9 FRANCOIS
A miserable, watery gray light seeps through the cracked glass of the warehouse office, bringing with it the smell of dead fish.
Why the dawn makes the smell worse is a mystery, but an unfortunate truth.
At least now we can move on from here. I roll my stiff neck. Bevan and I barely slept, taking shifts as watchmen. Usually lack of sleep is not a problem, but my body is still recovering.
I’m not complaining. It kept her safe.
Bevan is pretty happily asleep right now, tucked up on the left side of Aurora with London on the other.
Even in the dim light of a derelict fish-canning factory, her short gold hair catches the gray dawn. As my eyes rove over her face, she stirs and catches me watching her.
Softly, she sits up and extricates herself from the two men.
“Hey.” She comes and stands beside me, looking through the dirty glass. “Did you get any sleep?”
“Enough.”
“How are your hands?”
I show her my healing palms. She traces a finger over the skin. “Amazing, so quick.”
We lapse into silence again until she pulls the rainjacket more tightly around her body. “Let's go out. Just the two of us. We can scout for boats that look abandoned while the others sleep.”
Just the two of us?
The thought is intoxicating but I must be practical. “It’s not safe.”
"My face was on the news, but yours wasn't,” she argues, pulling up the coat hood. “But dressed like this, no one will recognize me. I look nothing like the photo on the news.”
That is true.
“I like how you look now,” I admit.
She looks skeptical. “Really, Francois? I doubt it. I know you.”
But that is the problem. She doesn’t know me.
Nobody does.
A desperate, sharp hunger flares in my chest. I want this. Time for just the two of us. I want it desperately. “Very well,” I murmur, my tone deliberately detached to mask the sudden, fierce thudding of my heart. "Keep your head down though.”
We slip through the office door and out into the biting morning air.
The harbor is just beginning to stir; the distant, mechanical groan of cranes echoes across the eastern basin, and the faint smell of marine oil drifts over the water.
A few early-morning dockers move through the fog in the distance, but they are focused on their boots and their first cigarettes.
We walk along, moving further from where the hub of the action seems to be, finally getting to a series of weathered low jetties. The water swirls oily and dark around the moored boats.
“Francois,” Aurora says softly, keeping her eyes on the water but shifting slightly closer until her arm brushes mine.
“I haven't had a chance to say it properly but thank you. For everything. For getting us this far, and for helping me find Sky. I know you risked your entire life to break us out of that place.”
The words press into my chest.
“You do not need to thank me, Aurora,” I reply, turning my body to shield her from three men walking nearby. "I would burn Havengard to the ground if it meant keeping you out of my father's hands. I would do anything for you. Absolutely anything.”
She looks up from beneath the yellow hood, her ice-blue eyes wide and searching.
“I know I have displayed it poorly,” I continue, the admission easier than any I’ve given before. "My family… we, er, deal in leverage. In control. It is how I’ve learned to exist. And it’s a toxic, difficult habit to break. But you must understand. You are my priority. You.”
My gaze usually makes people recoil, but Aurora doesn't shrink back.
She steps into my space, reaching a small, cold hand out from her sleeve to rest against the front of my sweatshirt.
“I think I misjudged you,” she whispers, a tender, fragile smile touching her lips.
“But I’m beginning to see who you are, Francois de Vaux.
Stop hiding. I’d really like to know the real you. ”
For a single second, the venom under my tongue turns sweet. I want to reach out, to trace the line of her jaw and claim the mouth that the wolf had possessed yesterday.
I watch her brow furrow as she keeps her hand on my chest. “Can I ask you something? Since… well, you're obviously the one who knows the most…” she trails off.
“Ask me anything,” I murmur.
“Why do you think I haven't shifted yet?” A frustrated shadow crosses her beautiful face.
I look down at her and release a sigh. “I know about your heart problem, Aurora.”
She blinks, then sighs.
