by Shana Abe
Armand swayed. I caught him by the shoulders once more; he leaned heavily against me. I spoke into his shirt.
“I bet the bedroom is up that stairway over there. Can you do it? Come on, lordling, one step at a time.”
I’d been correct. Upstairs was a series of bedrooms, and I led us to the biggest, because it was the only one with a vantage overlooking the hazy lakefront. Should anyone approach, hopefully we’d see them or hear them before they made it to the door.
If we didn’t … there was still the pistol.
The bed was enormous, easily large enough for four (which made me wonder about both the size and the inclinations of its owner). The mattress had been stripped bare, but all the clean linens and blankets were in a trunk at its foot, so it didn’t take long to make it up.
“You’re quite good at that,” Armand observed, seated in an ugly leather chair by the door. He’d wanted to help, but I’d made him sit. I was glad I had when I saw how he’d tried to hide his wince as he stretched out his leg. He reclined back and watched me work with those unnaturally bright eyes.
As soon as this was done, I was going find some water to scrub away all the dried blood on his face.
“Experience,” I said. “We suffered a scandalous lack of maidservants at the orphanage.”
“I’m beginning to suspect this orphanage of yours wasn’t nearly the utopia you’ve always boasted it was.”
“Oh, right. You know me, forever boasting about what a ripping good time it is to be an orphan.”
“It always is in fairy tales,” he said innocently.
I snorted. “Have you actually read any fairy tales? Orphans fare the worst of anyone. We were lucky they didn’t decide to roast us and eat us for dinner, come to think of it.”
“Ah, dinner,” Mandy said, closing his eyes.
Of course. One more task before I could rest. I hoped Mr. Hunter kept his larder well stocked. One couldn’t live off chopped-up woodlands creatures alone, surely.
“There’s something I forgot to tell you,” Mandy said, eyes still closed.
“What?”
“Well, I didn’t forget, precisely. But I … I wonder if it really happened.”
“What?” I said again, impatient, tucking in a corner of sheet.
“Back there this morning, back in the woods with the villagers, before everything went so wrong … there was this moment. This girl, I mean.”
I glanced up.
“And she … I could swear that as soon as I told everyone that we were dragons—hardly, I don’t know, an instant before it all blew to hell …”
“What?” I demanded, crossing to stand before him.
“I said that we were dragons, and she said, ‘Drákon.’”
I stared at him, speechless. His eyes opened. He looked up at me soberly.
“She was fourteen. Fifteen. Reddish hair. Different from the other villagers, you know? Different. Like us. And I … I couldn’t see all of her, but I don’t think she was wearing any clothing.”
“Are you saying—”
“Then she vanished. Right in front of my eyes, she vanished. Without smoke, without anyone else even noticing.”
I sank into a squat before him, my hands light atop his knees.
“Sounds like a hallucination,” I said carefully.
“I know.”
“But you don’t think it was?”
“I was struck on the head after that, Eleanore.”
“Then perhaps you heard her wrong.”
He eased back again, evading my gaze. “Perhaps.”
“And perhaps she seemed to vanish but was merely caught up in the crowd. They were rushing you then, weren’t they?”
“No.”
“Armand!” I dropped all the way down to the floor. “I’m sorry, but you’re asking me to believe that this girl, this villager in the middle of bloody Belgium nowhere, knew what you were, what we are, that she herself may have been one of us, and then, poof, she’s gone? No smoke or anything?”
“I told you I wasn’t certain that it really happened,” he grumbled.
I regarded him without speaking. It had to be close to dusk, because the room around us was dimming from greeny gray to greeny charcoal, and Armand was dimming with it, a wraith in the big dark chair.
Outside, a water bird began a low, piping warble that bounced off the lake before fading into nothing.
“Suppose it was real,” I said finally, quiet. “I don’t see what we’re supposed to do about it now.”
“No,” he agreed, and closed his eyes again.
I moved through the night shadows. I didn’t want to risk any sort of light, even though I’d found candles and matches stashed inside a cupboard. The lodge had plenty of windows, and the woods were plenty dark. A single flame would be all it’d take to reveal us to anyone, anything, out there.
I’d located the pump for the well and gotten us buckets of fresh water, which was handy, but I’d figured the lake would be a good enough source even if I hadn’t discovered the well.
The larder was the problem.
Most of its shelves were bare, but for four sealed canisters and a great many mouse droppings. The canisters contained four different things: sugar, noodles, something fetid that might once have been powdered eggs, and strips of dried meat.
That was it.
The meat was a welcome find (I thought maybe it was venison), but I couldn’t imagine what to do with the rest of it. I might soak the noodles in cold water and wait until they softened, then sprinkle them with sugar …
That sounded disgusting, even to me.
We still had some tins left in the knapsack, plus the apples, but we’d decided to save them if we could; neither of us knew what lay ahead.
I devoured a couple of pieces of venison as I rooted around to make certain there wasn’t anything else hidden anywhere else (there wasn’t, only more droppings), then carried the canister upstairs with me to check on Armand.
