Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The streets of Rouen are alive with people, chatter, gossip, and loud bargaining, and Milady de Winter sighs in pleasure as she lets the sound rush over her. She’s been too long away from society. Well, interesting society, anyway – Gus’s men may be excellent at beating and selling men, but they’re not exactly sparkling conversationalists.

“Be back within the hour,” Sebastian growls at her even as she thinks this, and she gives him a farewell flutter of her fingers as she melts into the crowd. It’s barely this side of mocking, but he won’t notice – he’s quite infatuated with her, despite his often taciturn nature and short way of speaking.

Two months in the Forest of Evreux have left her with the appearance of some kind of witch of the woods, and she wishes she could spend the brief time she has stealing some elegant trifles and creature comforts to negate that. It’s the first time he’s brought her to Rouen with him instead of leaving her in their latest camp. But it won’t take Sebastian long to negotiate the price for this load of men, or for the items taken off them, and she has other things to attend to.

She considers that she has little in the way of conscience, but even so, she tries not to dwell on the men sold to the Spanish galleons. Slavery leaves a sour taste in her mouth. She reminds herself frequently that her part in this is simply as an evaluator of goods, nothing more, nothing less, but the continuous parade of doomed men still feels like it drags at her more by the day. As soon as she can find something else, she’ll be long gone. With every bagful of trinkets, she hopes against hope for something valuable enough to get her out of the country, or at least valuable enough to keep her afloat until she can find something that doesn’t feel like it’s scraping away whatever remnants of soul she has left. Being in cities for too long is dangerous, though – the Cardinal won’t have forgiven her actions.

She keeps her ears alert for any mention of Richelieu as she winds through the streets. It doesn’t take long to hear his name, but the news shocks her so much she nearly bends over gasping in the street. She grabs the gossiping woman’s arm and receives an offended look. “The Cardinal is dead?” she demands. “He can’t be.”

“Wore out his heart in the service of France.” The woman forgives her rudeness, pleased by the dramatic response to her news. “Shame, isn’t it? They say the Queen’s so distraught she nearly lost the child, and her what, only a month or two from her time?”

She has no hesitation in dismissing that as a complete fabrication to add drama to the story, and a silly one at that. Their King has been without a son long enough, and his brother the heir disliked enough, that no one in this little circle of gossipers looks pleased by the addition.

The Cardinal, dead. It’s hard to imagine. If he wore out his heart through overwork, she wonders with dark humour if she bears some of the responsibility – without her there, he must have had to take a much more hands-on approach to his schemes. Of course, that’s his own fault. The rest might be hers, though – giving him a bullet wound (however superficial), exacerbating his relationship with Treville to the point they must have barely been able to work together, and turning over information to his enemies that presumably forced him to rebuild a large part of his network. Richelieu must have recruited the huge web of agents and informants once before, of course, and her account would only have damaged the setup instead of ruined it totally, but he would have been far younger when he first created it and it’s not exactly an easy task. A lot of the more recent contacts in those lists were her doing, as well – it was her work as much as his that she undid, and she feels a brief pang of regret for all that wasted effort.

Still, the Cardinal paid her well enough for it at the time, easily a hundred times what Gus is ever likely to give her, and since she’s about to spend every penny she’s received from Gus so far the memory is even more bitter than usual. She regrets leaving her savings in Paris far more than she regrets anything else. Most of the livres were tucked away in her hidden room at the Palais-Cardinal, and are likely to be long gone by now.

“Who’s to be the new First Minister?” she asks.

“None yet. But they say the Captain of the Musketeers is be promoted to the council and take on some of the Cardinal’s duties in the meantime,” the woman says with a sniff of disapproval. She’s well-informed about the business of government, for a street gossip. “Accepted immediately, they say, before the Cardinal’s corpse was even cold. Doubtless he’s hoping to be First Minister once the dust has settled.” Whoever ‘they’ are, they say a lot, according to this woman.

