by Finley Aaron
“Hot or cold?” He’s standing quite near me now, and meets my eyes.
“I like it hot.” Somehow, I manage to keep a straight face until he turns away to make the tea. Then I cover my face with my hands and sober myself with the thought of what might have happened had I laughed after saying something so blatantly flirtatious.
While Ion starts a pot of tea on the stove, he suggests to me, “Perhaps you ought to call Jala, so she won’t worry.”
“You’re right!” I realize aloud, kicking myself for not having thought of the same thing. I pull out my phone and quickly get Jala on the other end.
“What happened? What’s wrong? Are you okay? Where are you?” Jala fires off pent-up questions in a streak the moment she answers the phone.
“I’m okay. I’m great. Ion invited me to stay for supper.”
“Are you sure you’re okay? He hasn’t got you under some sort of spell?”
I ignore her question, because I can’t imagine how I would answer that in Ion’s presence without offending him. “We’re having salmon and asparagus. I’m not sure what time I’ll be back.”
Ion spins around from his work at the stove. “We’ve still got to finish our tour, unless you’ve changed your mind.”
“He’s giving me a tour of the castle,” I explain to Jala, hoping she’ll make the connection that everything is going very well, and she should be happy for me instead of so worried.
But she only sounds more concerned. “Be careful. He’s dangerous.”
“Yes, well.” I clear my throat and force myself to sound perfectly cheerful for Ion’s sake, even if Jala’s words are a bit disturbing. And I sincerely hope Ion can’t hear her in this echo-chamber of a kitchen. “You too, then. I’ll call when I leave so you know when to expect me. Otherwise assume the best. Have a lovely evening.”
Ion’s silently working the stove, adjusting the heat under the fish, and I study him in light of Jala’s warnings.
Has he got me under some sort of spell? I don’t think so. I don’t know when he’d have cast it. If anything, I’ve been calling the shots this whole visit, wheedling my way into his cobwebbed room of memories-best-forgotten, and getting a free gourmet meal out of the deal.
I don’t feel endangered. Worst case scenario, if I ever do feel threatened I can turn into a dragon, leap out the nearest window, and fly away.
Ion turns the fish before peeking inside the oven at the asparagus. “Just in time!” He hops to grab an oven mitt (we dragons can handle hotter temperatures than humans, even when we’re in human form, but there’s no sense risking unnecessary injury—and the broiler was super hot) and he pulls the pan out, plunking it on the stainless-steel counter behind us.
“What do you think?” he asks.
The chopped veggies have blistered, turning brown and even black in places. Nothing like the mushy, falling-apart asparagus my mom has tried serving. “It doesn’t look like any asparagus I’ve ever seen,” I admit, intrigued.
Ion laughs. “We’ll take that as a good sign.” He hands me a fork. “Feeling brave?”
We lean over the pan, and I select a particularly small piece to sample, popping it in my mouth and chewing quickly. It’s got a roasty, nutty, salty flavor vaguely reminiscent of popcorn. “That’s not bad!”
“You sound so surprised,” Ion teases me, and we both eat a few more bites before he announces the tea is ready and the fish is done.
I’m not surprised when the fish turns out to be delicious. The tea is perfect, too. To my relief, though Ion’s manners are a bit more refined than what I usually witness at my family’s dinner table (where my brothers and yes, even my parents, have been known to tear meat from the bones with their teeth, talk with food in their mouths, reach for things across other people, belch loudly, and in various other ways behave in a manner that sometimes makes me cringe) Ion doesn’t appear to have any snobby table rules like about which fork to use (we’re both using the same forks we used with the asparagus).
In fact, we’re not sitting formally at all, just perching on barstools at the stainless steel counter, eating the food while it’s piping hot, and laughing.
It’s the laughing that surprises me most. Granted, I tend to get giggly when I’m nervous. And for all Ion has done to ease my fears, I still feel crazy nervous.
