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Edmond was trying to dodge Mercedes' pointed questions about the last twenty years of his life when he noticed that he hadn't seen André for a while. The young man usually hung around after lunch, but Edmond hadn't noticed a single brown hair or white feather today. His gaze searched the room thoroughly, then the window when it came up empty. Finding nothing, he turned back to his companion, cutting her off before she could ask for the umpteenth time if he was the famous Italian nobleman who had bought his father's flat.
"Have you seen André?" asked Edmond.
"Now that you mention it, I think I saw him leave the house with Fernand a while ago."
"With Fernand!?"
And she had been careful not to tell him.
A touch of anxiety stirred Edmond's heart. Since the incident with Villefort, he did not like to leave the young man alone. He was afraid of what André might do if left to his own devices.
The idea of Fernand being with him did little to reassure him. On the contrary, the memory of Morcerf's betrayal had stayed with him too long for Edmond to forget, and he was sure it was the same for the soldier. Who knows what the blond would be capable of doing, if driven by another fit of jealousy?
"Are you sure?”
He had already taken a step towards the door.
Mercedes was staring at him with piercing eyes. Edmond shuddered. It was as if she could see through the mask he had spent six long years forming, and judge the distrust of the world that hid behind that wall. Her eyes suddenly softened.
"Yes, I'm sure of it. I think I heard them talking about exploring the cliffs. Would you like us to go and check?"
Edmond nodded. Already, he could feel his wings arching against the straps that held them to his back, almost invisible, even as his feathers ruffled with worry. They soon reached the edge of the cliff that bordered the manor house, where two figures were perched.
"See, I told you they were out! Mercedes said, a mischievous look in the corner of her eye.
Edmond wasn't nearly as delighted as she was. The smaller figure of André stood dangerously close to the edge for his liking. He knew that the young man was winged as well, so there was nothing to worry about if he threw himself over the edge, but there was something about the scene that made Edmond uneasy. It took him a few more steps to notice the strange position of the young man's white wings, and to make out the ropes around them.
His steps quickened of their own accord.
"What on earth are you doing?" Edmond shouted as soon as he was within earshot.
His ears were ringing. He was barely aware of Mercedes running beside him, a reassuring hand resting on his arm, lost under the mad pounding of his heart and the obstructed sight of André, at the mercy of his enemy.
The dark-haired man and the blond seemed to be exchanging words, but Edmond paid them no heed. The worst-case scenarios were playing over and over in his head. André's gaze met his for a moment, a defiant determination shining in his eyes, and Edmond's heart leapt. The next moment, the young man cried out "No! Go ahead!"
Fearing the worst, Edmond disengaged himself from Mercedes' grasp and accelerated again.
"André! Your wings!"
The cry was lost in the air.
Like a nightmare vision, Fernand pushed André into the void.
A high-pitched wail escaped Edmond's throat. Without a moment's thought, he tore off his jacket, shirt and support bands, pulled them over his head and, with his wings fluttering freely in the wind, leapt after the young man he saw as his son.
His thoughts did not extend to his lack of primary feathers, recently clipped to hide the limbs more easily under the tight gala clothes from the previous evening's party. They did not extend to the cliff, too close, which threatened to send him tumbling at the slightest false move. They didn't extend to the icy air nipping at his skin, or the wind whistling in his ears as Edmond dived, his wings pressed against his back to offer as little resistance as possible and speed up his fall.
No, Edmond's thoughts were focused solely on the young man falling a few metres from him, his fingers tangled in the ropes he was struggling to untie.
Edmond stretched out his arm in silent prayer, desperate to catch André before they both crashed to their deaths on the rocks waiting for them, fangs open, below. His fingertip grazed one of the ropes and Edmond felt a victorious thrill run through him. The next moment, he had tightened his grip and was holding in his fist one of the floating links that André had managed to partially detach.
His wings unfurled, great sails like the ocean hidden by the mist, carrying them beyond the spiky fangs of the cliff. Instantly, André's entire weight came to rest in his arm. The jolt pulled painfully on his shoulder, and Edmond winced. To make matters worse, their speed had slowed but they were still falling, Edmond's reduced wingspan was barely able to support his own weight, let alone that of another man. André absolutely had to regain the use of his limbs before they crashed. With a powerful sweep of his wings, he readjusted himself so that he was now at André's level, one hand wrapped around his torso, the other entangled in the bonds.
