by Shana Abe
Yet the dragons in the book were exactly how Mr. Merick's title depicted them: fiendish.
That was seven-year-old Zoe's first uncensored introduction to the human world, which was clearly a place filled with farmers bearing sharp tools who desired nothing more than to stab her straight through the heart.
For the first few weeks after discovering the Book she slept with a lamp burning all night by her bed, until Cerise had tattled and Mother made her stop.
Slowly, over time, she came to comprehend the nature of the stories, the mortal fear behind them. The Others could not or would not accept the notion of a dragon as a hero and so dragons were cast strictly as villains instead. Why else would a human hunt a dragon? The drakon of Darkfrith never killed without good cause, never scorched anyone else's crops, never bullied other villages. The careful surface of their lives was as placid and bucolic as a fine oil painting. No one wished for outside attention.
It had taken her years to notice what had been apparent all her life: that despite all that—or perhaps because of it—beyond the most necessary of trading and commerce, Darkfrith remained isolated from the human realm. Even the post proved irregular at best. It was as if at some undefined point in the past, the entire shire had been encased in a vast, transparent bubble that repelled all but the most persistent of visitors.
Getting in was difficult. Leaving, as it had turned out, had been as simple as taking a stroll down a moonlit lane.
It seemed nearly impossible here, beneath the china-blue autumn sky of France, with the sun warm on her shoulders and a cup of steaming cf au lait in her hand, that any of the pampered, chattering aristocrats seated with her on the coffeehouse patio would harbor any thoughts of pitchforks and dragon hearts.
And yet ... someone was. Someone. She knew it.
Zoe kept her nose buried in the book she'd purchased a few days ago, feigning to read. She was prim and proper-looking enough, she thought, to blend in here: Her gown was apple-green velvet, her hat was fashionably straw, and the book was small enough to be discreet.
It was entitled, in French: Young Persons Useful Guide to Social Modesty&Moral Certitude. It was not nearly as interesting as the conversations around her.
The unspoken ones, of course.
She could not actually read thoughts, not like the sentences printed upon the pages before her. She could more sense them. She could choose the direction of the deep blue cloak and fling it there and see what it dragged back to her. Sometimes there were images, sometimes entire discussions. Sometimes there were only emotions, or deep quick memories that made no sense to her. But nearly every time now she flung the cloak, some manner of information came back. She was getting better and better at it.
One week ago she'd been walking by this very cafe near the Palais Royal when she'd first felt it: a slow-boiling malice, something thicker and heavier than the usual petty grievances she was used to brushing up against. It had stopped her in her tracks, literally—much to the annoyance of the water-carrier walking behind her—freezing her in place with a single whispery phrase that had snaked out from the mess of tables and coffee-scented confusion and transformed into a wall right in front of her:
—over two hundred sanf inimicusyes, soon enough to raze the entire— Her feet, her heart, her blood—all instant ice.
The sanf were the peasants with pitchforks made real, an ancient order whose sole purpose was to destroy her kind. The ones who, according to the Zaharen drakon in Transylvania, had found and killed the Darkfrith emissaries.
Hayden. Golden-haired, gentian-eyed Hayden, who smiled at her jokes and ate her cooking without complaint, no matter how abysmal it was.
She'd managed to keep walking, albeit much more slowly, shaking the water from her skirts. She'd kept her head bowed and her eyes to the paving stones and tried and tried to get the cloak to work for her again, to tell her who had conjured those words.
But she'd gotten nothing more. The fashionable galleries and restaurants around the Palais were packed with Others, everyone laughing and talking and eating and belching and getting roundly drunk. Any one of them could have been an enemy.
It didn't even occur to her until she was in bed that night that the sentence she'd caught had been in English.
She'd come back every morning since. She'd altered her hair, her frocks, her hats. She'd sipped coffee and tea and bavaroise all the day until her fingers trembled and her stomach rebelled, and even so she'd not slammed into that wall of thought again, not in any language. But it had been her best lead so far in all her wanderings through the city. It was her first solid link to the fate of her fiance, and she wasn't going to give it up yet.
