Hart of Winter

by Parker Foye

  Luc’s fork clattered onto his plate, the noise cutting sharply through the intimate chatter of the restaurant. He narrowed his eyes into shards. Rob remembered coming face-to-tusk with a wild boar on a research trip with his mother in Turkey for some project they’d been hired on. About to be gouged by Babe’s terrifying uncle, Rob hadn’t known whether to run or Instagram his inevitable goring. Saving them both, his mother extracted them with quick spellwork and nothing more scarring than a silly story to share.

  Rob didn’t think even his mother could finesse him out of his current mess.

  Luc worked his jaw, then picked up his fork again. Rob didn’t relax since the action meant Luc had a fork in his hand while Rob had only a napkin. He thought again of the boar.

  “I know the show, yes,” Luc said, in a measured voice. “What makes you ask?”

  Here it went. “My family is on it. I’m a Lentowicz. Like the—the cursebreakers? On Netflix? At first I worried you wanted me for something since Ava—But with how you’ve acted, you clearly don’t know who I am. And, wow, I’ve never actually said this before, and now I have, it sounds ridiculously egotistical.” Rob took a gulp of his wine, needing to clear his dry throat. Luc’s tight-jawed expression hadn’t changed. “Then I realized you have a curse. And with the show coming here, I had to tell you. I care for you, Luc, and I needed you to know before—” Rob stopped when Luc held up his hand.

  “You knew they were coming here? This whole time?”

  “No! I found out the day before yesterday.” Rob eyed his glass again. “I could’ve said earlier, but a phone call didn’t seem right. I needed to say it like this, face-to-face. So you could… I don’t know.” He shrugged lamely. “Ask questions. Hit me. Whatever.”

  “Hells’ sake, Rob, I’m not going to hit you,” Luc said, lowering his voice. He darted his gaze toward the door and back again. “Are they coming here? Now?”

  “They’re not even in France yet, as far as I know.”

  “Okay, but the—the collector? Do you know her?”

  “What? No, I swear I’ve never seen her before. I asked our family archivist, but we’ve never worked with her. No red flags, though.” No wonder Luc was twitchy; Rob had the luxury of forgetting about Nessom, but Luc didn’t. Had he been panicking since their meeting? Rob wanted to smother himself in cheese for being so ignorant.

  After a long moment where Rob considered the cheese and Luc unnervingly considered Rob, Luc eased back into his chair. He finally rested his fork on the lip of his plate, smoothing his long fingers up the handle. Rob shifted awkwardly, the movement jostling Luc’s leg where they had been touching. He saw the question—should he pull away?—jolt through Luc’s mind and could imagine those strong thigh muscles bunching for flight, but then Luc relaxed all at once. Everyone in the room must have been able to feel the change, as chatter suddenly increased in volume. Someone laughed, high and nervous-sounding.

  Luc placed his arms on the table and dragged his left sleeve down to expose his wrist and its cuff. He tapped a symbol on the cuff with his black fingernail. Rob stared because he was finally allowed to.

  “Do you know what this means?” Luc asked, his voice careless but his eyes hungry.

  As much as he wanted to say yes, Rob shook his head. “No. Sorry. What does it mean?”

  Luc smoothed his shirt back in place. “We don’t know. That’s the problem.” He shifted in his seat.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Another time.” Luc smiled weakly. “I suppose I don’t have to make excuses anymore, do I? Sunset is when the curse kicks in, and sometimes I’m fine, thanks to the cuffs, but sometimes…. It’s been getting worse. I’d rather be home by then.”

  Rob felt his eyes go wide. “You mean this whole time….” He couldn’t finish the question. Hearing Luc’s pain once was enough; he hadn’t imagined it happening every night. “Shit.”

  “That’s about right.” Luc pushed up from the table and pulled on his coat. He fished in his pocket and withdrew his wallet, dropping some notes on the table despite Rob’s protest. As he replaced his wallet, he leaned over and bussed a kiss on Rob’s cheek. He smelled like winter. “Sorry to run. And I owe you a date; this was a wonderful day. Like, eighty percent wonderful.”

  “So twenty percent awful?”

  “Twenty percent scary, let’s say.”