Immediately, the young man struggled.
"Get off me, for fuck's sake!"
Edmund blocked a kick to bend over the bonds that were binding the young man's immaculate wings. The latter had made good progress with the work, and if the situation hadn't been so suicidal, he would have been impressed by the speed with which André had untied the knots.
"No."
"What do you mean, no?" André tried to push him away again, to no avail. "Can't you see you're bothering?! This is my fucking test!"
Edmond paused in his disentanglement for a moment, incredulous. His wings missed a beat.
"To prove what?!”
Teeth clenched, he angrily untied one of the weakened knots, freeing André's left wing. The limb struck Edmond's face like a whip, and he nearly choked on the feathers.
"Stop it! No! Not that one!" André shouted, too late.
The sudden imbalance sent them tumbling towards the cliff that Edmond had just managed to pull them away from. A scream escaped the youngest as his back scraped the rock. Edmond gritted his teeth and flapped his wings to counterbalance the blow, fearing the worst, but while successfully steering them away from the dangerous rocky edges, the flapping added to their imbalance, so that André was now above and Edmond below. In this sense, his wings were unable to catch the air and dragged on either side of their tangled bodies, unable to slow their fall.
"You always make everything worse!" André shouted in his ear, "Do you think I know everything because of you? You think the hospice didn't teach me anything?! That I can't manage on my own?! WHY DO YOU ALWAYS HAVE TO COME TO MY RESCUE?!”
Edmond gritted his teeth and belied the young man with a stroke of his waist, which set them on the right course, while forcing André's flapping wing to fall back. They were always falling too close, too fast, but Edmond knew from experience that panicking would get them nowhere. His fingers ran over the knots, abandoning those that were too hard, too tight, to concentrate on those that a simple pressure managed to untie. There was still one complex knot, however, different from the sailor knots Edmond knew, which passed under the fold of the wing and held the humerus to the ulna. From the slight softness around it, the knot had been made to be loose, but the blow Edmond had given the rope when he caught André had tightened it into a hard little ball that refused to untangle.
A punch hit his stomach and Edmond let out an expletive.
"I don't need your help!"
He tightened his grip around Andre's torso, refusing to dignify him with an answer. Their bodies rose and fell to the rhythm of Edmond's flapping wings, in a vain attempt to slow their mad plunge. Without the most buoyant part of the wing, the primary remiges, it would almost have been more efficient to simply glide. But the energy of the desperate can't cope with inaction.
Edmond bitterly regretted not having the knife with him, which he always tucked into the hem of his shirt and which now lay somewhere out of reach at the top of the cliff. The fog and tears blurred his vision, and André's continued blows did nothing to help, forcing him to repeat his attack several times on the cursed knot that condemned them. His fingernails scraped uselessly on the rope, leaving his fingers flayed and the knot still there, still tight. Edmond was considering using his teeth to get at the rope when André screamed.
It was a shrill sound, so loud and high-pitched that one would have expected it more from a young lady in distress than from an ex-street-voyou. Edmond almost dropped it in surprise, but caught himself by the same knot that was causing so much trouble. However, the movement relaxed André's free wing and it began to flap uselessly in the air again, bothering Edmond as he struggled to slow their pace as much as possible.
The young man's debates resumed in earnest.
"Coward. Me. Fuck."
Edmond reasserted his grip, clutching André's head to his heart. The memory of the trial and the years leading up to it, when he had kept the little bird he had taken under his wing too far away from him, echoed in his mind.
"Never again, André. Never again.”
His wings trembled from the effort of carrying their combined weight for so long, and threatened to give way. Edmond forced them to keep flapping. If they fell, they would both fall.
"EDMOND!"
At the call of his name, he raised his head. Fernand had dived in after them, and was now approaching at full speed. Edmond glanced at the soldier's wingspan, then at the rocks, increasingly visible through the mist below. Fernand couldn't carry them both any more than Edmond could carry André and they were still too close to the edge of the cliff. At their current speed, they would be torn apart by the rocks of the coast.
One man, however, he could carry. All the more so if the man was young and had lost his reason to fight. A bitter taste invaded Edmond's mouth. No matter how hard Mercedes tried, he could never trust the Catalan who had stolen half his life, let alone when the soldier had pushed André off the cliff. But it was Fernand who André had gone out with this morning, and it was Fernand who was capable of lifting the young man. Edmond had never been able to save anyone, not even his own life.
