The Deepest Night tsd-2 Page 12

  Not the headmistress, apparently. Maybe Almeda, the housekeeper. The always-charming Gladys.

  Mr. Hastings, the groundskeeper—and Jesse’s great-uncle. He lived alone above the stables; from here I could nearly see it, nearly make out the smudge of light peeking out past the doors …

  I turned about, telling myself I had to before someone caught sight of me.

  I circled up and back and found the cliff with Armand motionless at its edge. There was the blanket behind him, the motorcar, and a small clearing behind that. Not much, but it would have to do.

  I sailed closer, concentrating on the scrap of land I wanted, feeling my wings adapt to my target, shorter beats, a higher arch.

  Closer. Closer …

  I passed over Armand, ruffling his hair and shirt and trousers. I was by him in a breath, past the auto, sinking to the clearing—

  Too fast. My body realized it before my brain did. My legs stiffened and my wings tried to reverse but they couldn’t, and the ground rose up so quickly that all I could see were blades of grass and—

  I struck the earth and went end over end, and my right wing got crushed and my tail hit something solid that squealed, and the next thing I knew I was on my back seeing stars—fake ones, woozy orange balls, up and down, up and down—and when I could focus again my brain was screaming, Breathe! So I did.

  A human was running toward me. No, not a human.

  Armand, his eyes gone an incredible, luminous blue.

  I turned my head and looked at him, dazed and happy in some weird, detached way, despite the fact that I felt broken in about a dozen places.

  Armand’s eyes could glow, just like mine.

  Armand was just like—

  “Lora!”

  He fell to his knees beside me, his hands roaming frantically along my face.

  “Lora! Are you hurt?”

  I smiled. Well, I would have. It was more like I showed him my teeth, which didn’t have nearly the same effect. He scowled down at me, and his eyes reverted to normal.

  “Eleanore, it’s me. Don’t you know me?”

  I sighed, then Turned back to girl.

  “Ouch,” I said.

  “Oh!” He lurched away from me. “Oh, ah, you’re—you don’t have any—”

  “Just toss me my coat, will you?”

  I kept my eyes closed until I heard him return and the rough wool weight of the peacoat was draped over my torso. The ground was lumpy and there was a rock digging into my thigh, but I didn’t feel up to moving yet, so I ignored it.

  “Mandy. Do you know what just happened?”

  He settled down at my side, running a hand along my arm. “You managed to destroy my father’s favorite car?”

  I sat up, clutching the coat to me. The motorcar had a series of long, gaping gashes angled down its side, all the way from the bonnet to the back door. The tears were as neat and clean as if someone had taken shears to the steel.

  My tail, I realized. My barbed tail.

  “Uh … ,” I said.

  “Don’t worry. There are a dozen more you can go through before we have to start buying new ones.”

  “No, not that. I mean, I’m sorry about that, of course—”

  “As long as you’re not injured—”

  “No, listen! Armand, you … your eyes. They were dragon eyes! Just now, when you came to me.”

  He looked confused; I dug the rock out from beneath me and threw it toward the sea.

  “Dragon eyes,” I emphasized, smiling. A real smile this time, one I couldn’t have stopped if I’d wanted. “And they were beautiful.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “Yes.”

  And only then, with the wind whispering and the sea crashing and the mist rolling along the waves … only then did the stars come to life.

  not alone, was their sudden chorus, a wily, sparkling tune. not alone, beast, not alone.

  I rose to my knees and hugged him, the coat trapped between us. His arms came up and encircled me; he turned his face to my neck.

  “A dragon,” Armand said against my skin, so soft and awed I barely caught it.

  “Not alone,” I said back, but without sound, because I wasn’t ready for him to hear it yet.

  After that, everything changed.

  We still met at night, because it was obvious I needed all the practice I could get. The owls and herons were our witnesses as I shifted from one form to the next, over and over, mostly getting it right but sometimes not. Armand was always there for that.

