Page 130 of Caution to the Wind

I cleared my throat, my open eyes fixed on the inky blackness in front of me, my hands opening and closing on the sheets.

“Cedar took me home.”

The house had been dark, but that wasn’t surprising. My parents had never been home, and since Daiyu moved into hospice, no one spent much time at the house. We were always with her, waiting, waiting, waiting without even hope to keep us buoyant. The house felt like a dug-out grave waiting for a body, and I shivered when I unlocked the door and pushed inside.

“There was blood all over me, but I guess I’d forgotten because when the lights suddenly turned on, my first thought was why would anyone be home? Not, holy shit, I should hide before someone sees me looking like something fromThe Walking Dead.”

“It was Florent,” Axe-Man said, not a question.

“It was Florent.”

I could still remember the look on his face, brows knitted fiercely over dark eyes, skin flushed with fury, lips a pale line. He’d never seemed so…big before. Not because he was an especially tall man, nothing compared to Axe-Man, but because his rage inflated him, made him grotesque.

“I won’t ask where you were,” he said in this low, vibrating bass, his Quebecois accent more distinct than ever. “I don’t have to. I know you were with Henning Axelsen. Whatever trouble you’re clearly in was his doing.”

“No,” the word hurt my throat as I coughed it up. “No! Henning saved me tonight. H-he…” I choked on a sob and then sucked in a sharp breath through my teeth. “No. I wouldn’t be here right now if it wasn’t for him. And because of me…I think Henning might go to jail.”

“Oh.” Silky tone rich with satisfaction. “I’ll make sure of it, Mei. You will never see that man again. Are we clear?”

I didn’t hear his words because it occurred to me that Florent was home when he should have been with Daiyu.

“Why aren’t you at the hospital?” I demanded.

And then Old Dragon appeared in the mouth of the dark hallway looking so old, older than I’d ever seen him before. Pale and drawn like a ghost floating in the shadows.

And I knew.

“No,” I whispered, and whatever was left of my heart, of my sanity broke with a great, echoing crack, and I dropped hard to my knees on the marble, not even feeling the pain. “NO!” I screamed. “No, please, no, no, no.”

I couldn’t seem to stop, not even when Old Dragon collected me carefully in his arms, pulling me slightly into his lap over his crossed legs. He tried to hush me and soothe me even as I was distantly aware of his own tears splashing to my fevered skin.

I paused in my storytelling because Axe-Man was touching me suddenly. Without realizing it, I’d sat up in bed, curling around my bent knees with my arms locked around them. His hand, the hefty weight of it, slid under my hair to wrap around the back of my neck and hold firm. It was oddly comforting, and after swallowing hard a few times, I tried to continue my story.

“I don’t know how you felt the moment you knew Kate was dead, but for me, at that moment, after losing you in a way just an hour before, I couldn’t express my grief even in my own head. There were no words or even thoughts, just pain. Throbbing between my temples. In the balls of my feet, in the space between each rib. I just felt stripped of my skin and set on fire, every inch of me in excruciating pain.” I sucked in a shuddery breath and slowly let it out. “I’m not telling you this to, I don’t know, make you pity me or anything.”

“I don’t pity you,” he assured me in that low voice, but his hand flexed on my neck in a way that translated to comfort.

“I don’t know how long he let me cry for, but I don’t think it was long. Or, maybe, he was laying into me the whole time and I just didn’t recognize it. But finally, Florent lost his cool completely.”

“You will listen to me,” Florent hissed, suddenly in front of me, his fingers sliding off my wet, snotty chin as he tried to grasp it. “That man made you miss the last moments with your mother. Do you recognize that? Can your pea-sized intellect realize that he’s a monster, and I’ve been remiss in letting you fixate on him. On thatcriminal, patheticfamily?”

My only response was a shivery wail that echoed in our large foyer. Old Dragon clasped me closer to his chest and said something aboutnot now.

But Florent didn’t listen.

He gripped my chin harder and forced me to look up into his ravaged face, and he promised me low, cold, “Hear me on this, Mei Zhen Marchand. You will never see the Axelsens again.”

The word finally penetrated, a fresh wound, a mortal wound breaking through the haze of pain.

“What?” I whispered.

“I think,” I told Axe-Man in the dark, curling even tighter so my knees cracked and my shoulders pulled in their sockets. “I mean, it sounds dramatic, but I really wasn’t human in those moments. It’s like the horror of everything just overloaded my circuit and everything after was just…instinct. Like an animal.”

“An animal cornered and afraid,” he muttered darkly.

I coughed, but it was supposed to be a chuckle of agreement.

“I don’t remember exactly how it happened, but suddenly, I was lunging at him. At Florent. At my dad, only he wasn’t my dad by then. He wasn’t even someone I knew. I don’t even think I saw him as a person. He was worse than a monster or the devil whatever personification of hate and fear people give to things. He was the axe cleaving me in two, and I thought if I could just get my hands on him, the pain would stop.”