I grip my knees, and pain radiates up my bruised phalanx. “I don’t understand.”
She plays with the rectangular catch on her purse, flipping it open, then closed. “You were only a toddler. But also the only Roland left. If you’d stayed in town, Amandine was convinced . . .” Her gaze flitters to every inch of deserted space. “She was convinced he would try to get the Quatrefoil together again, no matter your age.”
“Who’s he?”
She lifts a penciled-in eyebrow.
“You said he would have tried to get the Quatrefoil together again. Who’s he?” I want to hear her say it.
She snaps the golden clasp shut and hugs her purse to her chest, her gaze flitting around the empty waiting room again.
“Rainier,” she whispers.
His name echoes like a gunshot inside my throbbing skull. I roll my fingers into fists, relax them, roll them back in. “Amandine asked you to hide me from him?”
“Yes.”
Glad to see my gut hasn’t deceived me yet. “Why tell me now?”
She eyes the Bloodstone. “I’ve lived with this secret for seventeen years. And then I lived with the guilt of having lost track of you. I don’t know if the others told you, but my son was cursed. When it happened, when he started acting—” A tear snakes down her cheek, gets lost in one of her wrinkles. “He consumed my every thought. My every minute. After I sent him away, I tried locating you, but you’d vanished . . . without a trace.” Her voice grows thinner, her grief heavier. “I hope you can forgive me.”
I don’t answer her, too busy planning how I will take de Morel down with me when I go. I might be scum, but a man feared by his own wife . . . there’s no word to describe that sort of person. I stand and pace, back and forth, back and forth.
Nolwenn sniffs, following my frantic marching with her shiny eyes. “Marseille?”
“I knew I couldn’t trust him.”
“Him? It was my fault.”
“You did it to save me. To get me away from him.”
“And I failed.” She inhales deeply, as though to quiet her sorrow, but more tears stream out. She squeezes her eyes shut. “You found your way back home.”
“No. He found me.”
It hits me then that although he claimed to have gotten me out of Vincent’s clutches, he might’ve had no hand in it. That when he loaned my money to that Marianne-chick, he might not have known I was alive. Not that either is consequential at the moment.
Nolwenn grabs my sleeve, effectively halting me. “Marseille, you cannot tell him you know. You cannot say a thing. I have grandchildren.”
Holy shit. Does she think he’d hurt those kids?
“And he’s got a daughter who worships the ground he stands on,” she adds in a small voice.
“Doesn’t do much standing if you ask me. Unless he’s faking his handicap.”
“No. It’s real.” She wipes one cheek, then the other. “Do you promise to keep my secret?”
Going down without a fight goes against every fiber of my being, but there’s so much terror in Nolwenn’s brown eyes. And I don’t want to be the cause of it.
I scrub my hands down my face and heave out a sigh. “Fine. But once I’m gone, you have to swear you’re going to take care of Cadence as though she was your grandkid, Nolwenn.”
“I swear upon the Quatrefoil that I will.”
Is this some sick joke? “The Quatrefoil?”
“Sorry. It’s . . . the saying’s so ingrained in me.”
Taking Rainier’s wrongdoings to my grave better earn me some damned angel wings.
When I return from my walk a half hour before moonset, Cadence’s clinic room is crowded. Adrien stands at the window, fogging up the glass with his slow breathing, staring out into the darkening grayness. Gaëlle leans against the wall under the mounted TV set, head back, eyes closed. Alma sits on the bed, cheek resting upon Cadence’s shoulder. Bastian occupies the Kartell ghost chair in the corner, punching his phone’s screen.
They all turn when I enter, their faces carved in granite.
I avert my gaze.
“I miscalculated, Slate. The new moon sets at 4:47.”
Whoopedy-woo. I get four extra minutes.
“Maybe that’ll give us time to—”
“To what, Bastian?” I don’t mean to sound like an ass.
He swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “Maybe we could—”
“Just let it go. Just fucking let it go.”
