by Shana Abe
"Come inside," he said, and placed that hand upon the small of her back as she passed. "Come talk to me instead."
* * *
They had found him two days beyond Dijon. He hadn't realized it was the coachman who'd betrayed him; all Hayden knew was that at some point during the night in the rustic inn they had settled upon he'd awoken to the tiny, persistent scratch of a pick working at the lock to his room. And even then he'd assumed it was just a common thief determined to ransack his luggage; France, he said, was rife with such rogues. Until he'd caught a whiff of saltpeter and nervous sweat. The oiled metal of the guns.
Hayden was full drakon. Although the council had instructed him not to use his Gifts unless his circumstances turned truly dire, he figured a quartet ofsanf inimicus breaking through his door was dire enough.
"You Turned?" Zoe asked him, nursing her cup of too-strong tea. "To smoke or to dragon?"
"Oh, to smoke, of course," he said, taking a sip of his own tea. They had moved from the front parlor to the drawing room across the hall, where there were frosted-glass lamps and a settee wide enough for them both. The curtains here were heavy damask, white with saffron flowers. "A dragon would have shattered that little matchbox of an inn to slivers, even without trying."
"It was mostly spit and thatch," agreed the dragon-boy, who had shunned the pungent tea for brandy. He sat by the fire once again. The engraved glass in his hand winked in constant, cinnamon sparks.
Zoe glanced at him. "You were there?" Twice since beginning his tale, Hayden had granted the boy the honorific His Grace, and once,His Highness. Sandu was Zaharen, obviously, from that clan of Transylvanian drakon that so worried her own. He seemed quite young to be both a lone hunter and a prince, but there was no mistaking that air of jaded, adolescent regality about him. He even held his brandy in a studied way, the stem and cup supported between two slender pale fingers.
In any case, Hayden would not be wrong.
"I was," said Sandu. "The sanf were tracking your husband. I was tracking the sanf. Our sudden convergence was most fortuitous.""They weren't expecting us both. We made short work of them," Hayden said mildly. She lowered her cup. "Are they dead?"
"Really, my dear. I can't imagine you'd find any gratification in the details!" He leaned over to touch a hand to her knee and almost as quickly removed it. "Suffice it to say you need never worry about those particular humans. They shall not trouble us again."
"Yes," said Sandu, sending Zoe a short, candid look. "They're dead."
"I like this boy," commented Rhys. "I confess it. I like him more and more."
The ghost of Rhys had followed them inside. He'd taken a chair by the windows, as relaxed against the cushions as the young prince seemed to be, and up until now at least, he'd been silent.
She'd decided to ignore him. It was her only hope of slipping back into her normal life. If she refused to acknowledge him, if she refused to interact with him, perhaps he'd give up. Perhaps he'd fade away and go where he was meant to, wherever that was.
Not here. Not at her side.
When she moved her hand, the loose leaves of tea at the bottom of her cup spun in diminutive eddies. She looked from them deliberately back up at Hayden. At his profile, so golden and fine.
"Why are you both in Paris? I thought the council wanted you to reach the Zaharen in the Carpathians."
It was Sandu who finally answered; Hayden had gone stiff, avoiding her gaze. "Because ... Paris is where they are. Paris is where they've hidden their heart."
She nearly spilled her tea. "What? Thesanf? "
"That's what we discovered that night." Hayden murmured the prince's name, but the boy only spoke over him. "Their leader is ensconced here. They're building ranks. There might be hundreds of them already in the city alone. They're preparing for something big, bigger than they've ever attempted."
"Darkfrith," Zoe guessed, then caught her breath.
"We fear it so."
