“Where’s Jules?” I ask, suddenly alarmed. I haven’t seen him since the memorial ceremony.
“He left. He said it’s too painful to be with us here in Paris. That he needs time away before he can come back for a visit. Or more,” Vincent says softly.
I understand it, but I don’t like it. I wish we could all be together like before: best friends, not heartbroken strangers.
But Jules will never be a stranger. I am sure he will be back. Feelings change with time—or at least pain lessens with time; I know that from experience. I can think about my parents now without crippling sadness. I can let myself remember them with gratitude for the time I had with them, even though the parent-shaped hole in my heart will never be filled.
Vincent leads me away from the fire. He begins to put an arm around my shoulder and then, seeing my bandage, hesitates. “Are you okay?” he asks, touching my shoulder gingerly.
“I don’t know, am I?” I say it as a joke. But once the words are out, I realize their multiple meanings, and suddenly I’m exhausted. Am I okay? Will I ever feel normal again? I want to hug Vincent, but it feels like he’s holding back, and not just from fear of hurting me.
“Let’s get back to La Maison,” he says. And taking my hand, he leads me down the high-walled corridor and through the gate. The car is parked where we left it. Vincent begins to open the passenger door for me.
“I don’t want to go home yet,” I say.
Vincent looks surprised.
“I mean, we don’t have to, do we?” I ask. “I think I want . . . no, I need . . . to walk.” My stomach is in knots and my body is exhausted, but all of the emotion—the fear and pain and despair followed by relief and exultation—of the last hour is bottled up inside me and makes me feel like running instead of walking.
Pressing my hand to his cheek, Vincent brushes my fingers across his skin, closing his eyes as he savors my touch. He locks my hand in his and we begin walking.
As we approach the river, the sky lightens from velvety black to the steel gray of predawn. We cross the street to walk along the quay above the rippling surface of the water. “Look at where we are,” I say, and nod toward the ?le Saint-Louis in the middle of the river just across from us.
The tree-lined terrace where we sat and talked last summer juts out into the waves, parting the Seine into two rivers that skirt either side of the island. Two parallel rivers that reunite at the far tip of the ?le de la Cité, once again becoming one.
I stop walking and Vincent peers at me, a hundred questions in his eyes. “Can you tell me what you’re thinking about?” I ask.
He looks out over the water. “I was so afraid when you were in that arena with Violette,” he says with a tremor in his voice. “When she stabbed you, it felt like I was being stabbed. I wanted to protect you. And then for the first time I realized that even if she killed you, you would come back. As long as I kept your body away from the fire you would reanimate. That you were like us now—like me. It felt like a revelation.”
“But you’ve known that for days,” I say.
“I know. But it hadn’t really sunk in until I saw you there, facing death.”
“And the fact that I’m like you now makes you feel different about me?”
“Yes.”
A stab of apprehension makes me look away toward the water. “Do you think it will be a problem for us?”
“No, Kate. You don’t understand,” Vincent says, resting his hands very carefully on my shoulders. “My feelings for you aren’t different. But everything else is. Like I said, what happened to you is something I never hoped for. I don’t want you to bear the burden of life as a revenant. I don’t want to see you subjected to our fate—the obsession, the craving, the pain of injury and death.”
He brushes back a wisp of hair that has escaped my ponytail. “But what I want doesn’t matter. It is your destiny. Now you’re here. Now you’re one of us. And now that we are well on our way to destroying our enemies—thanks to you—there’s nothing standing in our way.
“I’m being given my heart’s desire, and I just don’t know what to do with it. I’m almost afraid to believe it’s true, in case someone shakes me and tells me I’m dreaming.”
“It’s not a dream. I’m here with you,” I say. “For what looks like a really long time.”
Over Vincent’s shoulder an orange glow burns the edge of the sky. I take a step closer, until there is no space left between us and my chest touches his.
And as we kiss, the sun breaks over the horizon and sets the river on fire, its waves flickering an incendiary red in the first light of dawn.
Life changes so quickly. Not long ago I was mourning the death of my parents and wondering if I could make it through another day. Now I have been handed eternity. And not on a silver platter, either, but down a path lined with pain and bloodshed.