by Chloe Cox
It was as though a cruel, invisible hand had reached in and squeezed at Lucia’s chest. She had so wanted good news.
“You mean about my father?” she asked.
Remy nodded. “I don’t know what. No one knows where he is or what’s going on. And usually we know everything. But there’s been proper soldiers by your house every day, tearing the place up, looking for something.”
“In our house?”
“I don’t think they found it, though, ‘cause they keep coming back. Guess you listened better than I thought about hiding that Duke’s Blend, huh?”
Remy grinned at her, but Lucia could only manage a wan smile in return. If they were looking for the Duke’s Blend, it meant her father hadn’t told them how to find it. Or that he was dead.
Lucia’s entire body clenched with the effort of expelling that particular thought.
“That boy David comes around, too. He always looks real upset.”
David! It had been days! He must be out of his mind with worry. Lucia wondered what Paolo had told him, what Paolo had told anyone. The situation was—when she stepped back and thought about it—absurd.
“Remy, can you tell him I’m fine? Please? Tell him I have a plan, and…” Lucia ran her hands through her thick hair, just to give them something to do. It was a lie. She didn’t have a plan, beyond hoping that the violent man who slept above would like her well enough to help her father. “Tell him everything will be all right, Remy. Tell him I’m ok.”
“Are you?” Remy asked. She could see he was afraid of her answer. “I know whose house this is. Everyone does.”
“It’s all right, Remy,” Lucia lied. “I promise.”
When he hugged her, she knew things were bad. Still, he took the pie and scampered off, the wet squeaking of his boots trailing behind him into the night. The idea of Remy out in the world somehow made Lucia feel slightly better about life. There was at least that, in the end. She could be sure of Remy, even if she couldn’t be sure of herself.
Because even with everything that had happened, she couldn’t deny that something in her ached to be back in Lord Cesare’s bed.
The heart lies, Lucia’s grandmother’s words echoed in her head as she tiptoed back up the stairs. Men lie. Listen to your head.
Keep yourself to yourself.
Lucia took a deep breath, as though she could hold those words in and keep them close, and eased open the door to her rooms. Lord Cesare still lay on his side where she’d left him, apparently asleep. But it was the first time she’d seen his naked back, illuminated with the dull light from the hall lamps.
It was covered in scars.
These were not scars with the unique, jagged beauty of battle wounds, of one-time tragedies, of moments in time. They were all the same shape, the same width, long lashes of scar tissue, endlessly repeating, a crosshatch of recurring pain, over and over and over again.
Someone had done that to him. Someone had done that to him many, many times.
Lucia would never be able to explain what had compelled her to do what she did next. It was as unknowable as the moment when she’d stepped forward and grabbed his hand in mid-rage. But her mind abdicated all responsibilities to her heart and her body, and so she walked to his naked, vulnerable form, and reached out to touch his scars.
His hand was so quick she didn’t see it. He’d simply shifted his weight, rolled toward her, and then her wrist was lost in his huge hand.
“What are you doing?” he asked. His deep voice still held the confusion of sleep, but Lucia could see clarity begin to seep in around his dark eyes. His expression slowly became…what? Hurt? Surely not. Angry? Possibly.
“I don’t know,” she said hopelessly. “Your scars.”
Lord Cesare’s ridged stomach muscles rippled as he raised his huge torso, pulling her down on the bed next to him. He was fully awake now. His eyes were fierce. Lucia imagined she could hear his heart, beating a vicious rhythm in his chest.
“Are you afraid of me?” he asked.
It was not what she expected.
“No,” she said, and she wasn’t. And then in the next moment, she was. “Yes. I don’t know.”
He didn’t say anything, but closed his eyes. His hand burned into her wrist.
“Because of what I did tonight,” he said softly. “You are afraid…you pull away, because of what I did.”
Lucia didn’t know what to say. Little beads of sweat had begun to freckle his brow; a vein in his forehead pulsed madly. He seemed to be straining at something far beyond her understanding.
