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Paris was livelier that night than it ever had been for the Feast of Fools. The square at the feet of Notre Dame was alight with moonlight and bonfires, raucous with music, and swirling with merriment, but Phoebus only had eyes for one person dancing along the cobblestones.
Esmeralda always moved with a grace that defied reason, and tonight she was in perfect form, her violet skirts whirling about her bare ankles, the bracelets at her wrists and the coins at her hips jingling lightly in time to the drums. Phoebus watched her from his seat upon the steps of the cathedral and wished he could join her, but he knew it would be ill advised to exert himself with the wound in his chest held together by a literal thread.
As if she sensed his admiration, Esmeralda paused in her revelry to look up toward where he sat. Eyes the deep blue-green of the Seine met his, captivating him as she wove her way through the eddying crowd toward him; when she reached him, she took his hands and kissed him. She tasted like honey, and the scent of her skin—lavender, or maybe lilies? Phoebus had never been good at identifying flowers-- enveloped him entirely. He decided that whatever floral aroma enshrouded her, it was his new favorite smell.
She smiled when they parted and stared intently at him, like she meant to imprint the way he looked in that moment indelibly into her memory. Then she raised his hands to her lips and kissed the backs of each before plucking a coin from the air between them as if by magic. It glinted red-gold between her delicate fingers.
“For your thoughts,” she said, then sent it spinning upward with a flick. The firelight winked over both its faces as it spun through the air. Phoebus darted his hand out to catch it just as it began its downward arc.
“Besides admiring how beautiful you look tonight?” he asked. The coin felt warm against his palm.
Esmeralda quirked a brow upward.
“Just tonight?” she teased.
He chuckled.
“You’re beautiful every night, but tonight especially,” he amended. It was entirely true. Her cheeks flushed rosy and the sweat gleaming on her bronze skin gave her an otherworldly glow, the moon and the fire limning the sheen of her raven hair like heaven’s light.
She sat next to him on the step and nestled her head against his shoulder, wrapping both her arms around one of his carefully so as not to trouble his wound.
“I’m flattered,” she said. “But it doesn’t take a fortune teller to know that’s not the only thing on your mind.”
He knew that all her flashy stage tricks were nothing more than carefully rehearsed illusions, but there was something truly magical in the way she could read him so easily. He turned gingerly, a twinge between his ribs warning him not to move too suddenly, and pressed a kiss against the unruly curls at the top of her head.
“I was just thinking it’s strange,” he admitted, “how for all the sermons, all the ‘love is patient, love is kind, God is love’ talk, I never understood what it all meant in there.” He inclined his head toward the twin spires of Notre Dame and allowed himself to appreciate how pretty the merry glow of the celebratory bonfires looked upon her façade, a stark contrast from mere hours before, when she’d nearly been consumed in the hellish flames Frollo had brought upon her.
He continued, “But out here, among all these people I’ve been told my whole life are the enemy…” He couldn’t find the right words to explain it, the burgeoning warmth within him so big that it almost ached, but he imagined that that was the love that drove a man to write scripture.
Esmeralda seemed to understand what he said without speaking.
“Maybe God doesn’t do well inside stone walls, either,” she said softly.
“Maybe so,” he agreed.
They sat together in silence for a short while, watching Parisians and Romani alike dancing together beneath the sparkling night sky. Even the archdeacon had left his cloister to join in the festivities, looking on with dignified amusement as a trio of children bribed Djali with apples and carrots to perform tricks for them. Someone had crafted an effigy of Frollo with impressive swiftness since night had fallen, and it smoldered upon the pyre that had been built for Esmeralda in the center of the square, affording them all with an earthly view of the judge’s eternal torment. Phoebus glanced down to see if Esmeralda was watching the fiery spectacle with the same satisfaction he felt and discovered her looking at the whole scene before them with sadness in her eyes.
He was considering returning her coin as payment for her thoughts as well when she offered them without cost.
“I’m going to miss this place.”
His heart sank.
“You’re leaving?” he asked. He knew it was presumptuous to expect a woman who came from a people with a reputation for wanderlust to stay in Paris just for his sake. But he had thought she and the rest of her family had put down roots here; their hideout had certainly had an air of permanence to it—what he had been able to observe while being marched to the gallows, anyway.
Esmeralda’s expression was resigned when she replied, “The whole city knows where we’ve been living. That puts all of us in danger.”
“But the people here love you now!” he argued. He held out his arm in a broad gesture encompassing the merriment before them, all rivalries seemingly forgotten.
She gave him a halfhearted smile.
“They do,” she agreed. “For now. And they will for a while. But sooner or later people find a reason to hate what’s different. And when that time comes, we’ll need a new Court of Miracles to hide in.”
A sudden breeze gusted through the square, carrying the scent of smoke from Frollo’s pyre toward them. Terror flashed in Esmeralda’s eyes for the briefest moment before she squeezed them shut; when she opened them again, all he saw was the fierce determination that had made him fall for her. Beneath that confident expression, though, he saw a hint of uncertainty when she asked, “Are you going to come with us, when we find our new sanctuary?”
A thrill swelled beneath his breastbone, the first rush of excitement like he used to feel when setting out on a new deployment, knowing that adventure awaited him wherever he might land. That excitement was magnified a hundredfold by the prospect of having Esmeralda at his side for whatever lay ahead.
“I wouldn’t dream of letting you run off without me!” he told her, and her smile made him feel like he’d been given a hero’s welcome home. He kissed that brilliant smile, and for that brief eternal moment while their lips lingered together, he savored the promise of a future with her.
He could feel his heart begin to race—and with it a painful throbbing where he’d been pierced by that confounded soldier’s arrow, reminding him that for now at least any further excitement would have to wait until he’d healed. He pulled away reluctantly.
“Besides,” he laughed, a little self-conscious, “I’m a deserter now. Guess that makes me an outcast, too.”
Esmeralda’s eyes sparkled. “God help us!” she replied with a wink.