The knot was a lost cause.
Fernand reached out to grab them, a silent request in his eyes. He knew his hope was in vain, and yet he was still trying to lift them both. Edmond felt a pang of satisfaction as he threw his rebellious burden into the blond's stronger, more massive arms and used the momentum to propel himself away from the cliff. Already, he could feel the droplets of waves crashing against the rocks licking at his skin, hungry for human blood and licking their lips at the prey plunging willingly into their embrace.
For a wild moment, Edmond doubted he was heading in the right direction. His vision was obscured by mist, salt and tears. Had he imagined the horizon? There were only a few metres left before he hit the ocean, and the rocks still stretched as far as the eye could see, threatening to scrape his arms, torso and knees. If he had rushed towards the cliff, the collision would be fatal.
It wasn't the first time Edmond had leapt, blind and alone, towards an icy plunge. Twenty years earlier, he had leapt from the Château d'If for the first time and, hit by a bullet from one of the sentries, had spun straight towards the ocean. The waves carried with them the rage of the thundering storm so similar to the foam and mist that now faced him, and the cold February air had been scarcely more biting than the November air that was choking his muscles. Memories mingled with reality, sweeping him along in a daze for the last few moments of his fall.
His foot caught on a rock. He waltzed, thrown into the sea by the hook biting his ankle.
The water hit him like a whip.
His right wing went in first, then his neck, then his waist, then the whole length of his legs. The blow took his breath away. The pain of the blow was quickly lost under the burn of the frost, which slid along his skin like one of those old clothes you sometimes put on. Uncomfortable, but familiar. As twenty years earlier, the sea offered him an icy welcome.
Unlike his first flight, however, Edmond had learned his lesson. He pressed his wings against his back to offer as little resistance as possible; or rather tried. His right wing refused to obey and hung limply to one side, entangling itself in his arms and dragging him towards the seabed. His nerves were so numb from the cold that Edmond was unable to determine the source of his limb's recalcitrance.
Edmond stretched out his unbroken wing slightly to rebalance himself, then searched the dark waters with his eyes. This time, there was no lightning to illuminate the sky and guide him back to the surface. Luckily, he could still make out a gradient of light. Drawing on his last reserves, he swam towards the clearest area.
A flash of pain made him spit out all the air from his lungs. His injured wing had just hit a rock, hard enough to pierce through his numbness. Struggling not to open his mouth and inhale the salt water surrounding him, Edmond used the rock submerged surface to kick his way to the surface. He broke through the waves.
Immediately, his body broke into coughing fits. A little liquid had passed down his throat when he hit the rock, and his gulping inhalation had caused it to reach his lungs. He fought with all his might to stay afloat as the spasms shook him, until finally a small spit of salted water returned to the sea.
Able to breathe again, Edmond looked around him. The cliffs, and the rocky fangs that lay at their feet, stood proudly a hundred metres from his position. In his desperate race, Edmond had managed to get just far enough away to avoid the cemetery. The rock that had guided him to the surface had been one of the last before the seabed plummeted, and already it was not reaching the surface, depriving Edmond of an island on which to rest his weary limbs.
Unfortunately, he couldn't afford to go near the stones he could see piercing the water. Their sharp edges and the raging waves around them would soon be his undoing. So Edmond fought against the current to get away from the coastal waters and into the deep sea. Perhaps he would reach a beach along the coast, or come across a boat that would take him on board, at least long enough for him to rest and set off again.
Edmond had always been a good swimmer. Circumstances, however, hampered him. His two half-spread wings floated limply at his side, keeping him upright but requiring double the effort to keep himself in the open air and out of the currents dragging him towards the cliffs. It was all he could do without folding his right wing.
This did little to stop the waves from trying to knock him over. More than once, the furious ocean gave him the slip. The roar of the water filled his ears. Edmond almost didn't hear Fernand shout his name.
"Edmond, we're coming! Try to keep your head above water!"
It was easy for the blond to say, as Edmond could now see the mist parting towards him. He wasn't trapped in the freezing water, too cold and exhausted to shiver, kept from drowning by determination alone.
Edmond had no desire to be saved by Fernand. He wasn't a damsel in distress waiting for their Prince Charming to rescue him in his muscular arms. This wasn't his first rodeo in the waves and, if only he could keep his damned wing bent, he'd have no trouble sinking like an eel among them.