But Ion is laughing, too. At first his laughter crackled as though he’d brought it out from a long storage, and it wasn’t used to air and sunshine. But the more he laughs, the more it sounds genuine, if a bit haunted. There’s a sadness behind his eyes I can see most clearly just as his laughter fades, in that intermission as he’s drawing his soul back from its spirited dance, and his façade shifts ever-so-slightly, and I wonder who’s really back there, behind the veil.
I don’t dare stare too long, into his eyes or anywhere else. It’s all too tenuous—my being here in the first place, the two of us, enemies, cavorting like friends. I think he knows it, too, and rather than openly acknowledge it, he keeps talking—about his fishing excursion and trying to bring the salmon home, flying through the air, only to discover when some fish tried to escape that they weren’t all properly dead.
He’s funny. Not in an odd way, but genuinely funny, making a face as though he’s the fish, surprised to be flying instead of swimming.
Ion watches me lift one of the last few pieces of asparagus to my mouth. He looks pleased with himself. “The asparagus was edible after all?”
“Yes. It’s delicious, actually.” I can feel a blush rise to my cheeks. Though I can’t admit it to Ion, I know exactly why I feel so sheepish. If I’d have known the asparagus was going turn out to be edible, I could have lied about liking it and Ion never would have known the difference.
Perhaps I should trust that Ion knows what he’s doing.
Wait. Trust Ion? My arch-enemy? I wriggle uncomfortably on my barstool. Perhaps Jala was right, and I am under a spell.
Who’s seducing who, here? And why?
It’s not a question I can ask out loud, but it lingers in the back of my mind all through our conversation, even when I’m laughing the sincerest of laughs.
Our pleasant meal passes all too quickly, and Ion leaves the dishes to soak while we tour the rest of the castle.
The rooms are all exquisite, even with much of the furniture covered by clear plastic sheets to keep off the dust. There are suites of bedrooms with canopied and four-poster beds, parlors and sitting rooms with overstuffed chairs and cozy fireplaces, marble bathrooms from various periods of modernity, game rooms, a greenhouse conservatory growing mostly vegetables and herbs, with a few exotic plants for color, and saddest of all, a nursery complex of five rooms—three bedrooms for children, one for a nanny, and a common playroom in the middle, besides private baths.
“Oh, how precious.” I nudge the rocking horse with my foot, and it wobbles back-and-forth with a nimbleness that belies its long dormancy. Like many of the rooms in the house, the nursery dates back to a bygone era, a Victorian-Edwardian age of gilded dreams long ago lost to the light of a gloomy day.
Ion doesn’t say anything, which isn’t like him. Up to this point, he’s been a quick wit.
When I look at his face, I see his gaze is fixed on a pile of building blocks near one wall, and his mouth is twitching as though he’s fighting the words inside.
Because the words want to escape? Or because he feels obligated to speak, but the words don’t want to come?
I’m terrified to ask. It would be easier, far easier for me, at least, to ignore this gravid silence and move on.
But the veil that has cloaked everything behind his eyes—the one that hides his sorrows—seems to be waving at me almost desperately.
There’s another Ion behind there, isn’t there? The boy of fourteen in 1918, a man who still thinks he failed.
If Ion is going to fall in love with me, really in love, I’ve got to know who that boy is, behind the veil.
So I muster up a courage more desperate than that w
hich brought me to the castle in the first place. And I ask, “Ion? What is it?”
His head moves in something more akin to a tremble than a shake. “I haven’t been in this room since I outgrew it as a boy. This was always my favorite house of all our estates, and my sisters were all many years, decades, even centuries older than I. I was the only son born to my parents, born long after they thought they were too old to have any more children. This was supposed to be my house.”
He stops as though gathering his thoughts, which would be helpful, since they’re coming out all scattered and hard to follow. I don’t know what he’s getting at until he continues, “This castle, of all my family’s properties, was the one I’d chosen to be my inheritance. Coincidentally, it was also the only one not seized by the government—only because it’s too far from anywhere for them to send someone to seize it, and I’m not sure they even realized it existed. When I graduated from the nursery, and I left this room for the last time, I built that block tower.”