  Scary. Great. “How is that better than awful?”

  Luc’s eyes crinkled. “Lots of feelings can be scary, Rob. I heard you say you care for me in amongst all the other stuff.” His eyes were warm as he met Rob’s. “I care about you too. Please don’t think I don’t.”

  Rob watched Luc leave the restaurant, all swagger and grace, and wondered at the pain he’d been shouldering. For how long? Rob stared at the empty doorway until his phone vibrated on the table. Starting to life, Rob grinned as he checked it, expecting something cute from Luc. Something to repair the aching void threatening to open in his heart.

  Except the message wasn’t from Luc. It was from Rob’s mother.

  We’ve arrived. See you tomorrow.

  Rob twisted in his seat to signal the waiter. “Check, please?”

  Chapter Seven

  “ARE you sure that’s what he said? He’s a Lentowicz cursebreaker?” Eloise asked for what might’ve been the eighteenth time. Luc had lost count.

  Luc hugged the cushion closer to his chest and groaned miserably. “That’s what he said. Rob Lentowicz.”

  “Rob—un moment,” Amandine muttered and grabbed her phone from the coffee table.

  They were in the living room of the chalet, all together on the well-loved gray couch with its artfully mismatched cushions. Tea and biscuits were arranged on the squat oak table Tante Corinne had made, but Luc couldn’t stomach more than a nibble. He’d curled against the arm of the couch as soon as the week’s guests departed with cheerful spirits after breakfast, during which Luc was chopping yet more firewood. At the rate he was going, the municipal environmental officer would soon be by for a quiet word about curbing his efforts.

  The chalet still smelled like bacon and coffee. Luc pressed his face into the cushion and tried to quiet his roiling stomach. The motion made his brains rattle in his skull, and he groaned again.

  “This fucking sucks.”

  Eloise offered Luc another biscuit, though from her distant expression, it was more from custom than intent. Their family fed people as a course of habit. “I wonder what he’s doing here. Researching something?” She set the plate on the table again. “Why didn’t you mention this before?”

  “I told you, I only found out yesterday. Then you were giving that fancy dinner to the guests for their last night, and now here we are.” Luc glanced at the clock above the stone fireplace, which had been decorated with stockings embroidered with A, E, and L, the L newer than the others. He looked back at Eloise. “Shouldn’t we be getting to the airport for the next lot?”

  Eloise waved her hand. “Late arrivals.”

  Great, exactly what the day needed. Late arrivals meant Luc would be navigating the winding Alpine roads while dosed on over-the-counter meds to stave off his curse headache. He hadn’t mentioned his headaches to Eloise, but by the sidelong looks he’d been getting lately, she’d clearly noticed. She likely also noticed her supply of moisturizer getting low as Luc filched it to apply to the cracked skin on his wrists, hoping it would be more effective than his own. He mentally wrote himself a reminder to buy her a replacement.

  “Ha!” Amandine exclaimed, making them both jump. She thrust her phone at Luc, and he twisted to see the screen. “This is him, yes? He is cute, I remember.”

  She’d found a candid photograph of Rob climbing out of a black cab behind a woman, carrying her—Was that hair? Luc squinted and tried to enlarge the image, but the low resolution made it grainy. He recognized Rob easily, though.

  “That’s him, sure. What’s this?”

  “Robert Lentowicz broke the curse on Ava Gloss,” Amandine said, s
aying Rob’s name the French way. She quickly flicked through to a list of search results and passed her phone to Luc. “See?”

  Luc angled the phone so Eloise could see, and they scrolled down the list, a pit opening in Luc’s stomach with every headline. He knew the Lentowiczs broke Ava Gloss’s curse, as it was difficult to miss the story when every tabloid reported the news, and Luc was long conditioned to hear “curse” and listen quietly for the rest of the sentence. But he hadn’t known which of the family in particular was involved, clinging to ignorance in self-defense; knowing his own curse couldn’t be broken made Luc prone to resentfulness.

  From Amandine’s recognition, it seemed other members of his family had chosen a different route. Amandine didn’t strike Luc as an Ava Gloss fan considering the heavy metal usually rattling the windowpanes.