Edmond looked again for the shore, but the salt stung his eyes and he could see no further than the vague outline of the rocks towards the coast. He didn't remember being so far from it. Anger rumbled in the pit of his stomach as he realised that Fernand was his only reasonable way out. Already, the other man was reaching his level, the beating of his broad wings audible through the tide.
Edmond swallowed his rage. It would wait until he was on dry land, with all the support he needed to unleash his wrath on the newcomer at will. If the four walls of If's dungeon had taught him one thing, it was patience.
"Are you hurt?" Fernand held out an arm.
A coughing fit shook Edmond before he could reply. He still had a little seawater in his throat. He struggled to stay afloat, wheezing, before finally opening his mouth.
"I don't think so."
His wing was, but Edmond was certain it would heal quickly. His limbs were too numb to really feel any pain, and in any case, injured or not, Fernand couldn't do anything about it. He couldn't magically restore Edmond's ability to bend his wing or fly.
After a few kicks to get closer to the soldier, Edmond obediently raised his wrists to the outstretched hand. As soon as the other man had tightened his grip, freeing Edmond from the weight of keeping his body above the waves, a wave of torpor swept over him, silencing the mixture of anger and bitterness ringing in his ears.
"I've got you, you'll be all right now," Fernand murmured, as much to reassure himself as Edmond. “Don't flap your wings, you risk putting us both in the water, and I'm not set up for that sort of thing.”
Edmond nodded.
"All right, I'll trust you.”
At least on this subject: he doubted Fernand would have wanted to drown, or suffer Mercedes' admonitions for abandoning Edmond to his fate. If it hadn't been for the threat of their common beloved, the soldier would probably have passed Edmond without a glance, and continued his flight through the mist, returning later with some apology that he hadn't managed to find Edmond.
Edmond felt his eyelids fall back, half-closed, as Fernand pulled his body through the waves. His thoughts drifted from one subject to another, from Mercedes' request for peace to the deep resentment that his half-finished revenge had only just begun to bear, or just the nostalgic memory of the summer heat. He knew he had to stay awake. That the torpor that overcame him was simply the result of cold and fatigue, and that it was dangerous there, in the middle of the sea, at the mercy of a man who had been his enemy for longer than he had been his friend.
But the rubbing of the waves against his skin was so pleasant, the sound of wings hitting the air so familiar, that Edmond let himself be lulled to sleep. Why struggle, when the slightest attempt to move his own wings ended in abject failure? Despite himself, his body relaxed under the help offered, and he let himself be guided.
Fernand brought him closer to the cliffs Edmond had so desperately tried to avoid. He guided him along the rocky barrier to a more sparsely populated area where the less turbulent waves made it possible to climb to low rocky islets. There, Fernand let go of him and collapsed on the rock, his wings trembling.
Edmond struggled to pull himself out of the water. The effort woke him up a little, giving him renewed energy. Once freed from the sea's embrace, he took a moment to concentrate on his injured wing. Without the buoyant support of the water, he couldn't afford to leave it lying around.
He took the offending joint between his hands, grimacing as the numbness gradually gave way to a pulsating pain, and the shivers began to run through his fingers, more than once threatening to worsen the injury. From what he could feel between shakes, the limb was neither dislocated nor broken. It was probably just a sprain caused by the angle at which he had hit the water. He could already feel a swelling forming under the feathers, giving off heat that he couldn't feel in any part of his body. Edmond gritted his teeth and carefully manipulated the trailing wing into a folded position, then tucked the tip into his trousers to hold it in place. He did the same with the other, so that no questions would be asked.
Now that they were all out of danger for the time being, Edmond's anger was showing its fangs. It gave him an unexpected second wind. Suddenly, he couldn't forgive Fernand for pushing André off the cliff. So the blond was his first target when he joined the other two angels on the summit of their islet, using the burning fire of his rage to camouflage the shivering that was still shaking him.
"Have you gone completely mad?" He screamed as soon as he reached his prey. "You wanted to kill him, didn't you?"
"No!" Fernand defended himself as Edmond leaned forward, threatening.
If he could, he would have pulled his wings out of his belt and arched them, feathers puffed out with menace.
"So what was your plan?"
"It wasn't his!"
Two white wings suddenly hid the object of his ire. Immediately, Edmond's fury pounced on this new prey that was offered to him, fuelled all the more by the worry that was budding in his heart.
"Not his?”