Ion nods toward the intricate structure of stacked wooden blocks, whose design, though cubist, nonetheless mimics that of the castle we’re standing in. “I claimed then, with too much optimism, with too much pride…” he falls silent.
I’m not sure, but I think he’s afraid of letting too much emotion creep into his voice.
After swallowing a few times, he continues, “I claimed then, that my children would be the next to play with these blocks—that I would show them this tower I made as a boy. I didn’t understand that the world was going to change, that everything I knew and loved would be gone. Of all the things I’ve lost, all the dreams I’ll never see fulfilled, these blocks are still here. Mocking me.”
Ion’s staring at the blocks. Who knows what century-old memories are playing through his head right now?
I’m staring at Ion, really at both of us, as though I’m outside my body, watching this conversation unfold. It’s like a scene in a movie, except I don’t have the soundtrack to tell me whether to fear for the characters, or feel hopeful.
Why did Ion share this story with me? It’s an intimate glimpse of a painful place, and something he very easily could have walked away without mentioning. Does he want me to see—to know—his painful past? Why? Because no one’s ever walked through the castle with him, and he’s never before had a chance to share?
Maybe.
Or maybe it’s a carefully orchestrated attempt to win my sympathies.
Ion is cunning. Charming. Even deceitful. I know that. I’ve been warned.
And I promised myself I would not fall prey to his charms.
Unsure how to respond, I don’t say anything, and Ion leads me back out of the room. I’m still holding his elbow, and he reaches across and gives my hand a squeeze. “I’ve saved the best for last.”
We’re walking toward closed double doors, and I feel a rush of excitement mixed with fear. What is this best that Ion has purposely saved for last?
What’s on the other side of those doors?
CHAPTER SIX
Ion opens the doors wide and I see the room on the other side. It’s the ballroom with the concert grand piano—the room with the great arched windows and wide curved balcony, which I observed from the woods a summer ago, when Ion was playing the piano.
The room is enormous, with massive crystal chandeliers dripping from the ceiling, wax candles still fitted in place. Like much of this place, this room doesn’t appear to have moved all the way into this century, or even the last.
But it is gorgeous. Parquet wood floors give the room a surprisingly warm glow, while the enormous windows—each at least two stories tall, and the ceiling easily three stories above us, with balconies lining the sides—let in the fading light of night. This far north in Siberia, it doesn’t get dark out until quite late.
I’ve been here a long time, haven’t I?
The windows are swathed in immense curtains of yellow silk, which adds to the warm feeling of the room.
Ion crosses to the piano, lifts a candelabra, and blows a tiny stream of fire from his lips, igniting the five candles. He turns to me, the candle glow illuminating his face with flickering, uneven light. “What do you think?”
I realize I haven’t said a word—haven’t reacted at all, save for a gasp when Ion first opened the doors. “It’s splendid.” I’m tempted to ask if Ion has ever been to balls in this room, but I’m afraid of more heart-wrenching stories like the one he told me in the nursery. If he was thirteen or fourteen when his world came crashing down, then he likely never danced at a ball in this room.
Unsure what else to say, I let go of Ion’s elbow and head for the piano. “You play?” It’s as much a statement as a question, a not-too-lofty assumption, given that the piano is free of dust, a clear sign he’s been here—unlike the nursery. But I don’t want to let on that I saw him through the window last summer. I am not a creepy stalker.
Maybe a little bit of a stalker, but not the creepy kind.
Or if I am, I don’t want to let on about it.
This is hard.
Ion lifts the lid and plays an extensive, elaborate scale all the way up the keys, crescendoing grandly, playing six notes at once and all in the same key. “Do you play?” he asks me while the sound is still fading in the air.