Darkfrith. Cerise and the little children. Uncle Anton, gray and slow. All her kin, the village and farms and the unprotected downs . and that menacing phrase the cloak had captured for her back in the Palais Royal:over two hundred sanf—
Sandu shifted, adjusting a velvet pillow behind his back. "There's more. We discovered they're holding one of our kind. We don't know who. We don't even know why. It's not a ransom or exchange, and they're not using this drakon to hunt us, as they've done in the past. They're keeping him—or her—prisoner, a body bound. It could be one of your tribe or mine. You're missing your Alpha's second son and that young maiden. My own people are scattered, and we don't . track ourselves as you do, so it might be nearly anyone. Whoever it is, the individual seems vital to the sanf inimicus. Vital enough not to dispose of. Yet."
Rhys had sat up in his chair. His clenched fingers seemed to sink through the wooden arms.
"You're going after them," said Zoe, disbelieving. "Aren't you? The two of you alone, going for a rescue. Just like the heroes in a picture book."
The prince fixed her once again with that clear candid gaze.
"Of course," he said.
Hayden came to life. "And that's why you must leave. That's why I need you on the next coach to Calais. So you will be safe."
"Th etwo of you," she reiterated. "Against an entire hive of Others."
He granted her a sideways look. "Do you think it an uneven match, my dear?"
"I think it's suicide. You've just said there might be hundreds of them here. That their leader is here. Don't you think they'll have prepared for our kind? Don't you think they'll be ready to defend this body, this dragon, that they want so badly?"
"They're still merely humans," said the prince with a shrug.
"Humans with weapons! Humans with a list of proper ways to recognize us! To take away our sight!"
"But we have the better advantage," explained the boy slowly, as if she were exceptionally dense. "We know they're here. They don't know we are. You yourself said that the one who did locate you was killed by the other man, trying to protect you. So—there you have it."
She placed her cornflower china teacup delicately upon the table before her, centering it in its saucer, and shifted to face Hayden. He looked back at her gravely, not relinquishing his own cup.
"I won't be leaving. Not without you."
"Zoe .
"Think on it, Hayden. The sanf I encountered was a coachman. The man who worked for him was a coachman. I was fortunate enough to escape them both—" Rhys cleared his throat.
"—and certainly they won't be coming after me again, but if there was one thing they both made clear to me before they killed each other, it was that the sanf inimicus have infiltrated the coach yards of this city, purely in search of us. They discovered me once. There is no reason to believe they will not do it again. I might get all the way to Calais before they strike. But they will strike, dearest. They've proven that, again and again. And when they do, I shall be all alone." She lowered her lashes, tried to look vulnerable. "Practically defenseless."
"Oh, well done," praised the shadow in an exaggerated drawl. "I knew all that sly wit and duplicity would prove handy sooner or later."
Both the prince and Hayden were glowering by the light or their smallish lamps and fire; she'd taken the wind from their sails, she could see it, and could not help the slight curving of her mouth.
"I'm truly safer remaining here," she said, "with you. You must see that."
"Yes," said Hayden after a moment. "I'm afraid ... I'm afraid I do see. You're quite right. You could not possibly leave now. Not by any standard means, and I can't escort you yet."
"Bonehead," pronounced the shadow, throwing up his hands. "For pity's sake! I should have fleeced him at cards more often. Perhaps then he might have learned to recognize a sharp."
Zoe only smiled at her fiance, and lifted his hand to brush her lips tenderly across his knuckles.
* * *
They left her alone after that. They'd gone as a group to T
uileries and fetched her things in the deep black hub of night; she was settled in the third bedchamber of the maison now, the smallest of the three still adequately furnished. It had walls papered in pink and the palest yellow stripes, and brown-centered daisies painted along the trim. It was the room of a child, but she didn't mind. It lacked both a crib and even a single looking glass. The indigo cloak—all those spirits— was forced back to the windowpanes, and Zoe kept the curtains pulled tight, so that she would not have to see.
She lay in the bed and stared up at the ceiling. The prince had retired to his chamber with hardly a glance at her, but Hayden had lingered at her door, his gaze combing the girlish bedroom beyond her as if he searched for something that was not there.
"Will you kiss me?" she'd whispered, as softly as she could. She didn't see Rhys but that didn't mean he wasn't nearby.
