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I spat on her body and moved to the car.

Bodies lay everywhere, sprawled over the backseat, falling onto the ground. He had done enough with his bare hands and that tiny bloody knife to equal an army.

“I thought you were at work?” I asked, feeling on the edge of hysteria.

“Sweetheart, it’s going to be a long time before I go more than a few hundred feet away from you again without leaving an armed guard,” he said, and something about the response pulled me back from the brink, made me gasp on a laugh that was almost a sob.

“Let’s take Ciel inside,” Étienne said, his tight jaw relaxing a fraction as he saw the baby’s tiny fists pummeling the air happily.

“Is everyone all right?” he asked, his arm around my waist.

It was wet. There was something wet and sticky on his arm.

And thank all the ancestors everyone inside was all right. A few concussions, some bumps and bruises, but Mano would live, and it could have been worse.

Then Étienne strode over to me, took my cheeks in his hands and turned my face this way and that.

“You all right?”

“Yes,” I said, my knees trembling so hard I had to jam them together. “Yes.”

“And Ciel?”

There was blood on my face from his fingers, I could feel it sticky and wet on my chin.

“Yes. He was safe in the car seat. He barely even got jostled.”

There was a drop from his fingers that landed on the soft blue cloth of my carrier, rolling down the fabric to pool on my chest.

“They were going to take him,” I said, my voice sounding strangled.

“They didn’t,” he assured me. “They didn’t. They’re all dead now—everyone who would have hurt him.”

It was like my brain was shutting down, and then I felt a spoon with broth between my lips, and Étienne was feeding me, holding Ciel on his shoulder.

Tilly was there too, and I knew Étienne had sent for her, that she could stay as long as I wanted her to, and Hugo was reading to me, something funny, and Hugo and Étienne were taking turns rocking the baby as I slowly came back.

I knew there was no threat, I knew there was no danger.

But that night when I laid Ciel in the crib in my room, my hands were shaking.

There were heavy steps and I could feel and smell him behind me. Mountain scent and something raw and deep, and that iron tang of blood.

“I’m so sorry, Léonie. We didn’t get any information out of your brother. I couldn’t let him take another breath after what he did."

“It’s not about that.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t find out where they buried your Gran. At least you know she’s resting with the ancestors.”

“Yes,” I said on a sob.

“I was wrong to blindly trust my own blood, my own people,” he said, gripping my shoulders, his scarlet fingers reaching around, smearing all over my bare skin. “I have been a fool. It’s not about your blood after all.”

“What if you hadn’t been here?” I burst out, running into the attached bathroom so I could cry out my rage and fear without waking my sleeping baby. “I couldn’t have stopped them. Ciel would have been kidnapped and then what would they have done with him?”

“I was here,” Étienne said fiercely. “I will always be here to protect you and our baby.”

“I wish I could believe you.”