“Fuck, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. No doubt your father kept track of every little detail of my life.”
“He did,” I say gently. “And perhaps it’s because of your heart, you’re not shifting. The metabolic demand could place too much strain on your body. Your innate form may be deliberately dormant. To keep you alive.”
She kicks at the planking. “Well that sucks.” Then she looks up. “But Imran was really sick, and he shifted.”
“Imran’s case was entirely different, chérie. There was nothing left in his body to save. He knew it, and his spark knew it. He chose to expend every remaining ounce of his life force to get in one magnificent shift before dying. Your body is fighting to live. Quite the opposite.”
The look on her face is so bereft, when I take her in my arms, she doesn’t pull away from the comfort.
But a sharp, wooden creak from a nearby jetty shatters the moment.
We snap apart.
“Hey, you. What the fuck are you doing? This is a private jetty.”
A gruff, heavy-set man steps out onto the deck from a small boat, maybe a fishing boat? His suspicious eyes dart from my face straight to Aurora.
I don’t wait for the gears to start turning in his tiny, desperate mind. Before he can even begin to think of fugitives and a $100,000 reward, I am down the jetty.
The cold, reptilian blood rushes to the surface, drowning out any human warmth that I still carry. My pupils flatten into razor-thin vertical slits as I step into his space.
“Look at me,” I command.
His small eyes lock onto mine, and instantly his expression smooths out into a dull, glassy vacuum. I sense Aurora behind me.
She puts a hand on my back. “Gently…” she whispers.
Ah, yes. No need to brouiller his brain. I reduce the output of my power, then start asking my questions. “We need a boat to discretely get across the bay to the islands. What vessel should we get?”
“Boats…” the man mumbles, his voice hollow and mechanized.
“The crabber is flat-bottomed, it’s got a trolling engine, quiet really.
Fits four people at the most. Or the dinghy—she’s a sixteen-footer, holds six.
Sails, of course, so no noise at all, and the centerboard pulls clean up. Skims right over the sandbanks.”
He pauses, his glassy eyes staring at nothing. “Or you’ve got the jet boat down at the end slip. Internal drives, so there’s no prop to catch on the mud flats, and it’s way quieter than an outboard motor. Fast, too. Load it right up and you can outrun almost anything.”
Aurora and I exchange a fast look. “What else?” I ask her.
“Fuck, I don’t know. I know shit about sailing.” Aurora turns to the empty shell of the man again. “Anything you’d tell beginners about sailing from here to the islands?”
The man’s glassy eyes twitch, a violent tremor rippling through his frame. His head jerks stiffly toward the outer bay.
“Stay away from the western shelf…” the man blurts out, his voice rising in a thin. “Don’t go out by the flats. The deep water’s gone bad down there recently. People go out… boats come back empty. Feral things in the surf. Teeth in the tide. Stay away from the west…”
I click my fingers. “Enough. Now listen to me carefully, you haven't seen anyone on the jetty this morning. You came out here to check on your craft, and found nothing amiss. Leave now and do not return to this area for the rest of the day.”
His head drops forward, his chin hitting his chest as the final wave of the mind-wipe takes hold, leaving him entirely dazed as he staggers back to the main docks.
I look at Aurora, who is staring at the dazed man with a mixture of awe and residual fear. “Will he be alright?”
“He will, chérie. Now let us take this information back to the warehouse.”
She smiles, a little wan. “We’ve definitely got food for thought, but I wish we had real food—and coffee.” As we walk, our hands brush together. “You know,” Aurora says, “I’d never been allowed coffee until I got to Quo. It’s great, took some getting used to, but now I’m all about it.”
“That, my dear Aurora, was nowhere near coffee. One day I'll take you to Paris and we’ll visit my favorite torréfacteur. His beans are exquisite.”
She’s quiet for a moment as we move quickly in the lee of the dilapidated buildings.
“Paris?” she asks after a minute.
“Oui, chérie. You will love it, I know with certainty.”
