by Chloe Cox
Lucia said nothing.
“Maybe you could try to convince me to let you go.” He leered.
Slowly, Lucia turned her head. She had run through the depths of despair all the way to other side, and what she’d found there was resistance. She almost wished this idiot would open the door to cell, would try to lay his hands on her. Even as the small remaining rational part of her knew this to be insane, knew this to be a terrible thing, she wanted an opportunity to fight back.
“Die,” she said instead.
The jailer laughed, and spun his keys around on his finger. And then he did.
The jailer’s face crashed against the bars, his nose flattened, his eyes bulging, his chest unable to expand to take in air with the pressure of some great force behind it, crushing it against the unyielding metal bars. Lucia jumped back, putting her body between her father and whatever was happening to the jailer. It looked like he tried to speak, but then his body was lifted up, his face and chest sliding up the rough edges of the aged and rusted metal, until his feet kicked freely at the bars below.
Clang clang. Clang clang.
Lucia heard the jailer’s wet choking sounds, saw him dribble blood from his mouth in the one beam of light from the grating. Then he was dragged sideways, his bloodied face raking against the bars, and tossed down the corridor. He made no more sounds.
And behind where the jailer had been pinned against the bars stood the hulking, brutish form of Lord Cesare Lupin.
Cesare stood panting, his shoulders rising and falling with each breath. His eyes shone the way they had done at the Player’s Feast, and when he stepped forward into the light, Lucia saw him swallow, as though once again holding back something terrible. He stared only at her, and walked up to the bars. Then he wrapped his great hands around them and growled.
“Milord, I have the keys,” came Avignon’s voice from the direction of the jailer’s body.
“I don’t need them,” Cesare snarled, testing his grip. His eyes bored into Lucia’s, and his great shoulders began to roll. The bars screeched against stone.
“Even so, Milord,” Avignon said calmly, stepping into view. “You’ll only have to repair it later.” And he unlocked the door to Lucia’s cell.
Cesare strode in with the same charged ferocity, the same animal intensity, that Lucia imagined had killed the jailer, only to stop, suddenly, a few feet in front of her. She watched his expression change from burning, mindless desire to bewildered sadness.
She realized his expression mirrored her own feelings. And she felt it again, that thread between them, as though whatever he felt vibrated down that thread into her own core. Perhaps it went both ways. And the truth was, Lucia was frightened.
“What are you?” she whispered.
She might have stayed locked in that gaze indefinitely if it hadn’t been for the faint rasping noise of her father’s labored breath. “The pitcher,” she said suddenly. “He needs water.”
Avignon appeared, the pitcher already in hand. “I’ll tend to him, Miss Lyselle,” he said gently. “I’ve some training.”
Lucia watched helplessly, gratefully, as Avignon knelt to her father with the pitcher. The old man managed to drink a little, and Avignon began checking for wounds.
“Lucia,” Cesare rumbled behind her. “Lucia, we must leave here.”
She turned on him, overflowing with various emotions, a thin veneer of frustration and anger over all of it. Which, of course, was ridiculous. Cesare was breaking her out of jail. Gratitude would be more appropriate, but Lucia didn’t feel ready to start being appropriate.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she tried to yell, but only managed a strangled sob. The idea of crying in front of him, of showing him how much it hurt, made it all even worse. She bit her lip, and hated the tears streaming down her cheek. “How could you let us…while my father…”
Cesare’s wide-open face looked back at her with hopeless, childish stupidity. All the ferocity had drained out of him. He started toward her, arms extended, and then stopped. Opened his mouth, closed it. Finally, he closed his eyes and balled his fists up tight.
“I’ve always known I was a monster,” he began. “I’ve done monstrous things out on raids. Here, in this Castel. I’ve always been…angry. And then, on my last raid into the Berkari Mountains, we had trouble.”
Cesare’s breathing had sped up, and he took a long deep, breath to calm it. His face twisted itself inwards at the painful memory, as though he were watching it unfold in his mind’s eye. Still, he kept going.
