For a moment or a thousand moments, I hesitate, considering. To surrender and forget appeals more than to resist and remember. I am weak, and I do not like pain. The voice is so beautiful, so tempting, so strong, that I nearly let it consume me. And yet . . . I cannot. If I let go, I will lose something important. Someone important. I cannot remember who it is.

I cannot remember who I am.

You are the darkness. The shadows press closer, and I fold myself tighter. A grain of sand below infinite black waves. This darkness is yours.

Still I hold on.

Coco’s Flame

Reid

Coco leaned against the headstone beside me. A weatherworn statue of Saint Magdaleine towered over us, her bronze face shadowed in the gray twilight. Though she had long closed her eyes, Coco didn’t sleep. She didn’t speak either. She merely rubbed a scar on her palm with her opposite thumb, over and over until the skin chafed. I doubted she noticed it. I doubted she noticed anything.

She’d followed me into the cemetery after Lou had ransacked the scullery for red meat, unsatisfied with the fish Father Achille had prepared for supper. There’d been nothing inherently wrong with the way Lou had attacked the beef, even if the cut hadn’t been fully cooked. We’d been famished for days. Our breakfast of stew and lunch of hard bread and cheese hadn’t assuaged our hunger. And yet . . .

My stomach contracted without explanation.

“Is she pregnant?” Coco asked after a long moment. Her eyes flicked open, and she rolled her head to face me. Voice flat. “Tell me you’ve been careful. Tell me we don’t have another problem.”

“She bled two weeks ago, and since then, we haven’t—” I cleared my throat.

Coco nodded and tipped her chin skyward once more, closing her eyes on a heavy exhale. “Good.”

I stared at her. Though she hadn’t cried since La Mascarade des Crânes, her lids remained swollen. Traces of kohl still flecked her cheeks. Tear tracks. “Are you . . .” The words caught in my throat. Coughing to clear it, I tried again. “I saw a tub inside if you need to bathe.”

Her fingers clamped around her thumb in response, as if she could still feel Ansel’s blood on her hands. She’d scrubbed them raw in the Doleur that night. Burned her garments in Léviathan, the inn where so much had gone wrong. “I’m too tired,” she finally murmured.

The familiar ache of grief burned up my throat. Too familiar. “If you need to talk about it . . .”

She didn’t open her eyes. “We aren’t friends.”

“Yes, we are.”