The Treasure Keeper

He spared himself their reunion. With Zoe's first rushing step toward her fiance, the music in Rhys had swelled, and he'd deliberately drifted away. He almost returned to the assembly hall, or even his gray familiar street, but instead he figured he'd investigate this innocuous place that housed two of his kind, plus her.

Just in case.

Most of it was properly gloomy. Curtains and shutters blocked the sun from nearly the entire upper story, and all but two of the bedchambers were stuffed with furniture draped in musty sheets. The front two chambers, the ones closest to the main stairs, were the ones in use.

One was relentlessly tidy, with clothes and personal items laid out as precisely as if a valet had stood watch with a checklist. Brushes and combs and a jar of French powder, all aligned. A jeweled snuffbox exactly three fingers in either direction from the corner of the dresser. Even the pillows on the bed were fluffed tight.

The other chamber was practically in shambles, with books and scarves and shoes littering the floor, a cloth-of-gold waistcoat tossed askew across the top of a chair. Dabs of wax from the candle on the commode spotted the surface so profusely it looked like a miniature snowdrift against the wood.

It was no great task to surmise which room belonged to whom. Hayden James was so saintly-clean Rhys wondered if the man ever even needed to bathe. Dirt probably bounced right off his gilded damned skin.

He swiped a hand at the perfectly tucked quilt upon the bed, accomplishing nothing, and drifted on.

Dressing closets off each chamber, with basins and kits for shaving placed upon stands. Square-toed shoes and stockings, and coats hung from rods. A pair of offices down the hall, apparently unused. A single water closet. Two separate sets of stairs, the one in front and the servants' skinny, crooked flight in back. He trailed along them both, from the garret to the kitchen in the basement, with chopping knives and bread drying stale upon a block, and a small pot of herbs set to grab what sun it could up high in the solitary window. A kettle of something steamy bubbled from a hook in the fireplace. It was viscous and dark; Rhys could not smell it. Not without Zee nearby.

Two rooms made up. Two drakon dwelling here. If there were sanf inimicus anywhere in this house, they were more indiscernible than he.

The voices from the front parlor drew him back upstairs, one masculine, one feminine, and he found himself following the sound of her like a compass needle returning again and again to true north.

Surely they were done kissing by now. He could easily—all too easily—envision Zoe in a fervent, lingering embrace, but stiff-as-wood James probably didn't even know how to use his tongue.

Matters were not exactly proceeding as she had envisioned.

They sat in matching flaxen-striped chairs at opposite ends of the parlor. As the room was fairly small, this was no great inconvenience, but still Zoe wished they were closer. She found herself leaning forward, perched at the edge of the stuffed horsehair seat, just trying to feel nearer to him. Just trying to feel, still, that he was real.

The dragon-boy stood with an arm resting upon the soapstone mantel behind Hayden. He kept his gaze largely pinned to the rug, only occasionally glancing up at either of them, or else pulling a finger through the knot of his bandanna. A small snapping fire burned behind his legs.

Rhys was gone. She didn't know when he'd left, only that after she'd lifted her face from Hayden's chest he was no longer anywhere in sight.

She wished the dragon-boy would leave as well. She wished Hayden would rise from his chair, and take her by the hands, and pull her back into his arms to hold her so hard it would hurt. But after only a brief, astonished embrace—sandalwood, hair powder, silk, and a faint tang of ink— he'd led her here, seated her as delicately as if she were the dream she'd imaginedhe was, careful not to jostle either of them awake.

For a long while they'd only gazed at each other. He was exactly as she remembered, exactly the same: blue eyes like woodland flowers, lips that curved upward at the corners, lending the impression that he was always about to smile. He sat with his fingers interlaced and his feet crossed at the ankles, shapely calves in plain stockings, the buckles to his garters discreetly visible, small rectangles of reflected fire.

When he finally managed to utter something beyond her name, it was to ask if she wanted tea. Tea.

She'd declined. Her stomach was clenched so tight, she might never eat again.

'Well,' he said, still staring at her. 'I believe ... I believe we have some boeuf bourguignon from the other night, if you like.'

'Hayden,' she said on half a laugh. 'Don't you even want to know why I'm here? How I've come?'

'Yes.' He blinked a few times. 'I do. Of course. Very much.' And there, at last—his focus returned, and he smiled at her. 'Forgive me. I find myself beyond astonished. I don't know why you're here, or even how. But I'm so very—happy to see you.'

The pain in her stomach dissolved; she smiled back at him. Then she told him.

Not everything, of course. Until they could be truly alone, she didn't want to delve into the mysteries of her Gifts, so Zoe glossed over a few of the trickier details, speaking in a matter-of-fact voice, her eyes fixed to his or else drawn to the world outside the window beside her, an uncluttered street declining into dusk, with human families taking strolls, and three boys playing leapfrog on a lawn across the way.

And since she would not speak of the Gifts, she would not speak of Rhys. He was a secret on the tip of her tongue, but somehow trying to explain him—caustic and clever, her persistent shadow guardian—to Hayden, to the strange young drakon with the shuttered look upon his face, was more than she wanted to attempt at the moment. It occurred to her as she spoke that she had no proof of him in any case. No proof that the presence of the missing Lord Rhys was anything beyond her lonely nights and imagination.

She'd tell Hayden later. She would.

The shadow reappeared just as she was getting to the part of the sanf inimicus and the dance hall. He floated straight upward through the floor, rising before her from the center of the rug with a clear smirk at her startled break in her narrative.

Hayden came to his feet in a rustle of satin; the banyan flowed about his knees. 'You followed my coachman to a common dance hall? Alone? In a foreign city?'

'Prig,' said Rhys conversationally, turning to face him.

'Yes.' Zoe tried not to look at Rhys.

'To dance,' Hayden said, shaking his head. 'To hunt.'

She concentrated on him more clearly, detecting the change in his voice.

'I did. To find you. Hayden, I thought—oh, I thought the very worst. I thought you were dead. That they had discovered you, and you were dead.'

'And this man would somehow help you?'

'He was the last person I could locate who had contact with you.'

Hayden's handsome forehead became a crinkle. 'Good heavens. When I think of what might have happened to you, Zoe. If you'd been even an ounce less fortunate—'

She found her feet as well. 'Nothing terrible happened.'

A blatant lie, and as soon as she said it she regretted it, but it hardly mattered, because he wasn't listening anyway. He was muttering things like such a rash risk and not like you at all, and the shadow had crossed to him fully, was marking a circle around him in leisurely paces, trailing smoke in tails.

It was more than bizarre, seeing them together. Hayden, so tall and clear-cut, so very alive: broad- shouldered and warm, his wig stiffened white. The tucks and folds of his cravat glowing with the fading light in mathematical, cascading lines.

And Rhys: the same height, no wig or flour, no twilight to illume any part of him. Untamed hair. Cool and smoky dim. The horsehair chair, the embroidered cushions, the dragon-boy and the flickering glow of orange and gold from the fireplace—all still visible as he passed, only their outlines blurred by his shape.

And yet he seemed both more elegant and somehow infinitely more dangerous than anything else in the room, even as a being of mist and devoured light.

Hayden had paused to hold a hand to his head. 'I suppose there's no way around it. I must send you home alone.'

She tore her gaze from Rhys. 'Excuse me?'

Hayden looked to the other drakon for support; the boy stared back at him impassively. 'I'm sorry, my dear. Certainly there are—events taking place you cannot have realized, but I can't