“It’s iron rot, if you were wondering.” His voice was tight.
I nodded, although he couldn’t see through his closed lids. Leaning forward, I examined the steel encasing his wrist. There was no lock on it – only a metal clip holding it shut. That bothered me more than it should, because it meant what had kept them on was fear of something worse.
Holding the manacle steady, I flipped the clasp, and without warning him, I pulled the metal spike out of his wrist. Tristan jerked back with a sharp hiss of pain, pulling his arm out of my grasp. His shoulders hunched around his wounded arm, muscles spasming as he struggled to keep from retching. Then his other arm was in my face, the motion so fast I barely saw it until it was over. “Do the other quickly, before I lose my nerve.”
I did what he asked, working swiftly. “Now,” I said, warning him this time.
He tensed, and the metal made a sucking noise as I pulled it free. “Bloody stones and sky,” he swore, then added on worse, bending at the waist so all I could see was the top of his head.
Anyone else, I would have held. Whispered soft reassurances. But some instinct told me that to do so would only make things worse. It hurt my heart that I could do nothing to ease his pain, but what stung more was that he didn’t want comfort from me. I clenched my teeth, waiting for him to master the pain without my help.
When he straightened, I silently set to cleaning one of the injuries, his hand as cold and rigid as ice as I wound a bandage around his wrist. Part of me had thought the wound would instantly start to improve once the iron was out, but it remained the same. What if that meant it wouldn’t get better? Should I offer to try to heal them?
“Are you going to be all right?”
“Don’t concern yourself over it.”
His words stung. Keeping my face low, I bundled up the bloody towels and crusted manacles. “Catherine has the grimoire,” I said, needing to cut the tension. “It was part of a spell I was using to track Anushka, and without it, I have no idea how we’ll find her. And once they realize you are free and their plans are in shambles, I expect they’ll destroy it.” I needed to tell him what I’d discovered about my heritage – how Anushka was maintaining her immortality using the deaths of her descendants, but something stayed my tongue.
“I agree,” he replied. “We need to retrieve the book now while we have the advantage. Do you have any idea where she might be now?”
His perfunctory tone was unnerving. “Looking for me?”
“And when she realizes she can’t find you? Where would she go then?”
“Home. She lives at the rear of her shop in Pigalle.”
“Then we go there.”
Before I could say another word, the bundle in my hands pulled away and moved to the center of the room where it burst into flames. Silvery blue troll-fire, unnatural and strange in its intensity, incinerated the cloth, and the steel melted in glowing globs that dripped onto the wooden floor. Snatching up the water can, I tossed the contents over the smoking mess before a fire of the natural sort could break out.
“There was much there that could cause harm,” he said by way of explanation. “Now let us go find this Catherine before it is too late.”
Thirty-Four
Cécile
I stole a cloak from the costume room for him, and he walked next to me with the hood up to keep his otherworldliness from being recognized as we navigated the streets to Pigalle. The night air was icy and full of stars, the quarter moon bright enough that we didn’t need troll-light, though seeing him without one was as strange as me for once being the one who knew the way.
As we walked, Tristan kept glancing upward warily, almost as though he expected one of the stars to fall out of the sky and strike us where we stood. And when he was not looking upward, his attention jumped from the revelers, to the gaslights, to the horses trotting by, to the dog that barked as we passed. Anywhere but me. I felt tense with all that had remained unasked and unsaid, and I didn’t need to feel his emotions to know he felt the same.
“Don’t react, but someone is following us. Two someones.”
My stomach did flip-flops, and I only barely refrained from grabbing his arm. Who else could it be but Lord Aiden and Catherine? “What do we do?”
“Catch them. Quick, turn here.” He nudged me around a corner and into the entranceway of a building. It reeked of alcohol and urine, and even in the dim light I saw his nose wrinkle with distaste.
We waited in silence, but not for long. “I don’t see them,” a woman whispered.
“They went this way,” her companion responded. Both voices were deeply familiar to me.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake.” Skipping around Tristan, I stepped out of the entranceway.
Sabine and Chris both jumped in surprise. “Cécile!”
“What are you two doing following me?”