“Why did you take me there?” She hadn’t meant to sound so accusing, but the horror of that wretched place had seeped into her, poison she desperately wanted out.
Jon turned to her. The look on his face told her he’d been expecting this. “I showed you the truth of that place—of this entire city. You cannot control monsters, Marie. They will devour as they please. And they will never have their fill. You heard the Baron, love. No two ways about it now. You either choose or—”
“Or what? Or what, Jon?”
His smile tipped at the corners, tinged in sadness. “You don’t want it to come to that, Marie.”Trust me,his eyes promised. “Do you understand now what I must do? I’m not going to break this city. It already did that on its own. But I am going to bring it to heel. To new order. The loa will have their war, Marie, whether you like it or not. Do you understand now?”
She realized that Jon had wanted to save her from herself as much as he wanted to save those men. This entire ordeal had been a lesson. And he would not teach it again.
“If your war comes to pass, my life would be over, in a way,” murmured Marie, her voice so small.
She hated herself in that moment. Every selfish thought, every privilege, every single comfort her cloistered life in the Quarter had afforded her now seemed like poison in her mouth. So very bitter on her tongue. And yet she’d said the words anyway.No lies,they had promised.
He reached for her, his dark hand upon her cheek. She leaned in. It was strange. She didn’t know how starved she had been for touch, forhistouch. But Jon’s smile only deepened, as if he knew something she did not. “Or maybe it would truly begin.”
And before he could say another word, Marie quickly pulled Jon to her and laid a searing kiss on his lips. His hands were immediately upon her, tangled in her hair, roving across her back, pulling her to him. When they finally pulled away, she snatched him back, parting his mouth greedily again with her tongue. She wanted more.
She wantedhim.
Jon tasted coffee-sweet, of old magic forbidden to her, of deliciously strange, unknown spells. Was this the taste of true freedom? Was this what Jacques had wanted for her all along—to dare to use her magic formore? To dare to be something more than her own selfish ambitions had ever allowed her. And Jon the Conjurer had showed her how. He would show hermore.
Jon began to speak, but Marie held a finger to his lips. “Careful, now,” she said. “Some spells just shouldn’t be broken.”
Later, they found each other in the darkness of his bayou house.
Marie wrapped her arms around Jon, pulling him viciously to her. Her back hit the wall, twisted wreaths of dried basil and heather tumbling into a mess upon the floor. But Jon did not seem to mind. His eyes were fixed only upon hers, burning amber in the shadow. Marie pulled him into another kiss, felt his tongue trace her lower lip, then dip into her mouth, pushing for entry. The rough underside of Jon’s hand worked its way along her dress, dipping beneath it to hurriedly push it up around her waist. Desire scorched her veins, burning away all other feeling.
The walls shook again, shuddering from the force of Marie’s body, and she wondered if his little bayou house had any hope of withstanding the night. Glass potion decanters on the shelvesbehind them fell loose, splintering across the floor into smoking puddles. Marie laughed against his smirking mouth, then quickly pushed him away. She flitted over to the bed against the far wall. It was a sad little thing, so different from her gilded accommodations in the Quarter—each side surrounded in tattered mosquito netting. But she did not care.
She wanted to forget the torture of that steamboat, to burn it from her memory. And if she could not? She wanted something else from the night that might replace it. She wanted Jon. Here. Now. Like this. But she couldn’t be rid of another feeling slowly gnawing at her from the inside. The gods wanted her to choose a side. For so long there had only ever been her side, alone. It was why she had sought Jon the Conjurer in the first place.
But tonight had changed that. Something had shifted inside of her in that terrible colosseum. She’d felt it. And whatever resolve she’d had left had completely shattered inside its hideous inner sanctum. Was Jon still simply a means to an end? Or was he the new path her heart might take? She had thought that she needed a teacher to give her forbidden magic, but she hadn’t bargained that he might become more to her. That it might not even be the magic that was forbidden between them. It wasthis—this dark feeling of desire. But it was also the warmth of his hand on hers as they drew the veves into the ground, the weight of his golden eyes on hers when they caught each other looking. He saw her, and she felt perfect in his gaze. Whole in a way she had never been. Never felt. They’d been careful with each other before. Careful to not cross this line.
But there was nothing careful between them now.
Jon came up behind her, snaking dark arms around her torso, then roving greedily over the neckline of her gown, the swell of her breasts. He squeezed lightly as he dipped his head down to plant a trail of kisses along her collarbone, sucking beneath her ear. Marie leaned into him, into that deliciously searing feeling slowly traveling down her flesh toward her center. Had it ever been like this with Jacques? The thought should have soiled everything—but it didn’t. Because with Jacques, lovemaking had been sweet but always expected. It had never been likethis.Forbidden.
“They still call you the Widow,” he whispered, tickling her ear. “Tell me, if your husband is gone, then why do you still wear his ring?”
Marie froze, and all thoughts of forbidden pleasure vanished in one cold second. He was testing her. Even now. Even like this. On her right hand, the small gold band glinted upon her ring finger. It was not like her other talismans—this ring that Jacques had placed upon her hand the day of their marriage held no real magic. Only the magic of a few words—a promise.I will never leave, nor forsake you.It was what they’d vowed to each other that day, standing under the crown of purple wisteria in her grand-mère’s garden before Father Antoine’s watchful eye. Before God’s. But words were spells, weren’t they? And now…now her being with Jon had brokenit.
“You have no right to ask me that, Jon.”
“I have every right, Marie.”
Marie took the ring from her finger, placing it carefully on the oak nightstand beside the bed, where it would wait for her until morning. She stood facing the window, the glass that gleamed silver in the moonlight, and slowly tugged at the shoulder straps of her gown until it fell around her ankles in a pool of ribbon and lace. She lifted her gaze to the window and caught his eyes in the glass slowly appraising her naked body. She knew that look—one of soft worship, of hushed wonder before the altar of a goddess who’d shown herself for the first time. It was the look of reverence all loa liked when they mounted the body of one of their faithful vessels, when the power of their divinity flowed through them with the violent surge of the ocean. And now Jon had lavished this worship onto her, and it gave her a heady sense of power that not even the divine could give her. She wanted this. She wantedhim.
Marie turned slowly, her fall of dark hair concealing part of her face—and she was glad for it. It might shroud that flicker of guilt she felt needling in her chest. But there was another feeling slowly building inside her now, a spark kindling to greater flame each second she spent alone with this man. She could want both, could she not? Even if she could have only one in the end. But she didn’t want to think of Jacques now, nor of the terrors ofLa Lune.
She pulled him into a slow kiss, relishing the taste of him, the hintof wonder and magic unknown to her. This man contained multitudes and mysteries. There was still so much he might teach her. So much they might accomplish together. Tonight had shown her that. But it was colored by the horror of that steamboat, the hideous stench of profanity that lurked in its depths.
“Make me forget tonight,” she murmured against the curve of his mouth. “Please.”
“No, there will be no forgetting, love. You will remember tonight.” A hint of mischief glinted in his eyes beneath the pain. “Always.”
“Another lesson?”
“Always,” he murmured again.
