This is how it ends.
With candles burning on the sill, unsteady light casting long shadows across the bed. With the blackest part of night stretching beyond the open window, and the first blush of summer on the air, and Addie in Luc’s arms, the darkness draped around her like a sheet.
And this, she thinks, is home. This, perhaps, is love.
And that is the worst part. She has finally forgotten something. Only it is the wrong thing. It is the one thing she was supposed to remember. That the man in the bed is not a man. That the life is not a life. That there are games, and battles, but in the end, it is all a kind of war.
A touch like teeth along her jaw.
The darkness whispering against her skin. “My Adeline.”
“I am not yours,” she says, but his mouth only smiles against her throat. “And yet,” he says, “we are together. We belong together.”
You belong to me.
“Do you love me?” she asks.
His fingers trail along her hips. “You know I do.” “Then let me go.”
“I am not holding you here.”
“That isn’t what I mean,” she says, rising on one arm. “Set me free.”
He draws back, just enough to meet her gaze. “I cannot break the deal.” His head falls, black curls brushing her cheek. “But perhaps,” he whispers against her collar, “I could bend it.”
Addie’s heart thuds inside her chest.
“Perhaps I could change the terms.”
She holds her breath as Luc’s words play along her skin.
“I can make it better,” he murmurs. “All you have to do is surrender.” The word is a cold shock.
A curtain falling on a play: the lovely sets, the stagings, the trained actors all vanish behind the darkened cloth.
Surrender.
An order whispered in the dark.
A warning given to a broken man.
A demand made over and over and over for years—until it stopped. How long ago did he stop asking? But of course, she knows—it was when his method changed, when his temper toward her softened.
And she is a fool. She is a fool for thinking it meant peace instead of war.
Surrender.
“What is it?” he asks, feigning confusion, until she throws the word back in his face.
“Surrender?” she snarls.
“It is just a word,” he says. But he taught her the power of a word. A word is everything, and his word is a serpent, a coiled trick, a curse.
“It is the nature of things,” he says. “In order to change the deal,” he says.
But Addie pulls back, pulls away, pulls free. “And I am meant to trust you? To give in, and believe that you will give me back?”
So many years, so many different ways of asking the same thing.
Do you yield?
“You must think me an idiot, Luc.” Her face burns with anger. “I’m amazed you had the patience. But then, you’ve always been fond of the chase.”
His green eyes narrow in the dark. “Adeline.”
“Don’t you dare say my name.” She is on her feet now, singing with rage. “I knew you were a monster, Luc. I saw it often enough. And yet, I still thought—somehow I thought—after all this time—but of course, it wasn’t love, was it? It wasn’t even kindness. It was just another game.”
There is an instant when she thinks she might be wrong.
A fraction of a moment when Luc looks wounded and confused, and she wonders if he meant only what he said, if, if—
But then, it is over.
The hurt falls from his face and it passes into shadow, the effect as smooth as a cloud across the sun. A grim smile plays across his lips.
“And what a tiresome game it’s been.”
She knows she drew it out, but the truth still crashes through her. If she was cracked before, now she is breaking.
“You cannot fault me for trying a different hand.” “I fault you for everything.”
Luc rises, the darkness drawing into silk around him. “I have given you everything.”
“None of it was real!” She will not cry.
She will not give him the satisfaction of seeing her suffer. She will not give him anything, ever again.
This is how the fight begins. Or rather, this is how it ends.
Most fights, after all, are not the work of an instant. They build over days, or weeks, each side gathering their kindling, stoking their flames.
But this is a fight forged over centuries.
As old and inevitable as the turning of the world, the passing of an era, the collision of a girl and the dark.
She should have known it would happen. Perhaps she did.
But to this day, Addie doesn’t know how the fire started. If it was the candles she swept from the table, or the lamp she tore from the wall, if it was the lights Luc shattered, or if it was simply a last act of spite.
She knows she doesn’t have the strength to ruin anything, and yet she did. They did. Perhaps he let her start the fire. Perhaps he simply let it burn.
It does not matter, in the end.
Addie stands on Bourbon Street and watches the house go up in flames, and by the time the firefighters come, there is nothing left to save. It is only ashes.
Another life gone up in smoke.
Addie has nothing, not even the key in her pocket. It was there, but when she reaches for it, it is gone. Her hand goes to the wooden ring still at her throat.
She tears it free, hurls the band into the smoking ruins of her home, and walks away.
