Page 6 of Misadventures with a Duke

Wildernesses to match the emptiness of my soul.

Until it is flooded by a tempest of fury. A storm so blinding, I really do see naught but crimson now. My senses are filled by no other sound than my primitive roar. In my tastebuds, there is only bile and blood.

But not enough blood.

Not until I can gouge open Marquette De Lys’s chest. Until I am able to tear his heart apart, vein by worthless vein.

But when I emerge from my desperate red fog, only Magique and I are in the room. Shouts jostle each other on the streets below. The police are blowing horns and banging drums. They are answered by breaking glass and stampeding horses. Part of my mind orders me to move—I am covered in Magique’s fluids, and it may not matter anymore that I am a duke—but I cannot let her go. I hold her tighter, promising everything I own if the Almighty will honor the force of my love and bring her back.

Praying for a miracle that never happens.

Instead, I blink in astonishment as this bizarre night takes another unreal turn. More accurately, gains another new cast member.

“Kavia?” I croak. “What…on…”

My throat cannot manage more than that. I doubt the woman has ventured farther than the outskirts of Loire her whole life, but the kitchen maid who has always been more like my second mother is here, at least a three day’s ride from our family’s Angers château. She looks the same yet is eerily different. She still wears her favorite kerchief, which holds her curly hair back from her strong features, but the rest of her clothes are different. Is she wearing…trousers?

That is not the observation that jars me the most. The urgency across her features brings my roughest jolt. Her gaze is so intense and unblinking.

“Bastien.” She rushes over, tears coursing down her cheeks as if I have died along with Magique. No. As if I have died and come back to life. “Saints be praised! We found you in time!”

“In time? For what?”

“Carl! In here! I found him!”

I stare in confusion as her husband appears in the doorway. Carl is not the same as I remember him either. The last time I was home, so many months ago, there was only time for a brief visit with Father and Mother, so perhaps my memory is playing games with me. But Carl seems bigger now, and not just in a physical sense. The man, usually the staid calm to Kavia’s keen storm, paces into the room like a thunderhead in his own right.

“Mon dieu.” His triumphant growl is matched by his wide grin. “We did it. And just in time.”

I shake my head, abandoning confusion for bewilderment. “Did what? In time for fucking what?”

“Yes,” Kavia exclaims. “I told you we would!”

She drops down and yanks my head to her bosom.

I wrench away, which slams me closer to Magique. That aids with maintaining my sanity, but only a little.

“What the hell is happening?” I demand.

Nothing changes about Kavia’s mien. Everything changes about Carl’s.

“Mon coeur,” he mutters to his wife. “The boy…perhaps he has a good point. If he has to follow his heart out of this, but his heart is here, with her…”

“No,” I retort, pulling my lost angel tighter as if to shield her from his bizarrely bleak words. The syllables that feel so small compared to the size of my love. And loss. “My heart is not here. Not any longer.”

I struggle to imagine where she has gone, conjuring images from so many Sundays in church during my youth. But Maximillian was always more dutiful than I, listening carefully while I squirmed in the pew and fantasized about vanquishing Pierre Lacrosse at stick duels in the yard. The possibility of brimstone depths versus shiny clouds always felt far away and pointless.

Not anymore.

“We still have to try,” Kavia insists. Her grip on my shoulder is equally commanding. “We have to!”

“Agreed,” Carl utters. “We have come too far. Risked too much.”

I force my gaze away from my beloved’s still face. “Damn it, what are you two talking about?” I mean every syllable. Oui, they are far from the château, but this is not the center of Paris. I am more concerned with his second sentence. “Risked too much how?”

“We can explain,” Kavia says. “But not now. Not here.”

As if her fervent tone needs more support, the chaos from the street gets louder.