I walked slowly, my feet feeling the way step by step, the wooden banister smooth and warm beneath my hand. The bedroom was slightly less dark than downstairs had been, probably because of the series of windows meant to take advantage of the view. I was able to pick out the contours of the bed, the silhouette of Armand within it.
“Hullo,” he said, and even though he’d spoken softly, it rang abnormally loud in my ears.
“Hullo.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve brought back some strudel?”
“Even better.” I held up the canister. “Desiccated meat.”
His voice held a smile. “My favorite.”
“It will be.”
I sat upon the edge of the bed and opened the lid. I had to admit, the strips tasted better than they looked. I reached in, took a few, and passed them to him.
Our fingers touched. His felt like fire.
“Mandy!”
“Beloved.”
“Stop it.” I reached for him blindly. “Come here. I need to feel your forehead.”
Obediently he leaned forward. My hands found his neck, his jaw. The firm shape of his nose and then that welt on his forehead, which I’d cleaned and rebandaged, so what I really felt there was padding. I’d given him some aspirin then, too, but it didn’t seem to be working.
I brought my face to his and touched my lips to a bare spot above the bandage.
I felt him go very, very still.
“Eleanore,” he said, and if his voice had been soft before, now it was barely a sound at all.
I pulled back, unnerved.
“It’s how you check for a fever,” I explained, glad he couldn’t tell that I was blushing. “My mo—”
My what? My mother? My mother did that? I shook my head, and the tickle
of memory was gone.
“I think my mother taught me that,” I finished. “Or someone. I don’t know.”
He bowed his head, seemed to be examining the venison in his hands that I knew he couldn’t really see.
“Do I? Have a fever, that is?”
“I don’t know,” I said again. “Honest to God, Armand, I don’t know how anything works anymore.”
Likely it was the darkness freeing me, freeing my tongue. Likely it was that I didn’t have to look into his eyes and acknowledge what I’d find in them, the constant hunger, the unwavering focus that made me feel both huge and tiny at once: selfishly pleased to be the recipient of his desire, inwardly terrified because I didn’t know if I’d ever be worthy of it, or even able to return it.
I’d loved Jesse. I had. And it had been easy.
But now, with Armand … everything was topsy-turvy. Jesse was the star I couldn’t hear. Mandy was the dragon at my fingertips, right here, right now, and he wanted me.
I’d never have to wonder what he thought. Where he’d gone. I’d never have to wonder how he truly felt.
Only how I felt.
Which was … confused.
not alone, sang the stars, a refrain that shimmered through the cool, dark air, chasing shadows.
“I think I need to sleep now,” I said.
“I know,” he answered, and moved over in the bed to make room. “Come on, Lora. It’s soft, just like you’d hoped.”
“I should get you some more aspirin first.”
“Later.”
“But—”
“It can wait. Everything can wait until tomorrow, waif. When there’ll be sun.”
I was too knackered to argue. I placed the canister upon the floor and crawled toward him, not even bothering to remove my boots. I let myself slump into the bedding, a pillow downy beneath my cheek. Armand didn’t try to get closer, only lay there beside me, but eventually, after counting out more than two minutes silently in my head, I felt his hand clasp mine.
Fire, still.
Weary as I was, it was a long while before I fell asleep.
Chapter 24
Shed this skin.
He didn’t sleep. He couldn’t. He felt wrapped in flames, tortured by the simplest sensations: the weave of the sheets. The revolting smell of the dried meat. The dampness of the night.
His heart, too large in his chest now, too large and too desperate to get out, because it hammered and hammered against his bones with such violence it would splinter him into a million pieces. Every bit of him smashed, right down to his cells.
Only her touch was still right. Only Lora’s hand, lax around his, felt like the anchor he so greatly needed.
Armand remembered what Rue had written about the first Turn of the drákon as if he’d composed the words himself: It’s going to hurt. It’s going to hurt so very much that you will wish you could die.
But he couldn’t die yet. He hadn’t saved his brother yet. He hadn’t confronted his father. He’d never even kissed the girl he loved, not really, and if he died here, tonight, she’d be the only one who’d ever truly know what happened.
It would ruin her, the burden of that secret. Somehow he knew that it would.
Finish this life.
The Turn was building inside him, a tidal wave of smoke and disintegration so colossal it blotted out everything but his fear.
He dug his fingers into the sheets and stared up at the black timbered ceiling.
Shed this skin. Finish this life. In the twinkling of an …
The dam of his willpower crumbled, spent.
The air went to syrup, too thick to breathe.
His heart slowed. Slowed.
Stopped.
He couldn’t die—
Chapter 25
I jolted upright. I didn’t even realize I was awake until I heard the mournful piping of the water bird again, and I looked at the windows because it sounded so near.
I was awake, and I was alone in the bed. I felt ill and sweaty for no reason I could think of, as though I’d just broken a fever.
A fever.
