Page 7

A Flicker in the Dark

The woman who had been speaking approached him under the oil lamplight softly swaying above.

Its warm rays cast a marble glow over her bare arms and blushed her cheeks, as if an angel had kissed them.

And her eyes were as dark as the woman he had once married.

Her eyes reminded him of the first life he’d once cherished.

“Amée?” he whispered. His voice broke from the weight of memory and fully lost in the past.

Her eyes hardened, and the warmth left her face. “My name is élise. You’ll do well to remember that, stranger.” Her voice was not as soft or feathery as Amée’s, yet it sounded wounded, holding a certain sultry, dangerous allure.

Rollant flinched, reality snapping in, and he wondered how long it had been since he had said Amée’s name aloud. He swallowed the ghost of guilt. It had been at least a century.

“I will remember,” he replied, tracing her face with his gaze.

Her features were worn, too worn for her age.

Yet she possessed a raw kind of beauty that defied expectation—a beauty forged from survival and determination to hope.

Vitality lived in her expression. Her hair, as dark as ink, was loosely tied in a defiant red scarf, with falling strands that caught the light of the oil lamp.

Her dress was plain but carefully mended.

Each stitch was a testament that though she was not of wealth, she refused to fall and made each hardship polish her strength.

She was indeed a flame in the dark. It was no wonder the people gave such a response to her fiery speech.

It was no wonder he had to enter the bakery from the streets to see who spoke such empowered words.

élise sized him up; her eyes scanned him from head to toe. “You’re well-nourished, I might say,” she said and poked him in the chest as she rounded him like prey. He stood still and let her measure him as he did her.

She squeezed his bicep, raising an eyebrow. “A former soldier, I presume?”

He chuckled and nodded. “I fought for the Americas and ended my service with His Majesty’s Navy just this past month,” he lied.

The words slipped through his teeth with ease.

Lies were almost second nature, unlike his time in the Second Crusade.

He had been a man of honor, but after watching love die and trust shatter, he realized lies were necessary.

élise crossed her arms. “Lots of men claim they were sailors.” Skepticism curled her lips and set in her gaze.

He leaned in slightly, lowering his voice as though letting her in on a secret. “The sea’s a cruel mistress. Only a few return to speak of her—those who survive have the scars to prove it. What would you like to know to prove the truth?”

She met his gaze, and he could see the doubt slipping away as curiosity took it’s place.

“Anything,” she said with a dismissive wave.

She was not hostile or friendly; her responses reflected someone who had learned to live between civility and suspicion.

“Well,” he said and leaned back. “I was stationed aboard the Vaisseau Ville de Paris . We shipped out in ’81 under the command of Admiral de Grasse, and fought the British Royal fleet in the campaign off of the Chesapeake Bay.

” He only needed to sound convincing to turn a lie into a believable truth.

“Hmm,” she murmured, still with questions in her eyes.

He pressed on, seeing she was not yet satisfied.

“We escorted supplies and troops for General Washington of the colonies and fought off the British frigates. I earned my salt with the HMS Terrible ; a fierce battle, it was,” he said, thankful he had paid attention to the Minister of the Navy’s reports all those years ago.

He gazed off with a pause, letting the weight of the false memory sink in.

To bring an air of authenticity to his eyes, he thought of Arnoul putting a hole in his neck and he returning the same and forever changing his fate.

She glanced at the other men in the room. Their nods of approval told him she was leaning toward belief.

Rollant continued for their benefit and to seal his credibility, pushing Arnoul away from thought.

His voice lowered again. “The sea teaches patience in a way I’ve never been taught before.

To survive, you watch the horizon for threats.

” His gaze slid to her. “Much like you, watching for wolves in your den,” he said, complimenting her.

She received it with a soft smile, and something flickered in her eyes for a temporary pause in time, something warm and uniquely hers.

He fought the pull of it and remembered the sailor character he was portraying.

“Is there anything else you’d like to know?” he asked with a charming, practiced smolder.

She scoffed but couldn’t hide her curiosity.