Treville, that’s interesting. The man’s too much of a soldier to ever excel as a politician, but she supposes he’ll do his best. After the previous First Minister got him briefly thrown in the Bastille, he must have jumped at the chance to gain a little more influence and control, fearful of what the next one could do to him and his men. That’s Treville for you: anything for the Musketeers, for the country, and for the King, and always in that order of priority, regardless of how personally unpleasant he must find the work.

Does this mean she can return to Paris? It’s the best place to earn money, and she does have contacts there. Sarazin is likely dead, and if Constance Bonacieux was rescued, Athos did pledge not to kill her for her crimes. Well, he swore to let her go, but not killing her was certainly implied in the promise. But… no. At the very least, they’d try and force her out of the city, or arrest her for whatever crimes she’ll need to commit to earn a living. This does mean she can take her chances in cities more often, though, and perhaps speak to a few of the Cardinal’s old contacts and seek employment from them.

Probably best to stick with Gus’s men for the moment, then take a horse and flee one night after a particularly good haul. Even if it only keeps her afloat for a few weeks, she can build on that. That is, after all, what she’s good at. For now, she puts it out of her mind – she has other issues to attend to.

There: specific sets of herbs drying in a window, unmistakeably what she’s looking for. She knocks on the door and it’s answered by a sharp-eyed, grey-haired old lady who looks her up and down and then lets her in right away.

“I’ve been feeling slightly ill lately,” Milady says calmly, although there’s no real need for code here. The woman knows exactly why she’s here. It’s the truth, though, she does feel ill – some of her moodiness and nausea could be ascribed to her current living situation, but not all of it, and the diet the gang survives on certainly isn’t the cause of her slight weight gain. It’s lucky she noticed the problem so soon, since her cycles are erratic at the best of times, and can stop for months sometimes when she’s lacking proper food. It’s even luckier Sebastian was willing to bring her to Rouen with him and let her go off on her own. She can nip this in the bud and get rid of her nausea before he even notices she’s ill. Her rue tea and the other little preventative measures she takes have clearly failed her, but then, they’ve never been a guarantee as much as an aid.

Of course, however sick she feels right now, she knows from experience that once she takes the cure she’ll feel considerably worse for some time.

“I have a tea or two that might help.” The woman gives a shrug. “But some people react poorly to them, so it’s best I check your overall health first.”

Oh, good, a back-alley midwife with professional integrity – most of them are willing enough to just shove a few bags of pennyroyal at their customers and send them on their way, and Milady briefly wishes she’d just gotten one of them. Still, the teas can cause death if overindulged in or taken by a particularly sickly or weak woman, so caution’s reasonable – midwives who deal in abortifacients are seen as little more than witches by the more judgmental members of society, and leaving a trail of bodies behind is likely to get them burnt as one. Milady submits to undignified probing and prodding by surprisingly gentle fingers, and a series of sharp and efficient questions. At the midwife’s urging, she removes her stiff brown corset for an uncomfortable feel of her stomach, suppressing her annoyance at this rigmarole.

The second the midwife stops touching her, before even tying her corset, Milady fumbles in her skirts to retrieve the money she has. “Two doses, just in case,” she says decisively, laying the coins down with a clink. Pennyroyal’s expensive, and it might lay her out for a few days or even a week, but she has no doubt it’s worth it – Sebastian isn’t exactly the fatherly type. Of course, she’s not exactly motherly either, so who is she to judge?

“I can’t,” the midwife says, still squinting at her thoughtfully.

“Please,” Milady scoffs. “This is more than enough.” If she has to, she decides she can go as high as offering three quarters of the amount for one dose of pennyroyal, but if the woman tries to bargain for any more she’ll simply go and find another midwife.

“It’s not the money, it’s the timing.”

“What, pennyroyal’s out of season? Is France experiencing a shortage? Just give me the bloody leaves.”

“I meant your timing. You’re too far along. It will take a much greater dose to do it, and even if it works, you’re likely to bleed out your insides along with the child.” The crone looks unsympathetic, and any attempt to speak delicately about this transaction has ended.

“Don’t be absurd. I’m two months at the most.” Before joining Gus’s crew she was getting by mostly on her thieving abilities, and what few seductions she undertook were not of the variety that could cause a pregnancy. Milady wonders if this woman is simply very bad at her job. She’s taken doses of pennyroyal weeks later than this before, and been completely fine.