“I’m not going to Paris with you, Francois,” she says quietly, but with a finality that cuts my heart to shreds.
“No? Then where will you be, Aurora? What grand plans do you have for your future?’ Yes, I sound cold, but I can’t do anything about it.
“I’m going to make a home, maybe around here somewhere. And Sky and London and Tally will live with me. Layla too when she gets out.”
“So you are setting up a half-way house?”
“Don’t be horrible. There’s a room there for you if you finally get the stick out of your ass.”
Room for me?
She considered me in her future plans?
Maybe my shredded heart will live after all.
When I push open the heavy, rusted sliding door of the warehouse, the interior is pitch black compared to the dawn outside. We step into the main floor, and a massive, terrifying shadow detaches itself from the wall.
Before I can even register movement, a calloused fist collides squarely with my jaw.
The impact sends me stumbling backward against the corrugated iron wall with a loud, metallic clang. The copper taste of blood explodes in my mouth. I look up, my hand flying to my swelling cheek, my eyes flashing back into vertical slits as the snake-fire flares in my veins.
Taliesin is standing over me, his broad shoulders squared, his chest heaving under his plaid flannel shirt. His amber wolf-eyes are burning with a terrifying, wild panic.
“Where the fuck did you take her, de Vaux?” He roars. "I woke up and she was gone. I thought you took her back to your fucking father!”
“Tally!” Aurora screams, throwing herself directly between us, pressing her palms flat against the wolf's broad chest. "Stop it! He didn't take me anywhere. I asked him to go. We were scouting the piers. We found boats!”
Taliesin freezes, his gaze dropping down to her. A deep, shuddering relief takes over his body and he pulls her close. “Don’t go anywhere without telling me, Rory. Please, I beg you.”
“Sorry, Tally. It was thoughtless.”
I spit a mouthful of blood onto the concrete floor, my lips curling into a cold, venomous sneer as I stand.
“Your lack of impulse control is entirely exhausting, Bevan,” I snarl, wiping my mouth with the back of my sleeve. “But if you are quite finished playing the feral beast, we have a sea crossing to plan. And the locals say the water has teeth.”
He growls back at me. Tiresome posturing. I turn away and look at the fresh filth on the hideous sweatshirt I’m wearing. I could transmute the fibers into a much more satisfactory cloth, but it would tax my already weakened powers.
Instead, I perform a cast to dry out the bloodstain. It evaporates to dust and I brush it away. The action helps settle my pulse and annoyingly heightened emotion.
Aurora watches the dust fall, her eyebrows lifting. “You make it look so easy. What spell was that?”
I step closer, taking her hand in mine. “Dehydration cast, chérie. Here—allow me.” I lift her hand, tracing a slow, deliberate rune in the air. “Concentrate on the dampness you feel in your footwear.”
As she fixes her eyes on her feet, I realize I have done Aurora a disservice to not immediately teach her spells that will aid her comfort.
“My spark is fizzing,” she whispers. “Now what?”
“Repeat the rune-shape while settling your intent on making your shoes moisture-free.”
Taliesin shifts behind us, trying to see what we are doing. The dog has never cast a spell in his life.
“Ooh, shit. I think it’s working.”
Indeed it is. The unpleasant wetness of Aurora’s prison-issued sneakers dries and falls away. She looks up at me, eyes sparkling. “Thank you! So much, Francois. Gods, I’ve so much to learn.”
“I will be here to teach you, ma petit. Whatever you need, I’m here.”
As Aurora nods in appreciation, a wave of frustration and annoyance pours out of Taliesin. I feel it in my chest. I know a thread bonds me to Aurora, and unfortunately also Taliesin and London. But this is the first time I’ve been able to taste an emotion through it.
I also sense jealousy and curiosity.
The wolf wants to learn, but to do so he’ll have to ask for my help.
Très bon.
This petty little victory brings me great pleasure.