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His lips press to my temple, and then my cheek. “You’re not going to scare me away, Sarah,” he says. “I know you. Killing might make you feel powerful, but it’s not your driving force, and even if it were, God help me, but I’d love you all the same. If you are soft and sweet and need protection, I will love you. And if you are a weapon capable of destroying people in ways I haven’t even dreamed of, I will love that version of you as well. Whatever it is you are, I want you and I wouldn’t change it.”

He holds me there, with the towel wrapped around me, until my tears have slowed.

“You’re shivering,” he says. “Come.” He pulls me to our room and tucks me into bed, wrapping the blankets around me, before undressing to slide in beside me.

He finds my hand and lifts my palm to his lips. “Tell me everything.”

Haltingly, with my head pressed to his chest, I do. I tell him about Katrin, and her suspicions that I was her descendant. About Luna Reilly, who tried to stop the guards while I just sat there in silence. I tell him about Mathilde and the babies, and how I swaddled dead infants and felt absolutely nothing as I did it.

I tell him that I thought of killing Yvette and Dr. Nadeau, that there was a time, before Cece was born, that I hoped she wouldn’t survive. And he listens, running a hand over my back the entire time, soothing me, even as I tell him things he should hate me for.

“But how does any of this make you related to Coron?” he finally asks when I’m done.

“Katrin... I think she knew what I was even before I did. She said something about it, the way I was able to think the way Coron did. She was one of the women he raped and she was pregnant when she left. I confronted my mother about everything when I got home and she admitted that Peter Stewart wasn’t my father.”

“Sharing Coron’s blood doesn’t make you what he is,” Henri says.

“In my case, it does. It felt like it went away, when Cecelia was born, but it’s back. I feel it every time we’re threatened. That ugly side of me wants to be set free.”

“That side of you might just turn out to be what saves the children’s lives if I’m not here,” he says, pushing my hair back. “Perhaps everything you’ve lived through was necessary to survive what’s to come. And I need you to survive. So please, never do what you did today. Don’t risk yourself like that.”

His lips brush mine, once and then twice, and his hand rests on my hip, pulling me closer. My mouth opens beneath his and I feel him respond to it, groaning as I arch against him, before he pulls back.

“I should let you rest,” he says, flinching. “After what happened today—”

I pull him on top of me. “Nothing happened today,” I reply. “And I’m not fragile.”

With a small shudder he pushes inside me, leaning over to find my mouth. I feel split open, mentally and physically. He knows the ugliest things in my soul and he loves me in spite of them. It is more than I could have hoped for, and it changes something between us.

Being with him tonight is more than love or lust.

For the first time ever, it feels holy.

38

SARAH

I wake the next day feeling sore, but in the best possible way. With the secrets between us finally gone, something that seemed impossible to improve upon is even better.

But our situation remains the same, possibly worse. Did that commander who visited yesterday tell anyone where he was going? Surely, the fact that they died two miles down the road will force someone to at least look at the farm. All day long my eyes flicker to the revolver on the high shelf in the kitchen, to the knives on the counter. Lucien knocks over a broom behind me and I jump.

“We can’t continue like this,” Henri says.

I shrug, as if my heart didn’t nearly shoot out of my chest from the sound of a broom falling. “I’m not sure we have a choice.”

“Unfortunately,” he sighs, “we do. I’ll stay through Christmas, and then I’m going to run Roche’s little errand.”

I shake my head. “No,” I whisper. “Please. Don’t.”

“I’ll be gone two weeks, perhaps three, and then we’ll have everything we need. We’ll take the train to Marseilles and be on the next boat to England. Think of it, all of us together, where the children can run outside without fear.”

There’s a part of me that wants to believe him, that wants to fall into this pretty picture he’s creating. Already, I can imagine summer nights when the children catch fireflies in jars and swim, Henri and I watching them with our hands clasped, the worst behind us. I hunger for it in a way I can hardly even express.

But nothing that’s happened over the course of my life leads me to believe our happy ending could be so close at hand, or acquired so simply. If it were easy, Roche would be doing it himself.

* * *

By Christmas, Lucien and Charlotte are better. Cece is still sick, but she’s younger and more fragile, so it stands to reason she’d heal more slowly.