The Treasure Keeper

bullet—he assumed it was a bullet—had gone straight through the flesh of her palm.

He'd stuffed pillows beneath her leg, laid her hand upon her chest, then taken a moment to bend over to catch his breath, breathing in the scent of very fine liqueur and blood and her, his forehead pressed into the bed by her ear.

He thought woozily that he might never touch cognac again.

She was alive. She was breathing, she had a pulse. She was alive.

One of the arrows had nicked him beneath a scale on his shoulder; compared to everything else he'd been through, it was no worse than getting pinked in a duel. But he cleaned that too, to be safe, and all the little scrapes and cuts along her feet and the left side of her body.

Rhys spent the remainder of the dawn and all the next day sitting upright beside her, the near-empty bottle cradled between his thighs, fighting sleep. When he wasn't looking at her he was looking at the mirror. The crack slanting through it. It seemed normal to him again, just two pieces of broken glass over a mercury backing, foxing along one side. No sign of the beings he knew dwelled inside.

'Where were you bastards,' he muttered, as the afternoon light began to push against the velvet drapery. 'Where were you last ruddy night, eh?'

No one answered. Zee was asleep; the mirror was empty. He was talking to himself.

The day passed. By twilight he knew she was in trouble, because the lily-white cast of her skin had deepened into ruby at her cheeks and forehead and chest, and her breathing was labored.

He could go hunt a physician. He could go out into the streets and find one, lure him back here, bribe him into silence .

There was not enough money for silence at the sight of Rhys. He understood that. He thought perhaps his claws were even shorter still than yesterday, but there was no mistaking them for anything else. They were still claws.

He'd have to find a doctor, bring him here, have the man treat her, then kill him. It would be the only way.

Even then, there was no guarantee that human medicine would work for her. Their drakon bodies were just enough different to make matters unpredictable. Darkfrith itself had no surgeons or physicians. They were strong as a species, resilient. When bones broke, mothers and fathers set them. When fevers struck, blindfolds were used to prevent the ill from Turning unawares. Sometimes the clan used tribal stones with healing songs. That was about it. Live or die; it would happen quickly either way.

A poultice meant to drain the heat from a human fever might be the very thing that pushed Zoe over the edge of her resistance, and Rhys had no stones to heal her.

His mind circled the question wearily, the same problem and solution, over and over. Find a physician. Bring him here. Get the medicine. Kill him.

Rhys lay beside her on the bed, atop the covers. He turned his hand over and drew his knuckles down her soft burning skin from her chest to her stomach, back up to rest over her heart.

'Would you forgive me that?' he whispered. 'Would you forgive me?'

Talking to himself again. He already knew the answer.

The bronze-plated portions of the roof of the Palais de Tuileries had long ago corroded into green. She'd noticed it the way she'd noticed all the details of her sanctuary, the rows and rows of windows, the giant squared dome dividing its middle, the stately columns wrapped around its facade, chimneys wider than houses sprouting up from its ends.

But it wasn't any of those things Zoe first saw when she opened her eyes. She saw the green roof, wide and pretty against a bright blue sky, a rim of snow sugaring its raised edges. Sky blue, sea-green, white. The bronze didn't sing but it hummed, a calm and soothing drone that wrapped her in warmth.

She was warm, she realized. She felt air cool on her skin, and warmth where she was held. A voice was speaking in her ear.

A broken voice, a ruined voice, going from husky to nearly normal, cracking in places, just as an adolescent boy's might do.

'... in my tea, just to annoy me. And that's when I first realized I loved you.'

'I didn't.' Zoe sighed and cleared her throat as the arms holding her abruptly tightened. 'I did not put mud in your tea .'

'You did.' Rhys was clutching her so hard it began to hurt; he was seated, and she was cradled on his lap, and he was resting his cheek upon her head. She felt a deep, faint tremor in his bones, quaking through them both. 'Liar. We were twelve, and you did.'

'. didn't put it in your tea just to annoy you,' she finished. Her mouth was so dry; it sucked her words into a whisper. 'I put it there to teach you a lesson. You wouldn't stop teasing me. I had to knock you down a peg.'

He rubbed his face into her hair. 'Poor Zee. There's never a chance of that. Ask any of the elders. I'm deuced hard to train.'

'Like a colicky mule.'

'Exactly.' He took a breath as if to say something more, but only released it hard. The trembling grew stronger, then, slowly, began to fade.

She blinked again at the roof, her mind still processing what it meant. They were outside. On the roof of Tuileries. With all of Paris spread before them, the great crowded city dappled white beneath the arching sky.

She stirred against his grip. His arms loosened slightly, enough for her to sit up—and instantly regret it. Pain shot up her hip, spread like fire ants through her right hand.

'What are we doing here?'

'I wanted—I just wanted you to be outside, in the sun. Away from all that gloom and dust. We're beings of the firmament. I thought it might help.'

'Help?'

He kissed her temple. The scrape of his chin was actually painful. 'You've been out for a while, love. Two days.'

'What? Are you serious?'

'Never more.'

She leaned back in his arms. He was whiskered and red-eyed, his brown hair blown into knots with the wind, rolling into tangles over his shoulders; the golden dragon silk wouldn't tangle, and still rippled free. 'You look like hell.'

'Now, see, were I less of a gentleman, I might point out that you've looked better yourself. Lucky for you I'm so well-bred. I'll say merely that you're quite fetching in that old sheet. And the lack of blood to your face lends you a fashionable air of malaise.' He tried to smile but it was like a clay mask cracking apart, brittle and bleak. He gave it up, shook his head. 'God, Zee. You scared the life out of me. Don't do it again, I beg you. If there's any mercy at all in your heart, you'll never scare me like that again.'

It came back to her then, all of it. The quarries and the arrows and the dancing shadows. The madwoman who claimed to be one of them.

'We lost, didn't we?' she asked quietly.

'Lost? I'd say not. We're still here, aren't we?'

'Rhys.'

'Zoe.' He gazed back at her, grave. 'We're still alive. A great many of them are not.' 'How can you be certain?'

'Unless humans have developed the ability to allow solid stone to pass through them unimpeded 'Oh.'

'They're dead,' he said. His hand curved around her cheek, urging her to rest back against his chest, claws poking through her hair. She allowed it, enjoying the fresh warmth of him, the comfort of his touch, even with the talons. 'I did my best to ensure it.'

'But she escaped. That woman.'

He said nothing. He rocked them both back and forth a little, balanced upon the pitched humming roof. A lock of her hair flipped up over his arms, glinting against his skin.

'We've got to warn the tribe.' Zoe closed the fingers of her bandaged hand, testing the ache. 'They don't know about her. We've got to warn them. And Sandu—him as well.'

'Yes.'