I looked down and yes, there they were: his shirt laid out flat, the bandage that had been around his head fallen to his pillow. Beneath the sheets I’d find his trousers and underwear, too.
I sprang from the bed.
“Armand! Where are you? Mandy!”
I didn’t bother to keep my voice down. There was no one else here, no one at all.
All the windows were closed tight. If he’d left as smoke, it hadn’t been that way. There was no fireplace up here, but there was the one downstairs, and the door—
I hit the stairway so hard my feet slipped; only my grip on the railing kept me from spilling all the way down. As it was, I had to skip and hop and finish the last few steps at an awkward run, my boots cracking against the floorboards of the landing.
The front door gaped open. The night sky hung beyond it, coal black dappled with treetops and stars.
I tried to Turn. It didn’t work. I raced out into the open and scanned the heavens, searching for him.
There were some clouds, that persistent haze hanging over the lake. No smoke that I could see. But he had to be here. He had to. He wasn’t going to be one of those unfortunate young drákon who Turned and dissolved into death, because I was going to save him—
“Where is he?” I shouted to the stars. “Where?”
rise up, came their response; even they sounded mournful. rise up, fireheart.
And then, as if they’d unlocked the hidden shackles that had bound me, I could.
I went to smoke, freed from the earth. I left my garments behind, the lodge, its mossy roof. I launched upward, and suddenly I could see all of the lake, the bristly stretch of forest encircling it, the mist that shifted and curled above the surface of the water …
Hold up. There was no wind, no reason for that patch of curl there near the center of the lake. I moved closer to better see. It spun and whirled like a miniature cyclone, no natural thing.
Armand.
I flowed over to him, became thin and hollow and surrounded him as best I could. I couldn’t tell if he realized I was there; now that I knew where and what he was, I felt him as strongly as ever. It was obviously Mandy, gone to smoke but in such a furious way. The force of his whirling was sending me spinning, too, tearing me into tendrils.
I was beginning to feel ill again, so I had to draw free and let him alone.
What was he doing? Below us both, the water grew stormy, thick wide ripples that slapped all the way back to shore.
I wished he’d stop. I wished he’d move away from the lake, because if I accidentally Turned to girl here, I probably wasn’t going to be able to swim to safety. I was rotten sick of nearly drowning.
He went faster, faster. He was pulling a spiral of water up into his middle, sending drops in every direction. I hung back farther, baffled, as the spiral became a funnel, and the drag from his rotation became something stronger and more ominous.
What’s happening to him? I asked the stars.
They didn’t answer. I wandered higher and hunted the heavens, but Jesse wasn’t anywhere in sight.
Tell me why he’s doing this, I demanded.
shape and form, they sang to me. form and shape.
So … Armand was attempting to hold on to his shape? To not Turn back to a human or into a dragon, but remain as smoke?
Why would he do that? Unless … unless he thought that if he didn’t, he’d have no form left at all.
this beast was never meant to be fully as you are. the thread of his life has always been destined to be severed here.
If I had had breath in a body, it would have left me then. I rushed upward, trying t
o see as many of them as I could.
No! You can’t take him!
we do not take, fireheart. Their song was so sad now. So chilling. he is a child of magic. by law of magic, he ascends to us.
I sped higher and higher. Where is Jesse? Let me speak to Jesse!
Again, no answer. They glittered against a black, black sky, ice cold and remote.
You told me I wasn’t alone!
you were not. your span of hours with this dragon were freely given. that time is done.
Far below, the cyclone that was Armand began to break apart. The waterspout grew shorter, splashing into diamonds upon the surface of the lake. The mist settled. Armand spread thin … then began to rise.
I arrowed back down to him, surrounded him. I tried my own cyclone to keep him in place. He only twirled with me and then beyond me; I wasn’t able to stop him from flowing higher.
Please, he can’t die now, I pleaded.
I had no hands to capture him. I had no words to encourage him. Within moments he was so diaphanous it was as if he had no substance at all, not even color. Zigzag rips began to cleave him; unvarnished night peeped through. A distant, horrified part of me wondered if it hurt.
I’m supposed to save him! I have to save him!
The stars burned in silence. I wanted to scream and I wanted to cry. I wanted to destroy the magic that was taking him. If I’d had a bullet or a bayonet, if I’d had a machine gun, if I could have killed this thing that was killing him …
I watched, helpless, as the smoke of the only living soul who loved me wisped away, molecules falling skyward, gone forever.
And I realized that I had no true power, after all. Not over death.
I’d failed. I’d failed at everything.
A sudden new song swelled around me.
what do you give for this life? what sacrifice do you give?
My answer was instant, unthinking.
My own life. Mine for his.
agreed.
Have you ever done something so rash, so immense, that it takes an eternity of seconds for the magnitude of it to sink in?
I’d just committed suicide.
For Armand.
I had survived my youth immersed in storybook fairy tales. Spent the last few months of my life living one. The one thing I knew with absolute certainty about magical pacts was that they were binding, evermore.