The Deepest Night

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 fine 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