The Deepest Night

I’d never really been ashamed before about my nudity from the Turns. Discomfited, yes. Ill at ease. But practically the only people who’d ever seen me like this were Jesse and Armand, and somehow, with them, it was almost as if it didn’t matter. As if the magic we shared made it nearly normal.

But now there was Aubrey in our mix, and I felt—aware. I wished for a dress, and settled for blades of grass.

At least it was still dark. The moon had set; the stars had gathered into different constellations.

Jesse was gone.

“How long have you been able to do that?” I asked, and both of them turned their heads.

I gestured to Armand. “Blow fire like that?”

“Oh.” He ruffled a hand through his hair. “When you spotted me? About ten minutes, I’d guess.”

“You did … what?”

“He blew fire,” I explained. “He breathed it, like in fairy tales. It was bloody amazing.”

“Well …” Mandy actually looked embarrassed. “I found out by accident. I woke up and you were gone, and I wanted to call for you and knew I couldn’t, and it just—it burned in me. Don’t know how else to describe it. I felt a burn in my chest, and then my throat, and I meant to cough. But instead …”

He began to laugh. I did, too. Right then, in that quiet meadow where everything smelled of grass and smoke and fresh blood, it seemed very, very funny. I laughed so hard I started to cry, so I pushed my face into my knees and let the tears come, dripping down my legs.

Armand limped to sit beside me. I felt his hand stroking my hair. He didn’t say anything, just kept stroking.

A bird began to sing far out in the coppices. It sounded like a nightingale. It paused, waiting, until it was answered by another. They caroled like that, back and forth, as piercing and passionate as the emotions careening through me.

Eventually my tears transformed into hiccoughs. My nose was running. My knees were sticky and wet.

“Don’t worry,” Mandy whispered. “I’m sure you can breathe fire, too.”

“Oh, God, I hope not,” I said around my hiccoughs. My life was abnormal enough as it was.

I looked up, wiping my nose along my arm.

“Doesn’t that hurt? Your leg?”

He glanced down at it with an air of surprise, as if he’d forgotten all about it.

“Er … rather.”

“I think we should return to the hunting lodge. We can do something about it there. We’ll wrap Aubrey in that blanket.” It had made the journey with him, caught in my claws. “Both of you ride my back.”

“Hunting … lodge?” Aubrey asked.

“There are beds there, and clothing. Food in the village close by.”

“Sounds like … paradise.”

I had to agree. It did.

Chapter 32

Three dragons survived this world, not merely two.

It was driven home to me as I helped Aubrey into the bed I had slept in not four nights before, into sheets that were still marked with the mud of Mandy’s transformation.

Three of us. Perhaps the last three, so damaged and undone that if you were to combine us all together, we scarcely made up one sound creature. But here we were, back in the early dawn solitude of this cabin in the woods, and as I bent over to stuff the pillow beneath his head Aubrey’s gaze slipped downward—so very briefly— to my bare chest, and my skin began to burn.

That dragon echo in him from before. It was louder now. More difficult to ignore.

I backed away and went to find the trunk of clothing in the other chamber. I discovered Armand already there, lifting up garments. Like me, he was crisscrossed with rose-thorn scratches. Unlike me, the shin of his broken leg was swelling into a gruesome, livid blue.

I took the sweater dangling from his fingers without bothering to examine it. It was large and loose and fell to my thighs.

“You need to get off that leg,” I said.

“I know. I will. It’s just …” He was gazing at the wall, then at me. “We did it, waif. We did.”

I smiled. “Cursed near thing, though. And we’re not done yet.”

“But—”

“But you’re right. Bully for us. We did it.”

I moved to him, or he moved to me, I wasn’t certain. We were in each other’s arms, holding tight as the shadows shifted into violet and the morning’s first rays lit pearl through the foggy green forest. It was going to be a fair day somewhere, perhaps even here. Yet I longed for the fog to linger, for the mist shrouding the lake to roll closer and erase us from the sun. I wasn’t ready for daylight.

I lowered my head and let my hair cover my face. I ached for sleep and for poise and for the bandaged and broken man in the other room. For Armand and his leg, and the soldiers we’d left dead on the ground behind us. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to wipe them from my conscience anytime soon.

I also knew I was at the edge of my limits, because everything had taken on a flickery, unreal cast. Even the heat of Armand’s body felt like something I’d dreamed. If I lifted my head, I wouldn’t be in the hunting lodge. I’d be in my dormitory at Blisshaven. My cell at Moor Gate. I was a gifted dreamer and had conjured a daydream beyond all others, but in the end I’d wake and still be a nameless girl trapped behind locked doors. Ordinary and alone.

“Eleanore.”

I looked up. Armand was still there. All of it was.

“Go to sleep,” he said kindly. “Take this bed in here. I’ll bunk with Aubrey.”

“Someone should … someone needs to keep watch.”

“Yes. I will.”

I glanced at the bed, a bare mattress bumped against a headboard, a heap of blankets at its foot.

“Go on,” he said, and gave me a gentle push.

“Wake me when you need to rest,” I said, dropping to the mattress, dragging the blankets over me.

“Right.”

“Don’t …” My thoughts were drifting into soft, muddled clouds.

“Don’t what?” he murmured.

“Don’t burn the place down.”

My eyes were closed; the clouds had won. But I thought I heard him laugh a little.

“I’ll hold my breath,” Mandy said.

I was a dreamer, though. So even though I fell into those clouds, I dreamed I heard Armand and Aubrey talking. Armand’s voice low and soothing. Aubrey’s weak at first, growing stronger and stronger.

“ … landed in a field. Engine on fire. Nothing … I could do. Crawled out. Hid in a … ditch. Three days. Farmer turned me in. Didn’t blame him. Children … needed to eat.”

“Reginald took it hard. Very hard. You should know that he’s changed.”

“Heard. Asylum.”

“That’s not the half of it.”

“The … girl.”

“Yes, her. And us. You and me, too, mate. All three of us the same.”

“Bespelled … by stars.”

Silence for a while; I nearly floated away. Then Mandy spoke again. “You never thought—it might not be real? That you were going mad?”