Author: Tiffany Reisz

Her words stung—neither one of them heroes. He had to be a hero for her. He wished the world still had dragons so he had something to slay for her. He ached to prove himself to her, to prove his worth. And if the death of Talel’s horse had hurt her, he would make it right. For her. For them.

Against his chest, Nora released a raspy breath. He’d waited three years to hear that sound, the sound of her shivering with the pleasure his body gave hers. Three years. Twenty years. It had been worth the wait.

“Tomorrow,” he whispered in her ear as she brought her mouth to his again.

“What’s tomorrow?” She gazed up at him through eyes hooded with desire.

“We’ll start acting like heroes.”

NORTH

The Past

He never thought he’d live to see this day—and Søren, Stearns, or whoever he was, doing manual labor. At age seventeen, watching Søren scrubbing the floor of the hermitage with soap and water and steel wool, with his bare hands and on his knees, Kingsley knew he could die at this moment and safely say he’d seen everything.

“You’re supposed to be helping, Kingsley.” Søren rinsed the steel wool in the water and tackled a stain with renewed vigor.

“So sorry. I’m in shock. Haven’t recovered yet, mon ami.”

A smile played at the corner of Søren’s lips.

“Our Lord was a carpenter or possibly a stonemason. The apostle Paul was a tentmaker. They worked with their hands—grueling, backbreaking work. If it wasn’t beneath them to get their hands dirty, it should not be beneath me.”

“I want to be beneath you.”

“You are beneath me, Kingsley, in every way but literally. And if you want to be beneath me—literally—before morning, I would suggest helping me. I told you the hermitage was a hellhole.”

With a heavy sigh, Kingsley grabbed a sponge and dropped to his knees.

“You did not exaggerate.” Kingsley glanced around and took in once more the spiderwebs, the ashes ground into the dirt-covered floor, the droppings from the mice and birds that had made a home of the hermitage after Father Leopold had gone to meet his maker. “We should find somewhere else.”

“There is nowhere else. Not for miles.”

“It’s disgusting.”

“This is Maine. Winter is coming and it’s coming fast. We have two weeks of warm nights left, perhaps.”

“It’s beyond disgusting.”

“Once clean, it’ll be perfect for us.”

“Perfect for you to beat me and fuck me?”

“Exactly,” Søren said, not even cracking a smile. No smile necessary, Kingsley realized, as Søren wasn’t joking. Good. “The students never come out here.”

“Pourquoi?” Kingsley put his back into his scrubbing. It appeared a mouse had died in this spot and the grease of its bones and marrow had left a permanent mark on the wood. A lovely place to give his body to the man he worshipped.

“Someone started a rumor that Father Leopold’s ghost haunts the hermitage since he died out here. They didn’t find his body for a week, as a blizzard trapped everyone inside the school.”

“Just the ghost of a priest. Nothing to be afraid of.”

“The story claims that Father Leopold’s ghost takes sexual liberties with anyone who comes within his reach. In death he feasts on what he denied himself in life. Do you believe that?”

Kingsley looked at Søren with wide eyes. “No…but I very much want to.”

Søren laughed and threw his steel wool at him. Kingsley caught it against his chest and attacked the mouse-grease stain with determination. It took two entire hours to clean the floor. Another hour to sweep away the spiderwebs and kill the inhabitants. He crushed a wolf spider with gusto. Too much gusto for Søren’s taste.

“Can’t you catch them and set them outside, Kingsley? Killing them seems excessive.”

Kingsley leveled a cold, hard glare at Søren.

“Catch the spiders and release them outside? Did I ever tell you I passed blood for three days after our first night together? Pardonez moi for saying your Catholic respect for the sanctity of life would be more convincing were you not a sadist.”

Søren rose to his feet and straightened. He strode over to Kingsley. “I have no desire to hurt spiders like I want to hurt you. There’s a difference.”

“Really? How so?”

“First of all, I don’t find spiders attractive.”

Søren raised his eyebrow. Kingsley couldn’t stop the laugh inside him from bursting out. But Søren’s lips on his silenced him.

The kiss lasted for but a moment before Søren pulled back.

“Back to work,” he ordered.

Kingsley dropped to his knees in front of Søren and gazed up at him.

“Yes, sir.”

Søren stared down at him and Kingsley easily discerned the hunger in his eyes.

“Back…to…work…” Søren ordered. It sounded as if he was telling himself as much as Kingsley.

Kingsley frowned. “Yes, sir.”

Sighing, he grabbed the sponge and started in on the one and only chair they were able to salvage from the rotted furniture left in the hermitage. He halfheartedly scrubbed at it until he heard Søren mutter with disgust, “Kingsley, have you never cleaned in your life?”

“Non. I have a sister.”

Søren narrowed his eyes at him. Kingsley laughed.

“It’s true. I have an older sister—Marie-Laure. She and Maman did all the cleaning. Papa worked. And I…I did whatever I wanted.”

“Why am I not surprised? There are orphans at this school who spent half their childhood on the streets and are more disciplined than you.”

