“They’re fusing my mother.” Her voice came out strangled. “They’re turning her into a monster and she would know. She would know what they were doing. The whole time.”
“Easy,” he murmured. “Easy. I have you.”
Mother’s beautiful smile. Her warm hands, her eyes full of laughter. Her “I have the silliest children.” Her “sweet-heart, I love you.” “You look beautiful, darling.” All gone forever. There would be no good-bye and no rescue. All the deaths, all the scrambling, it was all for nothing. Mother wasn’t coming back to her and Lark.
Cerise buried her face in William’s neck and wept soundlessly, pain leaking out through her tears.
CERISE opened her eyes. She was warm and comfortable, resting against something. She stirred, raised her head, and saw two hazel eyes looking at her.
William.
She must’ve fallen asleep, all tangled up in him. They sat on the floor, where he first landed. He hadn’t moved.
“How long have you sat here?” she asked.
“About two hours.”
“You should’ve put me down.”
She wiggled a little, but he kept his hands where they were. “I don’t mind. I like holding you.”
Cerise leaned back against him and put her head on his shoulder. He stiffened and then hugged her tighter to him.
“Do I look like a mess?” she asked.
“Yes.”
That was William for you. No lies.
The soft light of the lamp fell gently, illuminating her hiding room. It looked so pitiful now. Pictures of dead people on the walls. Threadbare chairs. This had been her spot since she was a child and now she saw it, as if for the first time. It would’ve made her sad, but there was no sad left in her. She’d cried it all out.
“I’ll have to explain it to Lark.” Her heart cringed at the thought. “And I don’t even know if my father is dead or alive.”
Her voice trembled. William hugged her tighter.
“You’ve seen Lark’s tree?” he asked quietly.
She nodded. “The monster tree.”
“What happened to her?”
Cerise closed her eyes and swallowed. “Slavers. I don’t even know where they came from. We never could figure it out. Someone had to have let them in across the border. Celeste, my second cousin, and Lark, she was called Sophie back then, were taking wine down to Sicktree by river. Lark wanted to buy Mom a birthday present …”
She choked a little on the words.
“So Celeste took Sophie on a boat to trade a case of wine for some trinket. They shot Celeste in the head. Dropped her with one bullet. She fell overboard and Lark went after her. The slavers hit her with an oar when she came up for air, knocked her right out. They took her down into the Mire to their camp and put her in a hole in the ground. The hole would flood in the evening, and she had to sleep sitting up, up to her knees in water, so she wouldn’t drown. We turned everything upside down looking for her. We searched with dogs everywhere.”
His arm braced her, pulling her closer.
“She says the second day one of the men got into the hole with her. Probably wanted to molest her. He might have done it, at least partway. Lark can flash a little. She isn’t quite there yet with aiming, but it’s a strong white flash. She flashed him through the eyes.”
“Fried the brain,” William said.
“Yeah. The slavers left the body where it was and stopped feeding her. It took us eight days to find her, and then only because of Grandma. She had gone off into the swamp a week before—she does that every year—and when she came out, she called Raste Adir the way I did today. Used one of the slaver corpses we had put into the freezer. I should’ve done it, but back then I didn’t know how.”
Cerise swallowed. “When we found the camp, it was full of holes and children. Some were dead—the slavers didn’t take good care of their merchandise.”
“Did you kill them?” William’s voice was a ragged snarl.
“Oh, yes. Left nobody alive. I would’ve tortured every single one of those motherfuckers if there was time. When we pulled Lark out of that hole, she was weak but alive. She could stand by herself. Seven days without food, she should’ve been weaker.”
Cerise closed her eyes. Telling him was like ripping a scab off a wound.
“You think she ate the body?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask. I’m just glad she’s alive. She came back odd, William. At first it was the hair and the clothes, and then it was running away to the woods and not talking. And then there was the monster tree. Mother was the only one she trusted. Now only I’m left.”
“There is a real monster in the woods,” he said. “It went after Lark and I fought it.”
She raised her head. “What do you mean a monster? Was it one of the Hand’s freaks?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“What did it look like?”
William grimaced. “Big. Long tail. Looked like a giant lizard sprinkled with hair here and there. I cut it and it healed right in front of me.”
Damn it.
He looked at her. “I don’t know what it is, but your Grandmother does. She was singing it a lullaby in Gaulish.”
Grandmother Azan? “And you kept it to yourself?”
He raised his free hand. “I wasn’t sure if this was a pet, friend of the family, some distant relation, maybe another cousin … let me know when I’m getting warmer.”
Cerise pulled herself free of his arms. “It’s not a family pet or a relative! I don’t know what the hell it is. I’ve never heard of anything like that.”
“Ask your grandmother.”
“She’ll be asleep. She did some hard magic today, and it will take her a few days to recover.”
Cerise slumped forward. His hand ran down her back, kneading the tired muscles, the warmth of his fingers soothing her through her shirt. He stroked her like she was a cat. “So will you be pissed off if I kill it?”
“If it comes after us, I’ll cut it to pieces myself,” she told him.
His hand strayed lower and he took it away. He was back in control. The fierce creature she’d seen that morning hid again.
Cerise leaned back against him. His arm wound around her waist, pulling her closer. He was strong and warm, and sitting in his arms filled the sore empty spot inside her with quiet content.
“When I was twenty, I met a man,” she told him. “Tobias.”
“Do you have his picture on the wall, too?” he asked, and she sensed traces of a growl in his voice.
“Top left corner.”
He turned. His face grew grim. “Handsome,” he said.
“Oh, yes. He was very pretty. Like a movie star from the Broken. I was so in love. I would’ve done anything for him. We were all set to marry. He was almost part of the family. Dad even let him handle some of our business.”
“And?”
A familiar cramp gripped her heart. She smiled. “I found a discrepancy in the books. Some money had gone missing from the sale of the cows. Tobias took it.”
“Did you kill him?” William asked.
“What? No. I cornered him and he tried to deny it, but I guess I must’ve been too scary, because in the end he told me all about his master plan. He was going to get as much money as he could and take off for the Broken. He tried to lie and tell me he did it for us and that he was going to convince me to come with him, but I could tell he was lying. It was always about the money. It was never about me.”
“What did you do?” William asked. She couldn’t tell by his voice what he thought about the whole thing.
She grinned. “Well, he wanted to go to the Broken. Kaldar and me, we put him in a sack and took him down through the boundary. Kaldar stole a car, and we drove him down to New Orleans, to the big city, and left him, sack and all, on the courthouse steps. The Broken is a funny place. They really don’t like it when you show up there with no ID.” She tilted her face up. “Would it bother you if I’d killed him?”