She dared to look up at him, and when she did, she let out a soft, murmuring sound, leaned closer to him as if pulled by a cord connecting his body to her own. He cupped her face with one hand, let the other trail gentle fingers down her arm. The warmth of his body flooded through her; she shuddered and twisted to move closer to him.

“Audric,” she murmured, closing her eyes. She touched her cheek to his, relished the gentle scrape of his jaw.

“If there is wickedness inside you, Rielle,” Audric said hoarsely, his lips in her hair, “then I shall treasure it as I do every other part of you.”

A soft touch of his fingers against her ribs; another at the back of her neck, sending a tremulous chill down her spine. She melted into him, slipping into his arms as easily as if she belonged there.

But then she remembered Ludivine.

She closed her eyes. “We shouldn’t,” she whispered, her body screaming at her to stop talking and touch him. “I… Audric, what about Lu?”

Audric moved slightly away from her. Sorrow fell across his face. “I know. You’re right, I know.”

Rielle propped herself up on her elbows, watching him carefully. “Do you love her?”

“She is dear to me, but…no. Not as I should.”

“Then…” She reached for him, turned his face back to hers. Tears of shame rose in her eyes, but she couldn’t tear her gaze away from the blazing need in his own. “Maybe just this once? For the memory of it.”

He hesitated, glanced back through the trees toward Baingarde.

“The memory,” he said slowly, “might make things harder.”

“I don’t care.” She cupped his face in her hands, shook her head. “I want to anyway.”

For a moment he was quiet, considering her. Then, a soft smile. His lips against her palm. “My wicked girl,” he murmured and lowered his mouth sweetly onto hers.

The kiss was so careful, so gentle, that Rielle’s heart ached with tenderness for him. She cried out softly against his mouth and hooked her arms around his neck. At her touch, he shivered and deepened the kiss with a groan. The moment shifted from something cautious, something fragile and slow, to a scorching, helpless need. His hands slid down her body, and she arched up into his touch. When she felt him hard against her leg, she tightened her arms around him and gasped against his cheek.

“Audric,” she whispered, closing her eyes. “Yes. Yes, please.” She was dizzy with his nearness—his tongue opening her mouth, the soft murmurs of her name, the frantic nibbling gasps against her skin.

He gathered her body against his, fumbled beneath her dressing gown for the thin cotton of her nightgown, cupped her hips in his palms. It was like he couldn’t make up his mind where to touch her, and Rielle basked in every moment of his indecision, twisting beneath him, tugging at his shirt to move him where she wanted. She snaked her fingers under his tunic, greedy for the hot, bare skin of his muscled back. He was so warm, so solid and sure. She closed her eyes, pressed her lips to his collarbone. Breathing him in felt like breathing in a summer’s day.

“Closer,” she murmured, smiling softly against his skin.

He slid a shaking hand up her nightgown, across her bare thigh. He let out a low, broken sound and pressed his forehead to her own, moved his hand up to draw slow circles across her belly, and then slipped lower to settle between her legs. She cried out sharply when he touched her where she most craved it, her body bowing up off the ground and her hands clutching the grass for anchor. The wet earth beneath her swelled, trembled; a soft steaming mist had begun to rise around their bodies. The breeze cooling Rielle’s skin sharpened, gusting.

“I can’t bear this,” she whispered, hooking a leg around his, drawing his hips closer to her own. “Audric, please.”

He lowered his mouth to her neck, let out an unsteady laugh. “Do you know how long I’ve wanted you, Rielle?” came his harsh whisper, hot and sweet against the hollow of her throat. “Do you know how long I’ve—”

A hound let out a baying howl. Then another.

Audric froze, pulled away to stare down at Rielle in dismay. Then he looked over his shoulder, and Rielle felt his body tense.

She propped herself up on her elbows, tugged down her nightgown to hide her bare legs, and when she saw who stood in the trees on the far side of the seeing pools, her stomach knotted with dread.

A man stood in the moonlight, flanked by his hounds: Lord Dervin Sauvillier.

Ludivine’s father, staring right at them.

And his face was hard and white with fury.

28

   Eliana

“Though humans and angels were at war for centuries, they always had at least one common enemy: marques. The unclean children of traitors who lay with the enemy, their magic was neither of the mind nor the physical world but something else entirely. Were we right to hunt them down? Perhaps not. But we were right to fear them.”

—Marked: An Exploration of the Slaughtered Marque Race by Varrick Keighley, Venteran scholar

Eliana closed her eyes, weary. “Remy, please don’t start this nonsense again.”

“Do humans look like they do?” Remy insisted.

“He has these pet theories, you see,” Eliana told Navi.

“Their black eyes,” he continued. “Everyone talks about them. You can hardly see the white around them, is what I’ve heard.”

Eliana waved a dismissive hand. “Who knows what sorts of drugs the Emperor’s generals have access to?”

“Then explain the visions you and Navi had when you were near them. The angels used mind-speak. All the old stories say so.”

“And the old stories,” Eliana bit out, “are just that. Stories from a world so long past that nobody can remember it, and most intelligent people believe it never existed quite as those stories say.” She drew in a breath, more unsteadily than she would have liked. “People look anywhere for comfort during times like ours, Remy. Believe all you want in a world of angels and magic and mind-speak and travelers who can zip from one end of time to another, but please promise me you’ll remember it is simply that. A belief. It isn’t fact, it isn’t proven—”

“And the way your body can heal itself?” Remy interrupted. “Is that belief? Or is it a fact?”

Eliana glared at him but said nothing. For of course he was right. She couldn’t ignore the simple truth of her own body.

“Why won’t you believe me?” came Remy’s voice at last, softer now. “It’s the only thing that makes sense after what you’ve seen, isn’t it?”