Hayden lowered his chin and smiled at her, a soft and shy smile. Then he'd lifted his hands and cupped her face, and rested his lips against hers in what was surely the most tame, most brotherly kiss a female drakon had ever received from her affianced mate.
"No," she whispered. "Like this." And had wrapped her arms about his shoulders and pulled him close, pressing her mouth hard to his.
For a moment it seemed to work. For a moment his hands pushed deeper into her hair, and his chest expanded against hers, and she tasted tea this time, tea over the brandy and him.
Then he broke it off. He drew a jagged breath, lifting his head with his smile now strained, and dropped his hands to her shoulders.
Zoe reached up to grab his fingers, fierce. "Can we not pretend? Just pretend we're wed already? Do we need to wait?"
"If we do not have our honor," Hayden murmured, his eyes roaming her face, "then we have nothing."
We would have each other,she wanted to say. We would have tonight.
"Good night, dearest girl. You do hold my heart, you know. And it will be soon. As soon as we're home safe again, I promise. The very first open date in the chapel will be ours."
"Good night," she'd managed, and watched him cross the hall to his room. Shut the door.
She rolled over now in the narrow bed. She pulled the quilt up high, inhaled the scent of goose down from the pillow, and tried to fall asleep.
In the darkest corner of her very dark room, the shadow stood and watched her, unmoving. Unspeaking. Until the first blush of dawn lit the carpet of flowers at his feet.
Chapter Fifteen
Once there was a prince. Have you heard this story before?
A prince in spirit if not in title, and he was handsome and brave and bold, and more than a little charming. Like many such princes, he tumbled in and out of love with ease, and happened to leave quite a pretty trail of broken hearts scattered behind him. He was not especially kind, but he was not especially cruel, either. He had been blessed by life and forged perhaps a wee bit selfish by all that good fortune. There had never come an occasion truly to plumb his depths, and so he sparkled like a raindrop, bright and cheerful and happy to splash where he would.
Don't judge him too harshly. Born in his magical place, do you imagine you would have turned out so very different?
So this prince might well have lived the whole of his life in such a way, and then his name and story would have faded from memory; he would have been just one more dashing prince for us to amass with all the dashing others, fine-looking fellows all with the same grin.
But one day this particular prince lost his looks and his fortune with a single devious blow. He lost his light, and his hope. And he realized, only then—of course!—what a waste his life had been. How foolish he was to have squandered it, when he might have been a good man all along.
He had but one chance to touch something bright again. He had but one chance to prove he was more than splash and easy charm.
This chance came to him in the shape of a female, a special female: a treasure, one might say. She possessed a heart so strong and true he could scarcely fathom the size of it.
It's a shame, isn't it, that the sole thing the prince was good at was shattering hearts?
Chapter Sixteen
She had to cook.
She'd promised Hayden and the Zaharen she'd not leave the maison, not until they returned from their scouting mission down to wherever it was the sanf inimicus were crouching. By the time she'd awoken this morning, one of them—she didn't even know which—had already gone to market, and so there was now slightly more food than that one egg and the stale bread.
But they'd been out for hours already. Hours. There was a standing clock in the main hallway by the front door, and it had long since chimed two o'clock. Three. Even the shadow of Rhys was gone; perhaps he'd taken her at her word yesterday.
More likely she'd just pushed him into a sulk.
A group of children in the yard next door were running around, squealing and laughing over the calls of their nanny. A tethered dog in the yard on the other side was keeping up a stream of steady, unhappy yips.
She was hungry. She'd already dumped their stew from the fireplace into the compost—Rhys had been correct; it reeked of glue—but she'd not found enough sand or water to scrub out the pot.
She would compose a salad; there were plenty of vegetables for that. There was little chance of spoiling a salad.
Zoe whacked the carving knife into a head of cabbage. It split in two, the pieces rolling, one of them wobbling off the chopping board; she nearly caught it with one hand, but it was fat and wet, and slipped off her fingers. A caterpillar bounced out of it onto the floor.
