Chapter 38
Chapter Thirty-Eight
That evening, Michel sat alone on a stone bench with his head hanging between his knees in a dark cell.
There was a high, open cutout in the stone, and streaks of moonlight were coming into the space.
He still wore the same clothes he had been wearing when they had been captured.
He’d been given a blanket when he was left in the cell, which he had draped over his shoulders.
He had looked for escape every step of the way.
Michel had lived a life where his future title gave him enough backing to avoid many situations.
His skills with his sword and his ability to outthink opponents avoided the rest. This far east, though, nobody cared.
He was no one. He had nothing. He meant nothing.
He felt hopeless. He tried to talk his way out of the cell, but the guards ignored him.
Maybe they didn’t even understand him, and his skills with the language were as bad as Eve had said they were.
He had tested his weight against the bars.
They were more solid than him. He had no sword, no horse, no coin, no connections.
Worst of all, he had lost Eve.
He watched the moonlight change patterns across the floor as the minutes and hours drifted by.
He did not have the will to lift his head.
He only stared at the ground. At some point, he believed he ate something.
At some other point, he drank. His body did not complain in those ways, but he hadn’t paid enough attention to remember.
He had nothing to do or occupy him other than the tortured memories of Eve and the lights of his small prison slowly stretching across the floor.
He closed his eyes and imagined what it felt like to hold her warm body against his once more. To listen to her laugh. To feel her hair between his fingers.
As the night passed, he must have dozed off with those thoughts in his head because a scrape of metal startled him awake. He heard fast footsteps coming toward him. He knew immediately that they were hers before she came into view. He jumped up and was at the door to his cell before she arrived.
“Eve!” he whispered, up on the balls of his feet.
He didn’t know if there was danger, but he could see the panic on her face.
His sword, belt, and boots were in her hands.
She fumbled momentarily with a key, then popped the door open with a clang.
She pushed it in, and he grabbed at her, greedily wanting her in his arms, caring about nothing else. “Are you safe? Are you okay?”
“Michel,” she urged. “You must get dressed, and you must leave. Right now. I had the guard called away. We don’t have long.”
“But…Eve,” he said, filling his arms with her body, his nose with her scent.
“No, you will be killed if you stay here.” Her voice was stern, but he heard the remorse around its edges.
“Come with me,” he begged.
“I can’t,” she said, fighting back emotion.
“We will go to France, like we planned,” he said, pulling on her arms. His voice, supplicant, frantic.
“Michel, if I leave now, it will be worse.” She brought her hands up to her face, shaking her head at whatever outcome she feared. “So much worse for you.”
“If I don’t have you, Eve,” he insisted, still trying to contain her, hold onto her somehow, “nothing matters.”
“Put your gear on,” she demanded. “Right now.” She pulled him off her, pushed him back.
“Eve—” He reached for her again.
“No, you must trust me. You have to leave.”
He paused and looked at her. His fingers brushed her chin and tilted her head up to him. He read her expression and the words she wasn’t saying. “Your father won’t accept me as your husband?” He asked finally.
“Absolutely not.” Then her voice broke. “I tried.”
“What do you mean, ‘you tried’?”
“He is too old-fashioned, distrustful of the West. He would never let me go. Besides…” She shook her head. “He would never accept the relationship we’ve had.”
“Let me speak to him.” He was desperate, pleading with her.
“You have no value to him,” Eve asserted. “He will not give me to you.”
“I do have value,” he said, indignant. “I have a city. I have Provence and France behind me.”
“Michel, you don’t understand your position here. Titles, cities, they’re of no importance. I could barely convince him not to have you killed before dinner.”
Michel just stared at her. “I protected you. I fought for you. Eve,” he begged. “I love you.”
She shook her head. “You must understand when I say I have a duty to my tribe just as you do to your people. Everything happened—my kidnapping, the murders—because I was selfish and refused to do what was expected of me. I abused my privilege because I wanted life to bend to my desires.” She pulled in a breath.
“The ancestors brought me home. Now I must pay my penance to my people.”
“What does that even mean?” he asked, trying to get her to look at him.
“It means I have to stay, and Michel, it means you must leave, because you will be executed if you stay. And I cannot see that happen and have your death on my conscience too.”
An uncontrollable surge of tears came upon her then, and she had her face in her hands. Michel took her in his arms against his chest, as he had before, letting her cry as much as she needed.
When her shudders slowed, he asked, “Is this truly what you want?”
She nodded. “It’s not what I want, but it is what has to happen.”
Michel watched her for a long moment, doing his best to trace every emotion that went through her eyes. “Alright,” he said, taking in a deep breath through his nose. He backed away from her and sat to pull on his boots. “I will go.”
He felt himself closing off to the cruelty of the world. He dressed quickly, feeling rage battle hopelessness in his chest. He placed his sword. He pulled on his jacket. She gave him a cloak to help conceal himself until he was in territory that would protect him once more.
“A guide and a horse are waiting outside to help get you to the river. The guide has basic supplies for you. Beyond there, you will be on your own, but you can follow roads and markings to help you get back to Carth.” Then she paused.
