The Treasure Keeper

you shouldn't be with me.'

He regarded her with those chill green eyes. 'Whatever happened to I swear I'll avenge you?'

'I can't do that from Darkfrith.'

'By God, Zee,' he burst out, coming to his feet. 'You can't do that anywhere. Don't you understand? I'm not choosing to be with you. I can't help it. You're the sole light in my universe, and if I'm stuck with you, I have to guess there's a damned good reason for it. You don't know what happens after death? Well, neither do I. All I know is that when I'm with you I feel again, and I see again, and it's like there's actual blood in my veins.' He slapped a hand to his chest. 'In my heart. You drown the song, Zoe, you alone. If anything were to ever happen to you—'

'You might be free,' she whispered.

'No.' He shook his head again, smaller; his hair scarcely stirred. 'No, love. I'd just be alone. Again.'

'Zoe?'

She turned to find Hayden standing above her, his gaze bright as the sky, a hand spread upon the open door.

'Who are you talking to?'

'The diamonds,' she answered, taking up her skirts and climbing the stairs to him. 'The jasper.'

'Come inside,' he said, and placed that hand upon the small of her back as she passed. 'Come talk to me instead.'

* * *

They had found him two days beyond Dijon. He hadn't realized it was the coachman who'd betrayed him; all Hayden knew was that at some point during the night in the rustic inn they had settled upon he'd awoken to the tiny, persistent scratch of a pick working at the lock to his room. And even then he'd assumed it was just a common thief determined to ransack his luggage; France, he said, was rife with such rogues. Until he'd caught a whiff of saltpeter and nervous sweat. The oiled metal of the guns.

Hayden was full drakon. Although the council had instructed him not to use his Gifts unless his circumstances turned truly dire, he figured a quartet ofsanf inimicus breaking through his door was dire enough.

'You Turned?' Zoe asked him, nursing her cup of too-strong tea. 'To smoke or to dragon?'

'Oh, to smoke, of course,' he said, taking a sip of his own tea. They had moved from the front parlor to the drawing room across the hall, where there were frosted-glass lamps and a settee wide enough for them both. The curtains here were heavy damask, white with saffron flowers. 'A dragon would have shattered that little matchbox of an inn to slivers, even without trying.'

'It was mostly spit and thatch,' agreed the dragon-boy, who had shunned the pungent tea for brandy. He sat by the fire once again. The engraved glass in his hand winked in constant, cinnamon sparks.

Zoe glanced at him. 'You were there?' Twice since beginning his tale, Hayden had granted the boy the honorific His Grace, and once,His Highness. Sandu was Zaharen, obviously, from that clan of Transylvanian drakon that so worried her own. He seemed quite young to be both a lone hunter and a prince, but there was no mistaking that air of jaded, adolescent regality about him. He even held his brandy in a studied way, the stem and cup supported between two slender pale fingers.

In any case, Hayden would not be wrong.

'I was,' said Sandu. 'The sanf were tracking your husband. I was tracking the sanf. Our sudden convergence was most fortuitous.''They weren't expecting us both. We made short work of them,' Hayden said mildly. She lowered her cup. 'Are they dead?'

'Really, my dear. I can't imagine you'd find any gratification in the details!' He leaned over to touch a hand to her knee and almost as quickly removed it. 'Suffice it to say you need never worry about those particular humans. They shall not trouble us again.'

'Yes,' said Sandu, sending Zoe a short, candid look. 'They're dead.'

'I like this boy,' commented Rhys. 'I confess it. I like him more and more.'

The ghost of Rhys had followed them inside. He'd taken a chair by the windows, as relaxed against the cushions as the young prince seemed to be, and up until now at least, he'd been silent.

She'd decided to ignore him. It was her only hope of slipping back into her normal life. If she refused to acknowledge him, if she refused to interact with him, perhaps he'd give up. Perhaps he'd fade away and go where he was meant to, wherever that was.

Not here. Not at her side.

When she moved her hand, the loose leaves of tea at the bottom of her cup spun in diminutive eddies. She looked from them deliberately back up at Hayden. At his profile, so golden and fine.

'Why are you both in Paris? I thought the council wanted you to reach the Zaharen in the Carpathians.'

It was Sandu who finally answered; Hayden had gone stiff, avoiding her gaze. 'Because ... Paris is where they are. Paris is where they've hidden their heart.'

She nearly spilled her tea. 'What? Thesanf? '

'That's what we discovered that night.' Hayden murmured the prince's name, but the boy only spoke over him. 'Their leader is ensconced here. They're building ranks. There might be hundreds of them already in the city alone. They're preparing for something big, bigger than they've ever attempted.'

'Darkfrith,' Zoe guessed, then caught her breath.

'We fear it so.'

Darkfrith. Cerise and the little children. Uncle Anton, gray and slow. All her kin, the village and farms and the unprotected downs . and that menacing phrase the cloak had captured for her back in the Palais Royal:over two hundred sanf—

Sandu shifted, adjusting a velvet pillow behind his back. 'There's more. We discovered they're holding one of our kind. We don't know who. We don't even know why. It's not a ransom or exchange, and they're not using this drakon to hunt us, as they've done in the past. They're keeping him—or her— prisoner, a body bound. It could be one of your tribe or mine. You're missing your Alpha's second son and that young maiden. My own people are scattered, and we don't . track ourselves as you do, so it might be nearly anyone. Whoever it is, the individual seems vital to the sanf inimicus. Vital enough not to dispose of. Yet.'

Rhys had sat up in his chair. His clenched fingers seemed to sink through the wooden arms.

'You're going after them,' said Zoe, disbelieving. 'Aren't you? The two of you alone, going for a rescue. Just like the heroes in a picture book.'

The prince fixed her once again with that clear candid gaze.

'Of course,' he said.

Hayden came to life. 'And that's why you must leave. That's why I need you on the next coach to Calais. So you will be safe.'

'Th etwo of you,' she reiterated. 'Against an entire hive of Others.'

He granted her a sideways look. 'Do you think it an uneven match, my dear?'

'I think it's suicide. You've just said there might be hundreds of them here. That their leader is here. Don't you think they'll have prepared for our kind? Don't you think they'll be ready to defend this body, this dragon, that they want so badly?'

'They're still merely humans,' said the prince with a shrug.

'Humans with weapons! Humans with a list of proper ways to recognize us! To take away our sight!'

'But we have the better advantage,' explained the boy slowly, as if she were exceptionally dense. 'We know they're here. They don't know we are. You yourself said that the one who did locate you was killed by the other man, trying to protect you. So—there you have it.'

She placed her cornflower china teacup delicately upon the table before her, centering it in its saucer, and shifted to face Hayden. He looked back at her gravely, not relinquishing his own cup.

'I won't be leaving. Not without you.'

'Zoe .