Small lamps dotted the loft, their bulbs covered with stained-glass shades that cast the room in soft reds and purples. Back at the keep, Caius’s eyes had looked like emerald flames, catching the light from the sconces on the walls and dancing with it. Now, they were so dark they were hardly green at all, as though the swirling black of his pupil had swallowed the iris whole. Echo stared for a minute before she realized what she was doing. Tearing her eyes from his, she felt the traitorous heat of a blush creeping up her cheeks. She turned away to hide her flush, watching Ivy tend to Dorian.
“Your friend is talented,” Caius said.
There was something about being here with him that made Echo’s tongue feel too large for her mouth. She simply nodded and kept her eyes forward. Jasper was loudly rearranging cutlery in the kitchenette, signaling that he was giving her some privacy. What for, she had no idea, but that was par for the course. She usually had no idea what motivated Jasper to do the things that he did.
“He’s a strange one, isn’t he?” Caius’s voice was soft, conspiratorial even.
“Jasper?” she asked, finally looking back at him. He was trying to make small talk. What fresh hell?
Caius raised an eyebrow as if to say who else? The blush returned, heat crawling up the back of Echo’s neck like a spider.
“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, he is.”
“I’m curious,” Caius said, leaning forward to unbuckle the leather straps of the harness that held the two long knives on his back. “I’d like to hear about the time you saved his life. You seem so young to be having such adventures.”
Echo felt a prickle of annoyance at his words and held on to it. It was better than blushing. “I’m not a child.”
If embarrassment had not been beneath a hardened Drakharin mercenary, Echo would have sworn that the flash of emotion that crossed Caius’s face was just that. But she blinked and it was gone.
“I meant no insult.” Caius laid the knives on the floor beside the chair. Echo hated herself for noticing the way his chest strained against the bloodied fabric of his tunic. When he looked up at her, the hint of a smile he wore was almost sheepish. “But you are young. Too young to be spending your nights on the run from Drakharin soldiers, surely.”
“I don’t feel young,” said Echo. It hadn’t been the first time she’d been forced to run for her life, but the muscles in her legs ached in a way they never had before. A dull twinge settled into her lower back, creeping its way up her spine and across her shoulders. A faint throb had begun behind her eyes, and she knew she would be nursing a monstrous headache soon.
“The young never do,” he said softly. She didn’t know how to respond to this version of Caius. Antagonism she understood, but this newfound camaraderie was strange.
“How old are you?” Echo asked.
“How old do I look?” Caius’s lips twitched into a small grin. If he was tired, he wore it well.
“A lot younger than you probably are.”
He was quiet for a few moments, and the ping of Jasper’s microwave made her jump.
“About two hundred fifty,” Caius said. “The years start to blend together after a while.” He shrugged, as if the notion were the most normal thing in the world. “And how old are you?”
There was something about him that seemed both young and old at the same time. He lacked the gravitas of the Ala, who had always reminded Echo of a great oak tree, aged and eternal. In the face of two hundred fifty, any number Echo could have produced would have felt paltry by comparison, but the real answer seemed woefully inadequate.
“Seventeen.”
Caius blinked, slowly, as though opening and closing his lids took a bit of effort. “Seventeen,” he breathed. “Remarkable.”
“If you say so.”
“You still haven’t answered my question,” Caius said. “About Jasper.”
“Oh.” Echo had already forgotten it. The way Caius sat—no, sprawled—with his dark green eyes and his darker brown hair and his angular cheekbones made her slow, as if her brain had gone a bit rusty. She shook her head, as though the simple motion would clear it. It didn’t.
“Me and Jasper,” she said, though she didn’t quite like the way that sounded. Jasper had flirted with her, but he flirted with anything with a pulse. There was no such thing as Echo and Jasper. She didn’t know why it mattered to her that Caius shouldn’t believe there was, but it did. “About a year ago, we were both hired to steal the same thing. I got it. He didn’t. His employers didn’t like that very much.”