“It was an ambush. Some of the men fell back, or were separated. It’s not…it was, perhaps, suspicious. But I was left alone with a handful of my men and a dozen Berkari raiders, at night, in the woods. We fought until…” He paused to gather himself. “I still do not know exactly what happened. I remember a roar, a howling roar. And a rushing sound, as though there were a sudden storm. And then nothing, until I woke up covered in blood, wearing the skin of a dead wolf and surrounded by dead men. Men who had died…unnaturally.”
Lucia watched his great chest shudder and heave, and saw how difficult this was for him. She wanted to reach out and touch him, wanted to comfort him, but somehow knew that this was something he needed to get out on his own.
“My wounds were already healing. I had no memory, except…blood. And, worse, joy in blood. Since then, it has slowly gotten worse. The rage, the need for violence and for blood, and for…other animal pursuits, was always building inside me, until there were times when it threatened to break free. You have no idea how much I’ve struggled. How hard…”
A surge of tension rippled through out Cesare’s body, his massive muscles coiling and uncoiling with the terrible things he remembered. “I thought I would lose that struggle,” he said. “And then I found you.”
He opened his eyes, and looked plainly at Lucia.
“You found the book in my library. You know the truth. I am a Wolfenvask now. They say it only finds a home where it is welcome, and I…I was already a beast, in my way. Angry. Alone. Vicious. And you are the only person in the world who can make me better.
“That’s why I couldn’t tell you,” he said. He looked like he wanted to touch her, but was afraid she might break. “I’m so sorry. But you were the only thing that kept it at bay, and I had to know if…”
“If I was a traitor?” she said it for him.
“Yes.”
“I’m not.”
He smiled. “Even if you weren’t, I’d still love you. I had a plan, you know. You might not have liked it much, living in exile in the woods…”
“I’m not.”
Cesare grinned again. “I would have thrown you over my shoulder and taken you with me.”
Lucia found herself blushing at the thought. She wouldn’t have minded that, certainly. And she couldn’t deny the pull of her bond with him. It had been growing stronger, the longer they were together, the more they were near each other. To hear him explain…but that wasn’t quite enough.
“Is that all I am to you?” Lucia said. She did her best to keep her voice calm, flat, devoid of need or fear. She wanted him to be able to answer honestly. “It won’t matter if that’s all. If you only need me to keep the…Wolfenvask at bay, I’ll understand. I just want to know.”
Cesare reached out, and pulled her into him, crushing her body to his. “No, Lucia,” he said. “You don’t understand. It’s not your presence, or your body. That won’t suffice. If you ever cease to love me, I am lost. Both man and beast.”
Lucia’s heart pattered madly, and her body flamed to life where it touched his, even in the dank, evil gloom of a prison cell. His hand gripped against her lower back, his chest pressed against hers, and with one finger, he tilted her chin up to face him.
“I am not so arrogant as to think I deserve your love,” he said gravely. “But I will at least show you how deserving of love and faith you are. Avignon,” he called out, “you will take Vintner Lyselle to the townhouse, and call for a
physician?”
“Of course, my Lord. Are you…?”
“Yes,” Cesare said, his eyes meeting Lucia’s. “We are going to the Finale Feast.”
CHAPTER 18
Cesare felt Lucia’s heart beat through her chest and into his. She clung to him, her arms tight around his neck, her face pressed against his skin, as he raced through the winding catacombs. He didn’t know exactly how fast he was going, but he knew it was not a human pace. The walls blurred, and the stale, damp air blew briskly against his skin, and hers. Lucia kept her eyes shut tight.
He’d never felt stronger.
It had been apparent within moments of getting the satchel from Avignon that Lucia did not know her way around the catacombs. How could she? She’d been hesitant, and vaguely frightened, and eventually Cesare had realized that not only was she barefoot, but she couldn’t see in the dark like he could.
Like the Wolfenvask could. It truly felt like a part of him now.
Anything for an excuse to hold her tight, anyway. He would need the strength he derived from her, where they were going, to keep that thing contained.
