“I’m plotting to shave everyone’s head tonight.”

His lips twitched, and he looked suddenly sheepish. “I grew out my hair when I was fourteen. Alexandre has long hair, you know, in—”

“La Vie éphémère,” I finished, envisioning Reid with long, luscious locks that blew in the wind. I snorted despite myself. “Are you telling me you were a teenage heartthrob?”

One side of his mouth quirked up. “So what if I was?”

“So it’s a pity we didn’t meet as teenagers.”

“You’re still a teenager.”

I lifted my knife. “And I’m still pissed.” When he laughed in my face, I asked, “Why did you cut it?”

“Long hair is a liability in the training yard.” He rubbed a rueful hand over his head. “Jean Luc got hold of it in a sparring session and nearly made my scalp bleed.”

“He pulled your hair?” At my gasp, he nodded grimly, and I scowled. “That little bitch.”

“I cut it afterward. I haven’t worn it long since. Now”—his hands landed on his hips, his eyes glinting—“do I need to confiscate the knife?”

I tossed it in the air, catching it by the blade before sending it upward once more. “You can certainly try.”

Quick as a flash—without breaking my gaze—he snatched the knife from above my head, holding it there out of reach. His eyes burned into mine, and a slow, arrogant grin touched his lips. “You were saying?”

Suppressing a delicious shiver—which he still felt, given his rumble of laughter—I spun and elbowed him in the gut. With an oof, he bent double, his chest falling hard against my back, and I pried the knife from his fingers. Craning my neck, I planted a kiss on his jaw. “That was cute.”

His arms came around my chest, trapping me. Locking me in his embrace. “Cute,” he repeated ominously. Still bowed, our bodies fit together like a glove. “Cute.”

Without warning, he lifted me into the air, and I shrieked, kicking my feet and gasping with laughter. He only released me after Beau sighed loudly, turned to Madame Labelle, and asked if we could depart ahead of schedule to spare his eardrums. “Will I need them in Les Dents, do you think? Or can I go without?”

Feet on the ground once more, I tried to ignore him—tried to keep playing, tried to poke Reid in the ribs—but his smile wasn’t quite as wide now. The tension returned to his jaw. The moment had passed.

Someday, I wouldn’t need to hoard Reid’s smiles, and someday, he wouldn’t need to ration them.

Today was not that day.

Straightening my shirt, I extended the knife to Ansel. “Shall we get started?”

His eyes widened. “What? Now?”

“Why not?” I shrugged, plucking another knife from Reid’s bandolier. He remained wooden. “We have a few hours until sundown. You do still want to train, don’t you?”

Ansel nearly tripped in his haste to stand. “Yes, I do, but—” Those brown eyes flicked first to Coco and Beau, then to Reid. Madame Labelle paused in dealing the former their cards. Instead of couronnes, they’d used rocks and sticks as bids. Pink colored Ansel’s cheeks. “Should we—not do it here?”

Beau didn’t look up from his cards. Indeed, he stared at them a bit too fixedly to be natural. “Don’t presume we care what you’re doing, Ansel.”

Following Beau’s lead, Coco offered Ansel a reassuring smile before she too returned to their game. Even Reid took the hint, squeezing my hand briefly before joining them without a word. No one turned in our direction again.

An hour later, however, they couldn’t help but watch covertly.

“Stop, stop! You’re flailing, and you’re focusing too much on your upper body, anyway. You aren’t Reid.” I ducked beneath Ansel’s outstretched arm, disarming him before he could sever a limb. Likely his own. “Your feet are for more than just footwork. Use them. Every strike should utilize both your upper- and lower-body strength.”

His shoulders drooped in misery.

I lifted his chin with the tip of his sword. “None of that, mon petit chou. Again!”

Readjusting his form once more—twice more, a hundred times more—we parried through the greater part of the afternoon and into the evening. Though he showed little improvement, I didn’t have the heart to end his lesson, even as the shadows around us deepened. When the sun touched the pines, he finally managed to knock my blade away out of sheer determination—and nick his own arm in the process. His blood flecked the snow.