"It's all my fault," murmured André, his eyes low. His eyes glistened with tears that he refused to shed. "I just wanted to achieve something great, like the Count de Morcerf. I wanted to prove to you that I could do it too. That I can manage on my own, that I'm not some chick you have to look after all the time. I just wanted you to finally see me as an adult. But I have to admit... that I'm not as strong as you, Count, nor as strong as de Morcerf. For God's sake, I nearly killed you, I nearly took his father away from Albert, I nearly took the men in her life away from Mercedes, I nearly took the Count away from Haydée... It's abominable. Inexcusable. But... I just want to say that I'm sorry. I really am. I'm sorry I put you both in danger. Sorry I was too arrogant, or too stupid, or both. Sorry for everything. But please, Count, please don't take it out on de Morcerf. He tried to stop me, I swear! If he came, it was only to protect me, in case anything went wrong."
Where André's eyes shone, Edmond's flowed. The pang in his heart fought with his fury, and he only dreamed of reassuring the young man that it wasn't so bad, they were all here, very much alive. That his life, young and full of potential, was worth more than Edmond and Fernand put together. But he waited too long and, before he could say a word or make a gesture, Fernand was already embracing the younger man in his arms.
Even more surprisingly, André returned the embrace.
Edmond shivered, alone on his stone corner, separated from the other two by an invisible barrier that stretched beyond his senses. He was the one who had adopted André, and yet he felt like an intruder. Although he was the cause of this misadventure, Fernand was acting like a better father than Edmond had ever been.
Desperate for an excuse to look anywhere but at the other two men, and not to face up to the sum total of his failures, Edmond searched the steep wall of the cliff. If he remembered correctly, there was a small beach topped by a steep but passable path not far away. Their rocky islet was close enough for them to reach the shore by jumping from stone to stone. If the shivering didn't make him fall back into the sea before then. Edmund gritted his teeth to keep them from chattering, bitterly regretting not being able to wrap himself in his feathers, however damp, to recover some warmth. At least with no top on, his trousers were only soaked and his back was warm.
Whispers of nearby conversation reached her ears.
"... ... dead, André, ... everything's fine. ... worse, everything's fine ... ... everything's fine."
Edmond didn't hear André's reply, only Fernand's reaction.
"No, ... ... sure not, I know him. ... ... ... ... more for ...... ... grudge, ... ... ... .... But he ... ... afraid, André, really ... afraid. Whatever ... ..., you ... always ... son and he ... always worried about you. ... ..., ... know something about it. ... ... ... ... ...."
Edmond gazed at the cliff. His right wing pulsed languorously, slightly open despite the support of his belt. Would he be able to climb the path in his condition? Would Fernand and André be able to fly back up? They were all exhausted.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Fernand detach himself from André and turn towards him. Edmond took his gaze off the cliff and looked coldly into the soldier's eyes.
"All's well that ends well, isn't it?" joked Fernand.
Edmond stared at him for a moment. His pale skin, the cold water dripping from it and the tremors that continued to shake his feathers sent a clear message that, no, all had not ended well. And that was without counting the burns on André's back, or the slightly dragging wing that Edmond now noticed detaching itself from Fernand's back.
The blond raised his hands in a gesture of appeasement.
"Please, I know that right now you must be dying to challenge me to a duel or throw me into the water. But I'm exhausted so I beg you, give me until tomorrow. Then you and Mercedes can do what you like to me. For the time being, we'd better save our strength so that we can get back up."
Edmund felt he had quite enough energy left to let out a second burst of anger, but at the pitiful look on the blond's face and the broken face of the dark-haired man behind him, he thought better of it. He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose to escape the growing headache that threatened to split his skull.
"Unfortunately, you're right. Hell, I should have killed you that day you came to my house."
"Maybe you should have. But you wouldn't have had so much fun then.”
Edmond's shoulders slumped. He didn't know what he would have done in a world where his revenge had gone according to plan. He'd never really planned an 'after'. Instead of answering, he looked at Fernand's visibly wounded wing. He doubted that the man was in any better condition than he was to fly back up to the top. The irony of fate was that in their precipitous fall, both of them bruised a wing, while the investigator, André, escaped more or less unscathed. He glanced at the young man to check his theory. André had lost a few feathers, the back of his shirt was in a bad state and he was slumped over like someone carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, but he was safe from critical injury. Edmond was fine with this exchange. He would have suffered all the injuries in the world if it would keep the young man out of danger.