“Well over double that, I’m afraid.”

She opens her mouth to say incredulously that that’s not possible, then stops as she realises it is. Athos. She hadn’t been careful with him, because when was she ever careful with him, in any way? But they’d been married for a year back when she was younger and presumably more fertile than now, and nothing had come of it, so the odds of one time resulting in a child weren’t high. Of course, she’d been frantically busy in the months after their brief encounter, on the run without a coin to her name, so she hadn’t kept track of her time or kept an eye out for any symptoms. It had never so much as crossed her mind. So it wasn’t impossible, not entirely impossible.

She finds her hand wrapping around the locket, the locket she wears nearly all the time, even while sleeping. It doesn’t go with her dress – with any of her dresses, in fact – and the chain is far too long for her, but she cannot seem to take it off.

Still…. “You’re mad. I’m not even showing.”

“Women show at different times, and the first babe often shows late – this is your first, isn’t it? I’ve seen women before whose belly barely curved until right at the end. It’ll grow as big as it needs to, though, so I wouldn’t worry.”

“You wouldn’t worry?” she says, voice rising as something close to panic washes through her. As if she’d worry at all about the health of this little invader taking over her body and threatening to take over her life. She should demand the pennyroyal anyway, damn the woman for trying to stop her. If her coin won’t still the woman’s qualms, her knife certainly will.

Except that she doesn’t want to bleed out, not in an alleyway in Rouen with no one to help her, or in a forest camp surrounded by slavers. She’s risked death before, of course she has, but that’s death by gun or knife or sword, and that’s a very different beast, one she can fight. Of course, she’s not a fan of the prospect of death by childbirth, either, but she’s experienced how painful and disgusting taking pennyroyal can be even when it works exactly as planned – taking a lethal dose and haemorrhaging to death is presumably much more unpleasant. Something about this woman’s flint-eyed gaze convinces her she wouldn’t utter warnings without good reason for them.

And… it’s Athos’s child. That shouldn’t matter, of course, if anything it should be even more incentive to remove this parasite from her, but… it’s Athos’s child. What if it has his eyes, his smile, his laugh? Once upon a time she prayed for his child, partly to prove herself as a worthy Comtesse de la Fere, but partly just for the joy of imagining a small incarnation of their love running about the house. Those dreams are long dead, or at least they should be, but that doesn’t rob them of all appeal.

What if she had it and gave it away? The thought occurs just to be dismissed. Oh, it would be ideal if it were possible, but it costs money to persuade someone to take care of a child not their own. She doesn’t have any right now, and even if she did, that doesn’t ensure they’ll take care of it well. Loving couples who lack only a much-beloved child to raise are rare on the ground in France these days. The priests say aborting is an unholy rejection of God’s gift, and an attitude like that leads to a lot of unwanted children. People leave infants out at the crossroads, women sell their daughters to brothels or their sons to the galleys for barely a coin, families are large and food is scarce. No one would have much love to spare for a scrap of humanity abandoned by a woman with no name or position. She’s surprised by the surge of anger that goes through her at the thought of someone mistreating this thing inside her, this thing which is part her and part Athos, this thing which is made up of the only two people in the world she’s ever given a damn about.

My God. She’s going to have to keep it. Worse, a part of her wants to keep it, which is madness at it’s finest.

Panicked thoughts rush through her head at a speed that leaves her dizzy. She can’t return with Sebastian, not when she could start showing soon – he’s liable to notice and react poorly to the situation. But she can’t stay in Rouen, either. She needs money, serious money, enough money to get her through the rest of the pregnancy and after, at least until the child is old enough to be handed over to a nurse, a nurse who’ll also be expensive no doubt. Maybe money to get her even further than that. That means her contacts through the Cardinal. That means information, or, more likely, assassination. That means serious risk, but serious reward if she can survive it.

She takes several deep breaths, mentally apologising to the creature growing inside her for what she must do – it’s chosen a poor home, a dangerous one even, but she’ll do her best to see they both make it to the birth and have enough coin stored away to keep surviving during and after.

