The cold and pain from lack of air didn’t help. They took a constant toll on his body, and that would drive him feral more rapidly. How long had it already been? The days bled together, and he had lost count of how many times the sun had risen and set.
No wonder his mind had turned to fantasies of escape, and memories of leaving Belle.
Yet she’d found him anyway, almost three hundred years later, and treated him like he’d never left.
*
Eight weeks at sea.
Antoine had fed sparingly, mostly from a merchant traveling alone in the neighboring cabin. Just enough to sate his hunger, though the man now looked sallow and ill. At least his collar and cravat hid the mark on his neck, which never fully healed.
No sail had been sighted behind them, and with each passing day, Antoine’s relief grew.
He had done it. At last, he was free.
They stopped in Saint-Domingue, but the island was too small for Antoine’s interest. It was only another two weeks to New Orleans, and the potential of America called to him.
A man could lose himself in a country as large as that.
After Éliane, he would’ve happily let the sun take him, but Belle had interfered with that impulsive plan. And now he wanted to live, to explore his potential. Perhaps even to gain a territory, like she had done. There had to be land enough in a new country like this.
It was ironic that she had stopped his death when she had been the one to rob him of his life. Then the purse, so uncharacteristically left unguarded, the means to claim his freedom.
He couldn’t shed the niggling doubt that she had meant for him to take it. That she had been setting him free. Not apologizing—never that; she wasn’t capable of that—but maybe a new lease on life.
No. He gave her too much credit. It had been a mistake he had capitalized upon, nothing more.
Regardless, Antoine felt the stir of new possibilities, the excitement of fresh potential. With coin and his wits he could—
“Antoine?”
He’d been so lost in his reverie, he hadn’t sensed Noah’s approach.“Why are you here? I told you to stay away. Is she with you?”
“She insisted. She was going to come anyway. What did you want me to do, tie her down? Let her make the trip alone?”
“Stubborn woman!”
A hint of Noah’s humor came through the bond.“You chose her.”
“Take her back,”Antoine sent.“It is too late. My mind is… more gone than not.”
“You sound fine to me.”But the bond couldn’t hide Noah’s unease, and it only served to reinforce how close Antoine was to turning feral.
With a thought, he used Noah’s eyes. And there she was. Beautiful, worried, her brow furrowed with that small line he liked so much. Striking gray eyes bright as she looked to Noah with hope.
There was no hope to offer.
A glimpse of her throat above the neck of her hoodie. It looked so vulnerable, her blood would be…
Antoine knew he should shut down the link and cut off the view, but he couldn’t. Through Noah’s eyes, he stared at her pale, creamy skin, and his throat convulsed—not with the need to breathe, or to push the water from his lungs, but to take in herblood. To drink, until he could drink no more. To take every drop she had.
“Take her away, Noah. Don’t bring her again.”
“We both know she doesn’t do what I tell her.”
There was something in his mind-tone, a sense of helplessness. Enough to be a fleeting distraction from his thirst, to allow him to focus for a moment.“What is it? What’s happened?”Like he could do anything about it.
“Nothing. She went away, and… well, she’s back and she’s safe.”