  During the day, however, he avoided me. I didn’t notice at first; I was busy with my vastly crucial duty of ensuring that long strips of woven cloth were rolled precisely to measure. I spent hours in what once was the reading room but now housed (according to the sign on the door) “Necessary Supplies.” The sage-green window treatments and white paneled walls had been hidden behind temporary metal cases holding everything from iodine to powdered gravy. My workstation was exactly in the middle of the room: one table, one chair, reams of cloth.

  It wasn’t unpleasant. I didn’t have to see Chloe, and I didn’t have to deal with maggots or scrubbing up blood.

  Even Sophia lost me for a while, though once she realized where I was and what I was doing, she brought another chair and joined in—if you could call sitting beside me and doing none of the work joining in.

  “It’s so much cooler in here than out there,” she commented, taking a sip of iced tea from the service she’d insisted we have on hand.

  “No, it isn’t,” I said.

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “Quieter,” I noted, adding one of my finished rolls to the pyramid I’d been building on the table.

  She tipped her head to the side, musing. “Less …”

  Death, I might have said. Suffering. Dying men wasting away in their beds with nothing to be done.

  “Fuss,” she finished, flat, and I nodded.

  She placed her empty glass on the nearest shelf. “Where is Armand?”

  “I don’t know.”

  And I didn’t. That was one of the things that had changed. It wasn’t that I couldn’t feel him around in a general way. I still did. But he’d become less than even a specter to me now. He’d become someone who shunned me. No more swimming lessons; he’d told me that since we weren’t likely to drop into the Channel, I didn’t need them. No more taking meals together; Sophia’d overheard the butler informing the chatelaine that Lord Armand was much too busy to formally dine.

  When we met now at night, I noticed how he kept a firm distance between us. How he would stand at the edge of the cliff and watch me fly, but never touch me again, not even to offer me my clothes.

  I was accustomed to his bridled admiration, I admit. I’d come to expect it.

  Losing it irritated me.

  “Lovers’ quarrel?” Sophia inquired, rising to get more tea.

  “We’d have to be lovers for that to happen.”

  “You’re blushing.”

  “I am not. I am hot.”

  “Yes, indeed. Rolling bandages must be such awful exertion!”

  “Perhaps you’d care to try it,” I shot back. “Then you could find out.”

  She sent me a cat’s smile. “No, thank you. I’m quite content over here with my nice, cold drink.”

  I slapped my latest roll on top of the pyramid, destroying its fragile unity. It broke apart into bouncing pieces, bandages unfurling down the table and all across the room.

  “Lovers’ quarrel,” Sophia said wisely, and left it to me to pick everything up.

  “This time I’m flying with you,” Armand told me that night upon the cliff.

  He said it without inflection, without even looking at me, standing with his arms crossed to confront the rising yellow moon.

  No mist tonight; the moon threw a flickering path along the waves that led straight back to us.

  “I don’t know,” I hedged.

  “Don’t argue. It’s past time for it. You’ve done fin
e for the last two nights, haven’t you? No unexpected changes?”

  “That doesn’t mean they won’t come now.”

  “And it doesn’t mean they will. What are you scared of, waif?” His eyes glanced back to mine, heavily shadowed; I couldn’t read them at all.

  “Killing you,” I said bluntly.

  He shrugged. “Everyone dies sometime.”

  “Oh, am I supposed to be impressed with that? You’re so brave and noble, willing to leave me with your blood on my hands?”

  He looked at me fully. “Is that what you envision will happen?”

  Yes. No. I couldn’t bear thinking about it long enough to decide.

  “Tonight,” he ordered, in that cool, distant tone he used with me now.

  I turned on my heel, stalking back toward the motorcar. “Fine. Your funeral.”

  “We’ll find out.”

  I Turned without waiting to reach the car, smoke to dragon, just like that. I stepped carefully around my scattered garments, my talons scraping against the hard-packed dirt.

  I had no words in this shape; I’d discovered a while ago that I didn’t have any manner of voice whatsoever. I couldn’t even growl. So I lowered my head to glower at him and thought my dare.

