"Anatole."
He was on his feet, leaning over her, his hand on her face. "I'm here."
"How long?"
"A day."
"That’s all?" Her voice was a thread, thin and worn.
Before he could answer, she arched against the pillows, a sound escaping her that was closer to a keen than a scream, and her hand clenched around his with a strength the fever shouldn't have left her. He held on. He held on and spoke her name into the dark cabin while the curse did its worst. The night stretched out ahead of them, long and terrible and full of the kind of darkness that broke everything it touched.
He kept his hope alive her, even in the darkest of hours.
He would keep hoping until there wasn’t a breath left in her body.
And then he would join her in death.
Chapter Nineteen
JEANNE
The fever dreamed her. It had taken her body and was using it to dream its own dreams, and she was along for the passage, a passenger in her own skin while the curse did its work.
She was in the vineyard.
Not the real vineyard, the one with the dead vines and the cracked soil and her father's debts rotting the roots. This was the vineyard as it should have been, as it had been while her mother was alive. Green and heavy with fruit, the grapes fat and dark on the vine, the air thick with the smell of sun-warmed earth and growing things. Jeanne stood between the rows and the soil was cool beneath her bare feet and somewhere in the distance, Marc was laughing.
She turned toward the sound and he was there, leaning against the stone wall at the edge of the property, young and whole, squinting against the light. He was wearing the blue shirt she'd mended twice.
"You look terrible," he said.
"I'm dying."
"I know. I've been watching." He picked a grape from the vine and ate it. "You always had to do things the hard way."
"Marc." Her voice cracked on his name. "I'm so sorry. I should have gone more willingly. You didn’t have to die.”
"Stop." He held up a hand. "I didn't come here to talk about that. I came to ask you a question."
"You didn't come here at all. You're the fever."
"I'm the fever using the shape of your brother because your mind needs a face to talk to. Does the distinction matter?" He took another grape. "Here's my question. When Father sold you, what did you lose?"
She stared at him. The vineyard hummed around them, insects in the vines, wind in the leaves, the particular drone of a summer afternoon that she hadn't heard since she was little.
