Love's First Light Read Online Free PDF Page A

another execution. Did you see the carts go by?”
    “No.” Christophé looked over his shoulder at Jasper. “We have to go. They might have . . .” He couldn’t finish the sentence.
    Jasper pointed to a hook on the wall. “Get your cloak, pull the hood well over your head.”
    The streets were filled with crowds making their way to the Place de la Révolution where the guillotine stood. Street criers were eager accomplices as they strode through the boulevards and weaved around the chateaus and mansions of what used to be the privileged. The people cheered as news spread of the latest aristocrats to fall.
    Unable to wait until they reached the platform, Christophé stopped one of the street criers. “Do you know the identities of the prisoners?”
    The man gave him a suspicious look but rattled off several names. “Oh, and Émilie St. Laurent. She’s a young one, but they say she is the last of the St. Laurent house. Another aristocratic line ended.” The man grinned at Christophé, showing rotten teeth to match his rotten soul.
    Christophé turned, his stomach rolling, unable to speak. Jasper grasped his arm and pulled him along. “Hurry.”
    He felt swept along in the thick crush of people, as if he were one of them. He didn’t speak as they did, shouting their victory: “Kill them! Destroy the royals!” He couldn’t speak at all, only let himself be jostled along until he neared the front.
    They all stilled as the first prisoner was led to the platform. He could feel the hatred around him like a living thing, voracious and feral, as they read the name of a man he was sure he’d seen in his mother’s elegant salon. He watched, strangely detached, as they tied him to a long board, lifted him, then slid him under the scaffold and blade.
    Christophé’s throat thickened as the blade shot down. Gravity. Weight. Steel. Blade. Neck. Friend. Foe. Human. Man. His thoughts were scattered . . . abrupt . . . nauseating.
    Then they led another and another. Their heads were taken up by the executioner and held high for the crowd to see and cheer. Some were pierced on a wooden pole. Members of the mob grasped the poles in wild-eyed glee to parade amongst the thronging crowd. The people around him shouted in a murderous, frenzied state that he’d prayed only existed in nightmares. Christophé couldn’t imagine that he was still alive. That this was real and terrifying and . . . real.
    God!
He cried silently.
Oh, God!
    Then they led a girl up to the platform. Christophé saw the long, golden hair. The slight, shaking body. There was a hood over her head, but he knew.
    It was Émilie.
    He had thought to rescue her. He had thought he might do
something.
Now he knew. There was nothing he could do—except rush, screaming her name, to his own death. Émilie would die this day.
    And the only choice he had was to watch or turn away.
     
     
    CHRISTPOHÉ BRACED HIS legs. He took long, deep breaths to keep from succumbing to the beckoning blackness. But he stayed. With tears rushing, one after the other. With dread filling him like a blackness taking over his body, with legs that shook with the effort to stand . . . he stayed and he watched and willed with everything in him that God would work a miracle.
    He blinked as her body was laid on the wooden platform. He stumbled as the blade swooshed down. He cried out as her head fell into the bloody basket, the honey curls bouncing.
    As the crowd cheered he staggered away. Jasper was behind him, supporting him, half carrying him . . . but he couldn’t care. He sank to the side of the street and curled into a ball.
    “Noooo . . .”
The cry wrung through him and then out. Jasper hastened to hush him, but he did not care if the hordes of murderers surrounding him noticed. He did not care if they raised him up, stripped him down, and pulled the hood over his head. In that moment he welcomed the mounting of those wooden steps.
    There was no one left to care what might happen to the