18. Pretty Little Baby
PRETTY LITTLE BABY
ERIC
I don’t know why we’re here.
The ground is too soft and the fog is too dense this morning.
I’m wading over putty, and my freshly polished dress shoes riot against me with each step.
Francesca doesn’t care that there’s mud at the ends of my pants; she just struts on until she breaks the treeline.
The lake opens up in front of us, still asleep under a heavy blanket of fog.
It makes me mourn the comfort of the bed I left behind.
Granted, Lady Athena watched me as I slept, and the sheets, though soft, still felt like rope binding me to a stone altar—but that didn’t eliminate the fact that I was comfortable.
Well, as comfortable as one can be in a haunted castle.
Now I’m here before the lake in the hour when dawn hasn’t even arrived yet, tapping my leg like a frightened boy.
A gust of wind comes from the woods and shoves me forward, impatient to spit me out, and I groan in regret.
I follow the grooves in the ground and find Francesca crouched between tall reeds in search of something.
There’s fuckall light, and I bite my tongue from asking whether she’s got night vision or something.
At least that’s the joke I make to myself, because the other feels more like truth than something to be laughed about: that she doesn’t need light when she’s mapped out the place of her nightmares.
Her denim dips scandalously when she leans forward, and the jumper lifts, revealing a crescent of lower back. I stare because I can’t not. Because I’m a prince, not a fucking saint. This must be what my ancestors felt like when they saw a clavicle for the first time and lost their bloody minds.
“Planning to summon the dead, Lady Hannibal?” I call out, and the fog steals half the sound. “ Careful ,” it slips out when she leans deeper, and I move without thinking. “The ground’s soft enough to pull you in.”
“I’ve a feeling you’ll catch me were I to fall.”
I scoff to myself and scan the treeline, resisting the urge to haul her back from the water’s edge. The surface isn’t visible, yet the way the fog shifts implies that something is waking. It’s the wrong hour for that, and I eat slightly at the distance between us.
Just a bit.
There’s a small squeak from her when a reed catches her in the face. “So…” Her tone already has me bracing. “Are you sad your brother’s leaving later?”
“I don’t do sad.”
The breeze carries her laughter towards me. “I’m asking if you’ll miss him, Eric.”
“I don’t do sad,” I repeat.
She glances over her shoulder. A loose lock of raven hair is stuck to the corner of her mouth, but she makes no attempt to move it. Probably because her gloved hands are covered in dirt.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Incorrect; I very much did answer your question. It’s not my fault you don’t like the one I’ve given.”
“You will miss him.”
I watch her plunge her hands into the muck and grimace at this anomaly of a woman.
Mud clings to the leather, and she wipes it against her jeans without a second thought before digging through a different area.
Watching her mess around hits a nerve somewhere inside me.
I’ve never liked dirt. Hate it on my skin, under my nails.
Yet there she is, splashing around, and I can’t look away.
“It’s not about missing him, per se,” I force the words through clenched teeth. Had this been somebody else, I would’ve taken satisfaction from the struggle, from seeing one’s body physically reacting to the very thought of expressing any sort of affection.
Francesca’s delighted squeak fuels the rest of what I have to say. “I’m listening.”
“It’s about balance… in a way, of sorts…
” My eyes narrow, tracing the shape of her crouched figure.
“Kai makes noise wherever he goes, and I’d say I usually contain it.
So when he leaves, I’ll notice the silence.
That’s it.” To rid my tongue of the flavour of fondness, I slip in a lie.
“It’s one of the only things I like about him, his ability to fill the quiet. ”
“That’s a poetic way of admitting you’ll miss him.”
She moves again, from one patch of reeds to another.
Her knees hit the ground, and the reeds part, making space for her.
She honest-to-fuck crawls a few paces to the right, tracking an invisible string only she can see.
As the wind gets colder, I regret leaving my gloves in the car and stuff my hands into my pockets.
I’m well aware that she has baited me again, but all I can think is, ‘ What the fuck is she doing?’
Not just the action; that I can understand. But it’s the way she’s searching for something, uncaring that dirt splatters against her. I should be repulsed. In truth, I partly am, on some cellular level. Yet I’m also intrigued as hell.
I hate it.
