who he'd once been, he'd found the way of her, things he'd known for years because of all those daydreams: how to kiss her. How to stroke her white skin. How to move inside her so that her lips parted and her head arched back and her throat worked, all because of what he was doing to her. All the things he could do to her.
How to feel that rising release that wanted to shatter her, and him. To coax them both into that place.
Rhys felt as if his heart was a dry well that had been unexpectedly reflooded with life. He overflowed. He lay next to her and nuzzled his face into silver-glossy hair, and let the waters pour through him.
Let them spill over.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The hive of
The body of the beast in the cellar missing. The precious shards of diamonds that guarded him taken too.
It took them almost no time at all to abandon the house. They'd scrubbed out the blood from the floorboards, wiped down the walls until there was no trace of flour or dust. They'd removed all the boards and shelving of the false pantry to restore, more or less, the original entrance to the cellar. They'd rehung the door.
They would leave no element of themselves behind. Their enemy was cunning, and they would not be caught so short again.
The woman named Rez shuffled slowly through each chamber, her nose lifted to the air, her withered fingers tracing nooks and crannies, the hard corners of the wainscoting. When it was done, she pulled the hood of her cloak low about her face and stepped outside.
Her carriage awaited at the curb. She trundled closer, sighed at reaching the bottom of the towered steps —and the horses in their restraints rolled eyes white with fear.
When I asked her later what she'd felt as she'd entered the ruined house, tasted the Leftover emanations of
Our Gifts are tremendous burdens. You will discover that among us, for all our grandeur, there are those who cannot survive beneath their weight.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Sunlight flared red behind her lids. Zoe turned over, reached for a pillow to pull across her eyes, and gradually in that sliding strange world between deep sleep and full awake, realized why there should be no sun on her face.
Because she wasn't home. She wasn't somewhere safe. She was in Tuileries, and she had ensured that the drapery was very firmly closed the night before.
She opened her eyes. A shadow man stood against the window, contoured in light, spreading the tall heavy curtains with both arms.
He turned in place and looked back at her. Yellow sun proved what wasn't shadow: the curvature of a cheekbone; the hard, smooth arc of a shoulder. The muscles of his stomach, rippled and flat. He wore the breeches again, had tied the corners into a knot to keep them fixed without buttons.
Before she could tell him to do so, Rhys let the curtains fall closed in a pall of spinning dust. 'Awake yet? Come with me. I have a surprise.'
He did not give her time to figure her regrets about last night, or wish for a moment alone, or even to do more than toss on her nightgown—which she did, swiftly, using the cool crumpled linen to momentarily hide the heat rising in her face. He kissed her as she'd emerged from the neck hole, kissed her hard and then soft, his lips like velvet, the cuts that were healing still tasting a little of blood. Then he wrapped a hand lightly about her wrist and led her out of the apartment.
Down the silent, grave hallways of the palace, the bare green tiles. He didn't head toward the servants' stairs, the way she always went, but instead to the main grand staircase, with its black iron design of fleur-de-lis topped with a sickle-curved rail of gold-plated brass, the royal coat of arms set within the iron every six treads.
They went down together, one step at a time.
There were windows meant to illume the space, grand, imposing windows, but they had been sheeted, and so they descended three full levels by uncanny, impure light, her gown billowing with a draft of unseen air, Rhys's hair a mussed drape down his shoulders.
Past galleries of slender pillars and wide arches, ormolu garlands draped along the walls. Faces carved into the decorative friezes gazing back at them with blank stone eyes.
She'd been here before, but only in the dark. By day it seemed more haunted; through the cool solemnity of the open atrium she could easily imagine the long-dead Others who'd lived here, who'd touched the banister as she did, who admired the ocher-banded colonnades and intricate shining details of the garlands.
Zoe could not prevent her periodic, nervous glances toward the gloomier corners. She was ready to Turn if she had to, she could shed the nightgown quickly. They were so very open to discovery. Yet Rhys limped his way down the inlaid marble steps with an elan that was almost cheerful. She wouldn't be surprised if he started to whistle.
A thin, scorched aroma teased her nose, stronger, then weaker, wafting once very close before disappearing altogether. Smoke—not dragon smoke, but ordinary smoke from ordinary wood. The occupied chambers of the palace were still quite distant. Perhaps one of the groundskeepers had lit a torch outside.
Rhys had moved ahead. Like her, he kept a hand upon the banister, but gripped it harder. His limp was growing more pronounced.
At the bottom of the staircase he angled to a sealed doorway to the right, double doors, and she knew what was behind them as well; she'd visited every room on this level at least once, and this, she recalled, had been a parlor.
It was a parlor, but surely one for a queen, for the floors were a mosaic of sky blue and pink marble, and the arabesque flourishes covering the walls had been done in pure silver, still singing bright to her ears but long since tarnished to black.
There was a picnic laid out upon the floor. A blanket with china dishes—fruit and bread and sliced roast. An Oriental teapot that smelled of warm chocolate, and two thick plain ceramic mugs.
'I know how you feel about cooking,' Rhys said.
'How did you—' She only just stopped herself from glancing down at his hands. 'Where did you get all this?'
'Here and there.' He smiled at her—oh yes, that special smile; her heart gave a little squeeze— and backed into the chamber. 'Have you been to the kitchens in this place? One might house the entire English militia in a single corner. Even with only the few, poor hardscrabble souls living here, there were plenty of delicacies to choose from.'
'You stole it?'
His lashes lowered; his smile grew more wry. 'Let's
'But how did you manage to ...' She remembered the odor of woodsmoke. 'You set a fire.' 'Just a small one.'
