Sebastian shrugged off his coat. He hissed as the cold air hit the thin sleeves of his shirt. I pulled my own arms from the hunting coat.
I wore more layers than he did. He stripped down quickly, efficiently, slipping his linen shirt from his body in one smooth movement. Dark hairs curled in the middle of his chest, and I wanted to both look away and stare at him. I settled for gazing at his smooth stomach while I loosened my laces. My fingers, numb and stiff from the cold, did a poor job of it.
“Here, let me help you,” Sebastian said with a shivering stutter. The air must have felt like knives against his bare skin.
I let his deft fingers pull the strings free. My dress, once snug around my body, yawned at my chest and my hips. I pulled it off and faced Sebastian in my chemise. A glance down confirmed the thin fabric was little more than a veil—blurring the lines of my nakedness but not concealing it. I tried to let the sensibility of the situation settle over me. We needed to stay warm. Skin to skin—or close to it, because there was no way I was taking off my chemise—was the best way to do that.
But the heat in my belly wouldn’t go away.
Sebastian picked up our coats and wrapped them around us. Facing each other, we lowered ourselves down beside the fire and I nestled easily into the crook of Sebastian’s arm. He splayed his hands over the fabric of my chemise and rubbed circles with his thumb into my back. I breathed in the musky smell of him and my nerves quieted.
His nose and mouth rested on the top of my head and I hoped my hair still smelled of lavender.
“What will we do when the sun comes up?” Sebastian asked.
“Go home. Start again. Aurélie had a picture hanging from her roof of a girl torn open just like the seamstress . . . a spell or a recording of what happened. If she had something to do with it, someone in town might be helping her and making it look like the beast. So we have to find out why.”
“What if it’s just her?”
“It isn’t.”
“You said you thought someone might be using a knife,” Sebastian said.
“Sometimes, maybe. The cuts on Maurice were shallow enough for that, but Vivienne . . . it looked like teeth, didn’t it? And Aurélie doesn’t have the teeth to tear anyone apart. There’s something else going on, someone helping her.”
“Or it’s simply Ama doing the killing. Or wolves.”
I hadn’t forgotten that. “Yes, it could be. But the kills don’t look like Ama’s work. And wolves would eat more of their kill.”
He nodded slowly. “So, who in the village would benefit from it?”
“Well, Père Danil would love to be the one to vanquish the devil made flesh. Did you see how people flocked to church after Maurice was found?”
“Yes, Père Danil would revel in being a savior of the church. But he doesn’t have teeth that can tear flesh open either.”
I pulled away from Sebastian a little so I could see into his eyes, gauge his reaction while I went on with my theory.
“Emméline,” I said. “You gave her an incentive. What was it?”
Sebastian raised his brow and widened his eyes. “An introduction to the king, a recommendation to be one of his hunters at Versailles.”
“She could make her name defeating the beast. Prestige is alluring, and there aren’t many ways to earn it in a town like ours. The men don’t always accept her as her father’s heir. By creating more fear, she’d have an even bigger trophy to present if she finally destroyed the monster that everyone thought was doing the killing.”
“I can’t see it. I’ve known her since I was a child, and I can’t picture her as a murderer. She hunts animals, yes, but killing people would be very different.”
The possibilities swirled in my head, making me dizzy. A blast of icy wind wound through the opening of the tunnel and broke over us. My muscles seized up, shivering relentlessly, and I settled closer to Sebastian again. His grip on me tightened and my belly tingled with what I could only describe as anticipation. Lying together there, in the low glow of a stuttering fire, I wanted something to happen. But I wasn’t sure what. My own hands explored the soft skin of his back. He didn’t react and the tingling twisted into sour embarrassment. I stopped moving my hands and lifted them from his skin so he couldn’t feel the wetness on my palms.
“Even if we find the killer, we still don’t have a way to break the curse,” I said, to draw his attention away from my awkwardness. “We just have more questions than ever.”
“And no cure for Lucien’s illness.”
The edge of accusation to his words made me bristle in defense.
“I am trying. I came out here, into the frozen woods, on my own to find out how to read the spell book.”
“For your sister.”
“What does that matter? Magic could still work for Lucien too.”
“How do you know?”
I didn’t, not really. I could only assume magic could claw back the consumption better than tea and poultices could. But I didn’t know the rules of it any better than Sebastian did. We’d waded out into the unknown, and we had to hope we wouldn’t fall into the deep.
“Do you have a better plan?”
He hesitated, taking a big breath and letting it out slowly. My head rose and fell with his chest. “No,” he said.
“Then we go home and figure out who the killer is and buy ourselves time to figure out how to save Ama and Lucien.”
“What if there are no answers for us in this valley?”
Everything seemed contained here. I’d never left the watchful eye of the jagged mountaintops. My parents had been born here, and my parents’ parents. We were tied to this valley and the people in it.
Secrets festered in close quarters—among the boredom of tidy lives. We heard gossip, of course. Pamphlets and papers made their way here in the bags of travelers and pilgrims. Trinkets—a pair of paste jewel earrings, an embroidered handkerchief, a gilt fan just like the queen’s—glittered in peddlers’ packs. We weren’t cut off from everything; we were just far away. By the time those things reached us, they were already out of date, so sometimes we had to make our own news.
In a town of our size, we knew each other intimately. And we knew our stations—where we were supposed to stay. Rumors slipped through town like silk ribbons through a lady’s fingers and easily spun out of control. Blame was cast with the casual pointing of a finger—whether jeweled or browned and spotted from the sun.
It was easy to fall into the thrill of the mob. To belong to their passion. Sometimes I yearned for it, for the automatic acceptance that came with shared outrage.