Even though he was terrifying, even through all her conflicted feelings, Lucia wanted to comfort him. She wanted to be able to reach out, and…
She touched his face. His eyes flew open.
“Tell me what happened,” she said. “If you tell me, maybe it won’t be frightening.”
The sweat trickled down the sides of his face now, to his neck, to his heaving chest. She followed the glittering trails of tears, saw how they lit up the other scars, the ragged ones that told of his ferocity and his strength. Scars had such different meanings, she thought. She wondered which scar was making it so hard for Lord Cesare to breathe.
“I want to help,” she said.
“Aren’t you afraid of me now?” he rasped.
“Should I be?”
“I think so.”
His eyes were wet. He took her hand and put it flat on his burning, thumping chest, right over the biggest scar. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry you had to see what I am. I never wanted that.”
Despite herself, Lucia heard her grandmother’s words then: Always keep yourself hidden. Coming from someone else’s lips they seemed uncertain, fragile, and stupid.
“What happened with the whips?” Lucia asked.
It was a long time before he spoke.
“When my brother was still alive, I was only the spare,” he said. His voice was flat. Emotionless. His body burned under her palm.
“I was the spare,” he continued, “and my father hated me because I was beastly. He liked that word, ‘beastly.’ I was uncouth, and boorish, and ill mannered, and I reminded him of my mother, whom he had been forced to marry. And while my brother still lived, he would try to teach me manners with a whip.”
Lucia tried to touch his face, but he turned away, his mouth set.
“No,” he said. “That wasn’t bad. I knew I deserved it, most of the time. I could tolerate pain. It was a simple thing to learn. But after my brother died…”
Lord Cesare swallowed. His lip quivered, but not as though he were suppressing tears, exactly. It was more like he was trying not to snarl.
His heart thumped beneath her hand.
“After my brother died, I was not the spare. I was the heir. You cannot whip the heir within an inch of his life.” He took her hand from his chest and brought it to his rough cheek. She felt the stubble there, the rough, weathered skin, his surprisingly soft lips as he kissed her palm.
He sighed. “You cannot whip the heir, so you whip the things he loves. My horse. My favorite dog. My first woman. They all suffered, and died, when I was judged to be too…beastly.”
Lucia didn’t know what to say. There was nothing to say. She had known there was cruelty in the world, but she’d never truly seen it up close, and this was the first time she realized how lucky she was to be only a poor vintner’s daughter.
“You believe that,” she said softly. “About yourself. You believe you’re…”
But Lucia let her words fall between them, unwilling to say it out loud. The truth was that she’d been thinking the same thing, not an hour before. She watched his shoulders shake with effort, and realized that she had no idea what it was like to keep hold of a pain like that, and to feel you must do it all by yourself.
She thought she’d been alone. She thought she couldn’t risk sharing herself with him. She was only a coward, and Lord Cesare had been brave. He’d been honest.
Carefully, she clim
bed up into his lap, and put her hand back to that rough cheek.
“I see you,” she whispered into his ear. “And I am yours, completely.”
She even meant it.
And, for the first time in her young life, Lucia gently guided him fully into her.
CHAPTER 12
For the first time in his memory, Cesare woke up happy. The remembered feel of Lucia’s skin still clung to him, just like her scent, and her words still rang in his ears: I am yours, she’d said. Completely.
And he had felt it when she said it, had somehow known it be true, in the same way he knew…what did he know? Her scent. The effect she had on him. That he only felt whole when he was inside her. That when she loved him, he was at peace, and the thing he’d brought with him from the mountains was quiet.
Cesare had known all of that to be unquestionably true as he moved inside Lucia Lyselle and brought them both to the precipice together.
But in the morning, everything always looks different. This morning was like that. Lucia was still curled up in the bed he’d had prepared for her, her soft limbs entangled in so many yards of silk. She was beautiful, of course. Cesare marveled at her: she was so tiny, compared to him, so delicate, so soft, and yet he was expected to accept that she held such complete power over him?
