Page 80 of Bitter Burn
Twenty-Seven
Mark
I watch Cashel on my phone, coming to the balcony overlooking St. Peter’s Square and breaking tradition by smiling at them with his vulpine smile, showing off the rakish gap in his teeth and the friendly dimples marked into his cheeks. He waves, he prays. Once, after he speaks, his hand jerks upward, as if to touch the side of his jaw, but he catches himself and drops it back down.
I tap a response to the text I received just an hour ago from the clockmaker in Manhattan. I have a repaired mantel clock waiting for me to pick it up from the shop, according to the message.
“I need to go to the penthouse for a couple days,” I tell the table during a late breakfast in the speakeasy the next morning. “I have some business in New York.”
“I’ll come with you,” says Isolde in a polite but firm sort of way that’s difficult to quibble with in front of our guests.
“Here might be more comfortable, and it will only be for a short time.” Translation: You’ll be safer here, and I’ll be back as soon as I can.
My wife meets my eyes with hers, large and blue-green and unmovable. “I’ll be comfortable wherever you are,” she says calmly.
“Gosh, I’ve been wanting to shop in the city for a while,” Isabella comments dreamily.
Hugo turns to her and strokes her hand fondly. “There’s no reason you couldn’t, pet. You don’t have appointments at Armorica for another week. I’m sure Tristan wouldn’t mind staying with you?”
“I’d be honored to,” Tristan affirms.
“I can stay too,” offers Kayden. “I know Hugo is eager to get back to Edouard, and since Hugo will be at Armorica anyway, I’m sure he won’t mind sparing me for a few days.”
“Are you also dreaming of Madison Avenue and ribbon-handled shopping bags?” inquires Hugo, amused.
Kayden gives a handsome pout. “Obviously.”
I incline my head, as if I think it’s fabulous that four extra people are coming to Manhattan when I need to accomplish something incredibly sensitive and tenuous and secret. “There’s a hotel next to my building,” I tell them. “I’ll make the arrangements, and we can leave this afternoon.”
The others are settled in their respective hotel rooms, and Isolde and I walk into the penthouse with flurries caught in our hair and Petitcrieu jumping at our heels. We unhook her leash, watching as she tears through the new space, sniffing and sniffing and sniffing, like the leg of every chair and the base of every cabinet hold the sum total of the world’s knowledge.
I take Isolde’s coat and enjoy the warmth of her through her cashmere sweater dress as my fingers brush against her. A faint blush tinges her cheeks, and I wonder if she’s remembering the first night she came here. She’d been armored in every way possible—with clothes, with quiet resistance—and it hadn’t mattered. She’d crawled a few feet and tumbled into subspace faster than a stone flung into a pond.
She’s still standing in the foyer when I return from hanging her coat in the closet, and I drag the back of my knuckles up her neck.
“I want you to take me upstairs,” she says quietly.
“To the loft?”
“Yes.”
I nuzzle the spot behind her ear. She smells like heaven—honey and flowers and earth. “Are you sure?”
There are plenty of reasons not to: everything unresolved between us, all the secrets I told her I wasn’t keeping anymore. She won’t thank me later when she discovers the truth, and my secrets aside, we’ll both be missing the shape of Tristan between us. Dispirited from the strange twin to infidelity that is the two of us without him.
But there is one very good reason to take her up to the loft, and that is the lovely curve of her shoulder as framed by the city lights through the window.
I stare at it as she replies, “I’m sure, sir.”
Ah, that sir. Rarer and rarer but sweeter and sweeter, because I know she means it when she says it.
I am only a man. I take her up to the loft.
Two hours later, Isolde is face down in bed with her head pillowed on her arms, her shoulder blades striated in thin, crimson ridges, and her breathing as deep and even as I’ve ever heard it. I’m sitting on the edge of the mattress and running my fingers over those ridges, trying to bargain with myself.
It can’t be wrong if it makes her feel better—it won’t matter once I’m gone—what would a little more hurt—et cetera, et cetera—the predictable haggles of a sinner against his sins. But it doesn’t matter now. The entire affair will be drawing to a close very soon. Cashel will have his inauguration within the week, and once his pallium and ring are in place, he’ll have a week more of audiences, interviews, and administrative undertakings before he turns his eye to his niece or to me. And then the final gambits will start.
I have the florilegium, my great work, but my trust in its usefulness is layered with doubt. Its success would rely on the earnest actions of politicians—some of whom are in the pockets of Ys—and it would depend on a curious and vigorous press. The same press that cheered for me and my fellow soldiers as we boarded planes for Carpathia, that waved away concerns about the instability there, about the infeasibility of us simply popping in, mowing down some baddies, and leaving with a jaunty wave to the tossed flowers and blown kisses of the Carpathians.