But now their sour whispers were about Ama . . . and me . . . and I hated them for pushing us to the outside when all I’d ever wanted was to be accepted by them. I remembered the little dolls on our doorstep, Emméline’s knowing grin.
“What are you thinking?” Sebastian asked. He lifted a finger and ran it between my brows. “You’ve a line here from frowning.”
I brushed his hand away and tried to smooth my expression, but the rancor couldn’t be defused in a moment. Sebastian didn’t understand. He wasn’t part of the town—not like that. He belonged to a different world.
The politics of the town were beneath his notice because he held no stake in them. No matter what happened in the village nestled below his estate, he’d always be its ruler.
“My grandparents had to hide their baby away to keep the villagers from killing it,” I said.
“Not the villagers. A priest.”
I dragged my courage up from the bottom of my belly and said, “Père Danil was suspicious of your mother, wasn’t he? As a witch? And he didn’t chase her away.”
The cold air hit my skin the instant he pulled away, the space where he’d been quickly draining of warmth. He stood, facing me. Pain veiled Sebastian’s eyes and he stared at his feet, but I didn’t miss the tears on his lashes.
“Papa would have protected her, yes. Her status helped with everything else, but it didn’t stop the whispers. Didn’t ease her pain at being an outsider.”
“No, I imagine that pain lived deep inside. But she was safe from expulsion and that’s something,” I said.
“I don’t think she ever really felt safe, Marie. She was always peering out our windows, looking toward the village or into the woods. She kept Lucien so close to her you’d think she was afraid of him dying if he was on his own.”
“Well, he was sick, wasn’t he? That’s understandable.”
“It was more than that. She was terrified even before that. She really loved us. Please don’t try to take her away from me.”
I wished I could take us back to a few moments ago, when I could still feel the steadiness of his warm breath against my forehead.
“I’m not, I’d never.” I stumbled for the words. “Whatever she was, I’m sure it wouldn’t have changed the way she loved you.”
“It didn’t.” Sebastian wiped his eyes.
I hadn’t wanted to upset him, and regret made me want to call my words back. But I couldn’t, so I called Sebastian back instead.
“Please come here. It’s cold,” I said.
The fire burned low with glowing red embers and the black of the night wound round us like dark velvet. The howl of wolves rang through the trees outside the cavern and a tingle of fear ran down my spine.
He seemed to struggle with it for a moment, but then his shoulders dipped and he took a couple steps toward me. I stood and wrapped my arms around his waist. He pulled us back down to lie on his coat in front of the waning fire.
“We need to find out who . . . or what . . . is doing the killing,” I said.
“How?”
“Bait them.”
“Like we did with Vivienne’s body?”
“Maybe . . .”
If we used honeysuckle, that would only attract Ama. And we didn’t have another dead body to work with.
“I could be the bait,” I said, a plan suddenly coming to me. “I could make myself vulnerable, sit outside on the church steps like a vagrant, all wrapped up in an old cloak, and see who comes.”
“How do we know anyone, or anything, even would come? It would be taking a chance.”
“What if we double the bait?” I’d already thought about it, but I hesitated to say the words out loud because the idea terrified me. “You could drag me back into town with my hands bound. I’ll be your prisoner. Give in to the villagers . . . let them have their monster. And while they’re all watching me, you’ll dress as a vagrant and watch for the killer. If the killer is a person, they’ll want to keep everyone scared of me, and killing again is the way to do that. If it’s not a person”—I couldn’t say Ama’s name—“it will be drawn by the scent of blood.”
“Blood?”
“You can smear some on yourself.”
“And where will this blood come from?”
“Me or you.”
Sebastian stared at me. “You know what the villagers can be like, Marie. What if I can’t stop them from hurting you?”
I tried to smirk, but it couldn’t have come out right, because Sebastian only frowned more deeply.
“You’ll have to control them, my lord.”
He huffed out a sigh. “This is dangerous, Marie.”
“Everything is dangerous. How many will die this winter from cold and empty bellies? The pox could come for those who survive this spring. Safety is an illusion, Sebastian.”
I meant everything I said, but I left out how much I wanted to believe in that illusion.
“I don’t like this plan,” Sebastian said.
“Neither do I, but it’s our best chance at figuring out what’s going on and heading off whoever’s responsible.”
“So, we control the situation?” Sebastian said.
“As much as we can.”
We fell silent, and it was a warm, still, enveloping quiet. The smoke hung low—trapped by the cavern roof—and stung my nose, so I buried a little closer to Sebastian and breathed in the smooth scent of his skin. He tightened his grip on me, bringing me still closer. The bulk of him pressed against the length of me. Heat bloomed in my belly again and my breathing quickened, my breasts rising and falling against his chest.
He let out a little sigh into my hair, and I slowly tilted my head up so I could look at him. His blush, familiar to me now, reddened his cheeks, but his brown eyes shone with a spark I’d never seen in them before. Sebastian bent his head and his breath plumed against my lips.
I pulled back and dipped my head back down to his chest, all sweat and nerves and glowing embarrassment. I’d never been this close to a boy before, never seen anyone but my father without his shirt on. I shouldn’t have, either, until the wedding night I didn’t want. But here we were, his skin against my thin chemise, hiding in a cave to make it through the night, and the only thing occupying my mind was the gentle curve of his lips and the heat of his skin.
How much I wanted to kiss him was a problem. Because I’d never be allowed to keep him.
An invisible line separated us. We might have crossed it a few times because the threat of death was involved, but once we cured Ama and Lucien, things in our town would go back to normal. And normal meant Sebastian in his estate and me in my little cottage. Pretending it could be otherwise was foolish.
I dared a glance up at him, though, and found hurt in the set of his jaw. My own disappointment tightened my throat. Why were there so many rules? I didn’t want to play by any of them.