“Porses fottena seles.” The foreign words were rough, whispered. “Nicolas heard you in the woods. It’s why your parents had youout there to begin with, why you wouldn’t speak when we came for you. Why you didn’t scream in protest.”
He took it in, angry and protective and utterly devastated.
“And he knows?” Quinn asked sharply, almost accusatory. “He knows about the curse, and what it does? What it’s done to him?”
When I nodded, Quinn’s fists clenched so hard they shook. His whole body was riddled with vibrating tension as he mulled over my explanation.
“Nic, you bloody—” he cut himself off, having the wits to curse the rest in Hadrian. “He knows, and he still… Why wouldn’t he tell me? Does he not believe he can trust me, his dearest friend? Does he think I would judge him? That I would take action without his command? And you! Gods, I should have known. I should have seen…”
Then his eyes widened. A hand moved to his chest. He stood there a moment, appearing to measure the beating of his heart. I watched him guardedly, unsure of where his thoughts had led him. He touched his throat, then his ears.
“I’ve never…” he started, dark eyes falling to where I sat. “I haven’t heard your voice.”
“No,”I confirmed.“I’ve always been very careful around you.”
Quinn laughed, but it was bitter, bordering on hysterical. He spun around, both hands falling on top of his head. “Gods, but it would have been simpler if you weren’t. No honorable man should feel the way I do.”
My lips parted at the admission of his feelings. It was hardly a romantic confession, as bitter as he sounded. When he looked at me again, his hysteria softened into understanding.
“A son.” He wore his horror plainly. “Gods. Alana.”
Quinn dropped to his knees in front of me. His hands hesitated near mine.
“I don’t know what to say.” A rare admission from an otherwise voluble man.
There was nothing he could offer to spare me the torment, but to see his anguish, to know he was as lost as I was…it brought a semblance of comfort. He took his hair down, running his fingers through it, as his thoughts raced.
Then he paused, turning to face me. “If you bear a son, I swear on my name I will sing to him in your stead.”
I stared at the viscount, my chest tightening from the overwhelming grief and gratitude that clashed within. Quinn took my hand and bowed his head.
“If you write to him, I will read it aloud. I will teach him signs before he can speak; I’ll teach him the lullabies my mother sang to me, tell him they’re from you. Every achievement, every scrape and bruise, every moment he needs to hear his mother’s voice… Let me be your words, Alana. He will never doubt for even a moment that you love him.”
Quinn tilted his head up at me. My tears made good on their threat, falling hot and fast down my cheeks.
How could he possibly offer to do such a thing?
I took back my hand. As lovely a thought as it was, it was far too much to ask of him. Of anyone. He’d be stepping in as a third parent, another half to fulfill what I couldn’t.
“Help me,”I signed.“Get me out of here, Quinn.”
Quinn jerked back as though I’d struck him, his hand finding the cold marble of a garden statue for balance. The stone lion smiled with an open mouth, laughing in mockery.
“Alana…” he breathed, then found some strength in his next words: “What do you want from me, my Nightingale?”
There was no darkness to him, not like how he’d become when I’d asked him to poison Duke Augustine. Only a frightened boy looked back at me.
My hands moved frantically, too fast for him to follow at first.
Understanding crashed over him. “You’re asking me to…to elope with you?”
His voice cracked. I swallowed my own heartbeat, nodding steadily. Desire and despair battled across his features before he crushed it all back down.
“You know I can’t do that.”
I pushed myself from the ground and timidly approached the viscount. My hands reached forward, stopping when I heard his breath catch. I recoiled, careful with my next words.
“It’s not only the child. It’s Nicolas. After what he did to the Baldens, I see him differently. I know what he’scapable of, that he can becold and cruel.And his desire for me? It sickens me. Nothing between us is real or chosen. I don’t want my first time to be…”I paused, hoping he’d understand why I couldn’t finish that statement.
