The Beautiful (The Beautiful #1)(70)

She would not be the reason anyone else died. Ever again.

Without thought or consideration—her tears trailing down her cheeks, joining hands with the rain—Celine began to walk.

“Celine?” Pippa called out from behind her.

Celine ignored her and quickened her pace. Turned into the lemon grove, deliberately winding through the trees, pausing for a time in an effort to shake Pippa from her trail. Beneath a dripping branch, Celine took a deep breath, filling her head with the sweet scent of citrus as it mingled with the metal and moss of an early spring shower. Entreated her spirit to grant her the fortitude necessary to do what must be done.

The street lay empty through the iron gate, a few short steps and a world away.

In a moment, she would disappear and never turn back. It didn’t matter where she went. It only mattered that she vanish without a trace. That no one else perish because of her.

“Celine!” She heard Pippa shout from the opposite side of the lemon grove.

Now was her best chance. Celine darted from the shade of the tree, making her way toward the gate and the lonely freedom of a misty street.

A tall man stepped into her path, his tweed cap pulled low on his brow. “Celine,” he said calmly, his eyes like chips of ice.

Celine stumbled midstep, her composure on the cusp of splintering. “Yes, Detective Grimaldi?”

“Where are you going?”

“I’ve been asked to leave the convent.” She attempted to skirt him, but he shifted once more, blocking her from reaching the gate.

Anger lined Michael’s features. “You’ve been asked to leave . . . tonight?” His words sounded muffled to her. As if he were speaking into a void or at the end of a long tunnel.

Desperation clutched around her heart. “Let me go, Michael. Please.”

“Now is not the time for anyone to be walking the streets alone, least of all you.”

It was a cool declaration. But it seared through Celine like a brand, reminding her of the many deaths on her conscience. One by her own hand. “Get out of my way,” she said, her voice dangerously close to breaking.

“No.”

Celine shoved Michael with all her might. She didn’t stop to watch him fall. She simply raced toward the gate, her feet flying above the pavestones, her heart pounding at a frantic pace. The memory of what Bastien had said to her the night they first met echoed through her ears. He’d likened her to a lunar goddess who dragged darkness with her wherever she went.

She would bring no more darkness here. She’d run away once to begin a new life. She could do it again, without a single glance over her shoulder.

A firm hand yanked Celine off course, gripping her forearm tightly. Then it pulled her into a solid chest, clasping both her wrists behind her, forcing the air from her lungs. Michael towered over her, caging her with his arms, effectively rendering her immobile. He was stronger than he appeared at first glance, his body shifting beneath his wet garments like sinew.

“You little fool,” he snarled under his breath, fury sharpening his features. “You think you’re going to run away and everything will be as it once was?”

Celine glared up at him, drops of rain catching on her eyelashes. “Go to Hell.”

“Will you make sense in Hell? If so, then lead the way.”

“Sense?” she cried. “Tonight I was attacked by a creature that could fly. It taunted me. Said I belonged to it. Told me death was a garden and likened its work to the Battle of Carthage. Two nights ago, I was stalked by something that crawled up a wall and vanished in the wind without a trace.” Celine laughed, the sound bordering on crazed. “It knew my name. Tell me, Michael Grimaldi, does any of this make sense?”

Michael’s nostrils flared. He released her wrists, a veil of lethal calm descending over his face. “Why am I only now hearing of the incident from two nights ago?”

“Am I to report to you at every turn?” Celine laughed again. Pushed him away, her hands thrown in the air. “Besides, I sound like a lunatic. Like someone who lived in the dungeons of the Bastille for an age, deprived of sunlight and air and all that is necessary to survive.” Her chest heaved as she took in a ragged breath.

His expression unreadable, Michael stared down at her, his pale gaze steady. “What happened when the creature stalked you two days ago? How did you manage to escape?”

“Bastien.”

“Bastien?” Michael’s eyes narrowed, a muscle jumping in his neck. “Why was Bastien there?”

“I haven’t the faintest clue. Perhaps you should stop behaving like a belligerent child and ask him. It’s possible he has a death wish, too.”

Michael opened his mouth to retort, but the clatter of an arriving carriage stole his attention, sparing Celine from having to partake further in the conversation.

A glossy black brougham halted just outside the iron gates of the convent. Emblazoned on its door was the symbol of a fleur-de-lis in the mouth of a roaring lion. For a stutter of time, Celine allowed herself to hope a broad-shouldered young man would alight from its confines, his eyes like honed daggers and his jaw like hewn stone. Dared to dream he would gift her this enchanted carriage, capable of taking her to the ends of the earth. Tell her to go anyplace she wished. Swore to follow wherever she went, even to Hell itself.

Ridiculous. A man should not have to grant her this kind of freedom. Celine should be able to take it herself. But she’d already tried to take it. Tried and failed numerous times, the world reminding her at all turns that her own liberty wasn’t hers to give, much less take. A woman absent money or prospects had no place in proper society. In such a society, a wife and daughter were legal possessions. Commodities used to curry wealth and favor.