  “He has not said how he broke the curse,” Amandine said as she took a biscuit from the plate and cupped her hand to catch the crumbs. “A Rapunzel can be complicated. I had thought they were keeping a secret, but now I do not know.”

  Luc handed Eloise the phone, as she’d gotten caught reading an article. He settled back into the couch and propped his chin on the cushion he was hugging.

  “You know a lot about this stuff, then?”

  Amandine delicately brushed her hands over the biscuit plate. “Of course. It is my curse also.”

  Once upon a time, when Luc was sixteen, he started a fight with some kids from a rival school. He’d long forgotten the reason why, if there ever was one, but they were in the park on a Friday night, and Luc was angry, the way he’d been for years by then. Adolescent anger might have been primarily fear and confusion, but it made excellent fight fuel. After a few minutes scuffling and shouting, when Luc had bruised knuckles and blood in his mouth, one of the boys clonked him over the head with a half-full bottle of Lambrini, and he went down like a sack of spuds.

  Headache aside, he’d been fine, but he distinctly remembered the absolute shock of impact. Thonk! And then face-first on the ground.

  Luc remembered the thonk when Amandine claimed the curse for her own. He opened and closed his mouth a few times. Eloise must have finished the article and seen him, as a huff of breath made him look at her.

  “What?” he managed to ask.

  Eloise passed the phone back to Amandine. “I could say the same thing. Did you think you were alone in this?”

  Luc made a gesture to express the strongest “yes” he knew, inarticulate with emotion. Eloise rolled her eyes.

  “Did you never think about what would happen if we had children?”

  “I’m not having any,” he said immediately.

  “Me neither, probably, but Amandine wants a brood.”

  Luc leaned forward to look at Amandine, his eyebrows reaching for his scarred hairline. “No shit?”

  Amandine blushed and did a Gallic shrug. Luc had never thought about Amandine outside the context of Les Menuires, but he abruptly realized she lived the entire calendar year in the mountains and might intend to spend her life there. With children, apparently. Like an adult might, since at some point during the last twenty years, she’d become one.

  Luc wanted to go to his room and lie down until he felt less overwhelmed, but hiding wouldn’t solve the problem of his total self-absorption. He curled his feet beneath him on the couch and grabbed a biscuit, setting the cushion behind him.

  “Kids,” Luc started, then realized he didn’t know what else to say. His brain felt two sizes too big for his skull.

  Amandine shrugged again. “One day. I would like to add more names to our family tapestry. And perhaps one of my sons might bear the curse. I would know what I can to help him.”

  “The cuffs—”

  “You’re wearing them,” Eloise pointed out, a line pinched between her brows. “Luc, there’s only one set. If one of us has kids in the next few years, what will you do?”

  The question rang in the sudden silence of the room. Luc paused in chewing his biscuit, the sweet crumbs turning ashy on his tongue. He’d inherited the cuffs from Thierry because Thierry hadn’t been around to use them. Luc had always thought Thierry mailed the cuffs to Maman as his last act in the world, sensing hunters on his trail.

  Whatever the reason, the cuffs wouldn’t last long enough for Amandine’s kid to inherit, and in the unlikely event they did, Luc didn’t want to give them up. He knew it was selfish. And if he went early, as Thierry had, Luc didn’t want the only part of him left behind to be fading magical cuffs. He didn’t want anyone else in his family to fear people like Harriet Nessom or go looking for fights because they didn’t have any other way to get the anxiety out.

  With a sensation of detachment, Luc stuffed the rest of the biscuit in his mouth. He could barely taste it.

  “Luc?” Eloise leaned forward to catch his eye. “We didn’t mean to upset you.” At that Amandine chuffed and rose from the couch, heading out of the room. “Well, I didn’t, anyway,” Eloise amended.

  Luc didn’t know how to say he wasn’t upset, because he didn’t know what he was. Before he could fumble his way through the spectrum of human emotions, Amandine returned with something in her arms. The fucking tapestry. She’d pulled it from the frame, and when she sat down, she unrolled it across their legs. Luc’s thighs tingled uncomfortably from the magic residue.

  “Look.” Amandine jabbed at the tapestry. “Read.”

