“It was an accident,” she counters. “We were kids.” She pulls back but not completely. I am glad, despite the continuing torment she issues in the form of a light fingertip on my breastbone. Up, up, up she traces with that caress, until pausing at the hollow of my neck. “I just wish my subconscious would get that message.”
I swallow hard, knowing she can feel it. “I understand that more than you probably suspect.”
She hitches her face up. As soon as her wide stare thoroughly rakes my face, she murmurs, “You’re right. I don’t get it.”
I finger one of her curls. Our longer-than-expected tromp in the rain had a wonderful effect on them. They are softer. Curlier. I cannot resist. “Usually, it is—was—Magique shaking me awake from the nightmares.” Already knowing that will intensify her frown, I steel myself to give her the rest of the explanation. “Taking a man’s life…it is not as romantic as the traveling actors and court minstrels paint it to be. Even after one crosses that breach once…the decision you have, about knowing you are strong enough to snuff a life and then actually doing it…there is no traversing back to the other side. Not until you are faced with that decision again. And then you are on the other side, with your sword at someone’s throat…and you are God again.” I drag in desperately needed air. “And it is the most sickening feeling in the world.”
There is gentle pressure against the side of my face. It is from Raegan’s newly raised fingertips. “The kind of sick you can only feel in nightmares,” she finally whispers. Before I look back up, I already know…that she knows. She simply…does. “How many times?” she asks then. “That you’ve had to scale the breach, Bastien?”
I gulp. “Many.” My voice is strangled. My eye sockets are hot. “Too many.”
She slides her hand in, palming my whole jaw now. Those seeking digits of hers are now strands of warmth against my damp ones. “But why?”
“I am the second-born. You know Maximillian as more than a passing acquaintance, so you must know that. While I was always sure that my parents would not let me go destitute, I cannot expect them to carve my entire path for me. After all, they have Max to worry about.”
“You mean they had Max to worry about.”
“Oui. Of course.” I am perturbed about the forced correction, but not because her allegation is so obvious. Because her sadness is. There is a discernible, nearly touchable, certainty beneath her words…
She knows something. A something she does not feel ready to share right now. After my humbling lesson from the bus about being an overbearing oaf, I force the curiosity to the back of my mind. It will keep for another time—when her poor mind has not been battling a monster named Mack Deluise.
“Go on,” she prompts after a short lull. “So what did you do about carving the path?”
I am grateful for the subject change and tell her so with a small smirk. “Well, I was a devious child. Nobody was surprised when I grew up to be a man who could discern the same trait in others. It served me well when I was a guest at Versailles and thwarted an assassination attempt on Louis.”
Raegan’s eyes flare. “Shut the front door!”
I glance the general direction of the guest house’s entrance. “I believe the innkeeper already did…”
“Now you’re evading.” She pushes up, resting her weight on an elbow. “Knock it off and tell me what happened.”
I shrug. “Several of the men in the Grand Veneur slayed a huge stag for dinner. When they were about to wheel in the carcass for the king’s inspection and praise, I saw it move.”
“Ahhh!” she yelps, pressing her free hand to her mouth. “So wild!”
“Not what it was supposed to be at that point, but I think I grasp the point. Since my mind jumped instantly to foul play—”
“Or that maybe it was a zombie stag?”
I meet her light laugh with a wondering snort before continuing. “Louis was impressed with my observation. I have served the crown faithfully ever since.”
“Which is why he gave you a dukedom.”
“Ah.” Though I am done chuckling, I hold on to a lingering smile. “So my big brother has been bragging about me.”
Her sunny mien gets tucked behind a strange, subdued cloud. “Ermmm…not exactly,” she murmurs, earning herself a visit from my own inner storm front. I can only push back my overbearing thunderheads so many times.
“Meaning what?”
She averts her gaze. I do not have a chance to properly growl about that because she twists and settles to the bed again, all the way on her back. The plain white ceiling suddenly occupies her whole attention.
I silently seethe. Is the query that arduous to answer?
“Raegan?”
“Bastien.” She whips a hand back up, sprawling it across my lips. “Please… Just for now, can’t we just say that it’s awesome you survived getting here at all? And that we’ve done well at surviving the insanity since?”
Beneath her fingers, I compress my lips. I haul in air through my nose, determined to regain the upper hand of the exchange but am struck by a fresh wallop of her fresh floral scent. That sweet tinge along her skin, overlaid with the smoky damp of the rain… In seconds, I am almost undone yet again. But that’s when the storm intensifies, a perfect companion for the tempest that still spikes my temperament.
“Insanity,” I husk, battling the din from the new sheets of water plummeting outside. “So that is what I have caused for your life?”
“Oh, lordie.” She sighs while dealing a chastising push at my mouth. “I’m going to start calling you Eeyore 2.0, mister.”
I snort and pull away. “I know not of this pointy ore—or, for that matter, what you continue to speak of besides answers to my honest questions.”
She pulls her hand back. Splays her fingers along her furrowing forehead. “You know what? You do make me insane. But not in all the worst ways. Hey. That was a joke.”
I relent my glowering mope, though not swiftly. “Understood. But perhaps ’tis best that one of us keeps to the not worst side of sanity.”
She bats at my chest. “Oh, that doesn’t sound like any fun.”
“Désolé,” I mumble, already reveling in the way she leaves her hand there, working her sorceress’s magic through every available pore in my body. “Fun has been a rarity in my schedule as of late. Situations with His Majesty have become more and more…complicated.”
A sound spills from her, humor wrapped in odd nettles that I cannot interpret. “Gee, you think?” As soon as my frown deepens, she burrows her hand farther up on my scalp. “Okay, I’m désolée too. That’s a subject for a much different midnight. Or whatever time it is.”
“You cannot check on your small tablet? The one that lights up?”
She copies my arched brow. “That would be my phone, remember?”
“Ah. Yes. Phone.” It would be easier to recall the word, so closely tied to its Greek origin, if she actually used the device for speaking. But that feels like another subject for a different midnight, as well.