  Come on, then. If this is such a cakewalk for you, come on.

  He walked over to me and placed a hand upon my shoulder. Damned if I was going to make it easier for him by bending down. I felt his feet slip for purchase on my scales, some tugging, and then he was up, straddling me.

  I wiggled in place, adjusting to the weight of him. His feet hooked in the space behind my front legs and in front of my wings. His fingers entwined with my mane.

  “Golden Eleanore,” he said quietly, leaning forward along my neck. “Fairest of the fair. I’m so tired of waiting. Let’s get on with it, shall we?”

  My irritation drained away. I flicked my ears at him, took an uneasy step. He remained perfectly balanced.

  I opened my wings. I tried a few tentative beats, letting him get the feel of it, of how my muscles would shift beneath him. I didn’t like his grip along my mane but couldn’t imagine how else he was going to hang on; my scales were slick as glass.

  Suddenly the saddle didn’t seem like such a bad idea.

  “Fly with me, love,” Armand whispered, a warm and urgent pressure upon my spine.

  I crouched, bounded, and took us up into the heavens.

  Chapter 16

  It was a very different thing to fly with another. I learned that right off.

  He slipped back some but held on tight, which was good, because if he’d fallen off as I ascended I didn’t think there was much I could do about it. I climbed and climbed so there’d be time for me to twist about and catch him if I needed to, then had the grisly thought that if I went too high, I might suffocate him.

  I chanced a look back. Armand was windblown, beaming. He met my eyes and blew me a kiss.

  Cheeky, but the relief danced through me light as bubbles.

  I leveled out, unwilling to try anything too daring. I felt him adjusting in place; every movement threw me off by degrees, and I had to compensate by tilting this way or that.

  I caught a stream of wind and the roar in my ears subsided into something close to silence. There was only the hiss of my wingtips scraping edges off the air. His breathing. Mine.

  The sea was a reflective floor, occasional ships adding dollops of light. We skimmed below clouds plated in gold, because the moon was huge and lovely, pulling me toward it with a yearning that tugged soul deep.

  Fireheart. Lora-of-the-moon.

  I was meant to be here. I was meant to be this way. And even with Armand clinging to my back, I was glad. Up here I was as free to be myself as anywhere in creation. No rules meant to bind me, no gossip meant to make me feel small. No adults chiding me for never being quite what they hoped; no toffee-nosed girls mocking me for what I’d never have or never become.

  Beyond the clouds, the stars had been arranged in a high, brilliant lattice of glitter. They were singing without words, a symphony as glad and ferocious as I was.

  I gazed up at them and imagined plucking them one by one, wearing them as debutantes did diamonds: a necklace of stars, a coronet, a glinting fan of them trailing behind me like the train of the most breathtaking gown. The queen herself would weep with envy.

  There was one star in particular that caught my attention, brighter than all the rest. It blazed with light, a rare green and gold. I’d wear that one over my heart …

  Wait …

  “Jesse?” I gasped, and then screamed.

  Because I’d Turned to girl, of course.

  We tumbled down together, two bodies pinwheeling, the air sucked from our lungs. For a few long, terrifying seconds—much too long—I was trapped in the black breathless vortex of my impending death. I was senseless, powerless. The words Turn! Turn! screeched through my mind with no results.

  Then I went to smoke, instantly suspended.

  Armand continued his tumble, smaller and smaller against the waiting sea.

  I Turned to dragon and plummeted after him.

  I’d done something like this once before. I knew to fold my wings as close to my body as I could, to keep myself stiff and straight, a knife blade, a sword. He had his arms and legs spread out, which gave me the only small advantage I had; I was gaining on him, but not swiftly enough.

  He toppled upward, his face toward me. His eyes had that same blue glow that had thrilled me days ago, but now only served to fill me with an infuriated fright.

  He was not going to die. I was not going to lose the lone person who understood what I was and liked me anyway—

  The sea was so near. I was too far. Armand reached up an arm toward me and in desperation I reached back, my claws flashing.