“That was—you did—”

“Horrible,” he finished bitterly, throwing his sword to the ground to examine his wound. Face still flushed—only partly from exertion—he shot a quick look in the others’ direction. They all hastened to appear busy, gathering the makeshift plates they’d used for dinner. At Ansel’s request, we’d trained right through it. My stomach grumbled irritably. “I was horrible.”

Sighing, I sheathed my knife in my boot. “Let me see your arm.”

He shook his sleeve down with a scowl. “It’s fine.”

“Ansel—”

“I said it’s fine.”

At his uncharacteristically sharp tone, I paused. “Do you not want to do this again?”

His face softened, and he dropped his head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped at you. I just—I wanted this to go differently.” The admission was quiet. This time, he looked to his own hands instead of the others. I gripped one of them firmly.

“This was your first attempt. You’ll get better—”

“It wasn’t.” Reluctantly, he met my gaze. I hated that reluctance. That shame. I hated it. “I trained with the Chasseurs. They made sure I knew how terrible I was.”

Anger washed through me, hot and consuming. As much as they’d given him, they’d taken even more. “The Chasseurs can eat a bag of dicks—”

“It’s fine, Lou.” He pulled his hand away to retrieve his fallen knife, but paused halfway down, gifting me a smile. Though weary, that smile was also hopeful—undeniably and unapologetically so. I stared at him, struck momentarily speechless. Though often naive and occasionally petulant, he’d remained so . . . pure. Some days I couldn’t believe he was real. “Nothing worth having is easy, right?”

Nothing worth having is easy.

Right.

Heart lodged in my throat, I glanced instinctively at Reid’s back across camp. As if sensing me, he stilled, and our eyes met over his shoulder. I looked away hastily, looping my arm through Ansel’s and squeezing tight, ignoring the cold fist of dread in my chest. “Come on, Ansel. Let’s end this wretched day with a drink.”

Claud Deveraux

Reid

“I’m not drinking that.”

I eyed the tumbler of liquid Lou offered me. The glass was dirty, the liquid brown. Murky. It suited the oily barkeep, the disheveled patrons who laughed, danced, and spilled beer down their shirts. A troupe had performed this evening as it passed through Saint-Loire, and the actors had congregated at the local tavern afterward. A crowd had soon followed.

“Oh, come on.” She wafted the whiskey under my nose. It smelled foul. “You need to loosen up. We all do.”

I pushed the whiskey away, still furious with myself. I’d been so hell-bent on convincing the others to gather allies, to confront Morgane—so blinded by my pathetic emotions—I hadn’t considered the specifics.

“We aren’t here to drink, Lucida.”

The thought of leaving her filled me with visceral panic.

“Excuse me, Raoul, but you are the one who insisted we reconnoiter at a tavern. Not that I’m complaining.”

It was the kind of panic that consumed everything, required every bit of my focus to contain. I wanted to scream. I wanted to rage. But I couldn’t breathe.

It felt a lot like drowning.

“It’s the best place to gather information.” With a twitch in my jaw, I glanced across the room to where Madame Labelle, Coco, and Beau sat amidst the raucous traveling troupe. Like Lou and me, Beau had hidden his face within the deep hood of his cloak. No one paid us any notice. Our ensembles were nothing compared to those of the performers. “We can’t—” I shook my head, unable to collect my thoughts. The closer we drew to midnight, the wilder they ran. The more riotous. My eyes sought anything but Lou. When I looked at her, the panic sharpened, knifed through my chest and threatened to cut me in two. I tried again, mumbling to my fingertips. “We can’t continue with Madame Labelle’s plan until we assess the situation outside camp. Alcohol loosens lips.”

“Does it, now?” She leaned forward as if to kiss me, and I recoiled, panic rising like bile. Thank God I couldn’t see her face properly, or I might’ve done something stupid—like carry her into the back room, bar the door, and kiss her for so long she forgot her inane plan to leave me. As it was, I kept my muscles locked, clenched, to prevent me from doing it anyway. She slumped back in her seat with disappointment.

“Right. I forgot you’re still being an ass.”