For now… “Well then,” she says to the midwife, voice barely wavering. “Why don’t you tell me what I can expect, and what I must do.”

The bustle around the ship as people board is more than enough to hide a lone woman in a dark cloak. She lets herself join the crowd, slides to the side of it, ducks around people – the ability to wind your way through crowds and yet remain unseen in them is a kind of magic, and it’s one she’s quite proficient at. And there’s her target, all in black, high ruff, heavy gold chain, unmistakably Spanish. He’s paranoid, that’s clear to see, but he’s looking for armed and armoured men, not a pretty woman who bumps against him and then withdraws with an apology.

She stays just long enough to ensure he’s dead, and then heads back into the streets. She’s always liked port cities, the smell of salt and the sea, but today she’s not in the mood to like anything. Sure, she’s not working for slavers anymore, and that’s something – but the life of a hired assassin is not what she wants. She would have left it already, if she could have. It’s not what her child should have to grow up to, either. Well, once it’s born and her body recovers perhaps she can find a merchant husband somewhere – to a lot of older men, a child from a previous marriage would be irrelevant, and to some it could even be seen as attractive, proof of her fertility and ability to give them an heir. All she has to do is keep going long enough to find something more permanent.

She fancies she has to wear her corsets looser, now, but in truth there’s not much in it. She’s still waiting for her body to change noticeably. She’s also still waiting for some great surge of maternal love, sweetness, kindness and joy to sweep her away, and she suspects she’ll be waiting a while – right now she feels annoyed at the creature more than anything. There’s a sort of selfish protectiveness – my blood, my child, mine – a feeling she could savagely rend with teeth and claws anything that dared to try take it from her, but she doubts that’s what women are meant to experience when they’re expecting. She’s more a she-wolf than she is the Madonna, but then perhaps that just means no one will dare crucify any child of hers. A blasphemous thought, but it amuses her.

She’s terrified, but she won’t admit that, not even in the privacy of her own head. Furious, too: at Athos, at her own stupidity, at this alien creature inside her. Her experiences in life haven’t equipped her to deal with this.

Her contact is waiting at the place he promised, and she briefly considers whether to surprise and drug him instead of simply approaching. If the money really is on him, that way she could get it without risking herself as much. But this unknown hirer has so far played straight with her, even giving her a portion of her payment ahead of completion of the task, so she supposes she should stick to the arrangement as well instead of giving in to paranoia.

“It’s done?” The man says. He’s a Red Guard, she realises, just one out of uniform and attempting subtlety – it causes a shock, but only a brief one. It was the Cardinal’s old contacts she put her name out to when she realised she needed well-paying work, and quickly, and it makes sense that someone with access to that network would have access to the Red Guard as well.

“Yes.” She accepts the purse he hands over, weighs it. A frown crinkles her face. This is more than what she was owed, unless for some reason he’s paid her in small change – but when she opens it, there’s nothing but livres gleaming up at her, far more than was promised. It could help give her months of nice living, a lodging with multiple rooms, even a maid or nurse to help out with the babe.

She wants to earn as much as she can, stockpile livres as if her life depends on it. By the time it starts retaining memories, the ideal scenario is for her child to know her only as a woman with a decent reputation and place in the world. Legitimacy is one of her most consistent frauds, and she’s planning to extend that charade to her child as well. Perhaps she’ll be wife to a well-off but elderly man, or perhaps a widow who makes her way through the world on the funds her late husband left, but in any case her child will hopefully never know the assassin, thief or whore. If she can’t earn enough livres for that and she has to leave it with a nurse and return to her work then she will, but she’ll keep it as secret as she can, keep her world away from the child, whatever it takes. Until its birth, though, she’ll scrape up every penny she can to fund the planned fiction, in whatever way she can, however dubious, and not regret a single action. This is an unexpected gift.

She blinks up at the guard, suspicious, because unexpected gifts carry unexpected costs. “What’s with the bonus?”

“I was instructed to give you this as well,” the man says conscientiously, passing over a note.

