thinks as she follows Luc away from the graveyard, and the village, and the past.
She will never go back.
* * *
Paris, of course, has changed far more than Villon.
Over the years, she has seen it polished to a shine, white stone buildings capped with charcoal roofs. Long windows and iron balconies and wide avenues lined with flower shops and cafés beneath red awnings.
They sit on a patio, her dress drying in the summer breeze, a bottle of port open between them. Addie drinks deeply, trying to wash away the image of the tree, knowing no amount of wine will cleanse her memories.
It doesn’t stop her from trying.
Somewhere along the Seine, a violin begins to play. Under the high notes, she hears the tremor of a car’s engine. The stubborn clop of a horse. The strange music of Paris.
Luc lifts his glass. “Happy anniversary, my Adeline.”
She looks at him, lips parting with their usual retort, but then stops short. If she is his—then by now he must be hers as well.
“Happy anniversary, my Luc,” she answers, just to see the face he’ll make.
She is rewarded with a raised brow, the crooked upturn of his mouth, the green of his eyes shifting in surprise.
Then Luc looks down, turns the glass of port between his fingers.
“You told me once that we were alike,” he says, almost to himself. “Both of us … lonely. I loathed you for saying it. But I suppose in some ways you were right. I suppose,” he goes on slowly, “there is something to the idea of company.”
It is the closest he has ever come to sounding human.
“Do you miss me,” she asks, “when you are not here?”
Those green eyes drift up, the emerald even in the dark. “I am here, with you, more often than you think.”
“Of course,” she says, “you come and go whenever you want. I have no choice but to wait.”
His eyes darken with pleasure. “Do you wait for me?”
And now it is Addie who looks away. “You said it yourself. We all crave company.”
“And if you could call on me, as I call on you?”
Her heart quickens a little.
She does not look up, and that is why she sees it, rolling toward her on the table. A slim band, carved of pale ash wood.
It is a ring.
It is her ring.
The gift she made to the dark that night.
The gift he scorned, and turned to smoke.
The image conjured in a seaside church.
But if it is an illusion now, it is an exceptional one. Here, the notch where her father’s chisel bit a fraction too deep. There, the curve rubbed smooth as stone by years of worrying.
It is real. It must be real. And yet—
“You destroyed it.”
“I took it,” says Luc, looking over his glass. “That is not the same thing.”
Anger flares in her. “You said it was nothing.”
“I said it was not enough. But I do not ruin beauty without reason. It was mine, for a time, but it was always yours.”
Addie marvels at the ring. “What must I do?”
“You know how to summon gods.”
Estele’s voice, faint as a breeze.
You must humble yourself before them.
“Put it on, and I will come.” Luc leans back in his chair, the night breeze blowing through those raven curls. “There,” he says. “Now we are even.”
“We will never be even,” she says as she turns the ring over between finger and thumb, and decides she will not use it.
It is a challenge. A game, parading as a gift. Not a war so much as a wager. A battle of wills. For her to don the ring, to call on Luc, would be to fold, to admit defeat.
To surrender.
She slips the token into the pocket of her skirts, forces her fingers to let go of the talisman.
Only then does she notice the tension in the air that night. It is an energy she’s felt before, but cannot place, until Luc says, “There is about to be a war.”
She had not heard. He tells her of the archduke’s assassination, his face a mask of grim displeasure.
“I hate war,” he says darkly.
“I would have thought you fond of conflict.”
“The aftermath breeds art,” he says. “But war makes believers out of cynics. Sycophants desperate for salvation, everyone suddenly clinging to their souls, clutching them close like a matron with her finest pearls.” Luc shakes his head. “Give me back the Belle Epoque.”
“Who knew gods were so nostalgic?”
Luc finishes his drink, and rises. “You should leave, before it starts.” Addie laughs. It sounds almost