The Treasure Keeper

to all the other homes. So the four of them climbed up into the garret—even Rhys, though he arrived minutes after the rest of them—and waited for the last of the twilight to thicken into true night.

No one spoke. Enough had been said already; she'd refused over and over to leave Paris, and the prince had finally given up asking. Rhys had made it clear he wasn't leaving if she wasn't. And that was that.

The cook maintained that petrified stillness she had perfected whenever Zoe was near, the prince's hand on her arm. Rhys lounged against a box shoved against the canted attic wall. The slant of the ceiling nearly matched the curve of his back.

Zoe amused herself briefly imagining the councilmen's faces should they hear of this: an unshielded dragon atop an unshielded roof, soaring off across an open city sky.

'I think now,' said Sandu, breaking their silence. They'd opened the skylight to monitor the heavens; he was barely visible, a face and vanished hair, a sheet wrapped around his shoulders for propriety. He wore, of course, no clothing beneath it.

They climbed out to the roof, first the prince, then the cook, then Zoe and Rhys. The great blue bowl of heaven was cloudless. Stars fought the yellowed haze of the streetlamps below them in fierce prickled dots.

The prince made his way to the most level section of the roof. He glanced around him, took in the hills and mighty spires and steeples of the horizon that was Paris unfolded.

'Come to me whenever you wish,' he said to Zoe and Rhys. 'If you need me, come to Zaharen Yce.'

'Yes,' said Rhys. 'Thank you.'

The boy inclined his head. He lifted a hand to the cook, said something in Romanian, and released the sheet.

Before it even finished rumpling to his feet, he Turned to dragon. In the space of a heartbeat his human shape was gone, smoky twists that expanded, re-formed into a being of silent, glistering magnificence.

He was ebony with bands of sapphire and deep purple shaded along his sides, silver-dipped talons and wingtips. Zoe's people were more colorful, living rainbows in the sky, but the prince of the Zaharen had a sober, serpentine beauty she'd seldom seen.

The dragon turned his great head and gazed at the cook. They could not speak in this shape; they had no vocal cords to command. But the woman moved forward without hesitation, picking her way across the shingles, carrying the satchel. She climbed onto his back as if she'd done it a hundred times before, settled the bag against her stomach, and dug her fingers into his mane.

'Farewell,' murmured Rhys, and the prince nodded in return, tensed his powerful haunches, and leapt from the roof.

A sharp wooden clatter from below: shingles tumbling free, striking the cobblestones.

Neither Zoe nor Rhys looked down. They watched Sandu instead, his beating wings, his sharp ascent, the skirts of the cook flapping hard around him like laundry stolen by the wind. They watched until he was nothing more than a speck against the indigo heavens, a black star in the east that gradually shrank to nothing.

By mutual, unspoken agreement, Rhys slept in the princes old room. If it could be called sleeping, which he didn't think it could, as it really didn't involve anything like rest, or dreams, or blissful relaxation. It was far more a matter of him attempting to get flat upon the surface of the bed, small fluffy feathers kicked up every time he moved, tickling his nose and sticking to his lips, because no matter how he tried, he could not stop his talons from piercing the mattress.

He had pulled a quilt across his chest. He felt too cold and then too hot, too restless, but knew better than to attempt to rise and pace or read or brood alone in the dark. It had been far too much work just to get here, right here, in the center of the bed.

So he remained as he was. He kept his claws embedded in the ticking because it was easier than not, and he was tired of accidentally cutting his skin.

Zoe was in her room. He felt her. He couldn't tell if she slept either, but at least she was in the maison tonight. He'd half feared she'd want to start her hunt at once, that she'd wait for nothing, especially not him.

But after the prince had left, they'd shared a small meal and each retired, no more than five words spoken between them.

He was relieved. If she'd wanted to leave tonight, he would have had to find a way to stop her or else stay by her side. And he honestly didn't think he was capable of either at the moment.

The prince's room contained a looking glass. Nothing so ominous as the one back in Zoe's palace, just a small square mirror mounted in pewter, set at an angle upon the chest of drawers. He glimpsed no other faces in it but his own. His own was surely alarming enough.

He hadn't realized it was there at first. He'd walked by it, caught the motion of his reflection from the corner of his eye, and instinctively turned.

He didn't know the creature there staring back at him. It looked like him, but some exaggerated, gruesome version of himself. He'd brought his hands to his face, touched his palms lightly to his cheeks. Stubble—that was familiar. And the shape of his jaw, that too. Same eyebrows as always, black and straight. Same nose and eyes. A series of shallow nicks across his lips from before he'd mastered breakfast.

His hair, that dark vanity of his youth, now a mix of limp human strands and gold metal dragon.

His earlobe was torn. He'd worn an earring before, an emerald on a hoop; he supposed the sanf had stolen that as well. And he was emaciated. Their kind was lean in general but if he brought the lamp in his hand close enough, he could see the outline of his skull. He must have been without food or drink for months, without breath, all that while.

Worst of all was the scar that began above his hairline and ripped all the way down the right side of his face, halfway down his neck. He was lucky not to have lost an eye—or his head.

The fight in the woods. The sanf coming after him with swords and knives and bullets, and a hood. The spell of the diamond sinking over him even as he fought them, telling him not to Turn— but he was— look at his hands, he was—and someone clouted him in the face with a sword—

He'd backed away from the mirror. He had not looked into it again.

Rhys centered himself better in the bed, closed his eyes. He thought of Darkfrith. Of the woods and the lake, and the falcons and gannets that would sometimes venture to hunt fish in the River Fier. Crickets, serenading him from the bracken. Waterfalls. Swimming, weightless. Diving like smoke through the cool waters ...

His eyes opened. His body clenched, and more feathers puffed free.

After his discovery of the mirror, alone in this room, he'd tried to Turn to smoke. He'd tried three times before it worked, and even then, he'd only been able to hold it a few minutes.

Smoke should be so easy. Smoke was the most elemental of Gifts, and it should have been easy. It had not hurt, per se—not like his human body did. But he hadn't been able to hold it. Against his will, he'd felt himself gathering weight again, felt his limbs solidify, felt the floor beneath his

feet.

Three more times, he'd done it. Each time he'd been able to remain vapor a little longer than the last. But when he'd tried that extra fifth Turn, nothing had happened. His Gifts were numbed.

He closed his eyes again, tried to relax the knotted muscles of his back. At least he was clean again: with his Turns, all the dirt and grime of his imprisonment, the dried sooty sludge from the rain, had been left behind.

His hair, he thought with a trace of self-mocking humor, must look much better. He supposed that was something.

Paris was an unquiet beast. He heard no crickets here, no soothing splash of waterfalls. He heard humans. Many, many, humans. He heard dogs and cattle and chickens, and somewhere far overhead, a flock of geese honking lovelorn to the moon. He was certain he wasn't going to be able to sleep, not even in the midst of this soft bed, and so when he awoke at some undefined time later, he thought he must have simply been lost in thought for too long.

But it was darker, and it was more quiet. Not so many sounds of people. Not even animals. Just breathing. His own, a deep, slow, rasp that scraped from the bottom of his lungs. And Zoe's, lighter, more even, no rasp at all.

She sat beside him on the bed, unspeaking. He felt the curls of her hair brushing his arm.