The door swings inward, and the doc strides in. She lifts an eyebrow at the amount of people in the room but doesn’t ask any of us to leave. Then she zeroes in on me and smiles. “Ah! You’re due for a rabies shot, Monsieur Ardoin. I was worried you were trying to avoid me.”
There’s no way in hell I am getting a shot before I die. No. Fucking. Way. “I’ll come in tomorrow.”
“Did they ever find that dog?” She looks from me to Adrien. “The . . . what was it again?”
“A German Shepherd-pug,” I answer tonelessly. Doesn’t even make me smile anymore . . .
Adrien crosses his arms. “We found it. And we put it down.”
“Good.” Doc bobs her head, her silver braid settling over her white lab coat. “I’ve been meaning to call you, Adrien. About that puppy.”
Adrien begins to shift on a pair of loafers so shiny they must be from his post-guivre closet.
“I’d really love your thoughts on breeds, and—”
“Doc?” I cut her off. “Can you just tell us if anything’s new with Cadence?”
Her cheeks brighten. She gently shoos Alma off the mattress, eyes the machines and scrolls through some information on a tablet she pulls from the foot of the bed. She shines a pen light into Cadence’s eyes and taps something onto the tablet screen. “For now, no change. But, like I said a couple of days ago, she’s breathing on her own, shows no signs of brain damage, and no signs of infection.”
Also, no signs of life.
“She’s a strong girl. She’s going to come back from this.” Doc puts the tablet back into the pocket at the foot of the bed. “I need to go check on a few other patients, and then I’ll head home. If anything of note happens, one of the nurses will contact me immediately, and I will contact you.”
“Thank you, Sylvie,” Adrien says quietly.
She smiles as she walks out, and then the room falls silent except for the beep-beep-beep of the machines.
I glance at my Daytona: 4:25 pm. Twenty-two minutes to go before Slate Ardoin is no more.
“Can you all give me a bit of privacy with Cadence?” I study the wrinkled plastic IV sack, refusing to look at any of them. Refusing to see the pity in their eyes.
They all reluctantly shuffle out.
I sit on Cadence’s bed, lace my fingers through hers, and say for the hundredth time, “I’m so sorry.”
She doesn’t respond.
I set my gaze on the darkening sky, but all I see is my reflection in the glass. I’m pale and drawn and pretty damn pathetic-looking. Grief has pooled into my eyes and dragged the corners of my mouth down.
Grief at losing Cadence. At abandoning Bastian. At leaving this life.
So much for making my own luck.
Cadence’s chest rises and falls quietly. Steadily.
“You know, princess, I’d feel a hell of a lot better about tonight if you’d pop those beautiful eyes of yours open and give me a kiss goodbye.”
Her lids flutter. I want to hope they’ll do more than that, but I know miracles don’t happen.
I part my lips to speak again when her fingers twitch.
The words I was about to utter die on my rushed inhale.
Her eyelids quiver, and then they lift, and I get to look upon the most priceless jewels—Cadence de Morel’s aquamarine eyes.
“Slate?” Her voice is broken, hoarse.
My heart expands so suddenly I think it might injure my ribs. My dying wish came true. Not only is she awake, but she remembers me. I lean
over, thread my arms between the wires and tubes and take her face in my hands. “Thank fucking God.”
She raises a hand, knuckles my week-old stubble.
I swallow the rawness that’s gripped my throat. “How I’ve missed you, Mademoiselle de Morel.”
“I would hope so.” Her smile ignites something in me. Something that hurts, because it’s about to burn out.
I lean forward and graze her bruised, pale skin with my lips—her forehead, her cheeks, her chin, her nose—before finishing with a soft kiss on her mouth.
The machines beep out of time as though hooked to my own pulse.
Suddenly, the door of the room flies open, and the student nurse hurries to the bedside. “Mademoiselle de Morel!” When she sees Cadence is awake, her eyes grow wide with relief. “Welcome back. How are you feeling?”
“Okay.” Cadence smiles at me, and the sight fucking takes my breath away. “More than okay.”
The nurse resets the machines. “Let me call the doctor. She’ll want to see you.”
