The brave dog had the man’s sleeve between his shining teeth, hanging from his arm. “Get out, mutt!” the man shouted, cursing as he stumbled. Bernard did not get off. His back legs on the ground, he began to shake his head wildly from side to side, giving everything he had to disarm the man.
It wasn’t enough. I was only halfway across the room when the man pulled back his other arm, his hand covered in gold rings, the filth on his soul swirling as it rushed to strengthen his blow. Before I could stop him, he’d swung the fist at Bernard, knocking him loose. The dog slid across the floor, nails scraping on the stone, and crashed against one side of the fireplace.
“Bernard!” Charles screamed, his voice breaking as the dog yelped. The poor thing had been hurt, and he scrambled to rise again, but something was very wrong with his back legs.
Though the room was still lit by sunlight from the window and the fire, a sudden, familiar darkness flooded my inner sight.Rumple?I thought. It felt like him, but I didn’t have time to wonder what he was doing here. Charles was about to die, and there was something I could do to stop it.
“I should never have bought you that beast.” In a flash, the poker was lifted high again, and Charles was once again cowering.
But I’d had time to cross the room, and I jumped, spread-eagled in front of the man, and yelled, as loud as I could, “TITS!”
He blinked, taking in my naked body.
I yelled it again and grabbed them, just in case he hadn’t noticed. “Tits! Right here! Right above my lady garden!” I pointed to my hairy croissant, then back to my boobs, since he looked stunned, sort of like he might not put it all together.
“You’re, you’re—” he began to sputter, but Bernard had rallied. He was growling again, dragging his limp back legs across the room. Charles had used my distraction to move off the bed and was almost all the way to Bernard when his dad finally stopped staring at me and whirled to confront his naked son.
“I heard you were fucking boys,” the man spat, still livid, though his eyes kept darting back to the door now, like his anger had been redirected. “Two of your so-called friends rode horses into the ground to bring the gossip of my heir having his cock sucked in the middle of the feast hall.” He fell silent for a moment, staring at the door. Then, when Charles didn’t reply, he demanded, “Come with me. I’ll cut their lying tongues out for the offense against our family. Put on your clothing. You will bear witness.” His father snapped his fingers, like his son was a dog who had to obey.
Charles was holding Bernard by the neck, embracing him as the dog continued to snarl, though the sound was punctuated by soft whimpers. The poor thing was hurt.
Charles’s eyes landed on me. I was still standing with my arms wide, in between his father and where my boss had been on the bed. Emotions washed over his face: shame, fear, anger, and at last, acceptance. His lips trembled as he answered, “They weren’t insults. They were the truth.”
The air in the room turned to ice. “Whatdid you say?”
“I said they weren’t insults,” Charles replied, standing even taller, his cock flaccid, but everything else about him firm and strong. He was telling the truth, standing up to the bully, at last.
But I knew there was no defying the kind of evil that resided in his father, not without paying a terrible price. The shadows along the far wall thickened, as if death had entered the room on silent feet.
Charles stepped toward his father, his own feet quiet, though his voice was firmer now. “I am a lover of men, and women.” He nodded slightly toward me. “They may not be true friends, but they spoke the truth. I will not let them die to save my own hide. And I will not be ashamed of who I am, or who I love.”
His father drew in a labored breath, and he raised the poker to point to the wall that had gone hazy with shadows. “Stand there. Face the wall.”
Charles nodded once and strode over to the wall. “Bernard, stay.” His voice shook as he gave the command, but he did as his father had instructed.
So he didn’t see that the Comte du Périgord wasn’t raising the poker to kill his son, but the dog.
If I hadn’t cried out, he would have succeeded. But Charles heard my gasp, and before his father could strike the wounded dog again, he’d lunged for the hand that held it, wrenching the weapon away. His father’s slick-soled shoes slid on the stone floor. He lost his balance and pinwheeled away from his son, falling over the dog, who could not move fast enough to get away. Charles reached to catch him, but he was too late.
The sounds of a skull splitting with a sickening crunch on the side of the hearth made my stomach churn. The room went still, all of us frozen.
“Is he…” Charles rasped at last.
“I don’t know.” The poker had fallen to the floor and rolled to rest at my feet. I leaned over and picked it up, just in case.
But it was over. Charles dropped to his knees and stared at his dead father in horror.
I was looking at something else: the shadows by the wall creeping out toward the fallen man.Good,I thought. This guy had a one-way ticket to wherever bad dead guys went, and I kind of thought he deserved it.
Rumple had more or less made it clear that I had to help cleanse the world of evil, one agonizing process after another. But this guy had more or less killed himself. He’d fallen. It was an accident, right? I didn’t have to take on the weight of his evil.
Ugh.If I did, there wasn’t going to be an imaginary hammock in the universe comfortable enough to make that pain go away. I jutted out my chin, ready to argue with Rumple if I had to… but he wasn’t in the room anymore.
When had he left?Oh shizz.Was it before or after I’d yelled, “Tits?”
Before I could decide if that would have been embarrassing or not, I noticed something unusual. The shadows weren’t moving to the dead guy, but toward myboss. Clinging to him.
Oh no.“But he didn’t kill his dad,” I whispered aloud. “It was an accident.”
