Dark Triumph (His Fair Assassin #2)(101)
“Of course, we nearly ruined the effect by bursting into a fit of giggles, but we pressed the pillows against our mouths to stifle them.
“You have to understand, Julian was my dearest friend as well as my brother. My first memory is of skirts—coarse woolen or linsey cloth skirts as I toddled in bare feet on the stone kitchen floor. But my second memory is of Julian. Of his small, four-year-old hand taking hold of mine and pulling me into the family proper. Of his kind eyes and a face that always held a smile for me. Of hours spent hiding and playing our secret games, games that no one else understood, or cared to. It was Julian who risked much to hide me from the harm and cruelty of this household, and has since we were old enough to walk.
“So he was my friend first, before all else. We had always been stronger together; I thought this would be no exception.
“Would that I could swim back through time or somehow pour the sand through the hourglass backwards. To live one brief moment differently, make a different choice, set my life on a different path. Surely if gods or saints truly existed, they would have given me some warning, some inkling that my actions would send my life down a road I had no wish to take.
“Such was the moment when I invited Julian into my room, for I did not reckon on Julian’s own ripening body, or that mine would affect him so. He had always had my best interests at heart, and I never imagined this would be any different.”
Beast is still looking out the window, which makes it easier to continue. “But immediately it went wrong—horribly, deeply wrong. Inside, I felt as if some rot had taken hold of my soul. And yet, it made Julian so happy, and it gave him the courage to face down Pierre in all the challenges d’Albret set them. And I had not realized how beholden I felt to him for all the times he had saved me. So while I did not say yes, neither did I tell him no.
“Julian’s fingers were not poking or prodding, but gentle, teasing—awakening sensations that I had never experienced before. And I had not imagined that I could ever hold such power over a man—I, who had been at their mercy since I was born.
“But I had not foreseen that our relationship would take a twisted turn and come close to erasing all the good that once lay between us.”
I glance up at Beast’s face, which is contorted with—horror? Despair? I cannot guess what he is thinking or feeling. He looks down at his enormous, scarred hands. “How you must hate us all,” he says.
I stare at him, trying to understand what game he is playing. “But it was my fault,” I whisper. “My weakness and my—”
His head snaps up. “Your need to be loved? Protected? And for that, your brother demanded such a tithe? That is not a price anyone should have to pay for such things. And so I say again, it is a wonder you do not hate us all on sight.”
Marveling at how easily he has absolved me, I step forward and take his big hands into my own. “Not you, for you are as different from them as day is from night.”
Something in my words has struck him as forcefully as his words did me, and I can see that he wants to kiss me. But he does not, and I—I cannot bring myself to kiss him, not while the confession of such wantonness and wickedness still clings to my lips. The moment draws out into a palpable awkwardness, something that has never existed between us.
Unable to bear it, I turn back to the room and begin straightening the bed curtains. “We leave at first light?”
“Yes,” Beast says. “Do you think they are being brought to d’Albret’s encampment in front of Rennes? Or to Nantes for safekeeping until he returns?”
“I suspect Nantes, for even d’Albret does not want the inconvenience of girl children on his battlefield.”
“Very well. We leave for Nantes at daybreak.”
Leaving Beast to his window, I pace the small chamber, forming a mental list of all the preparations we will need to make before we go. There are not many. Provisions and fresh horses. I will not even have to alert the holding that we are leaving; we can simply be gone when they arise in the morning.
“Is Alyse buried here?” Beast asks, still staring out the window.
My skin pulls tight across my bones. “Yes.”
He turns from the window, his eyes bleak. “I would like to see her.”
I can think of a thousand places I would rather go, for the idea of visiting that place fair sets a wild clang of alarm bells ringing inside me, but I cannot refuse him this chance to visit his sister’s final resting place. “Wait here,” I tell him. “I must fetch the key.”
We step out of the castle into the raw spring evening, both of us quiet and lost in our own thoughts as we cross the inner courtyard and then go through the gate to the outbuildings beyond. Thick gray clouds scuttle across the sky, and I pray they will release their rain tonight rather than tomorrow, as a storm will greatly hamper our progress.
The closer we draw to the castle’s cemetery, the more my muscles twitch and spasm, desperate to avoid this place. My knees tremble with the effort to keep walking and not turn and run.
I lift the latch on the old rusty gate and push it open, its rarely used hinges squeaking in protest. My heart begins pounding and my breath comes faster, as if I have just run some great race. Beast looks at me in question. “There,” I say, pointing to the large mausoleum set near the back.
It is a grim and frightening place, not meant to bring comfort but to invoke all the demons of hell and damnation; that is what d’Albret is certain his wives deserve for having failed to please him in some way.