Page 34

The Choice of Redemption

The door shut with a soft click, yet Rollant’s heart thundered in his chest. The blind revenge that had consumed him six centuries before surged again, flooding his veins.

The image of élise’s ghastly bruised back seared into his mind.

Small yet ashamed, her whisper echoed in his ears: “ I cannot reach them. ”

His fingers trembled with a desperate and immediate urge to act, to repay blood for blood, like a demon prodding him to the edge of fury.

He pressed his nails into his palms to contain the dark tide coursing through him.

He paced the room, the weight of his immortal curse pressing against him.

He had once unleashed the savage bloodlust against Arnoul, and it brought him to this lonely, eternal perdition.

But Gabin deserved death. The man’s cruelty demanded it. Rollant shoved his boots on and examined his hands in the hearth light, flexing and curling his fingers, testing their strength. They would be as steel bars around Gabin’s throat.

For élise, he would put the man in the grave in the same brutal way Gabin had handled her.

The heavy weight of his coat felt like the armor he once wore as he threw it over his shoulders. He strode toward the door, the resolve of centuries hardening his steps. He stepped into the small entry room, and the cold pressed against him, stopping him mid-stride.

It wasn’t winter’s bite paralyzing him, but the familiar absence of life. The chill swept over him like a wraith, thrusting him to the last fateful moment when his hands had been drenched in blood and vengeance outside the walls of Damascus.

Life drained from Arnoul’s wide, unblinking eyes.

The iron stench of blood pressed against his senses harder than the sword in his hands.

The moment of justice arrived, yet it did not bring him peace.

It had not erased his pain but had only carved a steep punishment for his soul.

Blood begat blood, and revenge spawned a curse of eternal solitude.

Standing before the door of his Charonne home, he faltered in his resolve to release death upon Gabin.

His fist struck the wooden beam barring the door, and the sound reverberated through the room like the toll of a bell.

He hit it again and again, each strike an attempt to pummel the memories from his mind—the bruises on her body, the pleading look in her eyes, the helplessness of his own restraint.

He wanted to be her shield, her sword, her justice.

The world had hurt her, and yet he feared causing more harm to come to her.

Her voice came. “Rollant, is someone out there?”

He swallowed his anger and took a deep breath. He glanced over his shoulder and said in the calmest voice he could muster, “No. I’m just cleaning up. Go to sleep. You are safe here.”

The bed squeaked, and then silence.

Rollant sagged against the door, his forehead resting against the wooden planks.

“Curse you, Gabin,” he muttered. He clenched his fists, envisioning Arnoul’s blood on them as if it had never dried.

The sorceress’ warning left him, replaced by the soft hum of the winter’s wind forcing through the small cracks where the door met the doorpost.

The room was silent except for the crackle of the hearth.

Rollant turned around and stepped toward the main room.

The home was a mirror of his life—sharp, precise, but empty.

He threw off his coat onto the sofa and sat by the fire at the table, letting its warmth seep into his skin as his gaze got lost in the dancing flames.

élise was safe. She lay beneath his roof, tucked in his bed, well out of Gabin’s grasp.

That assurance should suffice, he reasoned while taking a deep breath through his nostrils and releasing it over his lips.

He wanted to heal her wounds and give her a life of peace.

Killing Gabin in cold blood would do neither.

He had engaged in wars for monarchs and navigated political courts seeking honor, but this—this self-control—proved the most difficult.

“Vengeance is the Lord’s,” he whispered, pulling the words from the oral citation from his youth, six hundred years prior. It was the only soothing thought that came to him in his powerless state.

Rollant leaned back, pressing against the chair. He closed his eyes and exhaled another slow breath. He gripped the table’s edge until his knuckles whitened. “She will have peace here, even if I do not,” he whispered.

The words calmed him. His fingers relaxed as he leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and rubbed a hand over his face.

It took six hundred years for him to feel again, but in some way, he sensed it had been a test—a second chance—and he chose not vengeance but peace.

And his choice, fragile though it felt, brought with it a glimmer of something he thought he’d lost long ago—honor.

Maybe the curse could be lifted since he had chosen well the second time.

