That moment was clear in his mind even today, a decade after: that moment of reemergence, of clawing up from the depths of a heavy, dark sea. As if he’d dragged himself awake from the worst of nightmares.
But it had been no nightmare, those three nights of hell. And what he’d thought of as the light at the end of the tunnel, as the prize for his endurance and existence through hours of torture, turned only into the slap of betrayal. And the hot memory of humiliation.
Giordan rubbed gritty eyes with trembling fingers that smelled of blood and semen and opium and filth. He saw that the alley was hardly wide enough for him to extend his legs, but so long that he could see only that it angled into nothingness.
The walls on either side of him loomed tall and windowless, like dark sentinels. The brick was cold against his bare back, chill and rough with dirt, sticky with unidentifiable substances. Even springy with a bit of moss. The ground below, uneven with cobbles and filtered with a random tuft of grass, seeped damply into his breeches.
All at once, Giordan became aware of the sun. It emerged from a heavy cloud as if a curtain had been drawn away. The golden light spilled into the alley next to him and would soon filter over the spot where he lay.
At first, he didn’t have even the energy to pull to his feet. Nor the desire.
His mind was stark and empty, devoid of thought, even emotion. Just…empty.
Finished.
She’d finished him.
But then, as the base need for self-preservation stirred with the shift of the sun, Giordan prepared to heave himself upright.
At that moment, he saw the cat.
She sat there, pale and blonde against the shades of indigo and violet and gray that filled the alley. Her blue-gray eyes were fixed on him in that way of her race, unblinking and steady.
But there was no miffed accusation in this feline’s stare. Her tail, which curled comfortably around her, had no annoyed twitching at its tip. She exuded peace.
She looked just like the cat who’d stared at him from a nearby roof some weeks ago. Just after he’d met Narcise.
Giordan realized belatedly that some of the weakness in his body stemmed from the presence of his Asthenia, positioned just-so in front of him. She sat just far enough away that he wasn’t breathless and paralyzed, but close enough that he felt the essence of her presence like uncomfortable waves.
And he realized that, until she moved, he could not escape from the alley.
“Scat!” he said with as much sharpness as he could muster, but at the same time, a wave of grief for his own fat orange Chaton roughened the back of his throat. “Move!”
The cat looked at him, her eyes intelligent and steady. And she didn’t move.
Even when he threw a stone toward her, she didn’t flinch. She hardly deigned to notice when the rock scuttled across the stones next to her.
Giordan looked up and saw the light blazing above in a perfect, cerulean sky. Hot and yellow and bright. The beams had begun to fill the alley in an ever-widening triangle of light, turning the stones lighter gray, glazing them with hints of yellow and rust, coloring the random tufts of grass green.
It was only a matter of time until the rays would fall onto him; now they eased slyly against his breeches and filtered over the heel of his battered boot.
He pressed himself up against the wall, crouched in the corner, glaring at the cat.
“Move!” he shouted again, and looked for something else to throw at the stubborn creature. There was nothing. He managed to work one of his boots from his foot—a very long, difficult process in his weakened state— and when it finally came free, he flung it clumsily toward the thing.
It tumbled just behind her and she barely lifted her chin as it thudded onto the cobbles.
He began to heave himself to his feet, but at that moment, the cat decided it was time to move…and she sauntered toward him.
As she came closer, the rest of Giordan’s strength fell away. His lungs slowed their movements, his chest felt heavy and constricted and his muscles ceased to respond.
Giordan sank back onto the ground, leaning against the wall as the cat positioned herself directly in front of him. So close he could see the gray and black flecks in her unblinking eyes, and even the fact that she had whiskers in both white and black. Her ears were two perfect triangles sitting at the top of her head, and her fur was lush and long like corn silk. He had a moment of madness and nearly reached to touch that soft fur.
Feeling ebbed from his body and he closed his eyes against the nothingness that swept over him. Blankness…something even beyond paralysis.
After a moment, he opened his eyes and saw the sun just peeking over the roof above him. Soon, it would be directly overhead, pouring into the alley.
He’d burn.
If the damned cat didn’t move…he’d burn. He had nothing to cover himself with, nowhere to hide.
“Go!” he shouted, but his voice was weak. And perhaps it even lacked conviction.
The cat, of course, didn’t move, and although she continued to watch him with those wide eyes, her expression was not haughty.
It was determined.
Giordan closed his eyes when he felt the first brush of the sun’s warmth.
It was an impossible juxtaposition of pleasure and pain…the warmth, as if someone’s hand brushed over him, warm and tender…and yet edged with sharpness, bespeaking of the agony to come.
He huddled against the building, curled up like a cat—or a fetus—pressing as close against the bricks as he could. But the back of his shoulder was exposed, the only part of him that he couldn’t keep in the shadow, and the sun’s rays inched inexorably closer until at last they seared into his sensitive flesh.
A wave of agony screamed through him and he realized from deep inside the white pain that it was coming from his Mark.
The light poured onto him, battling with the dark, undulating roots that branded him Lucifer’s. They writhed and screamed with their own pain as the sun burned and burned and burned.
The last thing he remembered was a light…bright and white and pure, burning inside his mind.
Clarity.
And a voice, deep inside him, that said, “
In the decade that followed Giordan’s betrayal, as the Reign of Terror in Paris ended and the Revolution metamorphosed into a new era under Napoleon Bonaparte’s leadership, Narcise came to a realization: despite her inability to banish the memory of what Cale had done to her, there were other men who wanted her, ones who could love her. At least for a time.
There were other men who, if she found one who was infatuated deeply enough, could perhaps finish the job Giordan had begun—or at least had made her think he’d begun; she had no reason to believe Giordan had ever even truly meant to free her.
She firmly pushed away her pang of unease as she remembered his face during their final confrontation. Everything from those moments was a blur of pain and darkness, of sordid, hedonistic smells assaulting and pummeling her with the knowledge of what he’d done…everything except the dull shock in his eyes.
Narcise shook her head to banish the image.
Now, perhaps she could find a man who actually would help her escape from her brother.
She didn’t have to love him, or even care for him—she wasn’t certain she could ever open her heart again.
She merely had to make them want to help her.
Because it had become clear to her, with a bitter and terrifying finality, that she had no chance of escaping Cezar on her own. For too long she’d held out hope that she could find a way…but he was too smart and cunning. There were sparrow feathers, it seemed, everywhere in the house and in its adjoining tunnels, and he kept anything that could be considered a weapon far from her except when she was forced to entertain. Nor could she trust any of the servants, for they were all bound to her brother.
She was utterly alone, and felt that loneliness more acutely than she ever had before—now that she realized