Within moments, he was gently setting her down and feeling for the familiar patterned depression in the stone. With a great sigh, the rock yielded and slid away to reveal the great banquet hall of the Castel Lupin. It was full of Bacchanal lanterns, hung high and low, twinkling through out the great space below the vast ceiling, and full, too, with the sounds of drunken, expensive joy: the clinking of glasses, the laughter of men who wanted to be noticed, even the hushed chatter of their wives. The banquet table was on the other side of the hall, looking down on the emptiness below, an elevated island for the rich and powerful. No one had yet noticed their arrival through the secret door, not even the guards.
“Cesare…” Lucia said, her voice quiet.
“Don’t be afraid,” Cesare said, taking her hand. “If he tries to harm you, the Wolfenvask will take care of it, believe me.”
“If who tries to harm me?”
“My father,” he said, and he led them forward into the great hall.
The silence spread like a disease, beginning at one end of the banquet table and passing from guest to guest. Eventually it reached the Duke, who was sickly slumped in the seat of honor at the center. Even from a distance—they were still only halfway down the center of the hall, moving all the time toward the banquet table—Cesare could see his eyes slowly widen.
“Cesare!” the Duke called, though his voice was weak. Seated at his side, tending to his wine, was the red-faced Captain Rickle, who looked more afraid than offended. His eyes locked on Lucia.
Lucia’s fingers dug into Cesare’s arm. “Trust me,” he said again, and she nodded.
They were close now, and the only things in the entire room that dared to move. Cesare wondered what it must look like to Lucia, completely new to all of this, barefoot and in a barely decent dress: the entire ruling class of J’Amel, their hangers on and the up-and-comers, all gathered with their ambitions at a long, festive banquet table, where they pretended to enjoy each other’s company. With a soldier’s eye, Cesare noted the placement of friends and foes: the Grimaldis were absent, no doubt because of Gaston’s injuries; Rickle was helping his father to his feet in his anger; Jovan sat quietly to the side; Roberto Ramora drank with an air of amused interest. He didn’t much care what happened, politically, so long as Lupin family’s squabbles didn’t affect his fortune. No doubt his money was well hidden.
There were others, but no one who mattered. And here they were, standing in front of his father’s place, staring down the entire establishment. The guards at the edges of the room shifted nervously in their boots.
“Cesare, what is the meaning of this?” His father tried to sound irritated, but Cesare heard the high note of nervousness in his voice. His father did not like the unexpected, especially where his son was concerned.
“The meaning of this, your Grace,” Cesare drawled on the honorific, “is treason.”
The silence was complete.
Rickle cleared his throat. “Your Grace, I must inform you—”
“Shut up, Rickle. You’ll be lucky to survive this.”
The Duke of J’Amel looked past Cesare’s shoulder, to where Cesare knew there would be armed guards, and nodded. He said to his son, “Cesare, you are clearly not yourself—”
Cesare snarled, and felt a flicker of the beast pass through him. It must have played across his face, his body, his eyes, like a shadow, a brief suggestion of something terrible. It stopped his father mid-sentence, and everyone froze at the point of highest tension, reminded that they were still very much made of vulnerable flesh and blood.
“I dare you,” Cesare said, gesturing towards the guards. “I dare you. I am no longer a boy, Father. I’m no longer even a man. Do you want to find out what I am? What you helped to make me into?”
Cesare hadn’t known it to be true until he said it, but he knew it now. Without his father, the Wolfenvask would not have found a home in him. Maybe he would have died out there in the mountains without it. Maybe he never would have found Lucia.
We should be grateful for our pains as well as our joys, Cesare thought. Learn from wrongs done and justice served. But now, at least, it was time to right some of those wrongs.
“Cesare…”
“Don’t believe me, Father? Why don’t you ask Gaston Grimaldi?”
A murmur spread through out the now rapt, if terrified, audience. Cesare was certain the gossip would be on the street within the hour. He was not surprised to see that it was Rickle who stood up.
“You admit that it was you?”
