Page 33 of Even Angels fall
Just for good measure, I take a look at what they are doing. It’s hand-to-hand combat, and I know the technique they’re teaching—have for years—so I tune them out for a while. It’s not going to teach me anything about the way they fight.
If I look at them, I’m going to get even more antsy because I’m not there with them, demonstrating how it is supposed to be done, because I looked long enough to see a good portion of them are doing it wrong.
I close my fist a few times before the need to go over there overtakes me.
I need to breathe and focus on Cassiopé.
“Have you ever been outside of Paris?” I ask her absentmindedly.
“Oh, yes, I’ve visited Lyon and Cannes. I even went to London and Berlin once. It was amazing.”
As she tells me how beautiful each of the cities was, I start to imagine, and my brain conjures things I’m dying to visit.
One day.
When all of this is over.
18
Angélique
After some time spent under the sun, looking sideways at the warriors training, I’m bored again.
I’m not going to say anything, though, because Cassiopé looks like she’s living her best life.
I now know everything I need to know about Fabio; the love of Cassiopé’s life.
Or the crush of a lifetime.
I’m not bursting her bubble, but I’m pretty sure Fabio prefers men by the way he admires the way the other warriors move as they spar.
She’ll realize at some point, but I’m not going to tell her, or at least not now.
We’re still sitting on the ground, and I see his shadow before I hear Brice’s voice.
“He wants to see you,” he tells me in a curt voice before addressing his daughter in a much softer voice, “Sweetie, you’re going to burn if you stay too long under the sun.”
He’s not wrong. I think I already got a little sunburned, but that’s not what makes me pleased.
If I had known that taking the sun—and maybe taking a look at his warriors, too—would be what made Elhyor break, I would have done it a lot sooner.
I conceal my smile as much as I can and follow Brice inside.
“Golden door,” he says without so much of a glance at me.
All he can see is his daughter, who—even if she spent most of the time outside under the protection of shadows—is now slightly red from the sun.
I’m a bit the same, but no one is going to fret about it.
I knock on the gaudy thing that is Elhyor’s door when I arrive, even if the door is ajar.
“Come in,” Elhyor says without asking who it is.
I guess he’s used to giving orders and being obeyed, so in his mind, there is no reason I wouldn’t come running to him when he asked. No, demanded.
“What is it?” I ask before letting him talk.
I don’t know what prompts me to push his buttons—I’d learned to keep quiet in Versailles—but it’s like I chase the glint that appears in his eyes each time I say something that can be perceived as a challenge.
