Chapter 59: Oil and Water
MARGAUX
A tunnel stretched before me in impossible directions. Shadows pooled along walls that breathed like living things. My footsteps echoed wrong. Too loud in some places and swallowed completely in others.
Something moved ahead.
Liquid darkness coalesced into a shape that defied description. It shifted between forms with each pulse of whatever passed for its heartbeat. Sometimes human. Sometimes animal. Sometimes, nothing I could name.
The thing blocked my path. Whispers leaked from where its mouth might have been.
Do you want to make a deal?
"No." My voice bounced off surfaces that shouldn’t exist. "Leave me alone."
The darkness surged forward. Tendrils reached toward me with purpose that made my skin crawl. I tried to step back, but my feet had grown roots into stone that wasn’t there moments before.
Why not? You are afraid.
Cold fingers wrapped around my wrist. The touch burned and froze simultaneously. My bones ached from the contact.
I can protect you from it. All you need to do in return is give me what I want.
"You’re not real." I pulled against the grip that tightened with each word. "This is just a nightmare."
The thing tilted what might have been its head. Laughter spilled out. The sound reminded me of glass breaking underwater.
Oh... You just awakened. You don’t quite know what you are yet.
Terror spiked through my chest. Sharp enough to steal breath.
Even better.
It rushed at me. The darkness consumed everything. My vision went black. My lungs seized. The world collapsed into a single point of absolute terror that swallowed me whole.
I jerked awake, gasping.
Pain exploded through my skull immediately. White-hot agony that radiated from somewhere above my hairline and spread down through my face and neck. My throat felt like someone had shredded it from the inside. Each breath scraped against tissue that shouldn’t hurt this badly.
Where was I?
The ceiling came into focus first. White plaster crossed with dark wooden beams. Unfamiliar architecture that my brain struggled to place through the fog of pain and confusion.
"Margaux."
The voice pulled my attention sideways. Étienne sat in a chair beside what I now recognized as an infirmary bed. His stag mask caught the light in ways that made the carved antlers look alive.
He moved to my side instantly. His hand found mine and squeezed with pressure that should have hurt but instead anchored me to reality.
"You’re fine. You’re safe now."
The words registered through layers of panic that refused to settle. Safe? Nothing about this felt safe. My body screamed warnings from a dozen different places. My head throbbed. My throat burned. Something wet soaked through the bandages I couldn’t remember receiving.
Flashes hit me in fragments.
The garden. The forget-me-nots swaying in the morning breeze. The iron fence rusting in patterns that looked deliberate. Then the sentinel beside me had stiffened. His hand reached for his weapon, but never made it. Blood sprayed across blue flowers. So much blood.
Then the hands were around my throat.
Invisible fingers squeezing with strength that defied physics. I’d clawed at nothing. Fought against the air that wanted me dead. My vision had tunneled. Darkness crept in from the edges. Just like in the dream. Just like the thing that had grabbed me.
Panic surged fresh and immediate. My chest heaved with breaths that wouldn’t satisfy my lungs. The room spun. Étienne’s face swam in and out of focus behind that terrible mask.
The antlers. The carved wood that covered everything human about him. It looked too much like the creature from the tunnel. Too much like the thing in my nightmare that had promised to protect me for a price I’d never agreed to pay.
"Get away!" I shoved at him blindly. My hands connected with solid chest. Then his face. The mask shifted under my palm.
It fell.
Wood clattered against floor tiles somewhere beyond my field of vision. And suddenly I saw him.
Burns cut across Étienne’s face in patterns that spoke of violence survived. They ran from his temple down past his jaw. More were on the right side of his nose and cheekbone. The skin had healed rough and raised. Permanent evidence of pain he’d endured.
But it was him. Undeniably him. Not the creature. Not the darkness. Just Étienne without the barrier he maintained between himself and everyone else.
My struggling stopped. Recognition crashed through panic, scattering it into manageable pieces.
He leaned closer. His scarred face filled my vision.
"You’re safe now." His voice dropped lower. Gentler than I’d heard it since arriving at this estate. "Nothing is going to hurt you here."
My breathing slowed. Each inhale came easier than the last. The terror that had gripped my chest loosened its hold incrementally. I focused on his eyes. On the concern written across features, he usually kept hidden.
We were close. Too close. I could count every damaged pore if I wanted. I could see his pupils dilate slightly as he watched me calm down. I could feel his breath against my face in warm puffs that matched the rhythm of mine.
The door opened with a soft click.
"Alpha, I brought more—oh."
