Page 7 of Severed Heart (The Ravenhood Legacy #2)

Chapter Five

D ELPHINE

I TAKE A PUFF of my cigarette as the woman watching me from the aisle seat across from mine finally speaks her mind. “You look too young to smoke.”

“You look old ,” I tell her, and her mouth drops open.

“How very rude,” she gasps.

“Yes”—I roll my eyes—“ rude for stranger to make observations and speak them.” I blow my exhale her way, wishing I had gotten the window seat. An older man snores next to me, his head tilted away from the wasted view.

“Who are you traveling with? I wonder if they would approve of your behavior.” She eyes the wheezing man next to me. “Is that your father?”

I bark out a laugh as I smooth my hand down Celine’s dress and ash my cigarette, staring back at the woman. “My papa rots in the ground.”

“Oh,” she says, taken aback by the way I tell her this. I never understand why people are so polite about revealing the truth when it’s not pleasant. It’s as if people are hiding from real life, but some truths can never be pleasant, no matter how they’re worded or spoken. “And your mother?”

I inhale again, considering if I want to reveal so much to her, and decide to have a little fun. This woman considers me a mystery to solve, much like my aunt and uncle did. Not only that, but it will also give me a chance to practice my English.

“Left me when I five. Poof. ” I snap loud, and the woman jumps back in her seat. She is intimidated by me— me— a girl at least twenty years younger in age. Alain says intimidation is one of my gifts.

“My papa dies the night partner comes to collect me from a card game. I was”—I lean toward her—“ I was bet, last bet he makes.”

The woman gasps in shock as I lean in further, blowing more smoke in her face, which she now ignores for my story.

“Sold me for a spoon of ... the needle drugs.” I take another cigarette out of my pack sitting on the tray table.

“Heroin?” She asks, eyes bulging.

“Yes, heroin. So if you want to talk parents how rude I behave, you will have hard times to reach them.”

“My God.” Her eyes soften with pity. “I’m so sorry to hear that.”

“What is your name?” I ask.

“Janet,” she tells me, her eyes scouring my face and dress—nothing I am not used to. Women and men alike are always watching me. Alain says they cannot help themselves because I am painfully beautiful.

“Do not pity me, Janet ... I very, I’m fortunate.”

“Oh? How so?”

“When I land in America, I marry a soldier. ”

She gapes at me. “But you can’t be more than what, sixteen?”

Her guess discourages me even as I fill out one of Celine’s more sophisticated dresses after applying thick makeup. I’m failing to conceal my age as much as I hoped. I decide it is better to start rehearsing the lie I’ll be living very soon.

“I am eighteen .”

“Oh?” Perspiration dots her upper lip as I shake out my match. “Well ... congratulations. You’ll make a beautiful bride. You’re just gorgeous, honey.”

“Merci, Janet. You have nice . . .” I look her up and down to try and find a way to be kind with my reply, “Eyes.”

“Oh, thank you.” She smiles, and I smile back for an entirely different reason. Within the length of a plane ride, I will be legally eighteen in the eyes of United States law and be able to work and marry. Alain told me that in America, if the paperwork says so, it must be.

And I will marry him because after kissing too many Lyams, I found the only soldier for me the night Celine brought me to her apartment—a soldier who had been fighting alongside Abijah in the new Pardi Radical until he evaded arrest just weeks ago.

Declaring his time in France over after, he promised he would send for me once he found us a place to live and work—as well as a good place to re-establish his movement.

He fled France with a few of his most trusted men and writes that he has been very successful.

Yesterday morning I received a letter with a ticket as promised.

I left school early, faking an illness to start packing.

I decided to bring very little of my clothes and leave all those meant for a modest little girl.

I packed just enough to fit in my wildflower suitcase—all I have left of life with my papa.

But the life I had with him, I’ve been promised to have again with Alain.

Excitement fills me as I think of Alain’s description of North Carolina.

My dream written in his handwriting, in black and white, of the town of Triple Falls.

He wrote that there are many rivers and lakes for me to fish—along with abundant wildlife—and not nearly as many people as the city I so despise.

After getting to know Alain, I found out his dream was mine, too.

It’s still a mystery to me how we kept our relationship from both Abijah and Celine these past months.

We almost got caught once or twice but managed to escape all suspicion that we were a couple—which we weren’t—not at first. It was only yesterday that I finally told Celine of our relationship and future plans.

