Chapter 120: Siren sounds
MARGAUX
I woke before I understood why.
The room glowed faintly, the lamp Étienne left behind casting a gentle halo. I lingered in stillness, letting awareness return in slow, careful increments. Then it came: warmth brushing my hand, a gentle weight at the bed’s edge.
I turned my head.
Étienne lay curled on the floor, his head nestled against the mattress by my hip, his hand draped over mine where sleep had left it.
When had he moved from where I last saw him? The last time I’d looked, he had been sitting in the chair, upright and vigilant, until fatigue must have finally coaxed him into surrendering to sleep. But why was he asleep here instead of on the bed?
I sat up slowly, careful not to disturb him, and slid my hand out from under his.
His face turned toward me, softened by sleep, the constant vigilance he wore in daylight finally at rest. I watched him, noticing how the burns along his face seemed gentler in this light, no longer armor but simply skin. Even his mouth had eased into a shape that belonged to a much younger version of himself.
I had expected, somewhere in the back of my mind, to wake and find the room empty. To find that he had retreated somewhere colder once the conversation about boxes and names had run its course, his heart locked away again behind the concrete walls he kept around it most days, especially after reading that document and feeling old hatred flare back to life.
I had braced myself for that possibility even as I drifted off to sleep, telling myself it would be fair. That I had earned no promises from a single confession made in a kitchen.
But... he had stayed.
That simple truth settled in my chest, warm and unfamiliar, like slipping into a coat that was not yet mine, its comfort both foreign and inviting.
My gaze wandered to the desk, where the file lay almost untouched, exactly as he had left it hours before. Whatever struggle he faced over opening it, he had either surrendered or triumphed, depending on the measure, because the pages stayed closed. I wondered if he was shielding himself, or the delicate thing forming between us, or both at once, so entwined neither of us could unravel them tonight.
My eyes moved to his hand.
The oven burn lingered as a thin red line across his palm, stubbornly visible when it should have faded by now, given how swiftly wolves usually healed. I recalled the salve the head healer had given him for his leg, still waiting on the dresser, forgotten in the chaos that had swept through the day.
I got up.
The floor bit at my bare feet, cold seeping up through my ankles as I crossed the room for the small jar. Returning, I eased myself down beside him, moving with deliberate care to avoid waking him, and gathered his hand gently into mine.
He did not stir.
I massaged the salve into his palm, slow and careful, watching the angry red line soften under my touch. The burn must have hurt more than he ever admitted. When it happened, he barely flinched, just pulled the dish out and carried on, handling pain the way he handled everything difficult: quietly, without fuss, as if voicing it would be a luxury he did not deserve.
When I finished, I let my fingers rest over his palm a moment longer than the task required.
I found myself noticing, in the peculiar way you notice things about people you’ve known most of your life, how much larger his hands had become. Sixteen-year-old Étienne’s had been slender and quick, better suited to skipping stones across the lake behind his family’s estate than helping with the chores his mother was forever assigning him.
These were a man’s hands now. Faint burns marked two knuckles. The fingers were broader, the bones more pronounced beneath the skin. They were much larger than mine, carrying the quiet evidence of years I had not been there to witness.
I set the jar aside.
When I glanced back at his face, something had changed. A faint crease appeared between his brows, his jaw tensing in a way that seemed beyond his control. I guessed the cold was to blame. The room had grown truly chilly in the depths of night, and my own feet were nearly numb against the stone floor.
He needed to be on the bed, not slumped against its frame with his neck at an angle that would leave him stiff and irritable in the morning.
I got my arms under his shoulders and tried to shift him, and immediately understood the scale of what I had just committed myself to. He was not a small man, and unconscious weight did not cooperate the way conscious weight did. I braced my feet against the floor and pulled, managed to get him partway up before losing ground entirely, then tried again with my legs doing more of the work than my arms ever could on their own.
"You could help," I muttered at his sleeping face, which obviously did nothing.
It took considerably longer than I expected and involved more strain and graceless maneuvering than dignity allowed, but eventually I had him angled mostly onto the mattress. In the final push to get his legs fully up, my own balance betrayed me completely, and I went down with him, landing half across his chest before I managed to catch myself on one forearm.
The warmth of him registered immediately, even through both our clothes, and for one unguarded second, I let myself feel it. The solid heat of him beneath me, the steady, unhurried rhythm of his heartbeat under my palm where it had landed against his chest, the particular safety of being this close to someone who could crush most threats in this house without breaking a sweat.
Then I hurriedly pulled away, annoyed with myself for lingering even a heartbeat longer.
I shook my head, crossed to the foot of the bed for the blanket that had been kicked loose in my earlier efforts, and draped it over him, tucking it gently around his shoulders.
His hand moved before I had fully released the fabric.
His fingers closed around my wrist. Not roughly, but with enough certainty that I could not have pulled free without genuine effort, and he drew me down toward him, still deeply asleep, his face unguarded in a way it never allowed itself to be during waking hours.
"Étienne?"
He did not answer in any way that suggested consciousness. His face remained slack, his breathing slow and even, his eyes closed beneath the soft fall of his hair. Whatever was happening was happening somewhere beneath the surface, in the place where the careful architecture of his guard came down because there was no audience there to perform for.
"Please stay," he said.
The words came out quiet and stripped bare, nothing like the measured, deliberate voice he used during daylight hours when every word had to survive his own mental scrutiny before he let it out. They landed somewhere in my chest that I did not have a ready name for, something tender and unguarded that I had been keeping carefully boxed away since the kitchen.
I stood motionless, his hand still circling my wrist, every sensible reason to pull away lining up in my mind. The complications. The unfinished file. The chest bearing my mother’s name in the hidden room, waiting like a breath held too long.
It was a fight I lost, regardless, because I lay down beside him anyway, against better judgment.