“What was it?” Caius stretched his long legs out in front of him, crossing them at the ankles. Echo busied herself with wondering what white-furred animal had died to make Jasper’s rug.
“A harp.”
“A harp?” Caius sounded almost amused.
“A harp.”
“Must have been some harp.”
“Supposedly, it was magical,” Echo said. “Legend had it that if you played it aboard a ship, you could call mermaids to do your bidding. But I don’t think mermaids even exist.”
“They do.”
And just like that, Echo’s world rearranged itself. It seemed to be doing that with alarming frequency these days.
“Did it work?” Caius asked. “The harp?”
Echo shrugged. “I didn’t stick around to find out. I was busy pulling Jasper out of the ocean. His employers threw him overboard when he told them I’d stolen it from right under his nose.”
“The Avicen aren’t overly fond of water,” Caius said. He made it sound clinical, as if he were reciting from a textbook.
“Some are, some aren’t,” Echo said. “Jasper can’t swim to save his life. Literally.”
“But you saved it for him.” Caius looked her over as if he was appraising her. She didn’t like it. “That was noble.” He made it sound more like a curiosity than a compliment.
“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” she said.
“I’m sure it did.”
They fell into a silence that wasn’t entirely uncomfortable. Echo gazed around the room, at the paintings on the walls—all stolen, all famous, all hideously expensive—and the little touches that made the loft feel like a home. A record player sat in the corner, vinyl albums stacked haphazardly next to it. A row of Japanese netsuke lined the windowsill, a tiny army carved of ivory. All stolen. Muted voices drifted from the kitchenette, where Ivy had joined Jasper.
Caius spoke before Echo could make a break for the kitchenette. “I’m sorry you were dragged into this mess.”
She blinked. “Really?”
“Really.”
“I just …” The words refused to come easy. There was so much she wanted to ask. “Why?”
Caius breathed, long and deep, before answering. “Because it isn’t your mess.”
“And it’s yours?” Echo asked. “I thought you were just the hired muscle.”
That small smile found its way to Caius’s face again. “We all have our jobs to do. The parameters of mine have simply changed.”
Echo raised her eyebrows. “And now they include teaming up with a bunch of Avicen?”
“There are some things more important than taking sides,” Caius said. “The … previous Dragon Prince tasked me with finding the firebird, and it’s a cause I happen to believe in.”
The clinking of ceramic cups from the kitchenette cut through the silence, but Echo couldn’t have torn her eyes away from Caius if she wanted to. The fact that she didn’t was problematic.
“The Dragon Prince,” Echo said. “What was he like?”
Caius looked down at his interlaced fingers. A few locks of hair fell in front of his face, and Echo’s fingers twitched with the urge to brush them back. She sat on her hands. He didn’t look up when he said, “Bit of an idiot.”
A mad giggle tore its way out of Echo. “What?”
“He was so busy looking for threats from the outside that he missed the one hiding right under his nose.”
“Tanit
h?”
Caius nodded.
“Who is she?”
“His sister.”
Echo drew her legs up on to the couch, crossing them at the ankles. What must that have been like, she wondered, to be betrayed so thoroughly by someone who was supposed to love you, wholly and unconditionally? Her own family—the biological one she’d run away from—had disabused her of the notion of innate and obligatory love long ago, but she’d always imagined the bond between siblings to be a sacred thing. Like her bond with Ivy. “Damn,” she said.
“That about sums it up.”
“What was his name?”
Caius shifted, long legs uncrossing and crossing, one hand rising to rub the base of his neck. “I don’t know. The Drakharin keep the name of their ruler well hidden from those on the outside. There’s power in names.”
The Avicen and the Drakharin had more in common than they realized, but Echo kept that thought to herself. Mortal enemies were touchy about being compared to each other. “So I’ve heard.”
Caius nodded again. “Thank you,” he said quietly.
“For what?”