“You can’t be serious,” Celine gasps as Ezekiel keeps a firm grip on my hands, leading me around their kitchen table. As she gawks at my admission, I notice a fresh bruise on her cheek.

“Did Abijah do that?”

She jerks her chin. “No, he did,” she laughs, nodding toward Ezekiel, her eyes soft as they always are with him, which I recognize as a mother’s love. “He hit me with one of his bath toys.”

“Don’t lie to me, Celine,” I warn.

“I told you, Abijah doesn’t hit me. Not like that, and don’t change the subject,” she snaps. “You can’t just tell me you’ve been with Alain all this time and nothing more. Did you start seeing him right after you met?”

“No.” I shake my head. “No, no, not at first. He said I was too young. It took him a very long time to consider me for himself—years—but I finally convinced him.” I smile at her, but she does not smile back.

“God, it was happening right under my nose!”

“You were busy,” I say, picking up the reason for her distraction and holding him up for my inspection. Ezekiel stares back at me with his father’s firelight eyes and pats my cheek with his open hand. “So much of Abijah in you,” I tell him, and he giggles.

“Don’t remind me,” Celine sighs.

“No, that bruise will remind you,” I say, turning to her.

“For the last time, Abijah is not violent with me,” she insists. “Just the once, and it was an accident.”

“If it happened once, Celine, it will happen again. I have seen how he behaves—his paranoia—and he is not well.”

“Since when did you become an expert on men? You’ve dated only one.”

“So have you,” I point out, and she sighs again.

“But Alain, he is good to you?”

“He’s perfect to me,” I tell her, my attention still on Ezekiel as he jabbers on about one of his toys. “He treats me like I matter more to him than anything else, even his cause.”

“Abijah was like that too,” she relays in warning, “and he hasn’t been the same since . . .” She trails off, but I know exactly what she’s referring to.

“All they did was make their stance known. It was just.”

“Not the right way,” Celine says in a whisper. “Not the right way, Delphine, and you know it.”

“Alain lost his father in a bombing,” I argue. “If he didn’t think it was necessary, he wouldn’t have done it. You have to trust them.”

“Trust them?” She gawks. “Alain fled because—”

“I know what he did. He’s honest with me and wouldn’t have left if Abijah hadn’t overreacted and exiled him.”

“As he should have. Say all you want about Abijah, but Alain is far more dangerous.”

“I believe his reasons and ... I’ve been helping him. Since we met.”

“What?” Celine pales. “Jesus, Delphine. What have you done?”

“I was not there that night, but I go to the meetings and hear of their plans, their ambitions. I run errands for them, messages, trade guns, things of that nature. All they want is audience and—”

“Don’t,” she shouts, scaring Ezekiel, who jumps in my arms. “Don’t tell me anything else! I will not lose my son for any cause! Not for Abijah or you and Alain! Do you hear me? I’m done with it all!”

“Fine,” I say, tired of the same argument we’ve been having since Alain left—which is also why I don’t visit when Abijah is here.

Though we both want to drop it, she shakes her head. “Jesus, Delphine.”

“It’s what soldiers do.”

“Soldiers sign up to be soldiers and serve in the French Army. Why can’t you do that?”

“It’s going to be a different world when the Berlin Wall falls, and minds will change with it!

They’ve already seen many politicians forever stuck in the old ways, leaving soldiers to obey exhausted orders of oppression and control.

The new soldier has become the common man who turns street warrior to fight for a new world without selfish motive.

That is the soldier my Alain is and the soldier I want to be. ”

She shakes her head gently. “Maybe, but I don’t agree with you, Abijah, or Alain with the tactics you choose. The Pardi has already denied any of those inciting violence like Alain. I am for peace.”

“Peace,” I scoff. “Since when has peace brought change? The cost of peace is being compliant to whatever our government decides without our say. That’s not peace, that’s enslavement.

Alain says the same corruption stands just beneath the veil of American capitalism and is ready to join the fight to liberate them. ”

“Fight how? Violence only leads to more violence. So, I don’t agree with you. Or Abijah. In fact, I don’t agree anymore on anything with Abijah.” She wrings the towel in her hands. “I am afraid, Delphine.”

She takes Ezekiel from me and presses a kiss to his head, and I fear the conversation will only get worse with my next admission, but she speaks first. “As long as we’re confessing, I’ve met someone. I don’t know how ... but it just happened.”

Shock instantly fills me. “My God, Celine—”

“He’s a good man,” she defends, “a wonderful man, Delphine, and he wants to take me away from Abijah. He wants me to leave him.”