The cafe au lait was still fresh enough to smell enticing. A curled brown leaf from the apple tree arching above had fallen and landed at the edge of the saucer, precisely balanced. Zoe brushed it aside, watched it flutter down to the granite floor.
Hayden. Tell me where to look.
On a fine afternoon such as this the patio tables were popular; it was common custom for the lords and ladies to share. The pair of mink-bedecked matrons at her own were drinking their coffee lukewarm and sugared and discussing—in French—a play they'd heard about but hadn't yet seen. A dandy with brilliant orange heels and a rapier so long it jutted back beneath the table had claimed the final chair and turned it around so that he could join the circle of his friends nearby, agonizing loudly—also in French—over his losses at a horse race. All five of them were drinking absinthe.
Zoe set down her book. She brought the rim of her cup to her lips and let her gaze drift to the window just to her right. Behind it were slender dull flames from the wall sconces of the coffeehouse, waiters cutting back and forth, patrons seated at the inside tables. The interior was dim and the day was bright; it was far easier to see the reflections of the people outside with her, bright colors from sunlit parasols and coats, everyone white-haired, ruby-mouthed. She found her own eyes there in the glass, the arch of her brows, the ribbon of her hat and the curve of her chin—and then noticed something else, something new.
A shadow man, just over her shoulder.
She looked back, very quickly, at the empty space behind her, and then at the window again. The man continued to face her, his features dark and blurred, his posture radiating intent.
The coffee curdled in her throat.
The matrons still ignored her; the dandies were going on about the chances of a gelding against a mare; the shadow in the window took a step closer, close enough for Zoe to make out the faint, evil halo of smoke curling around him like steam rising from a hot roof.
She watched, her heart pounding, the cup a forgotten weight in her fingers, as his hand lifted, hovered ominously above her shoulder. And then—God help her, an actual chill rippled over her flesh as his dark shadow fingers glided slowly down the reflection of her arm—humid, cold, the shadows seeping down to stain her bones.
A voice spoke in her ear.
"Ma'moiselle."
Zoe snapped forward in her chair, sloshing the coffee over her hand. The two matrons made little birdlike noises of surprise, but the waiter who had approached only set down his carafe of fresh brew and offered his linen towel instead, apologizing repeatedly, mopping at her skin. The liquid had not been hot enough to burn—but she felt the tingling begin anyway, spreading up from her knuckles to her forearm.
She stood at once. She grabbed her book and shawl and nodded at the waiter, who was still apologizing, and sidestepped out of the patio into the rush of the street.
If she could get to somewhere private, somewhere where no one would see, she'd be all right. She could control it, damn it, she'd been able to control it for months now—
She couldn't help the last wild glance at the window as she rushed past, but this time Zoe saw only herself.
Quite a few of the coffeehouse patrons looked up as the young woman passed, and kept looking if they happened to catch a glimpse of her face. She'd had an entire group of admiring gentl
emen quietly betting on who would introduce himself to her first not three tables distant, and the steady, silent attention of a blue-eyed, elderly woman seated inside . but it was a newspaper boy named Yves on the corner who saw the demoiselle duck into the alleyway, almost running, and who thought to follow.
When he peered past the bricks he saw her standing forlorn at the end of the way, piles of refuse and wooden pallets blocking her way out the other side. The lady was breathing heavily with her back to him, holding her hands before her face.
Just then someone called for a paper. He turned around and sold three copies before he knew it, and by the time he looked back for the lady, the alleyway was empty.
But—there was her gown, all tumbled in a heap by the refuse. And shoes. And a straw hat, and a shawl, and a real book bound in blue, just tossed on top.
He was able to sell it all for a tidy sum the next day to old Therese at the Hotel-Dieu in Montpellier, except for the book, which he presented to his mother.
She thanked him very sweetly for it too.
