It was the wrong thing to do. The sound of my distress made Matthew wilder. Pierre was nothing more than an obstacle to him now. Matthew flung him across the room, where he hit the wall of the hay barn, all the while retaining a one-handed grip on his father’s throat.
“Silence, Diana. Matthew is beyond reason. Matthaios!” Philippe barked out his name. Matthew stopped trying to push his father away from me, though his grip never loosened.
“I know what you have done.” Philippe waited while his words penetrated Matthew’s awareness. “Do you hear me, Matthew? I know my future. You would have beaten back the rage if you could have.”
Philippe had deduced that his son had killed him, but not how or why. The only explanation available to him was Matthew’s illness.
“You don’t know,” Matthew said numbly. “You can’t.”
“You are behaving as you always do when you regret a kill: guilty, furtive, distracted,” Philippe said. “Te absolvo, Matthaios.”
“I’ll take Diana away,” Matthew said with sudden lucidity. “Let us both go, Philippe.”
“No. We will face it together, the three of us,” Philippe said, his face full of compassion. I had been wrong. Philippe had not been trying to break Matthew, but only his guilt. Philippe had not failed his son after all.
“No!” Matthew cried, twisting away. But Philippe was stronger.
“I forgive you,” his father repeated, throwing his arms around his son in a fierce embrace. “I forgive you.”
Matthew shuddered once, his body shaking from head to foot, then went limp as though some evil spirit had fled. “Je suis désolé,” he whispered, the words slurred with emotion. “So sorry.”
“And I have forgiven you. Now you must put it behind you.” Philippe released his son and looked at me. “Come to him, Diana, but move carefully. He still is not himself.”
I ignored Philippe and went to Matthew in a rush. He took me into his arms and breathed in my scent as if it had the power to sustain him. Pierre moved forward, too, his arm already healed. He handed Matthew a cloth for his hands, which were slick with blood. Matthew’s ferocious look kept his servant several paces away, the white cloth flapping like a flag of surrender. Philippe retreated a few steps, and Matthew’s eyes darted at the sudden movement.
“That’s your father and Pierre,” I said, taking Matthew’s face in my hands. Incrementally, the black in his eyes retreated as a ring of dark green iris appeared first, then a sliver of gray, then the distinctive pale celadon that rimmed the pupil.
“Christ.” Matthew sounded disgusted. He reached for my hands and drew them from his face. “I haven’t lost control like that for ages.”
“You are weak, Matthew, and the blood rage is too close to the surface. If the Congregation were to challenge your right to be with Diana and you responded like this, you would lose. We cannot let there be any question whether she is a de Clermont.” Philippe drew his thumb deliberately across his lower teeth. Blood, darkly purple, rose from the wound. “Come here, child.”
“Philippe!” Matthew held me back, dumbfounded. “You have never—”
“Never is a very long time. Do not pretend to know more about me than you do, Matthaios.” Philippe studied me gravely. “There is nothing to fear, Diana.” I looked at Matthew, wanting to be sure this wasn’t going to cause another outburst of rage.
“Go to him.” Matthew released me as the creatures in the loft watched with rapt attention.
“The manjasang make families through death and blood,” Philippe began when I stood before him. His words sent fear instinctively trilling through my bones. He smudged his thumb in a curve that started in the center of my forehead near my hairline, crept near my temple, and finished at my brow. “With this mark you are dead, a shade among the living without clan or kin.” Philippe’s thumb returned to the place where he began, and he made a mirror image of the mark on the other side, finishing between my brows. My witch’s third eye tingled with the cool sensation of vampire blood. “With this mark you are reborn, my blood-sworn daughter and forever a member of my family.”
Hay barns had corners, too. Philippe’s words set them alight with shimmering strands of color—not just blue and amber but green and gold. The noise made by the threads rose to a soft keen of protest. Another family awaited me in another time after all. But the murmurs of approval in the barn soon drowned out the sound. Philippe looked up to the loft as if noticing his audience for the first time.
“As for you—madame has enemies. Who among you is prepared to stand for her when milord cannot?” Those with some grasp of English translated the question for the others.
“Mais il est debout,” Thomas protested, pointing at Matthew. Philippe took care of the fact that Matthew was upright by clipping his son’s injured leg at the knee, sending him onto his back with a thud.
“Who stands for madame?” Philippe repeated, one booted foot placed carefully on Matthew’s neck.
“Je vais.” It was Catrine, my daemonic assistant and maid, who spoke first.
“Et moi,” piped up Jehanne, who, though older, followed wherever her sister led.
Once the girls had declared their allegiance, Thomas and étienne threw in their lot with me, as did the blacksmith and Chef, who had appeared in the loft carrying a basket of dried beans. After he glared at his staff, they grudgingly acquiesced as well.
“Madame’s enemies will come without warning, so you must be ready. Catrine and Jehanne will distract them. Thomas will lie.” There were knowing chuckles from the adults. “étienne, you must run and find help, preferably milord. As for you, you know what to do.” Philippe regarded Matthew grimly.
“And my job?” I asked.
“To think, as you did today. Think—and stay alive.” Philippe clapped his hands. “Enough entertainment. Back to work.”
Amid good-natured grumbling, the people in the hayloft scattered to resume their duties. With a cock of his head, Philippe sent Alain and Pierre out after them. Philippe followed, taking off his shirt as he went. Surprisingly, he returned and dropped the wadded-up garment at my feet. Nestled within it was a lump of snow.
“Take care of the wound on his leg, and the one over his kidney that is deeper than I would have wished,” Philippe instructed. Then he, too, was gone.
Matthew climbed to his knees and began to tremble. I grabbed him by the waist and lowered him gently to the ground. Matthew tried to pull free and draw me into his arms instead.
“No, you stubborn man,” I said. “I don’t need comforting. Let me take care of you for once.”
I investigated his wounds, beginning with the ones Philippe had flagged. With Matthew’s help I cleared the rent hose from the wound on his thigh. The dagger had gone deep, but it was already closing thanks to the healing properties of vampire blood. I packed a wad of snow around it anyway—Matthew assured me it would help, though his exhausted flesh was barely warmer. The wound on his kidney was similarly on the mend, but the surrounding bruise made me wince in sympathy.
“I think you’re going to live,” I said, putting a final ice pack into place over his left flank. I smoothed the hair away from his forehead. A sticky spot of half-dried blood near his eye had captured a few black strands. Gently I freed them.
“Thank you, mon coeur. Since you’re cleaning me up, would you mind if I returned the favor and removed Philippe’s blood from your forehead?” Matthew looked sheepish. “It’s the scent, you see. I don’t like it on you.”
He was afraid of the blood rage’s return. I rubbed at the skin myself, and my fingers came away tinged with black and red. “I must look like a pagan priestess.”
“More so than usual, yes.” Matthew scooped some of the snow from his thigh and used it and the hem of his shirt to remove the remaining evidence of my adoption.
“Tell me about Benjamin,” I said while he wiped at my face.
“I made Benjamin a vampire in Jerusalem. I gave him my blood thinking to save his life. But in doing so, I took his reason. I took his soul.”
“And he has your tendency toward anger?”