“Let’s go, Vale. We have an evil cabal to destroy.”
“They’ll keep five minutes. And what is the point of vanquishing evil if you are not sure you will get what you want afterward, anyway?” He wiggled my arm until I turned around, chin firmly down.
“I don’t want to talk about this now. I can’t. I need to fight. I need my head in the game. Lenoir almost . . . I don’t know. Killed me? Paralyzed me and raped my soul? I don’t know what that was. But you saved me from it, and I haven’t thanked you. So thank you.”
His fingers lit on my shoulders, crept on moth feet down my arms to my hands. “There. That wasn’t so hard, was it, bébé?”
“I’m fine at gratefulness.”
“But commitment is another story?”
“A completely different book. A library on a different planet.”
His finger grazed my cheek, a hot brand I felt all the way down to my toes. “Bébé, you are talking to a nomad. I have never lived in one place longer than a couple of months.” He stepped closer, tipped up my face. I could barely see him in the low light, but I could feel his breath on my lips, feel a tense tremble in his muscles. “Here is the thing about brigands: when they see something they want, they find a way to take it. Sometimes by force but most often by patience and cleverness. Following, studying, waiting for the perfect time to swoop in.”
“What are you saying?”
“Swoop.”
He kissed me again, softer this time. As I always did whether I wished it or not, I melted into him, opening for him. Kissing boys on Earth and in the caravan had always been exciting but taxing, as if it took work, took something out of me. But kissing Vale was a gift, filling me with strength and comfort. I guessed the daimons were right; love and lust were free game, as far as sustenance went.
“Oh la la,” I muttered as he drew away.
“Then it is settled.” Entwining his fingers with mine, he started back down the corridor.
I didn’t move. “Nothing is settled, Vale. Nothing.”
“But—”
“I mean, is that how brigands do it? One kiss, and everything’s done? I feel like I know you so well, but I don’t know what you want for the future. I don’t know what you dream about, if you want kids, how your career as a brigand would support us, what parts of you they would cut off if they caught you stealing. Are you going to challenge your father or get in a cage match with your brother? If he didn’t slice you in half, where would we live? Which continent? In a wagon? In a tent? What if I want to keep performing? I’m never going to settle down and be some grouchy old woman cooking stew I can’t eat around a campfire for a dozen good-looking, green-eyed children, you know. I’m never going to be tamed.”
“I would never want you tamed.”
“I don’t want a wagon or a house or a clockwork dog.”
“Details.”
“Kind of important ones. And what if we did have kids? They would be, let’s see, a quarter Abyssinian, a quarter human, and half Bludman. What do you even call that?”
He chuckled to himself. “A dangerous little fiend, that’s what.”
I almost growled but started walking instead. He wouldn’t let go of my hand, and enough of me wanted to let him keep holding it that I didn’t fight it. At least he walked with me this time, once he’d scooped up the lantern.
With the flow of water dripping down the trough, we had to walk one in front of the other down the ledge, with my arm pulled behind me. It was strange to remember the last time we’d walked down here, me so uncertain and frightened, him steady and playing the clown, trying to keep my spirits up. Maybe I didn’t have all the answers I wanted from him, but I understood that in a short period of time, he’d come to be a solid part of my life in Paris, a wall I could always count on to hold me up. And this fight we were having now, if you could even call it a fight, was more like married people bickering than new lovers having a quarrel. And he knew it, which was why he let me tug him along.
Truth was, he’d swooped in long ago, and I’d let him.
“Tell me, then,” I said softly.
As I kept my eyes trained on the lanterns up ahead, he murmured in a voice low enough for my ears only. “I want to marry you. I want to run away with you. I want to have children with you but not so many that you go crazy. I don’t want you to grow old by a campfire. I want to travel, see the world, pursue the sun. I don’t want to lead, but I don’t want to follow. I don’t ever want you to stop being wild, but I wouldn’t mind harnessing your ferocity. Perhaps we could start our own cabaret, treat the girls better. I don’t know. I have only been thinking about this most nights while I stare at the stars and wait for your light to go out so I know you’re alone when it does.”