Page 77 of The Beautiful Ones

“Or you may come with us.”

I felt her fingers loosen around mine.

Adrian’s expression did not soften, but neither did it command.

“I will not promise you ease,” he said. “I will promise that no one among us will require you to become smaller so that we may feel large. No one will make you speak for our comfort or ask you to be silent for our pride.”

The house groaned behind us. Somewhere within it, Madame Lebon called for a servant who had already crossed the fields beyond her reach.

“Cécile,” I whispered.

She looked at me. I saw affection, grief and apology pass through her face, each too quickly for me to hold.

Then Cécile lifted her hand toward his.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

ELIN

“Cécile, no.”

My refusal came from fear, not authority, but my fingers closed around her wrist as if I still possessed either one.

She stopped before touching Adrian’s hand.

The blue fire had reached the upper gallery of Le Champ des Fleurs. Behind us, windows burst one after another, sending bright fragments into the garden. The flames made no ordinary crackle. They moved through the house with the sound of pages turning, swift and dry, as though every room were another chapter being read aloud and condemned.

“You do not know what he is,” I said.

Cécile looked at Adrian, then at Nicholas and Octavia waiting beyond him.

“Neither do you.”

“That is why you must not follow him.”

Her wrist remained small within my grasp, but it was no longer weak.

“I have f-followed what other people knew for me all my life.”

The truth of it loosened my hand.

I had told myself I loved Cécile differently from her mother. I waited when she spoke. I interpreted the questions she could not finish. I stood between her and shame whenever I was permitted. Yet even love could become another room in which a person was kept for her own protection. I had been so afraid Adrian would take her choice that I nearly took it first.

“Then ask him what the choice costs,” I said.

Cécile faced Adrian.

“If I go with you, may I come back?”

“Not unchanged.”

“Will I die?”

“Everything dies to one life when it chooses another.”

I hated him for the beauty of that answer. Beautiful words were often curtains drawn over ugly rooms.

“Answer her plainly,” I demanded.