Serpent & Dove (Serpent & Dove, #1)(7)

“Are you injured, monsieur?”

Right. Today, I was a man. I could do this.

I forced myself to look up.

Beyond his obscene height, the first things I noticed were the brass buttons on his coat—they matched the copper and gold of his hair, which shone in the sun like a beacon. Combined with his straight nose and full mouth, it made him unexpectedly handsome for a Chasseur. Irritatingly handsome. I couldn’t help but stare. Thick lashes framed eyes the precise color of the sea.

Eyes that currently regarded me with unabashed shock.

Shit. My hand shot to my mustache, which dangled off my face from the fall.

Well, it’d been a valiant effort. And while men might be proud, women knew when to get the hell out of a bad situation.

“I’m fine.” I ducked my head quickly and tried to move past him, eager now to put as much distance as possible between us. Though I’d still done nothing wrong, there was no sense in poking fate. Sometimes she poked back. “Just watch where you’re going next time.”

He didn’t move. “You’re a woman.”

“Well spotted.” Again, I tried to shove past him—this time with a bit more force than necessary—but he caught my elbow.

“Why are you dressed like a man?”

“Have you ever worn a corset?” I spun around to face him, reattaching my mustache with as much dignity as I could muster. “I doubt you’d ask such a question if you had. Trousers are infinitely more freeing.”

He stared at me as if I’d sprouted an arm from my forehead. I glared back at him, and he shook his head slightly as if to clear it. “I—my apologies, mademoiselle.”

People were watching us now. I tugged fruitlessly at my arm, the beginnings of panic fluttering in my stomach. “Let me go—”

His grip only tightened. “Have I offended you somehow?”

Losing my patience completely, I jerked away from him with all my might. “You broke my ass bone!”

Perhaps it was my vulgarity that shocked him, but he released me like I’d bitten him, eyeing me with a distaste bordering on revulsion. “I’ve never heard a lady speak so in my entire life.”

Ah. Chasseurs were holy men. He probably thought me the devil.

He wouldn’t have been wrong.

I offered him a catlike smile as I inched away, batting my lashes in my best impression of Babette. When he made no move to stop me, the tension in my chest eased. “You’re hanging out with the wrong ladies, Chass.”

“Are you a courtesan, then?”

I would’ve bristled had I not known several perfectly respectable courtesans—Babette not necessarily among them. Damn extortionist. Instead, I sighed dramatically. “Alas, no, and hearts all over Cesarine are breaking for it.”

His jaw tightened. “What’s your name?”

A wave of raucous cheers spared me from answering. The royal family had finally rounded the corner to our street. The Chasseur turned for only a second, but it was all I needed. Slipping behind a group of particularly enthusiastic young girls—they shrieked the prince’s name at a pitch only dogs should’ve heard—I disappeared before he turned back around.

Elbows jostled me from all sides, however, and I soon realized I was simply too small—too short, too slight—to fight my way through the crowd. At least without poking someone with my knife. Returning a few elbows with my own, I searched for higher ground to wait out the procession. Somewhere out of sight.

There.

With a jump, I caught the windowsill of an old sandstone building, shimmied my way up the drainpipe, and pulled myself onto the roof. Settling my elbows on the balustrade, I surveyed the street below. Golden flags with the royal family’s crest fluttered from each doorway, and vendors hawked food at every corner. Despite the mouthwatering smells of their frites and sausages and cheese croissants, the city still reeked of fish. Fish and smoke. I wrinkled my nose. One of the pleasures of living on a dreary gray peninsula.

Cesarine embodied gray. Dingy gray houses sat stacked atop one another like sardines in a tin, and crumbling streets wound past dirty gray markets and even dirtier gray harbors. An ever-present cloud of chimney smoke encompassed everything.

It was suffocating, the gray. Lifeless. Dull.

Still, there were worse things in life than dull. And there were worse kinds of smoke than chimney.

The cheers reached a climax as the Lyon family passed beneath my building.

King Auguste waved from his gilt carriage, golden curls blowing in the late-autumn wind. His son, Beauregard, sat beside him. The two couldn’t have looked more different. Where the former was light of eyes and complexion, the latter’s hooded eyes, tawny skin, and black hair favored his mother. But their smiles—both were nearly identical in charm.

Too charming, in my opinion. Arrogance exuded from their very pores.

Auguste’s wife scowled behind them. I didn’t blame her. I would’ve scowled too if my husband had more lovers than fingers and toes—not that I ever planned to have a husband. I’d be damned before chaining myself to anyone in marriage.

I’d just turned away, already bored, when something shifted in the street below. It was a subtle thing, almost as if the wind had changed direction mid-course. A nearly imperceptible hum reverberated from the cobblestones, and every sound of the crowd—every smell and taste and touch—faded into the ether. The world stilled. I scrambled backward, away from the roof’s edge, as the hair on my neck stood up. I knew what came next. I recognized the faint brush of energy against my skin, the familiar thrumming in my ears.