Passion by Kate Lauren

Author:Kate, Lauren [Kate, Lauren]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Published: 2011-06-14T04:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

THE PRISONER

PARIS, FRANCE • DECEMBER 1, 1723

Daniel cursed.

The Announcer had dumped him out onto a bed of damp, dirty straw. He rolled and sat up, his back against a frozen stone wall. Something from the ceiling was dripping cold, oily drops onto his forehead, but there wasn’t enough light to see what it was.

Opposite him was an open slot of a window, crudely cut into the stone and hardly wide enough to stick a fist through. It let in only a sliver of moonlight, but enough blustery night air to bring the temperature near freezing.

He couldn’t see the rats scampering in the cell, but he could feel their slimy bodies writhing through the moldy straw beneath his legs. He could feel their ragged teeth sawing into the leather of his shoes. He could hardly breathe for the stink of their waste. He kicked out and there was a squeal. Then he gathered his feet beneath him and rose onto his haunches.

“You’re late.”

The voice next to Daniel made him jump. He had carelessly assumed he was alone. The voice was a parched and raspy whisper, but somehow still familiar.

Then came a scraping sound, like metal being dragged across stone. Daniel stiffened as a blacker piece of shadow detached itself from the darkness and leaned forward. The figure moved into the pale-gray light under the window, where at last the silhouette of a face grew dimly visible.

His own face.

He’d forgotten this cell, forgotten this punishment. So this was where he’d ended up.

In some ways, Daniel’s earlier self looked just as he did now: the same nose and mouth, the same distance between the same gray eyes. His hair was scruffier and stiff with grease, but it was the same pale gold it was now. And yet, prisoner Daniel looked so different. His face was horribly gaunt and pale, his forehead creased with filth. His body looked emaciated, and his skin was beaded with sweat.

This was what her absence did to him. Yes, he wore the ball and chain of a prisoner—but the real jailer here was his own guilt.

He remembered it all now. And he remembered the visitation of his future self, and a frustrating, bitter interview. Paris. The Bastille. Where he’d been locked up by the Duc de Bourbon’s guards after Lys disappeared from the palace. There had been other jails, crueler living conditions, and worse food in Daniel’s existence, but the mercilessness of his own regret that year in the Bastille was one of the hardest trials he’d ever overcome.

Some, but not all of it, had to do with the injustice of being charged with her murder.

But—

If Daniel was already here, locked up in the Bastille, it meant that Lys was already dead. So Luce had already come … and gone.

His past self was right. He was too late.

“Wait,” he said to the prisoner in the darkness, drawing closer, but not so close that they risked touching. “How did you know what I’ve come back for?”

The scrape of the ball being dragged across the stone meant his past self had leaned back against the wall.

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