When the door closes, Cadence’s grin turns fiercer. “We did it. We defeated the Quatrefoil.”
I swallow down a sharp prickle in my throat. Do I go with it, or set her straight? I don’t want to upset her.
I don’t have a chance to decide, because her gaze falls on the Bloodstone, and her face goes from pale to bone-white.
“Slate, why are you still wearing the ring?”
I clear my throat. “It . . . well . . . it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you’re alive and your brain’s working.”
“Take it off. We defeated the Quatrefoil. Take it off.”
“Cadence—”
She sits up, her breaths coming faster and faster, making the machines go wild. “Ares crumbled. I got the leaf. I got it.”
“Cadence, it’s okay—”
“I got my piece, Slate. I won it!”
The machines bleat anew.
“We looked for it.” I avert my gaze, smooth a crease in the sheet that covers her body.
The door swings open again.
“Can you give us a fucking minute!” I snap.
The nurse freezes midway to Cadence’s bed. “I was just going to switch off the machines.”
“Okay. Switch them off.”
She does it, then rolls the equipment against the wall. “If you’re upsetting the patient, then I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
Cadence’s eyes flash. “He’s not upsetting me!”
The nurse blinks before trundling out. She’s probably going to phone up Rainier. Fucking Rainier, who’s going to have a lifetime with Cadence while I get a handful of seconds. My tongue itches to reveal all Nolwenn said, but I think of Gaëlle’s twins, whom I have yet to meet, of her stepson, whom I have met. I won’t betray her or them, but she better hold up her end of the bargain or I will fucking haunt her ass like Matthias haunted her daughter-in-law.
“Slate, how long have I been in the clinic? How much longer before the new moon?”
Before I can answer that it’s already risen and will soon set, the whole Quatrefoil crew piles into the room—Adrien, Gaëlle, Alma, Bastian.
“Alma!” She yanks the IV out of her arm and scoots off the bed to give her best friend a one-armed hug before returning to my side. “I had the leaf before . . . before . . .” She puts a hand on her rumpled hair. “We have to go find it. It must still be there.” She twists her neck left and right, most likely looking for her shoes. “I remember where I dropped it.”
“We searched everywhere.” Adrien rubs his chin, eyes downcast.
“You mustn’t have searched everywhere,” she snaps.
My eyes slide to my watch. For once, I hope Bastian’s calculations are wrong. But they never are.
He glances at me, his eyes bloodshot and swollen behind his glasses. Ever since our botched attempt at removing my finger yesterday, he’s been bawling on and off like a freaking baby. “The moon sets in eight minutes, Cadence.”
“The moon sets? I don’t—” Her eyes go to the window, to the drab, dark sky, then to my hand, and finally to my face. “I had the leaf. I had it. This can’t be happening.”
“Princess,” I start.
A sob splinters out of her. I kiss her forehead.
Eight fucking minutes.
Maybe seven now.
This feels like the first night we met. When they counted down the seconds to the new year. Now, we’re counting down the minutes to the new moon.
“I . . .” I clear my throat. “I need to leave.” I clear my throat again and then get to my feet.
Although I want to go to Bastian, so I can give him one final hug and a pep talk, and then to Cadence, so I can bruise her mouth with mine, I don’t deviate from my outbound trajectory.
I don’t want anyone to see me suffer.
I don’t want their last memory of me to be tainted by me begging for mercy.
I stop on the threshold. Without turning, I utter Bastian’s name followed by the words I’ve told him so many times he’ll probably have them inscribed on my headstone: “Don’t do anything I would do.”
Shit. Will I have a headstone or will the date of Rémy Roland’s death be altered to fit my new narrative?
I tear out of the room, my boots clapping the linoleum. I nearly plow into the doc as I round the corner and barrel into the stairwell. I take the stairs two at a time until I’m on the ground floor, shoving the fire door open and tumbling forward into the hoary darkness.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I grit my teeth and wait for the torturous burning Rainier assured me would come.
Snow falls onto my clasped lids. An owl hoots in a not so distant tree. A motor rumbles.