She nods, takes it, and withdraws. She’s half a mile away before she settles to read it, and she opens it with gloved hands, pointing away from her, because she’s not the only person who can use poison. After it proves to be safe, she reads it, and then rereads it, and then becomes lost in thought, fingers toying with the chain of her locket.

She’s never respected any restrictions in her pursuit of survival, least of all morality, and she’s capable of being even more ruthless in her plan to give this child everything she never got. But this isn’t a question of ruthlessness, but of risk. She’s heard of the Comte de Rochefort, and not just the recent tales of his miraculous survival and escape. In some ways he was her predecessor, although their time serving the Cardinal did overlap a little, and the work he did on the Cardinal’s behalf was quite different than hers. It should be no surprise the man picked up the reins of what remained of her old network after Richelieu’s death – she’d heard rumours of him being given command of the Red Guards after crawling out of a Spanish prison, and from that position it wouldn’t be difficult to get to Richelieu’s accounts or any other information.

This gives her pause, though. It’s one thing for him to pay her anonymously to kill the Spanish ambassador. He has reason enough for a grudge against the Spanish, now that she considers it. It’s quite another for him to offer her ongoing work, for the next few months at least, at an equally high rate of pay. Her greedy side is already slavering at the thought of that many livres, but her cautious side holds her back – why would he need that many people assassinated? He’s leading the Red Guard, but he’s not a councillor, not a politician. Unless Treville has now taken over Richelieu’s position in more than one way and is persecuting the Red Guard as the Cardinal once persecuted the Musketeers, there’s no reason he should be more involved with the game of politics than any guard captain.

Richelieu called him a lunatic, once, when he spoke of him. She has a shrewd suspicion the Cardinal would not use that word lightly.

What does she know about him, besides that? He was Richelieu’s agent, he was captured by the Spanish, the Cardinal did not pay his ransom, but he escaped them anyway. The escape happened just after the Cardinal’s death – immediately after, in fact, and she notes that coincidence down as an interesting one, although how the two could be related she has no idea.

So basically what she knows about him boils down to him being a madman with a grudge against the Spanish and a possible grudge against the Cardinal.

And he wants her to come back to Paris to work for him.

It is a terrible idea, for many reasons, Athos chief among them. But she can avoid him and his friends – she managed for half a decade, after all. It shouldn’t even be a factor in her decision.

With a slow sigh, she realises she’ll accept this offer, however bad a decision it might be. Rochefort may be dangerous, but he clearly pays well, she badly needs the money, and this time she’ll make sure she gets out before things go bad. No one can know she’s pregnant, it’s too much of a risk, but she’s not showing yet, and with carefully chosen corsets and shrouding cloaks (perhaps matched to the colour of her dress for additional camouflaging), she can probably avoid anyone realising for long enough to stockpile quite a bit of coin if he continues to be so foolishly generous.

This will get her everything she wants – well, nearly.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Milady de Winter.” He has the drawl of lazy aristocracy, reminding her of nobody so much as Thomas d’Athos. Or perhaps that’s not his voice, but his eyes – when she looks in them, she almost thinks she can see little demons inside of each staring back. There are men who make her automatically reach for her knives, and he is one: it’s not an auspicious sign.

For that reason alone, it’s not a pleasure to meet him, but she gives him a crooked smile anyway. “And I you, my lord. Your reputation precedes you.”

“Just as your lack of a reputation precedes you,” he says. His smile is one of acquisition, his gaze cold and calculating as he surveys her. “I considered quite a few others for this job, you know, but with you so close, and the Cardinal’s seal of approval attached – well. I only hope the time you’ve spent in Paris in the past proves an advantage, instead of a hindrance.”

“I assure you, most of my prior acquaintances no longer live in the city.”

“Or live at all, I make no doubt. But my ways are not the Cardinal’s, and my aims are not the same.”

“All men’s aims are the same,” she says lightly, although she’s already beginning to wonder if she’s erred. “Power and control, my lord. The only difference is what they want it over.”

“Hah. I begin to see what interested Richelieu enough to pluck you out of the gutter,” he sneers. “In any case, if you’re wise, you’ll realise quickly enough that I’m not an ordinary man.”

