Where was Gregory? He’d be terrified. The boy was too young for war. Too young for pants, it seemed some days. The lad should still be sporting skirts and hovering at his mother’s knee. Not dying on a battlefield.
Atlas clutched his musket. Not dead yet. At least not his body. A bit more life leaked out of his eyes every damn day. And when the boy looked so much like Atlas’s brothers, that draining light hurt in five different ways. One searing stab for Gregory himself, and four more for Raph, Zander, Drew, Theo. All of whom Atlas could well imagine at his side on the smoky battlefield. Dying.
Better Atlas than them.
A bullet whizzed past his ear.
“Bloody hell.” Atlas threw himself against the wall beside the gate. Where was Gregory? A pain, bright at his neck. He reached up. Wet. Fingers red, the prettiest shade. He’d been nicked by that flying bullet. Not badly. He’d survive. For now. If he didn’t get hit with larger more well-aimed fodder. The wooden gate rumbled beneath the French attack, and Atlas threw his weight at it once more, alongside the others. They were not men now. They were boulders. They must be or?—
The gate gave way, flew open, and a river of snarling, fear-hardened men and killing bayonet points streamed inside.
Death had come. And where was Gregory? Where were Atlas’s brothers? Where was his future? Where was his own damn heart? Where was the beauty of the world he’d been born into?
The sounds of battle roared around him, through him, and he acted, worked, without conscious thought alongside the others—slicing, not getting sliced in return. MacDonell’s voice cut through the chaos, demanding control, inspiring it, as he fought through the writing mass of conflict toward the gate, officers at his side. It must be closed. The gate must be closed. Atlas pushed toward them—slicing, ignoring the new shreds in his own body—grasped the edge of the door with other determined fingers beaten raw and bloody. He threw hisshoulder into it. His soul. Had he left that in the wooden gate, then?
The slam of wood against stone. Graham snapped the wooden plank in place. Locked now. French forces still inside. Atlas turned to face them, blood trickling down his neck, soul lost to the wooden gate behind him.
A single note, sweet and sad at the same time, wavered through the darkness of Clara’s sleep. Not the deep darkness of a body truly exhausted, a body only the penetrating light of dawn can wake. She slept light as a breeze, and that single note woke her.
She sat upright, rolling to a curved position, hugging her knees to her chest and turning her head toward the curtain that separated the sleeping area from the small nook that held the pianoforte. The firelight-abandoned corner where Atlas usually slept—empty.
Had he made that note?
Her feet hit the floor, the threadbare rug not enough to keep her toes from feeling the December chill. What time was it? A full moon shone like a gold coin in the window. She uncurled her body to stand, rubbing the heel of her hand into one sleepy eye.
Another note. Sweet and sad and making her jump. The pianoforte. She was awake now, all the hazy sleep jolted from her body. She pressed her hand flat against her racing heart and paced to the curtain that divided the room, moved just beyond that veil, and clutched its velvet edge. Moonlight spilled through the window here, too, and Atlas sat tall and straight at the pianoforte, eyes closed, hands hovering over the keys. His body rigid as if he forced himself to hold an unnatural posture, to exist frozen always on the cusp of sound and music but never fallinginto it. Had those two lost notes been purposeful or the product of a weary body falling out of its intended space?
“Atlas?” She took two hesitant steps toward the instrument, toward him.
And his eyes flew open. “Clara. Did I wake you?” Those blue depths swam in sadness.
Oh. She decimated the distance between them, rounding the pianoforte and sitting beside him in the little space on the open bench. She had to angle her body sideways, wrap an arm around his back, and press her front against his side. She wrapped his hand in hers and rested them on his thigh, rested her chin on his shoulder. She touched him everywhere she could and all at once because she’d lost so much time touching him. Weeks where she’d allowed it only with another nearby, denying herself, denying him. But he needed touch, needed another human soul to tether him. She’d deny him no longer.
She pressed a kiss to his shoulder. “What has happened?”
He brushed a strand of hair away from her face, hooked it behind her ear, his gaze following the movement with tender care. “Go back to sleep. I did not wish to wake you.”
But the wordwakesounded like it should have beenworry.
“What has happened?” Her voice firm this time. She would not be put aside, and she knew how to, with the slide of softness into her demand, get wounded boys to open up, to trust.
He sighed, and his neck gave out, melting into a curve as his head fell forward. The posture did not last long, and when he lifted his head a heavy inhalation later, he wore a smile, and he changed their hands, cupping hers instead, patting the top of one. “Nothing but a nightmare. Those are common enough. Now, will you return to bed, or will I have to carry you there?”
“A nightmare is not nothing. I detest them. One in particular. It used to plague me before you brought me here. A small room growing smaller. No doors or windows. Me trapped inside. Itkeeps shrinking until it becomes a box made by my own hands.” She shivered. “Do you often have them? Nightmares?”
He froze once more, becoming the statue he’d been when she’d discovered him posed over the pianoforte in what seemed an eternal musical limbo. Then he broke eternity with a single head nod.
Oh. That nod ripped through her, a violent thing for a movement so small, and she threw her arms around his neck, buried her face there.
He stiffened. “It… it’s fine, Clara. I’m well. No need to worry yourself. I try not to wake you when I have them. I’ll be more careful in the future.” His arms came around her, and she knew—he would pick her up, carry her like a babe to the bed and be done with the conversation. With her worry. With her.
“No.” She broke his hold and jerked away from him, toppling backward off the bench. He caught her, one strong arm banded around her waist, righting her, setting her steady at his side once more.
“No…?” He peered down at her through the moonlight, wary.
“No, you are not fine. And yes, Iwillworry. How often do you have the nightmares?”
He scrubbed at his face. “It hardly matters.”
