“What are you going to do?”
His attention wanders to the house. “Visit my past.”
“But it’s night. And there’s no electricity.”
He presses his lips together as though taking both factors under consideration. “I’ll use my phone’s flashlight.” And then he backs up, takes the shovel Adrien’s finished with and the second bucket, and crunches back toward the shed.
“I’m sorry about what I said to you, Gaëlle. I didn’t know he tried to hurt you.” Guilt crinkles the outer corners of Adrien’s eyes. “I didn’t know he was cursed by my mother’s leaf—”
I touch his sleeve. “It’s not your fault.”
His red-rimmed eyes meet mine.
“It’s not,” I repeat.
“She’s right, Adrien.” I can’t see Gaëlle’s expression since I’m blinded by the snowmobile’s headlights, but I hear her sigh. “It wasn’t Camille’s fault either, and it devastates me to think she lived with so much guilt. That she died because of it.”
“Why did Maman blame herself?” Adrien’s gaze sinks to the rectangular ochre patch next to his boots.
It wouldn’t take a forensic specialist to guess foul play occurred in this deserted field. Thankfully, it’s private property. Plus, it’ll surely snow again soon.
“Her piece caused a fire to spark on the pier. She was with Amandine, Rémy—I mean, Slate—and his parents when it started,” Papa says as Slate’s darkened figure emerges from the shed. “Camille picked up little Rémy and ran him to safety while Amandine tried to corral people. Eugenia went straight for the flames. And Oscar went after her.”
Even though he’s steeped in night, I notice Slate flinch, and my heart tightens. I almost go to him, but what exactly am I going to do? Hug him like I did after he climbed out of the well? That had been awkward. Slate isn’t my friend. If he were, I wouldn’t be worried about him outing Papa to the police. Or am I just trying to distract myself from other confusing feelings?
Slate bristles. “So, my parents ran into the fire instead of staying with their son.”
“They thought they could fight the piece. They thought it might stop the fire. There werea lotof people on that pier.” Papa, too, sounds angry.
“What about me?”
“What about you, Slate?”
“Camille cared, but not my own parents . . .”
“They cared.”
He snorts. “Yeah, about magic.”
“They wanted to save you and Amandine and the whole of Brume.”
No one says anything for a moment.
“Was it also Camille who took me away from Brume?”
“No. She just got you out of the fire; I don’t know who swiped you off that pier. All I know is that Matthias was also there. He was a teenager at the time. Full of enthusiasm and feelings of invulnerability as the young usually possess. He tried to go help your parents, and in doing so, touched the piece. Camille raced back into the flames and managed to get him out alive. She’d originally thought it was a miracle—he had so few burns and no obvious side effect of the curse.”
I glance at Papa’s legs, his obvious side effect.
“For years, we watched him, and he seemed unscathed by the curse, but then he held his father’s hand over the tavern’s grill. Nolwenn got scared and sent him away. Distance doesn’t completely annul the curse’s influence, but it lessens its hold.”
“What?” I suck in too much cold air, and it burns as it travels into my lungs. “So, if you left Brume—”
“Brume is my home,ma chérie.”
“But if you left, could you walk again?”
He grips one of his useless thighs with a gloved hand. “With a limp.”