“I always strive for wisdom, my lord.” She doesn’t bother to aim for a seductive tone. He’s not a man to be swayed by romance, she senses that instinctively, even if the fire of obsession fairly burns in his eyes. If he wants her (and she prays to God he doesn’t), he’ll take her, but nothing done in the bedroom will buy either influence or mercy with this man. That was true of the Cardinal as well, but in his case it was a sign of natural shrewdness and a tendency towards dispassion, which she doubts is the case here.

“I suggest you strive for it on your own time. All I ask from you is obedience and efficiency, nothing more and nothing less.”

“Not loyalty?”

Another one of those slightly nasal titters of laughter. “I’m not fool enough to beg snakes not to bite. You’ll be loyal to the coin I provide, and if you’re not, I’ll see that your body is never found. Consider that your motivation to refrain from betraying me.” To her surprise, he takes her chin in his hand, using the grip to force her closer to him, until her face is only inches from him. “No one disappoints me twice, Milady de Winter.”

“I don’t even plan to do it once.” She doesn’t let her expression change, and she thinks that bothers him – apparently, he’s the kind who depends on fear to feel powerful.

He tightens his fingers on her face to the point of real pain, and she can see a flash of enjoyment in his gaze as she’s unable to suppress a wince, but finally he releases her. He pulls out a handkerchief and wipes his hand with it ostentatiously, as if he’s been in contact with a leper. Arrogant, unpredictable, cruel, and overfond of threats: he is not creating a favourable impression.

So this is her new employer. And she thought Gus was a step down.

“Do you have a task I can assist you with, my lord comte?” she asks, still cool, but now desiring nothing more than to put an end to this meeting.

“Your first target is the Duc de Barville, a member of the King’s council,” he says, letting his voice drop to barely more than a whisper. “You’ll get as much as you did for Perales, but I expect it to resemble a natural death or even just a disappearance. You have one week.”

A member of the King’s council – the council that currently, as far as she knows, has no openings. Treville took Richelieu’s spot, and Rochefort must want one as well. Well, that’s easy enough to achieve. She runs through the list of what she knows about the Duc de Barville, and it’s more than enough for her to subtly engineer his death. He doesn’t drink much, but he does like women, and he’s relatively old and unhealthy, so his heart giving out unexpectedly will excite no suspicion. An overdose of sleeping drugs and perhaps a pillow will suffice.

The man was one of the Cardinal’s more oblivious toadies, from what she recalls, always more than happy to follow any request. In fact, wasn’t he the one Richelieu ordered to make sure Rochefort’s ransom was never paid? She wonders if Rochefort knows that, if it’s why the Duc’s her first target. His motives don’t matter, she reminds herself, so long as his coin remains good – but there’s no harm in learning as much as she can, just in case. Rochefort would be a good man to have a hold over, but not a good man to make an enemy of, so she’ll walk the line as cautiously as she can.

She wonders why she feels nauseous, if it’s the babe in her or more than that. She worked so hard for years not to be bothered by this, by any of this, but when she looks into Rochefort’s face and thinks of killing a man at his bidding it leaves her cold and sick. She’s no longer suited for this life, now she doesn’t have rage to drive her, now she can remember without bitterness what it was like to have more than this, feel more than this.

It’s a couple of months, only a couple, and then she will leave this life behind for good, she reminds herself. Her child – part her, part Athos, all wonder – will have all the opportunities money and decent (if fraudulent) birth can offer.

A fool returns to their folly, and so she cannot stop herself from seeking him out. The Garrison is the last place she should be, even hidden in the dark alleys nearby at the dead of night, but she needs to see him.

It’s a brief sighting. He has a bottle in hand, Porthos’s arm around him as support, Aramis gesticulating beside them as he tells some wild story. D’Artagnan brings up the rear, smiling good-naturedly at the story. They head to the Captain’s quarters, because Athos is Captain now, apparently. Her hand is wrapped so tightly around the locket that her palm might bruise from the force of it.