  I felt the pull of him, an abrupt yank of weight. I opened my wings and tried to rise but couldn’t get high enough in time. Armand hit the water and then so did I, but the difference was that I broke apart into smoke as it happened, shattering far and wide.

  I didn’t know what had happened to him.

  The pieces of me bobbed about, gradually mustering back into one. Seawater splashed through me, atoms of mist adding to my vapor.

  Where was he? I funneled up, searching, seeing only pewtered water and slippery waves.

  Where is he? I called silently to the stars. Jesse, help—where is he?

  As if in answer, I felt myself beginning to solidify. And even though I tried to stop it, I Turned into girl again.

  I splashed down almost gently. It was almost preposterous how leisurely it happened, and how utterly unable I was to keep my head above the water.

  My one brief lesson in swimming deserted me. I thrashed about, sinking fast, the entire world sheathing me in smothering dark.

  Sophia had been correct. I was useless.

  My lungs burned. My limbs had gone to stone.

  Smoke, I commanded myself, but it seemed like such an impossible feat. All my magic was cold and lifeless, already drowned.

  My lungs were on fire. My heart was a dying ember. I had to breathe. I had no choice, I was going to breathe—

  The air rushed out of my lungs just as he found me. I was hauled upward and we broke the surface together and I was able to cough and wheeze and cry, and I did all of them at once.

  Armand had slung an arm under both of mine, our sides pressed together.

  “Use your feet, Lora,” he was panting in my ear. “Kick your feet, like I showed you!”

  I couldn’t feel my feet, but I must have been doing it because I was sort of floating, and he swam about to face me, still holding on.

  “I believe—” He kept panting. “I—ended our lessons—a tad too soon.”

  I was shivering, aching, mad as spit beneath it all. “Now do you understand? I need to do this alone!”

  “No.” He shook the water from his eyes. “You rescue Aubrey. I rescue you. See how it goes?”

  “You stubborn, bra
inless—”

  He pulled me to him and mashed his lips to mine. It might have been a magnificently romantic gesture, but I knew he only did it to shut me up. Anyway, my face was so numb I didn’t even feel it.

  “Turn to s-smoke. Dragon.” His teeth were starting to chatter. “Hang low. I’ll—c-climb up. Fly back t-to shore.”

  It was as good a plan as any. And it worked, more or less.

  I was able to hover just long enough for him to cling to my front leg. I flew as slowly and steadily as I could and eventually we made it back to land like that, both of us exhausted and chilled to the bone.

  I warmed myself by thinking that if he caught pneumonia, at least I wouldn’t have to worry about him coming along to Prussia and ruining everything.

  And even though I searched the skies, I didn’t glimpse the gold and green star again.

  Chapter 17

  Wire transmission from His Grace the Duke of Idylling, Bath, to Miss Eleanore Jones, Tranquility at Idylling

  01 JULY 1915 13:04

  MY DEAR MISS JONES STOP KINDLY CEASE DAWDLING STOP ALL BEASTS MUST HAVE COURAGE STOP I AM TOLD IT IS IMPERATIVE ARMAND GO ALONG STOP FOR HIS SAKE HURRY STOP

  Chapter 18

  The cable arrived the following afternoon. I would have burned the damned thing before Armand had a chance to read it, but since he was the one who handed it to me, it was too late for that.

  “Whatever does that mean?” asked Sophia, peering over my shoulder to make out the typed words. She rattled her glass of iced tea in my ear.

  “I don’t know,” I lied, and crumpled the paper in my fist. I directed a look up at Armand, still standing over my other shoulder and my table of miscellaneous bandage rolls.

  Why hadn’t he waited to give it to me? Now Sophia would never stop pestering me about it.

  His smile was slim and hard as nails. His cobalt gaze seemed more piercing than ever, almost unnaturally vivid.

  “The doctor informs me that Reginald’s delusions are as real to him as this”—he gestured to the cramped supply room—”is to us. No doubt you play some mysterious role in them, Eleanore. I’m sorry for it. I’m surprised he was allowed to send this at all.”