“Michel, I want you to know this doesn’t change my feelings for you.
I wanted all those things. I truly did.” She shook her head. “It is just impossible now.”
Michel nodded, unable to say anything else.
He pulled her close. He kissed her. One last time. He felt wetness on her cheeks or it could have been his own.
Then he sniffed and wiped his hand across his face. “Okay,” was all he could say.
They worked together to finish getting him strapped into his belt.
For a second, he felt the care and attention that she had given him before.
It made his heart ache with a pain he knew would consume him.
She hovered her hand above his wound but turned quickly back to his belt.
Terrible feelings of loss rolled through him, but he decided to deal with it later.
Right now, he had to hurry so she could get back to safety.
He stepped into the hall, careful to make minimal sound. She followed him.
They stood for a moment, looking at each other. He took as much of their limited time as he could to memorize her beautiful features, the ones that had caused him to act in a way he had never known himself to act.
“Alright,” he said. He touched her cheek. “Goodbye, Eve.”
“Goodbye, Michel,” she replied.
He moved in and gave her a quick kiss on the lips. Then he turned and ran down the hallway and through the door that she had left open for him into the cool night.
She stood there, watching the empty space where he had been, still feeling the imprint of his lips on hers.
Part of her couldn’t believe he was gone.
He had been everything to her over the last months: her enemy, her savior, her patient, her lover, nearly her husband.
Now he, along with a life she had wanted so badly, had disappeared.
She had told her father of her marriage to Bataar and how the girl had killed him. How Eve had run, thinking it was the best way to avoid conflict. How she had found a Frenchman whom she convinced to bring her with him to France.
Her father agreed to protect the girl. Together, Eve and her father wove a story in which Ganbold killed Bataar, jealous of his new bride, while Eve escaped.
Now, my flower, if you wish to do your duty to the tribes, a marriage to Bataar’s brother would be ideal.
Father, I want to heal the tribes. I want to do my duty…would you allow an alliance with France?
You mean the Frenchman?
He is a good man. A noble.
There are better men for you. Men in Timicin’s tribe.
I care for him.
Has he coerced you, darling daughter?
No father, he is a good man. Strong and loyal.
He did not bring you home. He did not seek out your family. If he truly cared for you, if he were truly noble, he would have insisted.
Father, I concealed my identity. He did not know I was the daughter of the Golden Khan.
Would your family love you less if we were shepherds? He had asked, and Eve knew his mind about Michel had been made up.
She had grown up learning never to make excuses for her actions, to do what was right by the tribes, to control her emotions or be disregarded.
But if she thought anything would change her father’s mind, if anything could convince him to let her marry Michel, she would have done it, damn the expectations.
She could continue to argue, beg, and plead, perhaps.
She could point out the hypocrisy of Bataar stealing her and Michel protecting her, but her father was traditional and couldn’t see through his culture, and though he loved her, he would want a solution that would appease the tribes.
Regardless, she did not know how much time she had before her body gave away her pregnancy.
Her sisters-in-law always seemed to be fat with child days after it was announced.
Eve thought for a moment she could claim it had been Bataar, but the timing did not line up, and even if the math was dismissed, a baby would come along that did not look like it had a tribal father.
No, Michel would not be safe if she turned up pregnant.
Her father, a fair, strong, brilliant Khan, was still a protective, conservative, volatile father who would have nothing to stop him from killing the man who had compromised his daughter.
It was the only option, then, to send Michel away, before the depth of their relationship was suspected, before Michel had to endure tribunals, before he suffered any more damage to his own life, so he could salvage some of his own legacy.
There were too many complications and too many ways Michel could still be blamed or harmed.
Her father, though he conceded not to immediately execute Michel for the crimes of others, insisted Michel remain imprisoned until he had a chance to mitigate expectations of the il-khans.
That would take time. Eve did not have time.
When she had left her father’s war room earlier that day, she had never felt more despondent, seeing all the ways she had caused harm.
She knew, at least, what she would do about Michel, and that gave her something to focus on.
She had made quick arrangements with a local guide who agreed to get Michel to the end of the mountain steppes, where he could have some autonomy and safety once more.
She had secured a horse, clothing, and things he would need for survival.
She retrieved his sword and weapons. She would get him out, she had decided, because that was the only way to protect him.
Now she stood where he had just been, silent tears streaming down her face.
It was early the next morning that Michel’s escape had been discovered.
A guard had rushed in alongside Khuyag, who had broken the news to her father.
Eve had spent the morning hovering around waiting for the news.
When they discovered the empty cell with no prisoner, her father turned to her with disapproving eyes.
In all her life, this was truly the first moment she had ever felt his disapproval.
She also knew it would get worse in the coming months as her pregnancy became evident.
Then her father was moving, gone, like she knew he would be, launching a search and throwing himself into political handlings.
She took her only breath of relief then. She knew that Michel should have had enough distance to be safe. If he stayed smart, he could avoid trouble and get himself home. She had done everything she could for him. Now, he would be on his own.