The few seconds of gazing at him before they’re up the stairs and away tell her nothing useful, but she drinks him in greedily anyway. His hair is a mess, and she would like to straighten it by running her fingers through it; his brow is wrinkled and creased with stress, and she could press her palm to it until he relaxes; he has dark shadows under his eyes, but she could persuade him to stay abed. It’s all wild fantasies, of course, and she’ll do no such thing – she has no idea what he feels about her now. Constance Bonacieux is alive, she knows that, but it’s not like her abduction was the only reason he had to hate her.

When she left, she left him with a scattering of little kindnesses, and one that was anything but little. She laid out five years of crime and cruelty on paper for his benefit, and turned the Cardinal from a disappointed past employer to an active and vengeful enemy. With that act, she gave him back Treville, the Musketeers, Paris, his whole life, while surrendering any remnants of her own. Looking back, what she did leaves her breathless and disbelieving, it seems so unlike her. She still can’t say why she did it, or what she hoped to gain. Was it some kind of repayment for protecting her from Catherine? Did she shrink back from the thought of destroying his second life as he believes she wrecked his first? Does she simply want him to think well of her? Her own motives are a mystery to her, except that, like always, they are bound up in Athos. She knows that much.

What she doesn’t know is if he accepted it as the gift it was, and if that gift blunted his anger at all. From his point of view, her actions led to him being humiliated, deceived, disgraced, ruined, shot, exiled, and drugged. She left him badly injured, defenceless, and alone in the house she burnt to ruins. What passed between them before she left seemed like something mending, like a step towards some strange kind of reconciliation, but she has no way of knowing if he views it the same. Perhaps all he saw was an unending series of bitter arguments, a meaningless coupling caused by adrenaline and stupidity, and him being almost-forcibly conscripted into carrying out her petty revenge on the Cardinal for him throwing her off.

Did he throw away the flowers she left him immediately? Perhaps the broken choker she intended for him is instead wrapped around a dead bouquet of forget-me-nots on the floor of the stable, ribbon frayed by the elements, metal heart rusting in the muck. Or perhaps the necklace is somewhere up in his new quarters, in a chest somewhere, or next to his bed, or under his pillow. She resists the urge to search the place and find out – there’s no guarantee he’s that drunk.

She wonders what he would do if she went and joined him, appearing in his room like a ghost, one he perhaps thought he’d laid to rest. She could shush his protests with her lips, draw him to the bed, whisper in his ear that it was nothing more than a dream, to be forgotten in the light of day. But no, if she sees him in that way, harsh realities will intrude immediately – she can hide her pregnancy in her clothes and cloaks, but pressed body to body he would feel the difference immediately. Another man might not, but he knows every curve and line of her, and he would notice that they have changed. And what would he think of it? He probably wouldn’t believe the child was anything to do with him, whatever she said. She winces at his imagined comments, cutting and cruel.

Of course, that’s far from the worst case scenario. If he did believe the child was his, he might want to take it from her after it was born, put it in the care of some good nurse and visit as often as he could spare time. After all, he wouldn’t wish for her to raise his child, not if he still views her as a cold, callous killer, a monster who destroys all she touches. Perhaps it would be better for him to have it, since Athos at least has money and security to give the child, but she’s lost enough of herself to him over the years. This child is hers, growing inside her, nurtured by her body, made up of her own blood and need and love, and it will be no one else’s so long as she draws breath.

The sunlit fantasies she had once, long ago, of her and Athos and a child they made together, living happily ever after… those are a thing of the past, even if they linger painfully in her dreams. There is an overwhelming pain and hurt between them now she won’t let her child become successor to. It’s one thing to spit and snap and slice each other to ribbons, but anyone else who gets involved might become a victim of this storm of darkness and emotion between them, and her child will be no one’s victim, especially not her own. The child will grow up knowing that its mother loved its father, that she grieves him still, that their union was something beautiful that ended in the death of one of them, and that’s enough truth to share. Perhaps she will set some contingency, so that there is no way the child will be left homeless or helpless if she dies, so then it will know it has a father probably willing to take it in.

