somewhere north. They had dogwood trees and they would bloom white in the spring. She said they would host balls, and people would gather from all over and dance … Have you ever been to a ball, William?”
He’d been to too many of them. Casshorn, Declan’s uncle, had adopted him to get him out of jail in hopes that he and Declan would kill each other. The adoption came with etiquette lessons. “I have.”
Cerise glanced at him. “Is it fun?”
“I was bored. Too many people, too many colors. Everything is too bright and too vivid. Everyone is talking but nobody is listening, because they’re too concerned with being seen. After a while it all just blends.”
“I’d like to go to one,” she said. “It might not be my thing even, but I’d like to go at least once to say I’ve done it. Sometimes I feel cheated. I know it’s selfish, but sometimes I wonder what it would’ve been like if my grandfather didn’t get himself exiled. Who knows, I might have been a lady.”
He didn’t have much use for ladies. A lady was someone else’s wife or daughter or sister. They were not real, almost like trophies forever out of his reach. She was real. And strong.
She looked about to cry.
“Would you like to dance?”
Her eyes opened wide. “Are you serious?”
Once he learned something, he never forgot it. William took a step forward and executed a perfect deep bow, his left arm out. “Would you do me the honor of dancing with me, Lady Cerise?”
She cleared her throat and curtsied, holding imaginary skirts. “Certainly, Lord Bill. But we have no music.”
“That’s fine.” He stepped to her, sliding one arm around her waist. She put her hand on his shoulder. Her body touched his, and he spun with her around the attic, light on his feet, leading her. It took her a moment and then she caught his rhythm and followed him. She was flexible and quick, and he kept picturing her naked.
“You dance really well, Lord Bill.”
“Especially if I have a knife.”
She laughed. They circled the attic once, twice, and he brought them to the center of the room, shifting from a quick dance to a smooth swaying.
“Why are we slowing down?” she asked.
“It’s a slow song.”
“Ah.”
She leaned against him. They were almost hugging.
“What’s bothering you?” he asked.
“I’m scared to death.” Her voice was barely above a whisper. “And mad. I’m so mad at the Hand for putting me through this hell, I can’t even breathe. I have to save my parents. I love them so much, William. I miss them so bad it hurts. I would have to rescue them, even if they were horrible people, because if I don’t, our reputation will plummet. People will think we’re weak, and they will peck us apart little by little. But to save my parents, I have to sacrifice some of my family. Tomorrow they will die, their seats at the table will be empty, and for what? So we can keep living in this mud and squabbling over it. Gods, there has to be something more to life than this …”
She closed her eyes.
He held her close. “You’ll do fine. You’re a natural.”
“A natural what?” she asked.
“A killer. I’ve known people who were better swords-men, but they didn’t have that thing inside that let them kill. They hesitated, they thought about it, and I killed them. You have it. You’re good and you’re fast. I’ll be there to keep you safe.”
“I don’t want to be a killer, William.”
“You don’t get to pick.”
She pulled away from him. He didn’t want to let her go, but he did.
Cerise hugged herself. “On the wall to your left.”
He turned. Two photographs waited at eye level. The first showed three men standing close. The middle one was Peva Sheerile. He had one arm around an adolescent kid with the face of a spoiled child and the other around a tall blond man with mournful gray eyes.
“The Sheeriles. That’s who we’re killing tomorrow.” Cerise sounded bitter.
He looked at the second photo and stopped. Cerise and Lagar danced silhouetted against a bonfire.
She was dancing with her enemy.
“Did you think of him while we were dancing?”
“What?”
He wanted to rip Lagar’s head off his shoulders. Instead he turned and went down the stairs.
CERISE watched him leave. The door closed and she slumped into her chair. So there he was, Lord Wolf. He might have been a bear, for all she knew, but somehow wolf just suited him better. He was predatory, fast, and cunning. And made ninety-degree turns that made her head spin. One moment they were dancing, the next he took off snarling under his breath.
She looked at Lagar on the wall. William didn’t understand the pictures. Lagar would, though. He would know exactly why she kept him on the wall. It was a snapshot of what might have been but could never be.
Cerise sighed and drank the wine from her glass. If things were different, if their families hadn’t been in a feud, if Kaitlin, Lagar’s mother, wasn’t a raging ball of hate, if Lagar was his own man, he would’ve courted her. She was sure of it. She’d seen it in his eyes that night by the fire, that look of desperate, hopeless longing. If things were different, she might have accepted his courtship. He would’ve been a good match: handsome, smart, with the strong magic of an old Legion family, and enough money to make sure she would never need to hustle again. She didn’t love him, but who knew, maybe if things were different, she might have given him a chance.
That snapshot on the wall showed Lagar’s wistful thinking for all to see. Her grandparents’ picture showed hers.
She’d wanted so much to have been born out of the Mire. The swamp had its savage beauty, but it was no place to live. No place to build a family and raise children. Half of the people her age couldn’t read and didn’t want to learn, which was the sadder still. But everyone from the age of twelve and up could fire a crossbow and wouldn’t hesitate to shoot a person with it. There was no hope in the Mire. No way to improve their lot. Even Lagar, with all of his money, still dragged the same mud on his boots.
She thought of her grandmother, standing delicately behind her husband and sighed. She didn’t want to be Grandmother Vienna. She didn’t want wealth. She could live her whole life without wearing a single gold ring, and it wouldn’t make a bit of difference. She just wanted to know that there was light at the end of the tunnel. That they could send Lark to a school, a real school with actual teachers, and to someone, a therapist, a doctor, who could help her, because the family didn’t know how. That they could earn enough to clothe and feed everyone without resorting to stealing. That they wouldn’t have to look over their shoulders, knowing any minute they might have to fight with another family like two rats snapping at each other in the muck. That they could live somewhere else, not in a place where her parents got kidnapped and nobody did anything about it.
Cerise shook her head. If they were slowly crawling out of the mud, she could live with it. But they were sinking deeper and deeper. Her children wouldn’t know her grandfather, and her grandchildren, if she were to have any, wouldn’t even know he existed. All his knowledge would be lost. Already she was forgetting things, and the books didn’t help, because half of the time she was too tired to read them.
It was wrong. Cerise clenched her teeth. The whole point of working so hard was so her children and their children would be better off than she was. But they wouldn’t. They would be worse. The more time passed, the more exiles Louisiana stuffed into the swamp, the more vicious it would become.
No matter how hard she tried, no matter how hard the family worked, they made no progress. They just slid backward into the swamp, and all she had as a consolation were useless dreams of “what if” filled with pathetic self-pity.
And then there was William. She should’ve known that nothing in life came without a catch. He was everything she could ever want in a man: smart, strong, funny, handsome, a hell of a fighter … and he turned into a
