32. Smoke
Smoke
Tennyson opened his eyes, and immediately closed them against the rain battering his face.
Pain radiated from a spot on his lower back, and he shifted, breathing hard.
He couldn’t see. Thunder snarled through the sky, covering any sounds through his earbud.
No, his earbud was gone. He cast through his muddled thoughts, trying to put them in order to form a narrative of what had happened.
He’d fallen—not far, but far enough. When his cloak had snagged, he’d been able to right himself against the wall and climb most of the way down, but his foot had slipped just before he reached safety.
He’d landed on a rock or branch, and it dug into the skin above his hip, pinning him in place.
He needed to get up, but the cold had seeped into his muscles, stiffening them, and the best he could do was turn his face so the water wouldn’t run into his mouth and nose.
“Light-winged Smoke, Icarian bird.”
The voice came to him faintly, pulsing in his ears, and he turned again.
“Melting thy pinions in thy upward flight, Lark without song, and messenger of dawn.”
He opened his eyes, and saw nothing. He didn’t need to. Something in him had recognized the verse, and he inhaled the sharp, cold smells of rock and earth.
“Circling above the hamlets as thy nest; Or else, departing dream, and shadowy form Of midnight vision, gathering up thy skirts.”
“Dad?” he said. The word was a croak, inaudible, and he didn’t repeat it.
“By night star-veiling, and by day Darkening the light and blotting out the sun.”
He could almost see him now, a figure shifting silver in the darkness, reflecting the raindrops as they passed through his form.
It wasn’t real. Whatever ghosts haunted him had never spoken before, but this—Tennyson lifted himself to his knees, holding in his groan to keep from covering the sound of his father’s voice.
“Go thou my incense upward from this hearth,” his father said, pointing. Tennyson followed the line of his arm, and in a flash of lightning, he made out the shape of a body twisted among the rocks.
When he looked back, the figure was gone, leaving only the final echo of Thoreau’s poem.
“And ask the gods to pardon this clear flame.”
Tennyson stayed where he was for two steadying breaths, letting the rain wash clean the memory of his father’s voice. Then he dragged himself across the ground and pressed his wet fingers to Hartmann’s throat.
“Not yet,” Hartmann wheezed. “But soon.”
His breathing was shallow, quick little gasps that did little to relieve him. Punctured lung. Between that and the broken bones, there was nothing Tennyson could do for him.
He sat, keeping close enough that Hartmann could feel his presence, but not close enough to touch.
Hartmann stared up at the sky, his eyes unseeing. “It’s better—this way—” he gasped. “Quick. I think—my back—” He broke off, panting. “I don’t feel much. Harlow would’ve done... worse.”
Tennyson didn’t know anything about that. He’d never failed Harlow before, and he didn’t work with anyone who might. But the thought that Hartmann was grateful for a broken spine and collapsed lung made his stomach clench. It didn’t matter what Harlow did to Tennyson, but if he got to Louna...
Hartmann coughed, a rough, wet sound that weakened as it progressed.
For a few moments he was quiet, except for his breathing, and Tennyson let his gaze drift up to the castle looming over them.
Lindsey and Louna were up there. He would never be able to scale the cliff in this rain, and it would take time to go around to the lots.
By the time he returned, they may already be gone.
He hoped they were. Hartmann had more guards in the castle, and if they searched the grounds before Lindsey and Louna could get to the van, they wouldn’t be able to fight.
“I didn’t get it before,” Hartmann said, so faintly that Tennyson almost missed it. “Why you always stayed—until the end.”
Tennyson shifted, and when the next lightning strike lit the sky, Hartmann saw him.
“Harlow won’t do the same for you,” he said.
He didn’t speak again. He took one more shuddering breath, and then the only thing Tennyson could hear was the rain and the wind and the thunder.
It could have easily been him, lying broken and breathless on the ground, with Harlow’s name on his dying lips.
What exactly separated him from Hartmann, besides a twist of fate?
If Hartmann had gone to Vietnam four months ago, would Louna have approached him instead?
Would she have saved him?
The cold had worked its way into his joints, so he forced himself forward and pulled Louna’s hairpin free of Hartmann’s neck, climbing to his feet in silence as his body screamed for rest.
He glanced around the forest one more time, and when he didn’t see his father, he pushed the hairpin into his pocket and began the long walk back up to the castle.
