to pass on, that took the shape of an animal. “They’re drawn to like creatures,” Lou had informed me, frowning. “Troubled souls. Someone here must have attracted him.”
Her pointed look had made it clear who she thought that someone was.
“Go away.” I nudged the unnatural creature with my elbow now. “Shoo.”
He blinked baleful amber eyes at me. When I sighed, relenting, he curled into my side and slept.
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 s
o 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.”
Lou’s laughter rings out, clear and bright, while I splutter with mortification.
“I know the two of you are physically involved—don’t try to deny it,” Madame Labelle adds when my face flushes scarlet, “but no matter your bodily urges, the danger outside this camp is too great. I must ask you to restrain yourselves for the time being.”
I stalk off without a word, Lou’s laughter still ringing in my ears. Madame Labelle follows, undeterred. “It’s perfectly natural to have such impulses.” She hurries to keep up, skirting around Beau. He too shakes with laughter. “Really, Reid, this immaturity is most off-putting. You are being careful, aren’t you? Perhaps we should have a frank discussion about contraceptives—”
Right. That did it.
The building pressure faded to a dull ache.
Exhaling hard, I slowly lowered Lou back to my lap. Another cough sounded from Beau’s direction. Louder this time. Pointed. But Lou persevered. Her hand slid downward once more. “Something wrong, husband?”
I caught her hand at my navel and glared. Nose to nose. Lips to lips. “Minx.”
“I’ll show you minx—”
With an aggrieved sigh, Beau pitched upright and interrupted loudly, “Hello! Yes, pardon! As it seems to have escaped your notice, there are other people here!” In a low grumble, he added, “Though clearly those other people will soon shrivel up and die from abstinence.”
Lou’s grin turned wicked. Her gaze flicked to the sky—now pitched the eerie gray before dawn—before she looped her arms around my neck. “It’s almost sunrise,” she whispered into my ear. The hair on my neck rose. “Shall we find the stream and . . . have a bath?”
Reluctantly, I glanced at Madame Labelle. She hadn’t woken from our tryst, nor from Beau’s outburst. Even in sleep, she exuded regal grace. A queen disguised as a madam, presiding over not a kingdom, but a brothel. Would her life have been different if she’d met my father before he’d married? Would mine? I looked away, disgusted with myself. “Madame Labelle forbade us from leaving camp.”
Lou sucked softly on my earlobe, and I shuddered. “What Madame Labelle doesn’t know won’t hurt her. Besides . . .” She touched a finger to the dried blood behind my ear, on my wrist—the same as the marks on my elbows, my knees, my throat. The same marks we’d all worn since Modraniht. A precaution. “Coco’s blood will hide us.�
��
“The water will wash it away.”
“I have magic too, you know—and so do you. We can protect ourselves if necessary.”
And so do you.
Though I tried to repress my flinch, she still saw. Her eyes shuttered. “You’ll have to learn to use it eventually. Promise me.”
I forced a smile, squeezing her lightly. “It’s not a problem.”
Unconvinced, she slid from my lap and flung open her bedroll. “Good. You heard your mother. Tomorrow, all of this ends.”
An ominous wave swept through me at her words, at her expression. Though I knew we couldn’t stay here indefinitely—knew we couldn’t simply wait for Morgane or the Chasseurs to find us—we had no plan. No allies. And despite my mother’s confidence, I couldn’t imagine finding some. Why would anyone join us in a fight against Morgane? Her agenda was theirs—the death of all who had persecuted them.
Sighing heavily, Lou turned away and curled into a tight ball. Her hair fanned out in a trail of chestnut and gold behind her. I slid my fingers through it, attempting to soothe her. To release the sudden tension in her shoulders, the hopelessness in her voice. A hopeless Lou just didn’t make sense—like a worldly Ansel or an ugly Cosette.
“I wish . . . ,” she whispered. “I wish we could live here forever. But the longer we stay, the more it’s like—like we’re stealing moments of happiness. Like these moments aren’t ours at all.” Her hands clenched to fists at her sides. “She’ll reclaim them eventually. Even if she has to cut them from our hearts.”
My fingers stilled in her hair. Taking slow, measured breaths—swallowing the fury that erupted whenever I thought of Morgane—I wrapped a hand around Lou’s chin, forcing her to meet my gaze. To feel my words. My promise. “You don’t need to fear her. We won’t let anything happen to you.”
She scoffed in a self-deprecating way. “I don’t fear her. I—” Abruptly, she twisted her chin from my grasp. “Never mind. It’s pathetic.”
“Lou.” I kneaded her neck, willing her to relax. “You can tell me.”
“Reid.” She matched my soft tone, casting a sweet smile over her shoulder. I returned it, nodding in encouragement. Still smiling, she elbowed me sharply in the ribs. “Piss off.”
Blood & Honey Page 2