Glancing again at the men to his right, she straightened her back.

With her gaze averted, he kept his eyes on her.

He traced the curve of her high cheekbones and delicate nose above her full rosebud lips—carrying both the promise of a velvet touch and the risk of thorns.

As soon as his gaze dropped, he saw a bruise peeking beneath the shoulder strap of her shirt.

A bluish-purple stain marred her skin and told a story she wouldn’t share.

As if sensing his gaze, her eyes snapped back to his, and she tugged the strap to cover the bruise. It was a telling indication that someone had made the bruise, not by accident.

He chewed his lip at the many women he had seen beat over the years and remembered how a fire of righteous anger burned in his chest at each injustice.

But he forced himself to remain still before élise by reminding himself he was only there for a month to answer the king’s request, and he would not become entangled in these people’s lives.

There was a reason why he lived in the attic of the palace.

It was easy up there to pass the days and no longer care.

She shifted uncomfortably under his silent stare with shoulders drooping. “So, who is this Amée woman you spoke of?” she asked, tilting her head back with shadowed eyes. Her voice hardened, likely to shield herself from anything he might say.

“Amée,” he whispered. The name hit him hard out of his trance.

He wished élise hadn’t asked about his late wife.

The name still tasted like ash on his tongue after centuries.

The wound in his heart had never healed.

Rollant blinked, forcing himself to look away from élise.

His heart clenched, not just from the memory but from the cruel realization that no matter how deeply he cared, he would always be alone.

“Someone I once loved and lost,” he answered her. His tone gave away more depth than he intended.

élise’s face softened for a moment before she scoffed with a smirk. “You think me a fool? You are, but what? Twenty-five years at most? What loss could you possibly know?”

The corner of his mouth curled up in sorrow as he remembered his Amée and sweet Cateline. His gaze turned inward. “Yes, twenty-six, but it is still a time capable of great loss.”

élise shifted her weight again, regret flashing across her features. Her tongue swept across her plump bottom lip as if wishing to recall her words. She sighed and dropped her arms. “I am sorry, Monsieur. I didn’t mean to offend.”

“No apology is needed,” he whispered. He had seen Amée and Cateline from afar, watched them grow, but never dared to hold them until Amée asked to die in his arms once she had fallen ill in her advanced age.

It was then he knew the curse was real, watching Amée take her last breath in his embrace.

They had lived long lives without him. The Black Death swept through a hundred years later and took all of his descendants with it.

He buried them on his land, isolated and hidden in the Chartreuse mountains.

Every time he returned to his first home, he brought bags of flowers to place over their graves and roses for Amée.

“You have tearful eyes at her memory,” élise whispered and took a small step closer.

“It’s best not to let the men here see them.

” She wrapped herself in her arms and loosened the shield she had put up.

“I truly apologize for mocking your lost love,” she spoke in a hushed tone.

“Most men do not care about their women—not the sailors, anyway. It’s always the next port, the next conquest.”

Rollant blinked back the sting of pending tears. He had not felt the urge to cry in more years than he could count. He pushed those memories down where he kept them.

“You are too kind, Madame,” he said, returning to the present, though a bitterness coated the edge of his expression. But his voice remained warm in the character of a common former naval soldier.

Her eyes turned down. “Mademoiselle,” she whispered with a blush rising on her cheeks.

“Mademoiselle,” he repeated, barely hearing her. She wasn’t married.

They locked eyes briefly before élise shifted, putting space between them as though remembering he was a stranger. He scanned the room, and a few men were looking his way and speaking behind cupped hands.

“Don’t mind them. They are just wondering who you are. Never seen you before,” she said.

“Well, to further ease their worry,” Rollant said.

“You can tell them I am from Nice,” Rollant said.

The truth sat easier on his lips. He was born in the post-Roman town when the homes were still made of stacked stone with pitch roofs.

He came from a long line of knights and soldiers in medieval Provence.

His family surname was reminiscent of the mountains where his family had forged deep roots: Montvieux, “old mountain.”