Instead of grabbing her by the hips, throwing her over my shoulder and returning to the car, I foolishly dig my Oxfords deeper into mud with each step closer. “You know, centuries of human innovation have led to tools that easily could’ve done this for you.”
“Is me on my knees in dirt insulting your upbringing?”
“Just my self-control, apparently.” I halt when she flicks dirt in my direction. “Charming. I hope you plan on bathing in disinfectant once you return to the castle.”
“Mmm,” she says, wrist deep in decay. “Planning on pouring it on me, are you? You still haven’t admitted that you’re going to miss Kairos.”
She turns around as she says this, and I spot constellations of mud freckling her skin. I shake my head. “Francesca, I understand those boys probably emptied an array of trinkets out here, but a Sheffolk heir grubbing through lake scum isn’t the solution.”
“I am the lake scum.”
I’ve no response to those self-deprecating words, practically handing her the victory.
Were we not in the open air, the satisfaction radiating from her would’ve suffocated us both.
Silent, I choose to keep inventory: five smears on her jumper, the knees of the denim are beyond saving, and the laces of her right boot are drowned serpents trailing behind her.
The bank sucks at my shoes, and I have only myself to blame.
I didn’t even realise I moved directly behind her now.
“I don’t know what you think you’re going to find.
Chances are that anything those boys left behind would’ve been cleared by now.
This place matters to your people. Authorities would’ve combed the area. ”
“Then explain this.”
She stands, and in her hands, I see it. For a breath, I think it’s the remnants of a crushed soda can or just a regular piece of metal. She brings it towards my face, and I see that it’s a pin. A school pin. Beneath the badge reads ‘Valridge Prep’.
That’s not what makes me pause, though. I couldn’t give a fuck about some private academy. What grabs my focus is the way she clutches the pin as though it’s proved something she needed to believe.
“You’re relieved, why?”
She doesn’t answer me. Her fingers close around the pin and shove it into her pocket with the urgency of somebody hiding explosives. Not tucked away but stuffed, smearing dirt along the front of her jeans along the way.
“You still never admitted?—”
I don’t let her finish. “Stop this small talk. I’m begging you.”
“I’m making conversation ,” she drags the word with a smile, apparently sunshine in human form now that she’s crawled through hell for a piece of trash. “Filling the quiet. Didn’t think you’d complain considering what you just said about Kai.”
“Is that with this? Your attempt at small talk so I don’t notice the way your hands tremble?
” I ask. Her mouth opens and closes, forming no words, and the victory lands in my lap once more.
I go in for the kill. “You brought me here, before sunrise, to the lake that nearly killed you. You’re asking about me and my brother, but that’s not the question you really want answered. ”
“I don’t have a question.”
“I’ll let you believe that lie for now. You’ll choke on it soon enough, believe me, darling.”
There isn’t enough time for the response to hit her before I move; two strides through sucking marsh. And I reach for her, without a word. Just two fingers beneath her chin, I draw my embroidered white handkerchief from my coat and press it to her cheek like I’m cleaning blood from a blade.
I pause, waiting for her to jerk away.
All that leaves her mouth is, “You’ll ruin that.”
I almost tell her I don’t care. Ruining this piece of cloth will bring me great satisfaction because, like my signet ring, it only exists as symbolism, an extension of my father’s reign.
Instead, I tell her, “Please, indulge my neurosis.” The request is soft, and I feel her stiffen, but she concedes.
My hand then finds the underside of her jaw, thumb settling against the hollow just beneath her right ear. Her pulse knocks there wildly, drumming against my fingertips as her skin blooms red beneath the touch. I angle her face slightly, and the cloth meets her mouth next.
The edges of E.P.H.A. brush against her lower lip, devouring stains as it moves.
She swallows, and I feel the motion of it cradled in my palm.
The linen is ruined, grotesque with mud, and I should care, but I don’t.
She murmurs something that sounds like ‘pointless’, yet her voice snags when I ghost the fabric beneath her eye.
Francesca lets me chase mud down the slope of her nose, and when the last speck relinquishes, I mutter, “There, duchess returned from the dead.” I crumple the ruined cloth and slip it into her pocket, right alongside the pin. “Carry it. Consider this my flag of surrender.”
She tries to smother her grin by pressing her lips together, and in spite of the effort, joy seeps through the cracks. “You’re not going to repeat yourself? No further interrogation?”