The Treasure Keeper

It hurt. The iron was colder than ice, far colder than anything of earth should be. It dug into the flesh of her fingers and cut and screamed as she pulled, and finally tore along its joint. She dropped it at once, then picked it up and tossed it away from all four of them. Went to the other manacle and pulled and pulled again.

When it was finished she was bleeding, tiny nicks and cuts from the raw metal, the diamond shards digging into her skin. She threw that one away as well, wrapped her hands around Rhys's wrist and rubbed hard.

'Wake up. Everyone, wake up.' She took up his other cold wrist, twisting around at the same time, trying to see if Hayden moved. 'Zut alors! Merde! Wake up!'

Rhys's arm jerked free of her grasp. She drew back, startled, but both the taloned hands had risen toward her. She felt claws whisper through her hair, the zing of gold curving around the back of her neck. He pulled her down to him, lifted his head, and mashed his lips to hers.

It was icy. Not the winter ice of his shadow touch, and nothing at all like the sweet, warm kisses she was used to from Hayden—not even passionate ones she'd gotten when Rhys had disguised himself as Hayden. This kiss was icy like the cellar, icy and prolonged and tasting of desperation. Deliverance. She needed to breathe and she could not; his tongue invaded her, his claws kept her imprisoned, and even still she could not bring herself to hurt him to break free.

It was Rhys who dropped his head back to the limestone, panting raggedly, muttering in a broken, wretched voice, 'It's you, it's you, Holy Mother of God, I can't believe it's you, but it is, a miracle, it's you .'

'Zoe?'

Hayden was sitting up, staring at her. She wiped her hand across her lips, shook her head, unable to explain. And then the human was upon them.

In the long, unpleasant days that followed, after she'd replayed the moment over and over and over in her mind, she realized that he was the man she'd seen the cook sobbing over in the kitchen—not dead, only asleep or pretending. He must have been creeping down the stairs when both Hayden and the prince had fallen unconscious. He must have discovered the iron manacle she'd thrown as Rhys began his kiss.

The Other was able to steal up upon them all, even fetid with the smells of city and blood and man, and by the time she saw him there at the foot of the stairs, it was too late.

Hayden saw the sanf as well. He went instantly to smoke, a rush of vapor aimed like a blade straight at the human, but the man clutched the manacle in both hands and barked in French, 'Disperse! Do not re-form!'

She watched, baffled, her heart pumping, waiting for Hayden to Turn back, become dragon, leap and kill the Other—

But he didn't. He remained smoke. He reached the man and curled apart harmlessly against him, drifted up to the ceiling, and vanished.

Vanished.

She stared wildly at the sanf. 'What did you do? What did you do? '

The man pointed at her. 'You! Lie down! Stop breathing!'

She reached him in three steps, raised a hand.

'All of you,' screeched the sanf backing up rapidly, 'all of you stop—'

The connection of her fist to his cheek shattered the bone; she felt it, felt the man's skull break apart, his neck snapping to the side. He tumbled to the floor and did not move.

She was there anyway, dragging him up by his lapels, shaking him so hard his head lolled against his shoulders and his wig fell off. 'What did you do? Tell me what you did!'

A shadow came forward: Sandu, not Rhys. He took the manacle from the stair step at the dead man's feet.

'It was this,' he said quietly. He held it pinched between his thumb and finger as if it burned. 'Just this.'

She glared at him, still clutching the sanf. In the cellar darkness beyond them something new stirred. It was Rhys moving along the floor, his claws making small scritch, scritch noises across the stone.

'It's a kind of poison,' explained the boy. 'Poison in the form of a fragmented diamond, embedded in this metal. Do you know the story of Draumr, Noble Zoe?'

'No.' She released the body of the sanf inimicus, clutched at her stomach before bending double, then dropping to her knees. She was visible again; she was sick and empty. 'You're the only Gifted dragon I've ever heard of able to resist it.' 'It's only chips!'

'It is the remains of the most dangerous stone in our history. I can't even imagine how they got it. I'm sorry.' He bent down before her, placed the manacle carefully at her knees. 'When Draumr calls to a drakon, even in this form, we comply. Hayden James won't be coming back.'

Chapter Twenty

 Rhys was a problem. Despite the danger of discovery, they had to wait until dusk to escape from the house of the sanf inimicus. Fortunately, it was less than an hour's wait; the rain still fell in drumming dark sheets, and that helped as well.

The prince had dug up clothing in a bureau in one of the upstairs chambers, ordinary, innocuous clothing, and now he was a workman in wool and cleated shoes and a brown felt hat, and Zoe was dressed in the cook's spare uniform, which ended at her ankles and hung from her frame in massive folds.

There was nothing else of use in the house. No papers, no wallets upon the men. There was the cook to contain and Rhys to spirit away and—despite what the woman claimed—no means of discovering who else came here, what other faces the sanf inimicus might hide behind. They could not split up and they could not loiter. They had to leave.

Yet they also could not put fresh clothing upon the body of Rhys Langford. The rags he wore were pungent and held together by threads, yet his limbs were frozen—he could barely hobble— and the golden claws punctured all material. Dragon attributes, their scales and fangs and talons, were forged far stronger than even steel. By the time Sandu was able to hail a carriage for them, Zoe had given up attempting to hide anything but the claws. She wrapped him in a blanket from head to foot and sat stoically beside him in the coach, staring at the red-eyed cook across from her who was drakon and not, their knees bumping with every joggle, all four of them sodden. Silent. The only noises came from the joints of the carriage and the thundering storm—and the horses, which balked and neighed all the way back to the maison.

And the manacles, she supposed, although to her they were still quiet as a dead calm lake; even the iron had ceased to whimper. They lay wrapped in a sheet, tied in a fat bundle on the squabs beside her. Every now and then she noted Sandu's troubled gaze resting upon it from beneath the brim of his hat.

Rhys leaned heavily against her. At one sharp turn he nearly fell into her lap, wheezing as he tried to get upright again without using his hands. He struggled at first but at the next bend gave it up entirely, sagging. Zoe accepted his weight, pulled the soaked blanket tighter around him when it began to slide off. A solitary bright talon caught against her apron, tore a jagged rip through the middle before he shifted his arm.

The maison had not a single candle lit. They entered it without light, through the back, and the diamonds and jasper sang arias of jubilation at their presence.

Zoe lit the candles. She lit the fire in the parlor hearth. She warmed her hands before it for a long minute, feeling the steam beginning to form in the clammy mess of her petticoats and skirts, then turned around and faced the others behind her.

The cook, sans cap, rocking inelegantly in a chair with the knuckles of one hand pressed to her mouth.

The raven-haired prince standing sentinel beside her, still regal in his simple workman's garb.

And the monster, a broken shadow upon a chaise longue, his feet deformed, his legs unable to straighten. The scar drawn down his face an angry hard line. Hair hanging lank along his cheekbones, that very dark brown now oddly streaked with strands of bright silky metal. He was bony and ashen and frightening. Only his eyes remained unchanged from the ghost who'd haunted her, from the boy she'd once kissed: pale, winter green that watched her unwaveringly.

'What will you do with her?' Zoe asked in French, jerking her chin toward the cook.

'Take her home, for now,' replied Prince Sandu. 'Get her back home.'