“I admit that I caught him assaulting this young woman, and that I stopped him,” Cesare said. He waited for this admission to percolate through the wine-confused minds of J’Amel’s elite. He was almost able to pinpoint the exact moment when they connected what he’d said to the sorts of wounds they’d heard that Grimaldi had suffered, and what that could possibly mean.
The Duke waved his hand, eager to get on with it. He wouldn’t want to discuss Cesare’s apparent change in public. “And who is she, Cesare?” he said, his watery, yellow eyes coming to rest on Lucia.
Cesare felt her shrink back behind him. No doubt she was thinking of what he’d told her about his father and the whips. But it was Rickle who answered for him, Rickle who extended his fat finger, shaking with anger. “That is Lucia Lyselle, your Grace.”
Another ripple through the crowd, a louder one this time. The Duke looked from Rickle to Cesare and back again.
“I thought she was under arrest in the Basiglia.”
“I released her,” Cesare said.
His father blinked. He stared at his son, perhaps seeing him for the very first time. “Cesare…” he began, but Cesare did not let him finish.
Cesare was done.
He grabbed Lucia’s hand and advanced on the banquet table, bringing them both right up to the edge, right in front of his father. The beast churned inside of him, and yet, with Lucia by his side, he was in complete control of it. Cesare let it rise to the surface briefly, flashing its power just because he could, because they needed to know to take this seriously.
There was the sound of several heavy chairs scraping against stone.
“Stay!” Cesare bellowed. “All will witness this!”
The Duke cowered, seeming to shrink in his seat before his son, and Cesare saw him for the first time: small, mean, petulant, the sort of man who needed to prove his strength by beating a little boy. Not someone to be feared so much as someone to be dealt with.
Cesare slung the satchel from around his shoulder and removed the bottle. Rickle opened his mouth to speak, but Cesare silenced him with a glance.
“How much were you paid, swine?” Cesare spat at him. “It doesn’t matter. Because I am going to prove to you all—right here, right now—that the Duke’s Blend was never poisoned. It was only in your head, Father. Only in your poisoned mind.”
C
esare ripped the brown wrapping from around the bottle to reveal an ornate label covered with the unmistakable wax seal of the Duke’s Blend. He lifted it up so that everyone might get a good view. “Everyone look!” he shouted. “See the bottle! See the distinctive seals! This is the only extant bottle of this year’s Duke’s Blend, alchemically distilled by Vintner Lyselle, and all of it poisoned—allegedly—by the same man. It is said the goal was to poison us all, right here at this Feast, but all the bottles were destroyed in a suspicious fire. All except this one.”
Cesare popped the cork with his thumb, brought the bottle to his lips, and finished off half the bottle in one long gulp.
Cesare heard the gasps of shock, but mostly he felt Lucia’s hand in his own, squeezing her approval. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and bent to kiss her forcefully.
Now she would know. He believed her. He loved her. He was hers. And when he looked in her eyes, he saw: she did know. Then he felt it come racing, shimmering, rushing along the bond that they shared, where it filled him with renewed strength.
Reluctantly, he tore his gaze away from her, and leveled it at his father. The Duke licked his dry lips, his eyes darting about. “There was a letter,” he said. “A letter they found, mentioning a substance called valsace. I was told it is a poison.”
Cesare looked at Lucia. That had been her safeword.
“Valsace?” she said, surprising the entire room. “Valsace doesn’t exist. I made it up. It’s a code word for a secret ingredient we used in the Blend. We can’t just give our secrets away,” she said.
There was a pause in which one could almost hear the minds of the elite rearranging what they knew about life to accommodate the possibility that a half-dressed and barefoot commoner might speak to a Duke with evident, and accurate, contempt, and then live to glare at him, too.
Cesare laughed, though it was tinged with bitterness. “There!” he said. “Now all can see! There was no poison; there was never any poison. The Lyselles are vindicated. Don’t worry, Father: I’ve taken the liberty of releasing John Lyselle myself. But I’m afraid we’re not quite done here,” he continued, his eyes narrowed on a particular target.