Chapter Twenty Abel
Return to your void of suns and moons, if you so greatly disapprove. Forge a new realm with lesser creatures and leave us to our devices.
—Threat from the Immortals to the Gods, Before Ascension
Translated from The Tale of Stars (L’Histoire des étoiles), Part II: The Book of Dark Days
Chapter Twenty
Abel
Claire is late.
Not that we discussed a time for her to return.
She’s her own person. But a glance through the curtains shows it’s well past sunsdown.
Oil lamps offer limited lighting along the pedestrian walkways, but drunks are frequenting the taverns.
Lewd calls aren’t uncommon. Claire is clever—her actions at Bourlin’s Night Market proved that—but she’s one girl.
Intelligence may not be enough if the wrong person corners her.
“Stop that,” I tell Lucy. She’s been pacing on Claire’s bed, alternating between licking the candle flames and burrowing under the blankets, for the last two hours. Cabin fever. I drag the quilt out from under her and shake the fur off. She whines at me, her entertainment stolen.
“What?” I retort. “Sixth rule of dragon hunting: Keep all resources easily accessible. I need her nearby at all times.”
Lucy cocks her head at me, ears twitching.
Groaning, I drag a hand down my face. I’m conversing with a tinderfox. This silence is maddening. Claire has avoided me ever since she tried to kiss me.
I’m deluding myself. This isn’t about that. This is about her reading my journal. I heard her flip through the pages. I heard her hitched breathing.
She knows what I did.
Bad timing for a rift with my assistant. The strip of parchment Angéline sent to our room this afternoon waits on the dresser, under the glow of a candle.
It’s Gérard Dupont’s schedule.
Lodging, duration of stay, and directions to Faire la Déroute—a popular tavern. Angéline conspired with the concierge at Gérard’s hotel to arrange a time for me to confront him, during his wine-tasting reservation.
I can’t stomach that information right now.
I’ll search for Claire. The night is dark enough to hide my face. I’m starving without dinner anyway, and Lucy probably needs to relieve herself.
I throw my coat on. “Lucy, come.”
Lucy bounds off the bed and races to the door. Her ribbon catches under her paw and falls loose. I consider removing it—she’s squirming with excitement to leave—but I take the extra second to retie it. The way Claire accessorizes her reminds me of Micah.
Gods. I miss her.
The door bursts open. Lucy leaps back. I’m light on my feet, moondagger drawn in one movement, swallowing the hesitation to fight a human attacker.
Claire slips through and slams the door, chest heaving.
I lower the dagger. “What—”
Claire gasps and whips around. Her back hits the door; then she slides to the floor. Lucy yips with happiness and dives into the mess of her skirts—then her hackles rise. Her relentless sniffs draw my attention to the bloodstain that soaks Claire’s abdomen.
Fear thrusts me into emergency mode: emotionless, logical. The mindset I enter when a fellow slayer is injured. This is the part of slayer training that’s still comfortable.
“Did one of the assassins do this to you?” I push Lucy aside. “Where are you hurt?”
“Get back!” She recoils, eyes wide and fearful, like a cornered animal. Her arms fly up to protect her stomach.
From me.
“Don’t hurt me,” she whimpers.
Did my journal frighten her this much?
“Never,” I tell her, sheathing the dagger. “I would never hurt you.”
“Even if I told you this isn’t my blood?”
Gods. She hurt someone.
“I didn’t want to fight her,” she insists. Tears well in her eyes. “I didn’t…”
I hurry to the washroom and find a clean towel. Claire snatches it from me and hides the blood instead of pressing down on it. It really isn’t her blood, then.
“Did you kill someone again?” I ask.
She flinches. Is my tone too cold? I’m only assessing the situation. That distant look returns to her eyes, pupils dilated. Like the moment she saw the blood on her bodice at the riverside.
“It was self-defense.” Her voice rises with desperation. “What was I supposed to do? If I hadn’t struck back, she would’ve…”
“Killed you?”
Lucy nudges her hand, but Claire doesn’t seem to notice. She stays like that while I fetch the pitcher of water the maids left on our dresser. She doesn’t notice me returning with a full glass until I hold it directly in her vision. She averts her stare.
“I don’t want to cause pain on purpose,” she whispers. “I’m not you.”
The reminder strikes the air from my chest. She really has read the journal. She knows what I’ve done—and what I would be doing now if Micah hadn’t died.
“I didn’t view it as harm at the time,” I say, voice hitching.
“You drew out his suffering. You punished him for wanting to die.”
“I admit it wasn’t right.”
She bites her lower lip and remains curled in on herself.
I set the water glass between us and run a hand through my hair, unsure how else to help her.
Then again, maybe I shouldn’t. This could be another con, like the fight she started between those two men in Bourlin.
Gaining my sympathy could be her way of making me help her cover up a murder.
“Don’t summon the Gendarmerie,” she begs. “Please. I just want everything to go away.”
I try for facts again, but with a softer tone. “Who attacked you?”
“Just”—her voice shrinks—“a thief.”
I clench my eyes shut. Call me gullible, but I want this incident to go away too.
The mere prospect of losing her leaves my chest hollow, and that’s aside from how helpful she’s been to me, Lyle, and Madame Afi.
Besides, I understand self-disgust better than I want to admit.
I don’t need her to speak the gory details of what she did today. The guilt is punishment enough.
“If you thought self-defense was your only option, I believe you,” I answer.
We stay like that. I feel moronic sitting here, doing nothing to help her. I think back to my life before Micah turned—when the Meteku family showed me what true family is—and search for a course of action I can apply to Claire.
Madame Afi offered comfort through simple, vulnerable gestures. Like when she hugged me after I tried on Micah’s skull for the first time. I don’t see why a gesture like that can’t help Claire now.
I reach for her. She lurches to her feet, clutching the towel close. She slips past me to the washroom so fast, she kicks the water glass across the room. It cracks against the opposite wall.
Third rule of dragon hunting: Anticipate the target’s patterns and counter accordingly.
I stand and try to anticipate the pattern in her defensive actions, but all I see is that she’s in pain, and there’s no clear way to end it.
I knock on the washroom door. “Claire?”
She locks it.
I rest my fist and forehead on the door. The sound of clothes flutters behind it. Claire whimpers, like when she removed her bloody bodice. There’s a sudden splash, which means she didn’t stop to heat the basin. She must be freezing.
A change of clothes. I can bring her that.
I take a nightgown from her dresser, then hesitate by the door. This won’t be like the time we first met. She’s not teasing anymore. She wants distance. That I know how to give.
“I’ll leave clean clothes by the door for you,” I say.
After a pause, she forces a “Thank you.”
“I wasn’t wrong to try, was I?” I plead. “No one wants to die.”
“Some do,” she whispers. “If the pain overtakes the joy.”
I don’t know if she wants me to feel better or worse, so I lower the clothes to the floor.
From the beginning, this was a temporary arrangement.
A successful hunt means I will return to the solitary life of a traveling slayer, collecting soleils for a family estate that no longer exists.
But if I can’t help Claire cope with what she’s done, I won’t know how to help myself cope with the deaths I’m about to cause.
Again—I’m lying to myself. I just want her to be happy, and to be happy near me. It took Claire’s absence for me to recognize how quickly I’ve found solace in her presence. She brings levity to the morbid nature of my job, like Madame Afi does. Even just today, I missed her laugh.
Pride, money, and competition. That’s all I had to live for.
Until she shoved an empty wine glass into my hand.