Page 70 of The Familiar

CHAPTER 33

He shouldn’t have said it, but he had no desire to call the words back.

“Why didn’t you?” she asked. “Why didn’t you keep riding?”

“It would have been as good as an admission of guilt.”

“Is that why you stopped?”

“No,” he admitted. “I am bound in service to De Paredes.”

“Surely there are limits to one’s sense of duty?”

He could hear the hope in her voice, that the trust growing between them or his desire for self-preservation might drive him to sever his bond with his master. He didn’t owe her an answer. He could simply shake his head. He could leave.

Instead he spoke the truth. “I am bound to Víctor de Paredes as I was bound to his father and his father before him. I have served his family since before the kingdoms were brought together, since before these lands had Christian names.”

Luzia didn’t say that is impossible. He didn’t expect her to. By now she knew too many things were possible that she had never contemplated before. Scullions might become soldiers. Little girls could see into the future. Shadows could live and sometimes they had teeth.

All she said was “I’m cold and I’m tired and I need you to help me out of these clothes.”

“I’ll find you a servant or the widow.”

“I don’t want them.”

The words filled the room, a bell that had been struck, a reverberation that passed through their bodies, through the walls, out into the night.

He should say it wasn’t proper. He should go. “If I’m found here, there will be nothing that can save you, Luzia. The cost will not be so high for me.”

“If you think I’m letting you leave me alone again, you’re mistaken. Clothed or unclothed, if you’re found here, I’ll be damned, and I might as well be comfortable when I’m cursed to hell.”

Refuse her, he told himself. It’s not too late to spare her this betrayal. Sparks rose from the heated coals. Outside one soldier called to another.

He held out his hand. “Come here.”

Luzia rose and crossed the room. She turned her back to him and he was reminded of the day she’d tried to refuse his training, when she’d said she had to stir the soup. He reached for her laces, and when his fingers brushed the skin of her neck above her collar, he felt a tremor move through her. As if she were the bell that had been struck, that trembled with sound. He wanted to hear her ring out.

His hands were swift.

“This isn’t the first time you’ve done this,” she said with a weak laugh.

“I’ve been alive a long time.” His youth had been spent in countless beds, on floors, in fields, once between the rows of a vineyard. There had been times when the only way he’d been able to cope with his own immortality was to fuck himself free, to feel briefly, truly alive in another’s pleasure. “I fear the dress is ruined.”

“You’ve lived too long among the wealthy. It can be cut apart and made into something new.”

He turned away to offer her privacy and heard the thud of the dress, followed by the corset, and then the shuffle of damp linen being pulled away from her skin.

“I’m going to bathe,” she said.

“The water will have gone cold.”

“I can heat it.”

Of course she could. Desire had turned his mind to jelly.

“I’d like some wine,” she said.

“Then I will find it for you.”