élise sighed again with a smile, releasing some tension between them. “You are very observant. We don’t trust newcomers easily, but if you seek freedom, then you are one of us—until proven otherwise.”

“I have craved freedom for a long time,” he said, biting back the pain that rose inside of him as he thought of every painful death he had suffered and every rebirth. Freedom was a fleeting, unattainable dream.

“Happy to hear it,” she said and fidgeted with the sleeves of her shirt. “What is your name, Monsieur, since you know mine?”

Rollant inclined his head as the heat of embarrassment kissed his cheeks. He had been rude and forgotten to introduce himself.

“Rollant Montvieux.”

He dropped the “de” from his name to not signify his noble origins and draw suspicions.

Her eyebrow lifted. “Rollant, not Roland?” she asked with a coy smile. “Your parents must have had a fondness for Old France,” she said.

“They passed when I was a boy, so I could not ask them.”

Her smile softened, and a dark hue flashed in her eyes. “My mother also passed when I was young. My father did not want me, so I was sent to live with my aunt.” She studied him as if she wanted him to speak, but he did not know what to say to her.

They stood in silence with the weight of shared loss hanging between them. Were they trading scars? Rollant straightened up. He knew not to trust these quiet moments—they led to attachment, to weakness, to pain.

“Do I pass your check?” he asked, a polite smile returning as if polishing armor.

Her eyes ran over his face and broad chest, and she returned his gaze with a small, lighthearted smile. “For now.”

He thought her smile was meant to be playful, but there was a hidden warmth behind it, something genuine that stirred a place in him long frozen.

It was nothing like the raw intensity he had felt for Amée, but there was a familiarity—a spark of life where there had been only emptiness for so long.

It stirred his heart with a soft beat of light, a flicker in the darkness that had claimed him for centuries—a dangerous light.

He laughed in surprise at himself. Six hundred years, and he thought he had seen it all, felt it all.

But she—élise—was different. He had seen pretty girls before and even flirted once or twice, but it always ended the same.

They aged. They died. And he remained ageless with empty arms, forever separated by the sorceress’ curse. His laugh faded.

“What is so funny, Rollant?” élise asked with eyes lit with the fire of the speech she had just given.

His smile didn’t reach his eyes. “My apologies, Mademoiselle. You have taken my words from me,” he said, wrestling with the smile that wanted to grow.

“When is your next meeting?” he asked, steadying himself.

“In a fortnight,” she said. Her eyes dulled. It was most likely a lie.

“Here?” he asked.

She nodded.

“I’ll see you then,” he said with an even-tempered voice and backed away from her. Something tugged at his chest, urging him to stay, as he turned to go. But he reasoned with it and forced himself to the street.

She would age. She would die, just like everyone else. Her life would be like the morning dew in his, and he wouldn’t be in the city long enough to care what happened to her with the bruise on her shoulder or what became of her speech.

He wouldn’t let himself.

Yet, as he disappeared down the Rue de Charonne, the memory of élise’s smile lingered. He shook his head to clear his mind of whatever feelings had overcome him while inside.

“Of all people,” he muttered. “Why her? Why now?”

He shut his eyes tight, wishing to banish the image of élise’s face, which he could see clearly, and replace it with Amée’s since it had been reduced to a blurred outline. He swallowed the lump in his throat and wanted to feel nothing again.

He determined he would only be there as long as necessary to fulfill the King’s command and nothing more.

élise was just another pretty face, and Amée was his love.

The one he longed for. The one who loved him for all forty years after he returned home from the Second Crusade and deprived her of any semblance of a normal life.

He palmed his face, the temporary giddiness in his heart replaced with a solemn, bitter sense of duty.

“Forget élise,” he whispered. He shoved his hands in his coat pockets and headed to the inn up the street, chin down and walking with a forward lean, fighting against the harsh winter winds.

He cleared his mind and focused on the chanting and the people’s response to the crisis.

He had witnessed the French people were indeed restless, and only time would tell if they would act on rebellious words or seek revolution.

He had a month to gain their trust and determine when the rumors would come to fruition.