But when she thinks that, she finds herself already trying to amend it, trying to turn a definite line into a hazy border. She considers if instead she should tell the child about him when it’s fully grown – a son might be glad of a father who’s a Musketeer Captain, of the chances for advancement that could offer – but no, she can’t. Her child won’t know its mother as thief, murderer, fraud, and perhaps, by then, bigamist, not if she can help it. Not to mention Athos’s likely reaction. If he believed the child to be his son or daughter, he would be filled with fury towards her for her for all those years of concealment, and if he did not, he would be overtaken by rage at her perceived attempt to manipulate him. Either way, the child would feel anger, would know rejection, would be swept up in this dark current between her and Athos. Her main aim is for the child to be safe, so if she dies perhaps it will have to know of Athos, but her first priority after that is for it to grow up relatively happy and normal. Perhaps the child won’t be entirely normal – she’ll see it’s capable with weapons, able to pick locks, and knows any other skills necessary to survival, whether it’s a son or daughter, because of the aforementioned aim of safety – but normal in other ways. Normal enough to believe its parents were good people who had a simple, happy life together, and who both loved their child and each other. So much of that is true it hurts to think, but there is a lot she will leave out – her child will never know how the scar on its mother’s neck came to be. If that means it also never knows its father is a Musketeer Captain, so be it.

Captain of the Musketeers, such an illustrious position, and unlike Comte, it’s one that must be earned. She’s oddly proud of him – and it’s a wifely thing, isn’t it, to be proud? He’s had practice being in charge of people thanks to his former title, and in her biased eyes he is by far the smartest of the Musketeers, so he’s a sensible choice, but she wonders how he likes it. Her memory throws up a hundred instances of hiding and listening to Captain Treville speak with the King, how Treville would patiently persuade him back to more considered courses of action with his brusque honesty and common sense, and she tries to envisage Athos in his place. She suspects the King is the victim of a lot more sarcastic barbs than previously, most of them no doubt flying right over his head. Athos has no patience with fools, and can never resist the temptation to share his opinion of them, even if it’s just through his expression or tone.

Of course, knowing Treville, it’s unlikely he’s handed over the task of dealing with the King to Athos. Both of them being what they are, she imagines their only concession to both of their new positions is that Athos now has a fancier uniform and handles more of the day-to-day training of the other Musketeers. Treville probably still talks with the King, assigns missions, makes the overarching decisions, and manages the finances; Athos probably still treats all the men as his equals, drinks more than the rest of the regiment put together, and rides out with the Inseparables for every mission. In time, perhaps they will adjust and transfer more of the responsibilities, but neither of them are men good at adapting to change, and both will probably cling fiercely to their previous lower ranks for some time.

She can see nothing but the outside of the building, but it’s still difficult to turn away. It’s always difficult to turn away.

The Duc de Barville dies quickly, but with little dignity. A smarter man would have been far more suspicious at the sudden attentions of a beautiful woman, especially given his lack of charm or looks, but he’s probably used to his title and wealth drawing designing women like flies to honey. He’s happy enough to take advantage of her interest, and she’s happy enough to take advantage of his consequent lack of caution, and it ends with him dead in his own bed, no mark of a struggle to be seen.

She doesn’t steal anything on the way out, because she’s always been aware that if her rage doesn’t get her killed there’s a chance her greed could do the job. Her thieving instincts are always there: take, they say, take everything you can, you will not get another chance, this is it, this is all you can do. As a child she saw missed opportunities become death sentences for the other urchins around her, and so she always seized them, grasped them greedily, sucked everything she could out of every chance she saw.

She sees opportunities, and she seizes them, and it’s almost compulsive at this point. It’s always been that way: when Sarazin said he’d teach her to be the best, when she saw naked adoration in the face of a handsome Comte, when the cold eyes of the Cardinal first evaluated her, when Sebastian told her Gus’s group might have a place for her, and when Rochefort sent a letter with an offer in it. She always grabs the first chance that comes her way, because she can’t afford to assume another one will come. But now she wonders if this will prove a chance too far, because Rochefort’s eyes are colder than the coin her pays her in, and her husband is only streets away, and the noise of a dying Duc’s gasps are ringing in her ears.

Paris hasn’t changed at all.