* * *
She wasn't here.
Granted, he wasn't precisely sure where here was. Or even when. The one true certainty Rhys had was that although the symphony still echoed around him, he was no longer in the assembly hall in Soho. The chairs and musicians and sparkling chandeliers had all vanished. If he concentrated hard enough, he could dim the music, but it took a great deal of effort that usually ended up leaving him drained and weary.
And when he was weary, the music hall rushed back in full bloody glory. He was growing to loathe the combination of rose, mauve, and cream.
But he was getting better at fending it off. Right now, for instance, he stood by a road somewhere—a townish sort of road, narrow and shadowed, one he'd never seen before. Definitely not Darkfrith. If this was his imagination, he supposed he deserved some credit for the details: the cobblestones were convincingly grimy; the gutters choked with garbage; the buildings were slaty and tall and streaked with damp; the people wore coats and shawls and hats and walked very quickly past him with their heads bowed or their faces turned away. A rat was picking through a mound of putrid something beneath a yellow-leafed shrub in a pot by an open door; apparently it was the only thing willing to see him, because it kept throwing him beady, distrustful glances as it rummaged. When Rhys took a step toward it, it turned and scuttled back through the darkness of the doorway.
He'd discovered rather quickly that he couldn't move much farther than that. A few steps in any direction, that was all. No matter how strongly he leaned or shoved, he was essentially fixed in this ruddy spot.
Everything was tinted blue and gray, as if it were raining, but it was not. There was nothing bright around him at all, not even the sun in the sky, which was how Rhys knew that Zoe Lane wasn't nearby.
Zoe alone shone with color.
He'd found her twice now. Just twice. And the second time had been so different from the first, he could not help but think that perhaps that first time, together with her in the hall, with the light, and the musicians—perhaps he had dreamt that one. Because the next time he'd seen her she looked different, for one thing. Not so polished, not so alabaster-perfect. She'd looked ... almost human.
Which was ridiculous. Apart from the members of his family, she had to be the most absolute model example of the female drakon he'd ever known. She was stunning and always had been, blindingly so. She was intelligent and stubborn and completely unafraid of convention. Had she inherited the ability to Turn into dragon, he could only imagine the terror she'd have stricken into the hearts of the men of the shire.
Not that she hadn't accomplished that anyway. He hadn't known a single boy their age who hadn't boasted of at least trying to kiss her. She was their unspoken grail, their adolescent hope and despair; remembering it now, he wondered if she'd even realized how many grubby fights she'd inspired. Young love was a wild and capricious creature, and Zoe, with her sparkling eyes and swift graceful step, seemed to have them all tethered to her lead without even trying.
But Rhys had loved her first. And he'd gotten that first kiss. He knew it, because she'd told him so herself when it happened. It had been in the forest, and they were all of thirteen, and he was going to prove to her that he could Turn, because at that time, there seemed to be nothing more important in the world than that she know his secret.
So he'd done it. And he'd stayed that way, an emerald dragon in the emerald woods, letting her circle him in their hidden clearing, leaves and sweet grasses ripe with summer beneath their feet. She'd held her skirts with one hand and allowed the other to trail along the ridges of his spine as she walked deliberately all the way around him.
Her touch had felt like fire. The most teeth-clenching, unbearable, and exciting fire. It ripped through him like nothing he'd ever felt before, not even his first Turn. Somehow he'd managed to follow her only with his eyes; the clearing was small and Rhys the dragon was not. She'd finished her circle and met his gaze and licked her lips and smiled, and his willpower went to ash.
He'd Turned back, very quickly, and kissed her hard on that smile before she could stop him or draw away.
She'd done neither, though. Zoe had only closed her eyes and puckered her lips in return, cool and composed against the fever in his blood.
In that instant he loved her so much he thought his heart was going to explode.
When he'd pulled away, panting, her smile grew wider and her long lashes lifted. He was drowning in exquisite dark depths.
"It was wetter than I thought it would be."
