Prologue
Le journal de Corbyn Marchand – 18 novembre 2010
I finally escaped.
The outside air smells strange to me. Everywhere I look, I’m aware of the fact that I’ve left home for good. I had no choice, though, and I keep reminding myself of this regardless of one very overwhelming thought haunting me. J’ai déjà la mal du pays.
But I had no choice. The visions returned, though not the same ones I’ve experienced in the past. She wasn’t in any of them, which might have saved my life, because I would’ve doubted them had she been there. No, I only saw Penelope and her father, Armand in these.
It was five days ago, one week before the wedding that would have bound me to the Couture family. When the full moon rises, I will still be gone, though in far greater danger than I am now. Nothing has convinced me more of this than the very first thing I heard her say to him.
“I would sooner kill him in his sleep than spend a lifetime married to him.”
Corbyn stopped writing, setting his pen down as his eyes traced over the last line. The declaration didn’t sting as much as he thought it would when he repeated it back to himself, perhaps because enough time had passed for it to seep from his system and linger where he’d left it. When Corbyn had first heard it, he had been lying in the confines of his room, counting cracks in the ceiling and trying not to panic. A scene played out before his eyes when he allowed it, a curse of the second sight he’d harbored since his youth.
The house he saw looked elegant; the opulent estate of the Couture family nestled deep in the forests of France. Their monument to wealth and power overshadowed even the sprawling complex occupied by the Marchands, which was itself a pale imitation of their former residence. Regardless of how many years had passed, though, not much had changed about the European countryside. Corbyn might have pined for it again, if not for what he was being forced to witness.
Taking a deep breath, he forced himself to play the rest of the vision.
The man standing in front of the petite, comely woman wore a fine embroidered suit with a handkerchief tucked in his breast pocket. Corbyn knew him all too well; Armand Couture, the family patriarch and a creature of one hundred and forty years. A human might have guessed Armand at being closer to thirty-five, but it had been years since a human crossed the border and would probably be decades before it happened again. Their hushed tones were issued in French, but would have been just as damning in any other language.
He sighed in a frustrated huff. “Ma petite fille,” he said, taking her by the hand and leading her away from the main hall. “The terms of this arrangement were decided upon two years ago.”
‘Three years,’ Corbyn felt like correcting from the comfort of his bedroom.
Armand couldn’t hear him, though. Corbyn hadn’t even left the country let alone sat in the company of his rivals – enemies – while they spoke. According to the play of the waning light through the windows of their estate, he gaged the discussion had taken place five hours earlier, a conspiracy at dusk with just as many shadows playing out in words as there were from candlelight. It could’ve just as easily been a three years prior, though, as far as Corbyn was concerned. Penelope’s eyes didn’t look any softer, nor her voice any gentler, than the first time Armand had announced their engagement to the rest of the family.
Her father didn’t look any happier with the course of events, either.
He frowned when Corbyn’s fiancée sighed right back at him. Her blonde hair fell on the satin fabric of her dress as though she was a porcelain doll from a toy maker’s shop. “Mais Papa,” she said, “You’re not the one who’s going to have to sleep with him.” The words brought a wrinkle of disgust to her face. Corbyn felt the knife jab into him again. “I never found him attractive before, and I don’t find him any more interesting than I had when you demanded we be married.”
“You young ones always want the world.”
“Why shouldn’t I have it? Haven’t you always told me I deserved it?”
Penelope pouted. Armand shook his head before lifting an arm to wrap around her shoulders. “You fail to understand how the game is played, chère.” They started a walk further down one of the corridors, the lamp light shrouding their facial features as they strolled. “You can have the world, but you have to win the prize first. And in order to win the prize, you have to marry the king.”
“But he’s not the king yet.”
“He is the prince, oui. Le fils du Marchand. You should know by now how quickly those on top find themselves thrown to the bottom, though.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Simply that you won’t have to play this game for long.”
They turned to face each other. He leaned forward, compensating for their height difference by bending to kiss her forehead. Armand lifted a hand and stroked Penelope’s face, his expression softening. “We all make sacrifices to get what we want. Our family has been patient for centuries and you will have to be patient for a few years.”
“Why so long?” she asked. The firelight made her golden eyes radiate an orange-red.
“It isn’t nearly so long in the grander scheme of things. You will still have the better years of your life ahead of you, I promise.” Armand smirked, his gaze darting away before returning to her. “Endure until you have an heir. Ensure our position is secure, and after that, you’ll never have to touch him again.”
“Never?” she raised an eyebrow.
He laughed. “Ma fille, you have so much left to learn about the way the world works. Let us put it this way…” The smile on his broadened while the volume of his voice lowered. “You mentioned killing him in his sleep, but there are much more discreet ways of removing unwanted things. Play the game as long as you need to play it and you’ll have that world you want in the end. I promise you won’t be alone in this.”
They held eye contact until the downward turn of Penelope’s mouth curled into a wicked grin. Corbyn read the look they exchanged as though he could sift through their thoughts. It wasn’t about his contribution toward creating an heir, but keeping the Marchand family happy until somebody got Penelope pregnant with a son. All of a sudden, he felt used and dirty, seeing flashes of himself bedding a woman he knew didn’t love him until a child he might not have fathered breathed air for the first time. He saw an expression of pride on his face as he held the baby, unaware of the truth. Whether it took one year or twenty, someday he would realize he’d been played for a fool.
