17. Angélique
17
Angélique
I t’s been five days since I arrived at Notre Dame. I haven’t seen Elhyor much, and it’s driving me crazy.
I know he sleeps in his room. Sometimes I can hear him, but it’s like a ghost lives in that neighboring room. I can never see him or hear him more than in a fleeting way. Sometimes, it feels like I dreamt the fact he’s in the other room.
He hasn’t opened his door again, but true to his word, the following day, there was someone to teach me how to use the computer.
Turned out that I thought I knew how to use the computer, but really, I didn’t.
At least I learned a few things out of my half- lie.
Every day, Cassiopé has come to get me out of my room. She still talks too much, but she’s growing on me.
Thanks to her, I’ve discovered a lot of information.
Bats don’t age the same way as the other shifters, and she’s actually older than I am, by quite a bit, since she’s thirty-two. Brice is her father, and she doesn’t know her mother, since she died when she was very young. He doesn’t look old at all, and yet he’s two-hundred-twenty-nine years old. And weirdly, Elhyor isn’t much younger, with his two hundred and four years.
The discovery of how bats and dragons age similarly felt like a coveted secret, but with the way Cassiopé told me that so freely, I’m not sure it’s really a secret. It’s just dumb how people don’t try to learn about the other species. For all I know, fish-shifters have a longer lifespan, too, and there’s nothing written on it in Versailles—or else Léandre would have told me.
I’m not sure everything that comes out of Cassiopé’s mouth is important to my mission, but I try to listen to it all.
I feel a little bad when I spend time with her, though.
She’s very sweet and doesn’t seem to know when to stop talking or even how to talk and breathe at the same time, but she’s nice, and in another life, she could have been my friend.
I just need to compartmentalize.
I can’t get attached to the little bat-shifter if I want to survive what’s to come.
I’m also becoming extremely bored.
We’ve been to the archives every day since I arrived, and I feel like I haven’t seen the sun in forever.
I’m also getting antsy with the lack of physical release I’m used to.
I’m not talking about getting myself to come. I’ve done that every night, making sure to leave the door between Elhyor’s and my room open. I’ll get him to join me or hate me.
No, what makes me antsy is the fact that I’ve been practicing for the past eight years, for eight hours or more a day, and now, the only thing I can do is a little workout in the morning when everyone is asleep, and again after dinner. And not every evening, either, because Cassiopé still tries to get me to join the warriors and her for movie night.
I think she has a crush on one of them, but I didn’t manage to decipher which one. I don’t even think I learned their names, anyway.
The thing is, I haven’t gotten proper training since I arrived, and it doesn’t feel right, but I can’t ask to train with the warriors or I’m going to ruin the little angel doll image they all have of me.
It wouldn’t be too bad if only I didn’t have to catch Elhyor unaware just to open a door on him. If he knows I’m trained, he’s never going to let me close enough for me to complete my mission.
I need to find a way to at least get out.
“Cassie? Would there be a way to get out and watch the men’s training? My father never let me do that when I was in Versailles. He thought it was a distraction, and that I didn’t need to see how they trained to command them.”
I’m blatantly lying, but if it gets me out and she can drool over whoever she has a crush on, it’s a win-win situation.
“We’re not supposed to be there. Imagine one of the weapons fires in our direction?” she says with big doe eyes.
If it happened, at least I wouldn’t have to be taken back to my father.
That thought is… dark.
It’s not like me to give up, and yet I can’t help but feel it deep in my bones. If I’m dead, I can’t go back to my father, but I can’t kill Elhyor, either, or even turn Cassiopé’s world upside down.
I shake my head. I can’t think like that. There’s a path all ready for me, and I just have to get that stubborn dragon to see that he wants me.
I’d even go with sex directly. I don’t need the wedding.
Being a widow doesn’t sound that great, anyway.
“We’ll stick to the cathedral’s side. I don’t think any of them would be stupid enough to fire on ND.”
That seems to reassure her, and in the next second, her cheeks turn red. I didn’t need to say anything else, but I knew it was going to work as soon as her eyes lit up.
“Okay, let’s go,” she says as she grabs my arm and drags me through rows and rows of books until we reach the stairs. The training field is right over the archives, and I felt almost suffocated underground. Now that we’re outside, I feel better.
I tip my head back to the sun and enjoy the rays of sunshine brushing over my face.
I know I won’t be able to stay like this for long, with my pale skin and the lack of sunscreen, but I’m willing to get a little sunburned just for extra time under the sun.
Cassiopé and I sit against the back wall of Notre Dame as I soak under the sun and she eats the warriors with her eyes.
We’re a bit in the shadows, which suits Cassiopé just fine, but it’s not good enough for me.
I move from the wall and turn in her direction. This way, the sun hits my back and a bit of my head. All the warriors are visible if I twist my head a bit on the side, but it looks like it’s not what I’m doing.
”You’re not even looking at them,” Cassiopé says with a laugh.
It’s perfect.
“I need the sun more than I need to see sweaty men,” I answer with a shrug.
That seems to make her laugh some more.
Just for good measure, I take a look at what they are doing. It’s hand-to-hand combat, and I know the technique they’re teaching—have for years—so I tune them out for a while. It’s not going to teach me anything about the way they fight.
If I look at them, I’m going to get even more antsy because I’m not there with them, demonstrating how it is supposed to be done, because I looked long enough to see a good portion of them are doing it wrong.
I close my fist a few times before the need to go over there overtakes me.
I need to breathe and focus on Cassiopé.
“Have you ever been outside of Paris?” I ask her absentmindedly.
“Oh, yes, I’ve visited Lyon and Cannes. I even went to London and Berlin once. It was amazing.”
As she tells me how beautiful each of the cities was, I start to imagine, and my brain conjures things I’m dying to visit.
One day.
When all of this is over.