Chapter 283: All the love 2

MARGAUX

"Am I?" I held out the letter to him. "Read this. Read what I wrote to him."

He snatched the paper from my hand, his fingers tearing at the folds. He unfolded the pages with shaking hands, his eyes scanning the words I had written, moving back and forth across the lines as he absorbed my explanation of the threads, of my choice to break his neck rather than let fate do worse.

When he finished, he looked up at me, the paper crumpling slightly in his grip. "Your threads turned gold," he repeated, his voice hollow.

"You know what that means," I replied. "It is the same thread of fate that you shared with Theodore. You know what happens when that color appears. I cannot sit and let this happen."

He flinched as if I had struck him, his shoulders hunching forward. "That’s not fair," he whispered.

"Isn’t it?" I asked. "If you had known, Laurent. If you had this stupid sight that I have and you had seen that thread turn gold between you and Theodore before the end came, what would you have done? Would you have let him walk into that death? Would you have waited patiently for fate to take him from you, or would you have moved heaven and earth to change the outcome?"

Laurent’s jaw tightened, a muscle jumping there. "That’s not fair," he said again, louder this time. "I did not know. I cannot hold what has shattered. Theodore was different. The circumstances were different. You don’t know that the gold means what you think it means. You don’t know if leaving now will be the reason for his death, if it will even come to pass the way you believe."

"And you don’t know that it won’t," I countered. "But you know what your answer would be. Exactly what I’m doing now. You would have done anything to keep him breathing, even if it meant breaking your own heart to do it."

Laurent turned away from me, his hand coming up to press against his mouth. He stood over Étienne’s body, his back heaving with silent breaths, and I watched him wrestle with the ghost of his own past, with the memory of the man he had loved and lost to violence.

"Étienne will never forgive me," he muttered against his palm. "If I help you leave, if I let you walk out of here after what you’ve done, he will never forgive me when he wakes up."

"I am sos osrry, but I can live with that," I said softly. "At least until I find a way to change what is coming. Until I stop this war before it starts."

Laurent spun back to face me. "You think you can stop your father? You think you can walk into his camp, into that strange friend of yours’ web, and somehow convince them to lay down their arms? You’re walking into the lion’s den, Margaux. You’re giving them exactly what they want. You."

"Maybe," I allowed. "But I’m also the only one who can reach him. My father will have to listen to me. And Chris... Chris wants me, not Étienne. If I give myself to them, if I play the role of the rescued daughter, I can buy time. I can change the narrative. I can stop the march before it reaches these walls. Change fate."

"And if you can’t?"

"Then I die trying," I stated simply. "But Étienne remains here, safe, untouched by whatever fate had planned for him on that battlefield. He remains whole."

Laurent shook his head, his eyes closing. "This is madness."

"My mother was cruel," I said suddenly, my voice dropping. "She was cold and calculating, and she used me as a pawn in her games until the day she died. But I loved her, Laurent. I loved her because she was my mother, and because some part of me understood that everything she did, she did because she thought it would keep her safe, keep her powerful, keep her alive in a world that wanted her dead. And in some twisted way, she loved me regardless of everything. I cannot lose another person. I cannot stand by and watch the man I love, and I have lost once to senseless violence, be taken from me by the same violence that took everything else a second time."

I stepped closer to him, close enough that I could smell the grief on his skin, sharp and metallic. "I would like to carry my mother’s body with me," I added. "She should be buried in Beaumont soil, not here. I need to take her home too."

Laurent’s eyes opened, and he looked at me with an expression I could not read. "I haven’t agreed to anything," he pointed out.

"No," I agreed. "You haven’t. So what will you do, Beta Laurent? Will you prove my pack right? Will you make me a prisoner here, lock me in a cell, and show the world that Valcourt holds its women against their will? Or will you let me do what I believe is right for myself and for the man that I love?"

The silence stretched between us, taut and vibrating with tension. Laurent looked at Étienne again, his expression softening into something devastated, and I saw his hand twitch toward his friend’s face before he pulled it back.

"This will destroy him," he warned me. "When he wakes up, and he realizes what you did, what you chose, it will break something in him that I don’t know if I can fix."

"I can live with that," I replied. "As long as he is alive to be broken. As long as he is alive to hate me. I can live with his hatred, Laurent. I cannot live with his death."

Laurent picked up the letter from where he had dropped it on the bed. He smoothed out the wrinkles, his thumb tracing over the words I had written, and he stood there for a long time, staring at the paper without seeing it.

"I don’t intend to abandon him," I continued, filling the silence. "I will come back. I swear it on my life and on my mother’s grave. I just need to end this, and for me to change fate, to change this particular fate, I have to go back home. I have to be the one to walk into the fire so that he doesn’t have to. I know it in my heart."

Laurent’s shoulders dropped, the fight draining out of him in a visible wave. He looked suddenly older, worn down by the weight of the choices being forced on him. He folded the letter carefully and tucked it into his pocket, not returning it to me.

"There’s a car in the east garage," he said finally, his voice rough and quiet. "A black sedan, nondescript. Keys are in the office. I’ll have them bring your mother’s casket."

I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding, my knees weakening with relief. "Thank you."

"Don’t thank me," he snapped, his eyes flashing with renewed anger. "I’m not doing this for you. I’m doing this because I know what it means to love someone enough to destroy yourself for them. I’m doing this because I recognize that look in your eye, the look that says you’d burn the world down if it meant keeping him breathing. I’ve seen that look in the mirror."

He stepped closer to me, his finger jabbing toward my chest. "But if you don’t come back," he warned, his voice dropping to a lethal whisper, "if you leave him like this and you don’t return to fix what you’ve broken, I will hunt you down myself. I will drag you back here by your hair. Do you understand me?"

"I understand," I answered, and I meant it.

Laurent turned away, his hand coming up to wipe at his eyes. "Go," he ordered. "Before I change my mind. Before I remember that I’m supposed to be the responsible one, the one who protects him from threats, even when the threat is wearing his ring."

I picked up my bag and slung it over my shoulder. I walked to the bed one last time and leaned down, pressing a kiss to Étienne’s cold forehead, lingering there for a moment to memorize the feel of his skin beneath my lips.

"I’ll be back," I promised him, though he could not hear. "Wait for me."

Then I straightened, squared my shoulders, and walked toward the door. Laurent did not turn to watch me leave, but as I pulled the door closed behind me, I heard him whisper something to the empty room, a prayer or a goodbye. I was not sure which.

I walked down the hallway with steady steps, my heart beating a frantic rhythm against my ribs, and I did not look back.