The moment the Couture family determined the time was right to strike.
Corbyn reeled as though kicked. This wasn’t about an arranged marriage, or the alleged punishment he’d been given shortly after the Marchands’ exile from France. It was politics, plain and simple, which made all of the Marchand family pawns. His father and mother… Corbyn bolted upright as he thought of them, but realized several things in the short span of time he considered them. The vision of the Coutures might have ended, but memories of his parents followed in its wake.
‘You need to save them, Corbyn.’
A female voice whispering in his mind attempted to battle the onset of bitterness. She sounded just like his grandmother, Marie Blanchard, and forced him to shut his eyes and grit his teeth.
‘They never listen, Mamie. They never have. I have only disappointed them.’
‘But you are their son.’
Tears welled in Corbyn’s eyes as he stopped to think about how the conversation would unfold. His father would scowl at him, accusing Corbyn of not having the greater good in mind. “Tu es égoïste,” he would say. “Nothing more than self-centered since you were a child.” His mother would stand by quietly without intervening. The entirety of the wolfen realm would accuse Corbyn of slander and shun him even worse than they had before their exile, perhaps to the point of putting the would-be king to death at last.
And there was still the chance she was out there somewhere.
“You cannot think about her,” Corbyn said aloud. “You cannot think about anybody else. You can only save yourself, Marchand.” Indulging in a steadying breath, he exhaled it slowly and saw the path before him like an open book. Corbyn needed to wait for the cover of dark and head for the nearest border, leaving his world behind, this time for good. His heart ached and a howl of sorrow caught in the back of his throat knowing he could never return.
‘I have no choice, though. If I stay, it could mean my death.’
Moving swiftly, he packed a bag light enough for him to carry when his two legs would become four and the dash he undertook would require him to be as fast and soundless as possible. Corbyn hid it in the closet, and acted the role of loyal son for the rest of the evening until his parents and their servants retired for the night. The moon waxed mostly full and shone more light down that Corbyn would have preferred, but the bushes lining their house provided enough cover for him to shift.
His hands became paws. His clothing was discarded where it fell, someplace that would attract attention but only when they knew he was missing. Fur covered what had been bare skin and a dense patch of forest beckoned him from the edge of their property, promising freedom if he could cross its rocky soil. Pausing momentarily, Corbyn lifted his lupine head to regard the night sky and prayed to La Déesse Lunaire for clouds before sprinting faster than he ever had before.
The wind blew through his thick coat, those first quiet moments tense until he reached the middle of an open field. Suddenly, calm rushed through Corbyn, his limbs extending fluidly as though this was just another night and he was just on another run. The strap of his satchel dug into his neck and bounced off his hind legs during intermittent dashes in one direction, then cuts to the left or right until he disappeared inside the thick brush. It was as he broke into the woods that a strange feeling forced him to pause, almost mid-stride. Corbyn stood with liberation before him, and yet he couldn’t run another step.
Leaves rustled in the trees and the moonlight filtering through touched the earth, making it seem ethereal. Glancing in the direction of the portal he needed, Corbyn frowned, motioning to sprint again, but unable to. An otherworldly force seemed to have secured his legs in quicksand, an invisible entity grounding him and forcing him to look back toward the path illuminated with a crystalline glow. Another portal laid in that direction, but would put him at risk for being discovered.
‘It would throw them off,’ He thought to himself. ‘They would be searching the human towns closest to here while I would be somewhere much further away.’ Granted, they could follow his tracks, but a stream ran within a few miles of the Marchand estate and following it would lose any potential guards headed in Corbyn’s direction. And maybe, just maybe, he could make it to the other side.
If he ran all night.
Groaning as loudly as he dared, Corbyn freed his limbs enough to turn. A grunt punctuated the action, but the air fell silent, a pregnant pause surrounding him as he reared back onto his hind legs. Before him laid hills, trees, and rough terrain – a landscape he knew well leading off into the unknown. Pushing into a sprint, Corbyn dashed like the wind, the future an uncertain morass before him, but the course of actions now a necessary evil.
Corbyn sighed as he glanced at his journal again, the past melting away and the present reminding him of where he sat; the pause he let himself indulge now that he was on the other side. The run had lasted through the night and by the break of dawn, he crossed from one realm into the other. Rotating his shoulders, he felt the aches still present in his now-human form and took a deep breath as he lifted the pen again.
I don’t know what led me in this direction, but I needed to go. After finally making it across, I’m tired and wonder over and over if I did the right thing. But I had no other options, and if anybody accuses me of being the selfish man my father says that I am, I’ll have to issue my apologies later. I don’t know what the Coutures mean to do, but I saw the future for a reason.
I have become more of an exile than I was before.
Tomorrow, I head into a town the humans call Lancaster, in a territory they’ve named Pennsylvania, to make preparations before I disappear. I don’t know yet where I’m headed, but I can’t stay here, and can’t return to France.
Maybe, if I’m lucky, La Déesse will light the path for me again.
Le Fils du Marchand,
Corbyn
Adding to the Noise 