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At that, Fiona tilted her head up to look at him. “I would find that very hard to believe. You are always so careful around me and with me. I think it one of your finest qualities.”
He chuckled again, but gave her a squeeze. “You would have to thank Isabelle for that. I sometimes said the most foolish things, hurtful words. No, she made of me a better man. I am convinced of that.”
He didn’t want to say more, so he remained silent.
“Were you together long?”
“Eleven years. We married very young by today’s standards.”
Again she twisted to look up at him. “How old were you?”
“I was nineteen and terribly in love.”
“How old was she?”
“Seventeen.”
“Did you have any children?”
“Our second greatest failure that we did not.”
She went back to plucking at the sheet. He could feel the question coming but he wished with all his heart she would not ask it. But perhaps it was necessary. She would need to understand him better. So he waited.
“What was your greatest failure, Jean-Pierre?”
He sighed before he could speak. “That for some reason our love was not strong enough to prevail against the winds of the revolution.” He took a deep breath and spoke the terrible words, “She betrayed me to the devil Robespierre. She signed documents indicating that I had acted against the will of the people. She sent me to the guillotine.”
When she remained silent, but still plucking, as though her fingers reflected the workings of her mind, he said, “She was not herself the entire month before she did this thing. I would say she was hysterical. I believe now that she knew what she would do, and during that time she wrestled with her conscience. I will give her at least that much, that she seemed to suffer before she betrayed me. I often wondered if she heard rumors of one of the condemned disappearing before the blade could complete its work.”
The plucking fingers pulled harder. He caught her hand and stilled it. “Say what it is you do not want to say.”
This time she pulled back to recline her head on his arm so that she could look at him. He pulled back as well; otherwise they would be almost nose-to-nose.
“What if … what if she had a reason for what she did?”
“Do you think I have not thought of that?”
“Maybe she was protecting other members of her family? Maybe her only choice was her life or yours?”
“I would never make such a choice against her.”
She put a hand on his face. He saw her eyes well with tears. “I’ll tell you what I know. If Isabelle knew you as I know you then she could never have betrayed you without a profound reason. Something enormous must have been at stake. I’m convinced of it. Otherwise it makes no sense to me.”
“Of course you would speak with such grace. Of course. But I will never know. How can I? She did not ascend.”
“Do you know for certain?”
“I have visited her grave in a small church in Sussex, in the south of Britain. She emigrated the same night that I went to my death.” He sounded bitter. He supposed that he was.
“How did you know she’d done even that much? Did you follow her?”
“Oui. That first week. I kept at a distance. I watched her board the small ship to cross the channel. That was all I needed to see.”
“How did you know she died? Or when or even where she lived?”
“She kept her married name, my name, Isabelle Robillard. A few decades ago I went through the death certificates in Britain and found her in a place called Rottingdean in the south of England.”
“Then she didn’t remarry?”
“No, she lived less than a year.” He could hardly bear to think of it, that she had sent him to his death and he had lived all these decades, yet she had died but a few months later in a land not her own. He wanted to think of it as a form of justice. Instead, it was only pathetic. And very sad.
He felt Fiona’s finger on the side of his face. It was wet.
Fuck. He had not meant to weep but he so rarely spoke of her, of his beautiful vivacious wife, whom he had loved with all of his heart, so passionately. She was his first love and should have been his last in every good sense.
Fiona inched toward him and kissed his cheek all the way up to the corner of his eye. He turned into her and kissed her on the mouth, hard.
She opened for him, a flower blossoming so that he could penetrate her mouth. The faint whimpers, and that she spoke his name so sweetly within his mind, a very soft Jean-Pierre, Jean-Pierre, gave him permission to do what was in his heart to do.
He pushed her onto her back and took her, perhaps not as gently as he should have, but she clung to him, and shed her beautiful croissant scent, and cried into his hair, and dug her nails into the flesh of his ass.
What he knew for certain, as he spent himself inside her yet again, was that his heart reached for her much too often. He needed to be more careful, to restrain himself, but with her lovely cries and her sweet kisses and the tenderness in her eyes when she held his face as he came, mon Dieu, what was he supposed to do?
The use of the word obsidian, in the mythical triad known as obsidian flame, has a long history. Ultimately, the word became synonymous with truth, as in cutting to the truth, or bearing the weight of truth. The concept in my opinion is more poetic than scientific.
—Treatise on Ascension, by Philippe Reynard
Chapter 17
The following morning, Fiona sat across from Seriffe, in his office. He leaned forward in his chair, elbows on the desk, head in his hands. In the five months she had been on Second Earth, for most of that time living in his home, she had never seen him this distraught, this sad.
“I knew Greg,” he said. “Carolyn is best friends with his wife and now that poor woman is left to raise her kids without their father. Shit. I brought him on board, you know. Maybe two decades ago. He was a good fighter, the best of men, honorable, hardworking. Jesus, I can’t believe he’s gone. He was f**king careful in the field.”
Jean-Pierre stood off to the side, his arms folded over his chest, sentinel-like. Fiona glanced up at him. His gaze was solemn, his nostrils flaring. His jaw shifted a couple of times, back and forth.
She turned her attention back to Seriffe. She had no words for him. What could be said? The funeral would be held in a couple of days, a weekly ritual now. Too many Militia Warrior deaths. The Grand Canyon battle, just a few months ago, had taken the lives of over a thousand Militia Warriors, many of them based in Phoenix. But a good number of them had been flown in from around the world.