“I imagine it would take a great discipline to survive on the streets. I rather enjoyed being spoiled. The only son in a French family is an enviable position. And you? I can’t imagine you did much cleaning in your house.”

Søren’s eyes darkened at the question, but his face remained composed. “My father’s house had a large staff to take care of it. My sister Elizabeth and I were required to keep our rooms neat. Other than that, we had little in the way of chores. Other than surviving under that roof.”

“That bad, was it?” Kingsley asked, hoping to draw more secrets out of Søren about what had happened between him and his sister.

Søren nodded as he kept working. His hands never stopped. He seemed like a being of pure determination as he ran the soapy rag over the table.

“Being the only son in a family controlled by a child-raping madman is an unenviable position.”

Kingsley dropped the sponge. “You said…you’d said he raped your mother. She was—”

“Eighteen,” Søren stated, still cleaning. “But my sister was eight. Only eight.”

“Mon Dieu.”

“Non. Pas du tout. God has much more to do with us than he had to do with that. The monster who calls himself my father raped her. I was away at school in England while this all was happening, otherwise I would have two lives on my conscience instead of one. But I’d rather not talk of that. Tell me about your sister.”

Kingsley swallowed. He wanted nothing more than to hear about Søren’s childhood. As wretched as it sounded, it was still him, his life, his past. Kingsley drank up every precious revelation like wine. No one at school knew anything about Søren—not even his real name. They heard rumors, told stories, but no one knew him, the real him. The intimacy of the secrets was almost as potent as Kingsley’s and his two nights together.

Almost.

“Marie-Laure…” Kingsley pulled his eyes away from Søren, who seemed to be deeply engrossed in cleaning the stones of the hearth. “She’s beautiful. I’m her brother, and even I will admit she’s the most beautiful girl in the world. She dances.”

“Dances?”

“Yes. She’s a ballerina. In the chorus of the Paris ballet. But she’s good. Very good. She’ll be a prima ballerina someday.”

“Do you miss her?”

“Very much. She’s all I have left now, really. My father’s parents have been dead for years. My mother’s parents—they don’t even speak French. And they never liked Papa. It’s hard to be close to them. Marie-Laure feels like my only family. She sends me letters every week. Horrible letters. I can barely read them for all the smears.”

“Smears?”

“She cries when she writes me. Cries about Maman and Papa. Cries about us being apart. I thought she would kill me at the funeral…”

“Convenient place for a murder.”

“Very.” Kingsley grinned even as the memory of that horrible day came back to him. The two urns side by side on the altar. The seemingly endless parade of mourners, most of whom Kingsley had never met before. His father’s business associates. His mother’s friends. All of them had hands that needed shaking, cheeks that had to be kissed. And all he wanted to do was collapse onto the floor and sob for days and weeks and months and years until he died and could be with his parents again.

After, his mother’s parents came for him. Their solemn ‘It’s time to go now, dear,’ were the six most painful words spoken to him since those other five terrible words Marie-Laure had whispered three days earlier: “Maman and Papa, they’re gone.”

Kingsley had let them lead him away, his mind in a daze. But his dazed state shattered when he felt ten sharp fingernails digging into his arm.

“Non. Non…” Marie-Laure had cried, clinging to him as if her own life hung in the balance. Her beautiful face twisted in agony and her vocabulary was reduced to a single word—non. For ten minutes she’d held fast to her little brother, weeping on his shoulder, stroking his hair... And Kingsley had finally cried then, too.

Their parents had gone away on a second honeymoon, to Tuscany. That had been the plan. They’d never even made it out of Paris. And now he and Marie-Laure had only each other. And he would be taken from her, to live in America.

“Marie-Laure…she went mad after the funeral. I’d never seen her like that. Both my arms were streaming blood by the time our grandparents finally pulled her away from me.”

Kingsley worried about his sister. She loved too much. Far too much. Him. Their parents. Anyone she turned her attention to. He wished she could come be with him in America. It would calm her down, settle her nerves. Perhaps she would start to heal here, as he had.

“Sometimes inflicting pain is the only way to show love.”

Kingsley looked up sharply at Søren. “Is that why you hurt me?”

Søren’s face didn’t betray anything. He showed no expression at all when he answered simply, “I certainly don’t hurt you out of hate. But go on. What of Marie-Laure?”

“She’s not doing well. She worries about me. When I got hurt at school, she started selling Maman’s jewelry so she could afford to come visit me. She has no money. Papa had debts. They left us very little when they died.”

“You sound equally worried about her.”

Kingsley focused his attention on the table. “I am. She’s emotional. Not weak. She’s very strong, really. Strong passions. Everyone she loves she loves as if she’ll die without them. It’s not…it’s not good to care that much about people.”

“And why not?”

“Because they die. Or will die…someday. Even you. We’re doomed from birth. Might as well just have all the fun we want, oui? Doesn’t matter, anyway.”

“You Satanic Huguenot. I can’t believe I’m sullying myself with a Calvinist.”