"Damn it."
"Gracious. Where did you learn that?"
So, at least her ghost was back. She stooped to pick up the caterpillar, placed it in the pot of tarragon, then slapped the cabbage back upon the board. A square of sunlight slanting down from the window picked out in bleached yellow the grain of the wood, the bones and tendons of her hands.
"No doubt listening to you."
"Have you been?" he asked, walking up to her. "Listening, I mean?"
With the glow of light below him he was nearly as thick as life; she could see the slate shadow of beard in the hollows of his cheeks, the band of deeper jade around the pupils of his eyes.
"I can't really help it." She bent her head and whacked at the cabbage again. "As you seldom shut up."
"Hmmm. I hardly think I warranted that. Is your mood so sour because they've stuck you in the
kitchen?"
"No one has stuck me anywhere." Another whack. "I choose to be here."
From beneath her lashes she watched as Rhys made a show of glancing around them, his hands tucked behind his back, linen ruffles to his fingers and leather boots that made no sound upon the floor. "Yes. Yes, I can see why. It's a fair paradise down here in this basement. Not dank or dismalat all."
She shoved the chopped cabbage into a bowl, took out the carrots she'd already washed clean, and began to slice off their tops.
"I am female." A feathery-green frond flew across the counter. "I like to cook." "I can tell."
She put down the knife and turned to him. "You're stronger than before." He nodded. "When I'm with you."
"You're not just a reflection now, Rhys. You have depth." She wiped her hands on her apron and, experimentally, pressed a finger to his shoulder: cold, cold resistance. Her eyes went to his; he was watching her steadily. "I can feel you."
"Yes," he said.
She took a step back. She felt better with distance between them, safer somehow. "This can't be."
"Why not?"
"You're a ghost." She tipped back her head and gave a little laugh to the timbers of the ceiling, almost despairing. "For all I know, you're an exceedingly vivid figment of my imagination."
"No. You know I'm real."
"Do I? No one else can see you or hear you, much less touch you. I look at you and I feel—"
"What, Zee?" He floated closer, his lips barely moving. "What do you feel?"
Pain, she realized.
She felt pain when she saw him. Loss. She mourned the death of a man she'd not even known. He'd been beyond her, always beyond her, for both of their lives. He'd been that secret enchanting memory from her girlhood and the patrician future she herself had decided to abandon. But now, with him here, with him always here, she was learning facets of Rhys Langford she'd never before guessed: that beneath his wicked humor was sensitivity. Bravery. Beyond his cocky smile was stalwart dependability. Even as a shade, even at his most galling, he'd tried to do nothing but protect her.
And she mourned him, she did. She mourned his death.
"James is a fool." His mouth thinned as he studied her, the angles of his face shining clear and dark. "He should have stayed with you last night. I would have."
She laughed again, shaking her head to disguise the moist heat in her eyes, and went back to the carrots. "Oh. Splendid. You saw that?"
He was silent. The polished blade of the knife caught the light in a brilliant, painful gleam. She had to wipe her lids with wet fingers before she could glance back at him.
She would swear there was color in his cheeks, a stain of red over the dark. He looked abashed. Abashed, when she had thrown her heart and her body at a man who'd rather sleep alone night after night than with her.
She stabbed the point of the knife down into the block, folding her arms across her chest. "Let me be plain. I can't go through the rest of my days like this. With you like this, always lurking."
"Zoe."
"No. It's not fair. Not to me, not to Hayden. Not even to you. I don't accept it." Rhys watched her as if she spoke some odd foreign language, a small baffled crease between his brows, as if at any moment she would begin to make sense again. "It's not fair," she reiterated, more forceful, to defeat that look.
"I believe I've heard this tune before. But guess what, Zee? Life isn't—
"But you're not alive," she hissed.
"Love is stronger than death."
She opened her mouth, closed it, and tightened her lips. The aroma of chopped vegetables was suddenly astringent in her nose.