“Soft,” Lucia murmured in her sleep, and snuggled deeper into the coverlet. Cesare nearly laughed out loud. Behold the tyrant, Lucia Lyselle!
Cesare could be forgiven for doubting himself a little. It all seemed so fanciful. And even if everything he wanted to be true turned out to be actual reality, and not the delusions of a man who was quietly going mad, would she still feel the same? If only her whims didn’t have such unholy power over him. It wasn’t just being in love, though he was hopelessly in love with this creature: this was being held hostage. He couldn’t forget what had happened to him each time she’d turned away from him, each time she’d retreated into herself. If she did it again, Cesare was sure he would lose himself to the beast. The entire city would suffer.
And how could she love a beast? How could anyone?
Cesare hadn’t meant to lie to her. And he hadn’t, except by omission. He’d never told anyone about his father before, but that was only because he’d never had to. Everyone at court already knew. It hadn’t been kept a secret.
But he hadn’t told her about the mountains. He hadn’t told her that he’d fallen in a raid and woken up covered in blood, surrounded by dead men and a dead wolf. He hadn’t told her about the crazed killing fever that came over him. He hadn’t told her that he sometimes felt himself begin to…change.
Who could love what he’d become?
Cesare looked once more through the window upon the dawn breaking over his city. He loved his city. He always had. Even when his own father had done his best to make his life a living hell, J’Amel had always loved him. He’d always been a son of his city. And now, because of a fickle twist of fate, Cesare was to rule here.
Would he rule as a beast? As a madman? Far worse, far more bloodthirsty, far more cruel, than his father had ever been? Cesare felt nauseous. A man who would knowingly inflict that upon his city would truly be a monster.
Lucia whimpered again in her sleep and rolled to her back, exposing her naked breasts to the cool morning air. Cesare groaned. His cock longed to bury itself in her tight flesh, as though it had finally found its proper home. And yet, he still didn’t know for sure. He still didn’t know the extent of her involvement in the plot to poison the Duke’s Blend.
What had the Berkari prisoner said? Make her love you, or…?
And if she were false? What if that was the thing she’d been hiding from him? What if she had been a traitor all along? If all she wanted from him was her father’s freedom?
There were no excuses. Cesare had to find out, one way or the other, for the future of his city. He took one last long look at Lucia’s naked body, and then quietly slipped out the door.
~ ~ ~
The state of Cesare’s library was frankly embarrassing. He didn’t need to be a scholar, but this? I should at least pay someone to clean the books, he thought, stifling another sneeze as he rummaged through the shelves. Then they might look like someone cared to read them.
Cesare loved stories, but he hated books. That was something else his father had taken from him. There had been too many afternoons spent in libraries at his father’s insistence, only to be given a quiz that would challenge the greatest minds in J’Amel. And then, of course, the inevitable, bloody consequences when he failed that quiz.
The crack of the whip still followed Cesare, like a persistent ringing in his ears. He had failed the previous night, obviously, and he was paying for it now with ignorance and anxiety. Lucia had actually pointed out to him where to find the man who might prove to be at the crux of the whole case, and instead Cesare had lost his mind at the sight of a whip. It was inexcusable.
Especially since the last thing Cesare properly remembered before the whip-induced blood haze was Gaston Grimaldi, laughing amongst his little group. If Grimaldi indeed owned Lucia’s father through some proxy, it could spell disaster. Gaston Grimaldi would sacrifice Lucia’s father in a heartbeat. There’d be no chance for Cesare to exonerate either Lucia or her father, even if they were innocent.
If. The idea of Lucia conspiring with Gaston Grimaldi turned his stomach, and yet…
Cesare redoubled his efforts, hurling useless book after useless book into an ever-growing pile in the middle of the floor. There had to be something useful here about the Berkari, and about what had happened to him up in the Berkari mountains. Perhaps about what would happen to him—and the city—if Lucia proved to be a traitor.
