“And yet,” he says, “we are together. We belong together.”
You belong to me.
“Do you love me?” she asks.
His fingers trail along her hips. “You know I do.”
“Then let me go.”
“I am not holding you here.”
“That isn’t what I mean,” she says, rising on one arm. “Set me free.”
He draws back, just enough to meet her gaze. “I cannot break the deal.” His head falls, black curls brushing her cheek. “But perhaps,” he whispers against her collar, “I could bend it.”
Addie’s heart thuds inside her chest.
“Perhaps I could change the terms.”
She holds her breath as Luc’s words play along her skin.
“I can make it better,” he murmurs. “All you have to do is surrender.”
The word is a cold shock.
A curtain falling on a play: the lovely sets, the stagings, the trained actors all vanish behind the darkened cloth.
Surrender.
An order whispered in the dark.
A warning given to a broken man.
A demand made over and over and over for years—until it stopped. How long ago did he stop asking? But of course, she knows—it was when his method changed, when his temper toward her softened.
And she is a fool. She is a fool for thinking it meant peace instead of war.
Surrender.
“What is it?” he asks, feigning confusion, until she throws the word back in his face.
“Surrender?” she snarls.
“It is just a word,” he says. But he taught her the power of a word. A word is everything, and his word is a serpent, a coiled trick, a curse.
“It is the nature of things,” he says.
“In order to change the deal,” he says.
But Addie pulls back, pulls away, pulls free. “And I am meant to trust you? To give in, and believe that you will give me back?”
So many years, so many different ways of asking the same thing.
Do you yield?
“You must think me an idiot, Luc.” Her face burns with anger. “I’m amazed you had the patience. But then, you’ve always been fond of the chase.”
His green eyes narrow in the dark. “Adeline.”
“Don’t you dare say my name.” She is on her feet now, singing with rage. “I knew you were a monster, Luc. I saw it often enough. And yet, I still thought—somehow I thought—after all this time—but of course, it wasn’t love, was it? It wasn’t even kindness. It was just another game.”
There is an instant when she thinks she might be wrong.
A fraction of a moment when Luc looks wounded and confused, and she wonders if he meant only what he said, if, if—
But then, it is over.
The hurt falls from his face and it passes into shadow, the effect as smooth as a cloud across the sun. A grim smile plays across his lips.
“And what a tiresome game it’s been.”
She knows she drew it out, but the truth still crashes through her.
If she was cracked before, now she is breaking.
“You cannot fault me for trying a different hand.”
“I fault you for everything.”
Luc rises, the darkness drawing into silk around him. “I have given you everything.”
“None of it was real!”
She will not cry.
She will not give him the satisfaction of seeing her suffer.
She will not give him anything, ever again.
This is how the fight begins.
Or rather, this is how it ends.
Most fights, after all, are not the work of an instant. They build over days, or weeks, each side gathering their kindling, stoking their flames.
But this is a fight forged over centuries.
As old and inevitable as the turning of the world, the passing of an era, the collision of a girl and the dark.
She should have known it would happen.
Perhaps she did.
But to this day, Addie doesn’t know how the fire started. If it was the candles she swept from the table, or the lamp she tore from the wall, if it was the lights Luc shattered, or if it was simply a last act of spite.
She knows she doesn’t have the strength to ruin anything, and yet she did. They did. Perhaps he let her start the fire. Perhaps he simply let it burn.
It does not matter, in the end.
Addie stands on Bourbon Street and watches the house go up in flames, and by the time the firefighters come, there is nothing left to save. It is only ashes.
Another life gone up in smoke.
Addie has nothing, not even the key in her pocket. It was there, but when she reaches for it, it is gone. Her hand goes to the wooden ring still at her throat.
She tears it free, hurls the band into the smoking ruins of her home, and walks away.
XV
New York City
July 30, 2014
Addie is surrounded by trees.
The mossy scent of summer in the woods.
Fear winds through her, the sudden, horrible certainty that Luc has broken both rules instead of one, that he has dragged her through the dark, stolen her away from New York, abandoned her somewhere far, far from home.
But then her eyes adjust, and she turns, and sees the skyline rising above the trees, and realizes she must be in Central Park.
Relief sweeps through her.
And then Luc’s voice drifts through the dark.
“Adeline, Adeline…” he says, and she cannot tell what is an echo, and what is simply him, unbound by flesh and bone and mortal shapes.
“You promised,” she calls.
“Did I?”
Luc steps out of the dark, the way he did that night, drawing together from smoke and shadow. A storm, bottled into skin.
Am I the devil or the darkness? he asked her once. Am I a monster or a god?
He is no longer dressed in the sleek black suit, but as he was when she first summoned him, a stranger in trousers, a pale tunic open at his throat, his black hair curling against his temples.
The dream conjured so many years ago.
But one thing has changed. There is no triumph in his eyes. The color has gone out of them, so pale they’re almost gray. And though she’s never seen the shade before, she guesses it is sadness.
“I will give you what you want,” he says. “If you will do one thing.”
“What?” she asks.
Luc holds out his hand.
“Dance with me,” he says.
There is longing in his voice, and loss, and she thinks, perhaps, it is the end, of this, of them. A game finally played out. A war with no winners.
And so she agrees to dance.
There is no music, but it does not matter.
When she takes his hand, she hears the melody, soft and soothing in her head. Not a song, exactly, but the sound of the woods in summer, the steady hush of the wind through the fields. And as he pulls her close, she hears a violin, low and mournful, along the Seine. His hand slides through hers, and there is the steady murmur of the seaside. The symphony soaring through Munich. Addie leans her head against his shoulder, and hears the rain falling in Villon, the brass band ringing in an L.A. lounge, and the ripple of a saxophone through the open windows on Bourbon.
The dancing stops.
The music fades.
A tear slides down her cheek. “All you had to do was set me free.”
Luc sighs, and lifts her chin. “I could not.”
“Because of the deal.”
“Because you are mine.”