He heard himself say, faintly, "What?"
"My first kiss." Her head tipped as she gazed up at him; a lock of hair that had come free of her cap curled against peach-blossom skin. "Shorter too," she added pointedly.
So he'd kissed her again.
That was Zoe. Never shy about hitting him over the head with the truth.
He needed that now. Rhys ran his hands through his own hair, staring around him at the unknown road, baffled. He needed some truth, some clarity at least.
Hell, he must be dreaming the whole thing. Because the second time he'd seen her, she'd also been somewhere definitely not Darkfrith—and he could think of no reason why she wouldn't be safely cloistered in the shire. But she'd absolutely been in another place, somewhere cleaner and more stylish than his grimy little road, and the people surrounding her had been no one familiar at
all.
Coffee cups, wineglasses, trees overhead. He'd heard voices but only as a slur of soft babbling sound; no words. No meaning. And again, no depth of color, but for her. Zoe, with her ivory hair and roses in her cheeks. And painted lips. And a dress this time of verdant green. A matching ribbon on her hat. She looked like springtime in the middle of drab winter, and even if he'd wanted to, he'd have been unable to tear his eyes from her.
She'd seen him too. No one else had—there had been no rodents on that crowded little patio— but Zoe had seen him. And he thought . he thought perhaps she'd even felt him. He'd almost felt her. Almost felt the warmth of her shoulder, the texture of her sleeve. Her eyes had grown round as saucers as she'd stared back at his reflection in the window glass.
But something moved behind them, and she'd started—and vanished. He'd been encased instantly in darkness again, the cursed music. After trying very, very hard, he'd appeared here, on this dismal little street. He could summon nothing else.
He couldn't Turn, either. Not to smoke. Not to dragon.
He was stuck.
Rhys sat down on the sidewalk across from the shrub and contemplated its faded yellow leaves. The dull gray human men and women brushed past him as if he were invisible. As if he were a ghost.
All those years of practicing his stealth, and now he could barely frighten a rat. The irony of it seemed almost humorous at first—and then most definitely not.
To hell with this.
Rhys narrowed his eyes at the shrub. His breathing began to slow: gently, watchfully, the wh
ispered whoosh whoosh whoosh of blood through arteries and veins gradually overtaking the bright terrible music that soared at the edges of his being. If he could just relax enough, focus enough on what he knew of her—her shape and scent and colors, her eyes, her lips, that long-ago kiss burned into his soul—he was sure he could find her again .
But he must be caught up in some sort of bizarrely tangled dream after all. Because when Rhys thought he finally caught a glimpse of pure, pretty color from the corner of his vision, he could have sworn it was Zoe running, quite astonishingly nude, down a busy city street. And only the horses and stray dogs seemed to notice.
Chapter Six
Zoe sat on the edge of her bed wrapped in just a blanket, contemplating her feet. They were cut and cold and so dirty she was loath to put on stockings or shoes for fear of permanently mucking them up.
Paris was disgustingly filthy. Especially when one was forced to traverse it barefoot.
She had five gowns left. Three pairs of shoes. Four sets of stockings, garters, bibs. One corset and bustle.
Three of the five dresses she had purchased here. Her work as a seamstress would have meant a modest living nearly anywhere else, but Darkfrith—as ever—had evolved its own set of rules and social structures. She was no more and no less well-off than nearly anyone else in the tribe, but by the standards of the rest of the country, she was practically gentry. Certainly no one from the green hills of the shire ever starved. No one flaunted their wealth either. Barring the Alpha and his estate, the drakon of England lived their quiet, calm lives in the grip of secret luxury.
But only three gowns had fit into the valise. Besides, she'd needed room for her jewelry.
She lifted a foot, examined it critically. Were she able to Turn to smoke, all the dirt would fall away, the little nicks and blood would no longer matter—it was a fine Gift, smoke. She could fly with it, she could transform herself to haze and wind and survive even dire injury. Nothing would hold her back.