  Luc had read the names a hundred times. Quelled by Amandine’s fierce expression, he decided against mentioning the fact, and leaned in to read.

  “Oncle Thierry. Okay, sure. Name, mark of the curse, date of birth.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing,” Luc said.

  “And nothing,” Amandine repeated, weirdly triumphant.

  Luc stared at Eloise but she didn’t look at him. She looked down at her hands, her lips twisted. He turned back to Amandine. “I don’t get it.”

  Tutting at him, Amandine pointed at apparently random members of their family tree. “Pierre. Gabriel. Louis. Curse, curse, curse. Date of birth. Date of birth. Date of birth. Date of death, date of—”

  Thonk.

  Luc knocked aside Amandine’s hand and ran his finger along the names she’d pointed out, the names with the thin silver border indicating their status as cursebearers. Magic prickled over his skin, but it barely registered as Luc confirmed what Amandine had pointed out: every cursebearer had a date of death except for Luc—and Thierry.

  He leaned back woozily. He figured woozy was fine when the entire planet flipped twice in twenty minutes.

  “How didn’t I know this? Why hasn’t anyone looked for him?”

  Eloise answered, though she didn’t look up from picking at the fabric of her jeans. “You’ve always—It doesn’t matter. No one looked because they remember him leaving, and the hunters—the collectors—who were found nearby. And the tapestry is old, the magic faded. It’s hard to maintain a charm like this.” She raised and dropped one shoulder, like it didn’t matter, but her voice clicked when she spoke. “We decided you had to know since you wouldn’t ever look for yourself. Just in case. Now you know what we do. What will you do about it?”

  About Thierry, Luc didn’t know. The idea was enormous, enough to reshape his life.

  But the cuffs? Luc could do something about the cuffs. The cuffs Thierry had given up, apparently. He wasn’t dead at all.

  What did that mean for the curse, and living with it? What did that mean for Luc?

  Eloise had talked around it, but Luc heard what she didn’t say: his stubbornness in ignoring the curse, inasmuch as it was possible while bearing it, meant he wouldn’t have listened to any possibility there might be a way out from beneath it. Luc didn’t have the strength for hope. So Eloise had hope for him. She and Amandine had found a possible way to lift the boulder of the curse. The least Luc could do was lend a shoulder to their efforts.

  Decision made, Luc grabbed another biscuit and devoured it, then got to his feet. He plumped out the
squidged cushion and put it back in place. Where nerves once consumed him, only resolution flowed through his veins. His headache still bashed the inside of his head, but it could piss off. Luc had things to do.

  “What time are we going for the guests?”

  Raising her eyebrows at the change of subject, Eloise glanced at the clock. “Around four, I think, with traffic.”

  “Right. I’ll be there. But there’s something I have to do first.”

  “If we’ve upset you—”

  “No.” Luc shook his head. He smiled, and for once it didn’t feel calculated. “Seriously, this has been—It’s been really good. Hard to say how much, actually.”

  Amandine selected another biscuit from the tray and pointed at him with it. She’d rolled the tapestry up and set it aside. “And you will be back on time, yes? No catch?”

  “No catch.”

  She shooed him away, and Luc went, feeling tall as he grabbed his phone and jacket from his room and yanked on his boots. His head rang with clarity as he checked his reflection and scraped his hair back from his face for a change, wondering how the scars didn’t seem as obvious as they usually did.

  He looped his scarf over his head, stepped outside, and flicked through his phone to select his most recent number.

  Rob Lentowicz, craftumentary darling, cursebreaker.

  Luc hadn’t lied to Rob at their dinner date, the memory of which still made his stomach flutter. He wanted Rob. He cared for him, the cute snowboarder he’d crashed into, whose kisses brought Luc gladly to his knees. The guy who wore a red beanie instead of carrying a carnation and made jokes about cheese, who taught Luc how to snowboard because he wanted to share something that brought him joy. Who listened to Luc’s stories and refused to let Luc be indecent in public and had adorably crooked teeth and abs Luc wanted to grind against until he came.

  But Luc’s family bore a curse, and Rob’s family were cursebreakers. And while Rob hadn’t recognized the symbols on Luc’s cuffs, he’d mentioned his family archives.