Tennyson woke with a jolt, his heart hammering in his chest, Hartmann’s glazed eyes imprinted in his mind.
The first thing that hit him was the pain—familiar aches, new, raw cuts, and a thirst that made him swallow reflexively as he tried to orient himself.
He was in the woods, in the mountains. No…
he was dry, and his injuries were bandaged, and his body was warm.
The smell of amber, bergamot, and jasmine surrounded him.
He opened his eyes as the bed beneath him shifted, and Louna spoke sleepily. “Mon loup?”
He exhaled, sinking against her and letting the tension drain from him. She was curled against his chest, but she leaned back to lift her face to him. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he said, closing his eyes and grounding himself in the feeling of her skin against his.
Her sheet-dress was still wrapped around her, and he breathed in the faint smells of her perfume and the clean cotton.
The dream drifted at the edge of his thoughts, but Hartmann’s face faded, replaced by the figure that had urged him up from his fall.
He couldn’t say now whether the voice he’d heard had been a memory or a product of the dream.
But he’d felt his father’s presence several times in and around the castle, hadn’t he?
In the woods, at the harpsichord… maybe it was just a combination of sleep deprivation and an atmospheric setting, but then… maybe…
Louna stirred again, lifting her hand. He caught it and brought her palm to his lips so he could kiss the cut.
“How did this happen?” he asked quietly.
She let out a soft sigh. “When I was moving the harpsichord Cristian had delivered, Hartmann shot it through the window. This was from a splinter.” She laid her free hand on his chest, tracing a long scar across his collarbone. “How did this happen?”
“Don’t change the subject,” he said. “I knew there were two harpsichords. Where did you get the replacement?”
“The Romanian Athenaeum,” she said, nestling closer to him.
He breathed a laugh against her palm. “You stole it? In the middle of everything?”
“I borrowed it,” she said archly. “They weren’t using it, and we needed it. Everything depended on you playing your set.”
“That was the least important part of the evening.”
“No,” Louna said, cupping the side of his face with the hand he still held. “I wanted to hear you play. And Lindsey needed to hear it, as well.”
He lifted himself on his elbow to look down at her. “Lindsey?”
“He needed to know you are still who you have always been,” Louna said. “What better way to do that than music?”
A wave of something he couldn’t identify welled up in him.
Over the past three days, the woman beneath him had lied, stolen, and hurt—for him.
She’d hidden her own injuries and fears, and she’d kept his in mind as she’d made her plans.
He didn’t know how to take it. He’d been on his own for so long that the thought of being so seen—so considered—left him feeling like he’d gotten caught in an undertow.
The surge of emotion threatened to overwhelm him, so he did the only thing he could.
He gave it back to her.
Her eyes were bright when he bent to kiss her, reflecting the same flood that had overtaken him.
He wasn’t used to feeling so out of control, but there was something comforting in the realization that he wasn’t floundering alone.
Her hands drew him closer, and he gave in to the sensation of losing his feet, and let himself be submerged.
A knock at the door made him drop his head back to the bed, groaning. “Rise and shine!” Lindsey called, so cheerfully that Tennyson wished the door was open so he could throw something at him. “Come on, get decent. We’ve got things to do.”
He left before Tennyson could think of a retort, and Tennyson turned to kiss Louna’s shoulder. “Ignore him,” he muttered. “He won’t come in if he thinks you’re undressed.”
“Maybe not,” Louna said, patting his cheek before rolling out of his arms and straightening her dress. “But Ilya might.”
“I can take him,” Tennyson mumbled.
Louna waved at him. “In this state?”
“It’s been a few days since I punched him,” Tennyson said. “We’re probably due for it.”
Louna laughed and left him to get ready, so he forced himself out of the bed and scattered the coals in the fireplace so it would burn out.
Then he shuffled to the bathroom where he’d left his clothes, pulling on the slightly damp pants and the dress shirt, leaving it unbuttoned in the hopes that it might dry a little more throughout the morning.
The others were all awake—he could hear them talking in the living room, and he listened as he stretched his sore muscles.
Jean-Claude was in the kitchen when Tennyson came into the main rooms, pouring water from a pot into five cups. Lindsey whistled when he saw him, nodding at the bruises mottling his chest. “You look terrible.”
“Better than you,” Tennyson said.
Lindsey shrugged his good shoulder. “I think I have more bullet holes than you now. Or are we tied?”
“No,” Tennyson said. “You win.”