The sun was comfortably risen by the time he found the book he was looking for, and then he only found it because he’d fallen into his desk chair in frustration. Incredibly, it was right there, on his desk, opened to the section he needed. The Berkari Tribes: Legends and Lore.
Not incredibly, he thought, running his fingers over the old, yellowed pages. Suspiciously.
He’d found Lucia in here, he remembered, hiding from Rickle under this very desk. What had she been doing before that?
What had she read?
Cesare tore through the book, as though he could physically absorb all of its knowledge. He couldn’t read fast enough. Most of it was boring, dry drivel about the primitive Berkari gods, their rituals and festivals, their deities and…
Their demons.
Cesare collapsed back into the large leather chair. The sounds of his city waking up for the day seemed somehow far away, as though they came from a world to which he no longer belonged. His throat was dry, his mouth ashen.
It was true. Disguised in the pompous academic description of the Berkari beliefs was the simple, terrible truth.
Cesare was a monster. He had been all along.
The book tried to explain it away as some sort of metaphor, but Cesare knew the truth. He’d felt it stir within him when the rage came upon him, when he got overexcited, when Lucia pulled away from him. It was no metaphor, no fanciful allegory. He would become a true, physical monster. And Lucia was the only thing that had kept it at bay.
This was what the Berkari prisoner had meant: Legend says the Wolfenvask may be tamed by the love of his true mate, but is otherwise doomed. Traditionally killed with fire…
“My Lord?”
Cesare snapped to attention. Lucia leaned against the heavy library door, her skin glowing beneath a hastily tied silk robe, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. She still had the simple-minded, honest expression of someone who was not quite awake. Cesare felt the pull of her already. Even half-asleep, she still held such power over him.
It made him want to exercise his power over her.
“Come here,” he ordered.
That woke her up. Wide-eyed, she clutched her robe and padded barefoot to his desk. Cesare pushed his chair away and beckoned her to his side.
“Take off the robe.”
A smile flickered across her lips before she affected an expression of frightened innocence. Cesare’s entire body tightened around his core, watching her toy with him. She was the perfect complement to him; she was everything he never believed he deserved. And now that she was here, he was cursed. Self-loathing, love, and lust battled for primacy in Cesare’s worn out mind, and he was grateful, not for the first time, for the release of Lucia.
The robe fell to the floor.
Impulsively, he grabbed her by the buttocks and drew her to him, licking her from her navel all the way up her chest, rising to take a nipple in his mouth, digging his fingers into her soft flesh. She giggled, and then moaned, and he felt her begin to quiver in his hands.
Gods, the taste of her. Cesare was suddenly filled with the desire to lose himself in this woman, no matter the consequence, no matter the cost. She might reject him, and if he would have to die, then so be it. He had to have her. He had to feel her want him, just for this moment, and find a way to believe that maybe he wasn’t a demon monster after all, maybe there was something in him worth saving, even if in the end…
And yet, the bonds of his duty were strong. He had to know if she were traitor. He had to know if either of them could be saved.
“My Lord,” Lucia gasped, and ran her fingers through his hair. Cesare groaned, tore his mouth away from hers, and lifted her to the desk. With two huge hands he grasped her thighs and spread them wide.
“Stay open,” he said. He watched her muscles strain as she tried to spread her legs further, unashamed now of her glistening sex. She was already wet for him.
He began, “Lucia…”
But there came a sharp clatter from the hall, some servant having dropped something, and Lucia’s head swiveled sharply around. They both looked at the open library door.
“My Lord, they might see,” she said, turning her large green eyes up to him. Her voice wavered.
“Yes, they might,” he said, and ran one hand up her thigh. Her eyes fluttered, and he remembered how aroused she’d been on the table at the Dance of Lights. “But I don’t think you would mind, would you, Lucia?”