“Slate?” De Morel’s voice echoes through the frigid air.
“Come to watch me writhe in pain, de Morel?” I turn to where he sits like a fucking incapacitated king on his snowmobile, revving it up, even though the headlight is off.
I really don’t want the last thing I see to be his smug face, so I turn around and shut my eyes, and wait for the pain.
And wait for it.
And wait for it.
It doesn’t come.
I crack open an eyelid to see if I died without realizing it.
The stone wall of the clinic’s still there, a pale blemish against the night, and so is the pile of cigarette butts in the standing chrome ashtray beside the door, and so is the rumble of the snowmobile.
It’s hard to believe, but Bastian must’ve been off his game.
I lift my hand to swear at the cursed Bloodstone for dragging this out. The ruby gem is a dull burgundy, the color of the wine bottle I left behind in Amandine’s crypt.
Amandine, who tried to save me.
“You foiled a lot of things, Slate.” The motor revs louder.
I swallow thickly, fingers cold, numbed by fear and frost.
Molars gritted, I turn back to face Rainier. I want to push him off his snowmobile, drag his limp ass to the roof, and shove him off there. But I think of Cadence. I can’t do that to her.
“She just woke up. Your daughter just woke up.”
He freezes, his thumb slackening on the throttle. The motor still rumbles, but no longer as though Rainier was about to ram his sleek black ride into me.
My knuckles feel stiff. I spread my fingers to stretch them out and get the blood flowing, however pointless that might be. The band dips on my finger, and then the heavy stone drags it down.
Over the knuckle.
Over the nail.
And into the snow.
Epilogue
CADENCE
“Slate!” I screech as I shove the clinic door open. “Slate!”
It takes my eyes a second to adjust to the darkness, to spot his broad body, his hunched shoulders, his bowed neck, his downturned face. Next to him sits Papa on his snowmobile.
“Slate!” I leap into the snow, barefoot, my thin hospital gown flapping. Six quick strides, and I reach them. “How dare you
leave like that!” I shove his shoulder. “How dare you, Slate Ardoin.”
I don’t want to cry, but tears roll down my cheeks. I’m about to lose a boy I care so much about that I can’t imagine him not existing. Not being part of my life.
His hands sweep across my wet cheeks. “Cadence . . .” His voice is soft. The tone of someone about to apologize. About to say goodbye.
“We’ll find a way, Slate. I’ll find a way to save you,” I croak. “Right, Papa? We’ll find a way.”
My father remains as mute and still as my mother’s statue before the Quatrefoil animated it.
“Cadence . . .” Slate wipes my tears away again before resting his palms on either side of my face and tugging me so close our noses bump.
“You said we have to make our own luck. Running off to die alone—well, with Papa—is not making your own luck. That’s called giving up. I’m not letting you give up. I’m going to—”
“Cadence,” he says my name more forcibly.
I sniff. “What?”
“The ring came off.”
I blink. “What?”
“The ring came off.”
I jerk my head back. “What?”
“The ring came off.”
“I heard you the first time around.”
“Then why do you keep saying what?”
I want to swat him for being so wickedly insolent. I want to kiss him for being so wickedly beautiful, inside and out. “How did the ring come off?”
“I put my hand down like this.” He pivots his wrist until his fingers point to the snow. “And voilà.”
My heartbeats quiet, then thunder when I spot a dark stain on the trampled white expanse. I don’t crouch to pick it up. Don’t dare touch it.
I raise my gaze to Slate, brushing every inch of his face and neck and torso with my fingertips. “Does anything hurt?”
“For once, not a damn thing.”
“Papa! Did you hear that? The ring came off.” New tears spring into my eyes. “Does that mean he won’t be poisoned? Does that mean he’ll live?”
Slate slants my father a serrated glare which my father reciprocates. I need to get those two to like each other. Or at the very least, to stand each other.
Of Wicked Blood: A Slow Burn Romantic Urban Fantasy (The Quatrefoil Chronicles Book 1) Page 40