An Omega stood frozen in the doorway. Her eyes went wide as they tracked from Étienne’s unmasked face to how close we sat. To his hand still holding mine. To the intimacy of our positions that looked like something it absolutely was not.
"I apologize." She backed out immediately. "I’ll return later."
The door closed with a decisive thud.
Étienne pulled away. The space between us expanded back to something appropriate. Something that didn’t suggest any familiarity beyond captor and captive. He released my hand like it had burned him.
But his hand had lingered on mine for a second longer than necessary before he’d let go. I’d felt it. The reluctance. The way his fingers had tightened fractionally before releasing.
The absence of his touch felt wrong. My fingers curled against the blanket covering my legs.
"Thank you." The words scraped past my damaged throat. "For saving me."
His expression shuttered. Whatever softness had been there moments ago vanished behind walls that slammed into place with audible finality.
"Don’t thank me." He stood and retrieved his mask from where it had fallen. "Like I have said several times, I need you alive for what comes next. That’s all this was."
The casual cruelty landed like a slap. And underneath the words meant to wound, something else bled through the bond we both pretended didn’t exist.
Terror. Raw and recent. The kind that came from thinking someone was dying and being powerless to stop it. It flooded the connection between us in waves that made my chest tight with understanding I didn’t want.
He’d been afraid for me. Genuinely afraid.
Étienne settled the mask back into place. The stag antlers returned to hide whatever humanity I’d glimpsed. He turned toward the window with a posture that suggested dismissal.
He then tried to close the bond immediately. To hide from me whatever emotions kept leaking through from his side. The connection resisted at first. Then something shifted. A wall slammed into place that cut off the feed of his feelings as cleanly as severing a rope.
Blessed silence filled the space where his terror had been.
"Your boy toy has been captured by the way."
The statement came across as conversational, even though I knew exactly who he was talking about.
My stomach dropped. "Chris?"
Étienne didn’t turn from the window. His shoulders remained relaxed in a way that felt deliberately casual.
"He walked right into the trap I set. Brought eight sentinels with him, too." A pause followed. "They’re being held in the lower cells."
Rage sparked through the pain still radiating from my head and throat. Chris had come for me. Of course, he had.
And now he was imprisoned because of it. Because of me.
"What are you really going to do to him?" My voice came out steadier than expected despite the damage to my vocal cords.
"That depends." Étienne finally turned to face me. The mask made his expression unreadable. "On how cooperative he decides to be."
Then he looked away again.
A threat hung implicit in the words. Chris wouldn’t cooperate. He’d fight. He’d do everything in his power to get me out of here, even if it destroyed him in the process. That was who he was. Loyal to a fault. Brave to the point of stupidity.
Though Laurent had assured me that no harm would come to Chris because Étienne was playing this game for one reason and one reason alone, the fact remained that this was a very sensitive topic for him.
It concerned his exterminated family.
If Chris stayed stubborn and did not immediately give in, people would suffer. Étienne had reason to keep me alive, even if he was tormenting me in other ways, but Chris would not have that luxury.
"The forget-me-nots." The words escaped before I could stop them. "You grew them for me."
His spine went rigid. The tension radiated through his shoulders in a way that suggested I’d struck something vital.
"You’re a narcissist to think that." He didn’t turn from the window. "My mother loved them too."
His mother. The words hung in the air between us with a weight that crushed.
"Really? Because from what I remember..." I said quietly, "Like you, she had a sensitive nose. The only reason she grew them was mostly because of me."
His voice came out flat. "You did prefer them over roses."
The admission felt like a crack in armor he’d spent years perfecting. A glimpse at the boy who’d existed before everything had been taken from him.
"But see where that devotion got her."
The bitterness in his tone made my chest ache.
He turned then. The mask caught the light in ways that made reading his expression impossible. But his voice carried enough venom to paint the picture clearly.
"There was no empathy for her when strong spirits were poured on them, so the fire that would be made from their bodies would not even be quenched by the rain."
The image hit me like a physical blow. His mother burning. The flames were fed by pure alcohol to ensure they couldn’t be stopped. Rain falling uselessly while she died screaming.
Tears spilled down my cheeks before I could stop them.
"I’m sorry." My voice broke on the words. "I’m so sorry."
More tears came. Hot, fast, and useless. They wouldn’t bring his family back. They wouldn’t undo what had been done. But they fell anyway.
"I intend to find the truth."
"And then what?" He moved closer. Each step measured and deliberate. "Will you be able to point the gun at the people who raised you? The people you sacrificed yourself for, even now?"
His head tilted slightly behind the mask.
"You’re doing this for him, aren’t you? Your boy-toy? You’re playing this game with my mind to soften me, aren’t you?"