Perhaps the sorceress would grant him the ability to hold love in his arms again.

He flicked the notion away. Her dark celestial being hadn’t come to inform him that the curse was lifted, and he doubted she would ever do so.

The firelight danced across the ceiling as his thoughts churned. He had two weeks in Paris, due back to the King’s side by mid-February. The king’s command echoed in his mind. The same as it had been for a year: gauge the reaction to another faulty decision.

élise was a voice among the districts, her words reaching further than she realized.

She understood the people’s needs, their anger, and their hopes.

He could stay here, ask her, and deliver the king’s answers without ever stepping into Paris again.

Two weeks to make sure she wouldn’t look back toward the city or fall prey to its cruelty again and still glean what he needed to answer the king.

“The king. The king. The king,” he muttered.

All the royal houses had used him as the perfect instrument of power—his purpose and punishment—from the day the sorceress cursed him.

Eternal life, eternal servitude. His loyalty was not born of respect or admiration but by force, an irrevocable deal he wished would end.

The quiet creak of the house enveloped him as his gaze drifted toward the closed bedroom door. He had glanced back at élise before leaving the room; their connection was real and raw.

Despite her fear, she had trusted him to see her body, trusting him to do nothing more.

Her silence spoke louder than any words.

She hadn’t expected him to follow her request. His blood began to boil again at the notion and evidence of abuse in her life.

He swallowed the growing lump in his throat and relaxed his fist to calm himself.

”Two weeks,” he whispered and focused his thoughts. But the words were hollow. If he fell in love or had already fallen, could he pull himself away at the end of two weeks?

The thought lingered, tantalizing and dangerous, paralyzing him between two equally difficult futures: a life where she resented him for leaving and a life where she suffered for him staying.

He had lived this story before, watching Amée turn gray and fragile while he remained untouched by time. Amée’s gaze had brought him joy. Her laughter was his strength. He had witnessed her light fade at arm’s length, and in its absence, he’d been left in endless shadow.

Staying meant condemning élise to Amée’s fate, and he wouldn’t allow it.

élise would live, thrive, and die in peace, never tethered to his curse.

If he loved her, he had to leave after two weeks and never return.

There was no other way. He thought of the neighbor family down the street; he’d invite them over—they had a son her age. They were good people.

He closed his eyes, imagining élise in his Charonne home—her laughter filling the house, her hands tending the garden in the spring, her face framed by sunlight streaming through the windows.

She deserved a life unshackled by fear, a life free to bloom.

He glanced at the floorboards beneath the table, a spot worn smoother than the rest.

He knelt, his hands brushing over the worn wood.

Beneath it lay centuries’ worth of gold and the deeds to his Charonne and Chartreuse estates.

He had carried them through wars and dark nights, but now, for the first time, he felt their true purpose.

They were not for him—they were for her.

The gold would last much longer than the three years he told her.

He would leave her everything but himself.

He would pour the weight of his years into the next two weeks, equipping her with every tool she needed to build a life without him. Even if it meant carving out pieces of his own heart to leave behind, he would ensure she had everything she needed.

His throat tightened as he imagined saying goodbye.

Would she plead with him to stay? Would she see through his calm facade to the sorrow that would surely linger in his eyes?

He exhaled slowly, willing his resolve to harden.

He would make her understand that this life—this house, this freedom—was for her. It was never meant to include him.

His mind emptied as he shifted to the sofa. He slipped off his boots and pulled his coat around him like a blanket. The fire crackled as he adjusted his head in the crook of his arm. For the first time that night, the tight chains of indecision did not wrap around his chest.

“One day,” he whispered, allowing some of his thoughts to escape.

He might return to find her grave nestled among the wildflowers, her grandchildren playing beneath the trees she had planted.

Perhaps her name would linger, spoken with love by those who carried her fire.

It was a hope as fragile as it was bittersweet, but it was the only gift he could leave her.

His gaze drifted from the bedroom door to the flames as though they might burn away the ache in his chest. Perhaps, in letting her go, he might find a shred of redemption for his past sins and give her the life she deserved. And that, he decided, would have to be enough for her, if not for him.