It is only the most rudimentary beginnings of a plan, but it is something.
I glance out the window, heartened to see that the sun has dropped low in the sky. The sooner night comes, the sooner I can depart. Even so, as the shadows lengthen in my room, old memories awaken. Dark memories. Having no wish to be alone with them, I decide to go in search of Beast. It is time for him to hear the last of the secrets between us. Perhaps it will make him as eager to be off as I.
I rap on his door, then let myself in. Beast is just pulling a clean doublet over his head and is scandalized. “Sybella! You cannot be in here. Your servants—”
“Shhh,” I tell him. “You forget that these are d’Albret servants, much accustomed to all manner of indiscretion and wickedness. They would be more surprised if I did not visit your room.”
He blinks, not sure what to say to that, and I see drops of water still cling to his lashes. He is quiet for a moment, then ask, “With no one else to hear, will you tell me the significance of the locks of hair?”
Just thinking of them is like a fist to my belly. “It is a message. From my brother Julian.” My throat closes around the things I want to tell him. Instead, I say, “He carries a lock of my hair entwined with his in the hilt of his sword. It is a message . . .” And here I falter, for I cannot bring myself to say out loud what I fear it means.
But Beast is no fool, and when his large hands clench into fists, I know he has puzzled out the meaning. Now. I must tell him now before my courage fails me yet again.
“There is something you must know. My sister Louise—she is Alyse’s daughter.”
Chapter Forty-Four
BEAST STARES MUTELY AT ME, as if he has not heard a word I said. Color begins to rise in his face. “What did you say?” he whispers, his gaze fastening to mine like a starving man to a bone.
“Louise is your sister’s child.”
Beast stares at me a moment longer, his thoughts scudding across his face like storm clouds. Hope, as he realizes some small piece of Alyse still exists, then dismay—nay, anguish—as he realizes that she, too, has been taken from him. By yet another devil-spawned d’Albret. “Why did you not tell me sooner?”
“I had to be certain that you could accept that part of her was d’Albret. Once it was clear you did not hold that against me, I decided it was safe to tell you. I think I had some nascent thought about spiriting them away to safety. Louise, at least. To your own holding, perhaps? But once again, I am too late.” Of a surety, my love is as good as a death sentence.
“You think he means to kill them straightaway?”
“There are other ways to hurt her,” I say softly.
His head jerks around, his face gone white. “Like they hurt you.” It is not a question but a moment of realization. His expression grows thunderous, and his eyes take on that feral light. A low rumble begins deep in his chest, but he chokes it back. Instead, he turns and slams his fist into the casement at the window, causing the leaded glass to rattle.
I wait, holding my breath, uncertain which part of him has control.
When he glances back at me, the fierce light has gone from his eyes, but his face looks as if it were set in gray stone. “I will kill them. All of them.”
“I do not think the girls are in any true danger, not yet.”
Beast’s brows shoot up and he growls his disbelief. I take a deep breath then, for this is not a secret I ever planned to share with him. “Julian—Julian loves me, in his own twisted way. I think he simply sees them as a way to get my attention. Besides, what lies between my brother and me is as much my fault as it is his.”
I move over to the window to stare out into the courtyard. Dusk is falling, and the castle retainers are making ready for the coming night. “It was my brother Pierre’s fault, as most things often were. When I was but eleven years old he began scratching on my bedroom door, wanting to prove he was a man full grown. At first I thought it was ghosts, but then I realized it was Pierre, and his pinching, probing fingers and hungry mouth frightened me far more than any ghosts.
“The first night, I hid under my covers, wondering how I could keep him away from me. Then I did what I have always done to protect myself. I gave Fortune’s wheel a mighty spin and decided to use his own move against him. The next night when he came scratching at my door—more loudly and insistent—it was Julian who called out, ‘What do you want?’
“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.