I look from his face to his fingers, debating my response. I’m the best pianist in my family, though that’s not saying a whole lot. I could probably do a scale like he just played, in a key every bit as complicated as the one he just played in, but dragons are naturally competitive, especially the males, and I’m not here to fight, or show off, or anything like that.
Besides, even if I meet his scale-playing challenge, he’s no doubt got years of practice on me. Ultimately, I can’t win.
So I’m not going to start. I shrug. “A bit. I’m not nearly that good.”
“Play something for me.” Ion pulls the tufted leather bench out from where it’s tucked away almost under the keys.
Still twitching with repressed competitive instinct, I sit, wracking my brain for something impressive I can play off the top of my head. If I’d known I was going to have to woo my mate with my piano skills, I’d have practiced harder and memorized something particularly impressive.
What do I know that I can play by heart? The longest elaborate, impressive piece is the one I performed with my sister Rilla for our piano recital last year, an eleven-minute memorized duet. I played the treble. She played the bass.
She’s not here, but it’s the primo line that’s the most impressive anyway, with or without the secondo. And right now, it’s the only thing I can think of that I know well enough to play without the music, save maybe for a few movie theme songs and some short Bach pieces I use as warm-up exercises, neither of which are likely to impress Ion.
Scooting to the high-note end of the bench, I apologize ahead of time. “I haven’t played this in a while. It might be rough.”
I’ve got no more than five or six chords out when Ion surprises me by taking a seat at the other end of the bench. For a second, his fingers hover soundlessly over the keys.
I pause.
“Keep going.” He winks at me. “I know this one.”
So I keep playing and try not to have a heart attack, as Ion pounds out the bass line, even going so far as to work the pedal, which is helpful, because that was always Rilla’s job. For a few minutes it’s pure thrill, the notes carrying through the gorgeous acoustics of this room, melody and harmony soaring together as though Ion and I were meant to play side by side.
And then we get to the part where, in the original music, the primo and secondo are supposed to cross hands. Except that Rilla and I didn’t want to cross hands (in addition to being competitive, dragons can also be fiercely territorial, even over something relatively insignificant like piano keys, besides which, we, like our t-rex forebears, have slightly shortish arms) so we learned the opposite parts on our other hands in order to avoid crossing hands.
Ion starts to
reach past me.
I break tempo and shake my head. “I only know your right hand,” I explain in an apologetic voice, fearing our duet is about to come to an abrupt end.
But Ion simply gives a tiny shrug and plays the part that was supposed to be my left hand part, which Rilla always played.
Wow, he’s good.
So then for another minute or two I’m thinking we’re actually going to do this, we’re actually going to play this whole song together, and it sounds awesome, and we make an amazing team together, and whoever said Ion was evil was clearly wrong or at least they never heard him play the piano—when suddenly my fingers, which until this point have been playing along happily as though there’s nothing in the world they’d rather be doing, stop.
I freeze, aware for the first time in long seconds, maybe even a minute, that I’m not even sure anymore where I am in the music, and my fingers were playing without my conscious participation, and I have no idea what comes next.
I ruined it.
Ion backs up a few notes and plays back through, as though prompting me.
It doesn’t help.
He reaches across me and places his larger, surer hands over my smaller, trembling ones, and hits the keys.
The right keys.
The ones I couldn’t remember.
For five or six stunned notes he plays for me, generating the music I’d forgotten, working my fingers like a puppeteer, until I remember and carry on, as though those few notes were just a hurdle, and once I’m over it there’s no stopping me.
Ion deftly moves back to his part and plays along, right up through the glorious finish.
As the final note dies on the air, I pant, catching my breath. “How did you know that song?”
“It’s not uncommon.” He shrugs. “I’ve been alone in this castle for nearly a hundred years. I get in a lot of piano practice.”
“Thanks for—um—rescuing me.”
“Any time.” He’s looking at me sideways, still sitting beside me on the piano bench, a wry half-smile on his face.
I stand and head toward the balcony. In addition to being competitive and territorial, dragons don’t like being rescued.