"I hope, in any case, that after this you'll stop clipping your feathers."
Fernand's voice came from beside him. The blond had sat down on the stone itself and was watching him with the same attention that Edmond had been watching André a moment earlier.
"I'll think about it," Edmond growled. He moved away, leaping from rock to rock to get closer to the cliff, and the exit door that weaved its way through.
Clipping his feathers was necessary. The Count of Monte Cristo had no wings. The Count of Monte Cristo could not have wings, for their dark colour would sooner have thrown him out of high society, no matter how much money he brought with him. He would have been immediately suspected, accused and arrested, and Edmond was in no hurry to return to the Château d'If. But it was difficult for Edmond to hide his full stature under the tight clothes that the nobles liked so much, without a dark feather sticking out. So he trimmed the primary regimes, knowing that they would grow back after ten months or so, reducing the volume he needed to slip under his clothes.
But Edmond no longer needed to win the confidence of a few elitists or infiltrate the royalists to carry out his revenge. Who cared if high society gossiped about his demonic wings, so dark they could only belong to one of those damned revolutionaries?
Anger thundered in his heart at the memory of the nobles' remarks, who thought they were talking to one of their colleagues. But anger was an old friend of Edmond's, and fear, fatigue and the cold had only rekindled a feeling that never really left him.
Edmond jumped from one rocky islet to another, gradually making his way towards the cliffs. Moving allowed him to forget for a while the cold invading his limbs. More than once, he almost slipped on the slippery walls, but always caught himself before falling from the sharp edges to the waves. Each time, his wings tried to escape from their bond to help him regain his balance, to no avail, and each time, a launch of pain resounded from his right side under the strain.
Finally, he reached the base of the steep path leading up the cliff. Edmond looked up at the vertiginous passage. Up close, it looked even worse. He would have done better to push his wings up to gain altitude, rather than climb in his tired state.
Edmond's thoughts returned to Fernand and André, whom he had left on the first rocky islet. Fernand was definitely unable to fly. Otherwise, the blond would have already left. Fernand’s promise to Mercedes had been fulfilled, Edmond was no longer in immediate danger thanks to him. It would be best to show him the way to the cliff. That way, they'd be even.
Edmond himself would just have to spend the night under the sand of the beach, then climb back up into the air once his limb was less swollen. If he pushed hard enough, he was sure he could gain altitude, and perhaps even capture one of the morning's telluric currents to lift himself into the air despite his clipped primaries.
He retraced his steps to tell the other two about the cliff pathways.
And well..,
He preferred not to leave André alone with Fernand. Who knows what tricks the two men might come up with next, if left to their own devices?
He came back within sight of Fernand, the blond man's uninjured wing wrapped around André, while the second wing stood slightly back. He stopped at the edge of the islet, reluctant to interrupt this moment of peace from which he was excluded. He almost turned back towards the cliff, finding the memory of the winding path less frightening than facing the reality of a tenderness of which he could have no part.
This is stupid, Edmond reprimanded himself. Mercedes had told him more than once that if he wanted to join them, all he had to do was take the plunge. He put this advice into practice straight away, half driven by spite, half driven by yearning, and dropped down next to Fernand, his back pressed against the latter's shin, attracted by the warmth emanating from it.
An immense weariness overtook his body. His head came to rest in his arms and he sighed. Now that he was no longer moving, he was cold again. Except that this time he felt neither the energy nor the desire to move; not even to say a word and discuss the path, as he had planned. Instead, his thoughts flitted here and there, obsessed by the soft spot of warmth warming his back, by the comfort of his head resting against the stable surface of his arms, by the muffled roar of his muscles finally relaxing after an intense effort.
He almost gasped when an affectionate hand came to rest in his hair, distractedly untangling a few strands. The sensation was, however, rather pleasant. He let the hand do its work, leaning back a little more against the longed-for source of warmth.
The sound of the waves rocked him. Against all rationality, Edmond felt safe there, on this little piece of rock occupied by three men traumatised by life. It wasn't long before he was dozing, lost in a world of dreams and half-formed memories.
Fernand's whispering voice pierced his ears like a dream
"This kid really is yours, you know.”
Edmond nodded, not quite sure what he was nodding at. He let his heavy eyelids close and sank a little deeper into the cocoon that had appeared.
Yes, just a little nap. Then he would show André and Fernand the way back up the cliff, and bandage his wound properly. But first... First, he would allow himself a little rest.