Rook(52)

She could not tell him he was wrong. And it was mortifying. He reached up a finger and hooked a long curl, moving it away from her face. She felt her gaze pulled upward. René’s hair was russet and mahogany in the window sun, his expression serious, the blue eyes heated and focused and intent on hers.

“Do you know why I know these things you do not say? It is because you are like me. That is why I can see. I know what it is to live as someone else, where others can never know you.” He was making free with her hair on one side now, letting the strands spiral around his fingers while he ripped secrets straight from her soul. “But have you never thought that there could be a life you would want after the Rook?”

She should go. Some part of her mind knew this, was telling her to put an end to it, that she’d been caught in his spell unawares, that she was allowing what had happened in the sanctuary to happen again. But she couldn’t speak. She breathed in as his hand moved to her neck, thumb running along her jaw, tilting her chin to steady her gaze.

“Shall I say more truth to you? You have never thought there would be a life you would want, because you think all that is possible is only what you have seen. That anything sweet is like the honey in a trap.”

The universe had narrowed to the inches around Spear’s kitchen sink, to the lack of space that was between them. He brought his other hand up to her neck, cradling her head so she could look nowhere else. Her pulse was racing, the feel of his hands, the path of his thumb along her cheek negating her will to move.

“But what if Sophia and the Rook did not have to be two separate people, but could be one and the same?” His gaze looked hard into hers. “You are a risk taker, Sophia Bellamy, and I wonder, if you believed anything I am saying to you now, what would you risk for such a life?”

If she believed. Hadn’t she entered into this arrangement with René Hasard knowing she could not believe? That he could bewitch her like this if he wished? That she could not afford to be taken in just because she was aching to know what would have happened if she’d turned her head that day in the sanctuary, what would happen right now if she leaned forward just the slightest bit?

“But you do not believe me, do you?” he whispered. “Do you?”

Her lips parted, but she had no words. And then he stepped back a pace, dropping his hands, the smile in the corner of his mouth now bitter.

“Or do you choose not to believe, Sophia Bellamy?”


And she fled. Out the back door and into the muddy yard, crisp air hitting her panting lungs, clearing away the cobwebs of her trance. She looked left past the well, at the small barn and the loo and various sheds, and then to her right at the harvested cornfield, brown and crackling with stiff, dead stalks. The hill to the view was straight ahead, but she rejected all of these and instead turned and took hold of the house stones.

She pulled herself up, the flinty rock rough and still cold from the night, finding purchase for her side-turned feet as she grabbed, clawed, opposite leg, opposite arm, pushing her body away from the ground. She felt the ache in her muscles, so pampered the past nine days, and a protest from the wound in her side. She welcomed it. Again and again she stretched up, and then there was roof thatch in her hand. She got a leg over, rolled, and found herself lying flat on the roof, heat pouring down on her from a bright blue sky. She put a hand to her stitches, but she was whole.

What had just happened? What had she nearly allowed to happen? Her skin was tingling, pulse still racing, and not from her climb. She closed her eyes, letting the sun burn the lids. When she was a child she’d seen molten glass once, a glowing, fiery mass that looked soft and moldable like clay, but amazingly translucent, lit from within, so alluring that she’d ached to touch it even though she knew it would burn. And that was exactly how she’d been thinking of René Hasard, something tempting but off-limits for her own good. But what if he did not burn? He’d just said truth to her, more truth than she’d known what to do with. She touched her neck where his hands had been. Or what if he was just that good at the game?

Then she was up on her elbows. The kitchen door had been kicked hard from the inside, bouncing back into the wall stones she’d just climbed. She craned her neck and saw René striding across the farmyard, untucked shirt billowing with his speed. He went straight into the toolshed, coming out again with a curved, rather wicked-looking scythe, his face hard and white as a chalk cliff. When he got to the cornfield he tossed the blade aside, stripped off his shirt, wadded it up and threw it on the ground, picked up the scythe, and took a mighty swing. Down came the cornstalks in a scythe-wide swath. Once more, and again, each new swing of his arm ending in a little Parisian uff. The muscles of his back stood out with the effort, smooth movements repeating over and over until he was shining with sweat, red hair blowing wild in the wind. It was true. He was beautiful.

Sophia lay back down on the roof thatch, listening to René cut the remnants of Spear’s cornfield. Swish, uff! Swish, uff! What if he could be believed? What if she could believe him? She’d already pulled out those scales again, this time weighing her future against two-thirds of the souls in the Tombs. That was done. An easy choice. But did she really know what she was giving up? And what if, somehow, she managed to come out again?

She closed her eyes, feeling a finger move her hair, a thumb brush the skin along the edge of her jaw. No matter how many times she told herself that René Hasard was a liar, the simple truth was that she desperately wanted him not to be.