“For this.” Caius gestured at the loft. “For bringing us here. For helping when you didn’t have to.”
“I didn’t have much of a choice, did I?”
Caius’s eyes went soft and distant, as if he was looking at her, and maybe also through her. “There’s always a choice, Echo. Even if it’s a bad one.”
“And which one was this?” she asked. Ivy and Jasper had gone curiously quiet, and Echo knew they were listening.
“The good one, I hope.”
Ivy and Jasper resumed their conversation, voices hushed, and Echo was glad of it.
“You aren’t what I would have expected,” she said. Now it was her turn to be quiet, to make the words soft enough for only Caius to hear. “For a Drakharin, I mean.”
He clasped his hands over his stomach and smiled wearily. Smiling made him seem younger, as though his age matched his looks, but now, with the fine lines of fatigue setting in around his eyes, he looked older. He was too handsome to ever be truly haggard, but his shoulders sagged, and he sank deeper into the chair, meeting Echo’s eyes with a half-lidded gaze.
“Should I apologize for that?” he asked.
Echo shook her head.
“What would the Avicen have you believe of me?”
“That you’re a monster.”
Caius arched an eyebrow. “And do you find me monstrous?”
She could have lied, but he’d see right through it. He didn’t come across as the sort you could sneak a falsehood past. “‘The devil is not as black as he is painted.’”
“Dante.” The corners of Caius’s lips curved upward, just a touch. “You’re well read, I see.”
“I spend a lot of my time in libraries.” It should have felt wrong, to expose that part of herself to Caius, no matter how tiny it was. It should have. It really, really should have.
Caius studied her for a few heartbeats more before reaching into his shirt and pulling out the locket. Echo’s fingers twitched with her longing to hold it. Like Jasper, she had always been drawn to beautiful things, but this was different. This felt as if it should have been hers, and she couldn’t have explained it if she tried.
“If the locket belonged to you once, how did it wind up at that teahouse in Japan?” Echo asked.
“I gave it to someone a long time ago.” Caius twirled the pendant between his fingers, running a thumb over the bronze dragon on its front. “I suppose she gave it to someone else in turn. Strange to think that it found its way back to me.”
Strange indeed. He was connected to everything—the firebird, the locket, the music box, the maps—in a way Echo couldn’t quite piece together, but there was a finality to his tone that didn’t invite further questioning. Perhaps, in the morning, he’d be more forthcoming. Or, she mused, he would expect her to be as well. Maybe it was best if she didn’t pepper him with questions he clearly didn’t want to answer; that way, he wouldn’t pry into her secrets with equal curiosity. With a sigh, she moved on to her next query. “Did you keep the dagger?”
Caius slipped the locket’s chain over his head and dropped it onto his lap. Then he unclasped a small leather sheath on the side of his belt, removing the dagger in one smooth motion. He looked from the dagger to Echo, silent, waiting. Her fingers twitched again. She wanted to hold it, to feel the weight of the hilt in her palm, the onyx and pearl magpies against her skin. But there was one thing that had been bothering her since she’d found it.
“I don’t get it,” she said. “The locket had a map inside, but how does a dagger help us find the firebird?”
“I don’t know.” The phrase fell awkwardly from Caius’s lips, as if he wasn’t used to that particular combination of words.
“It’s funny,” she said. Caius tilted his head in place of asking what. “The magpies on the knife. That’s what the Ala calls me, sometimes. Her little magpie.” She didn’t know why she felt the need to tell him that, either.
“Magpies.” His voice was hushed, as if he was talking to himself. Echo felt positively incidental. “They make excellent thieves, you know.”
There was something unbearably sad about him. For a brief moment, she thought she saw the person he might have been, long ago, before the war had taken its toll.
“They’re smart, too,” she said.
That ghost of a smile returned to Caius’s face. “Is that so?”
Echo nodded. “And they’re the only birds that pass the mirror test.”
“What’s the mirror test?”
“It’s a way for scientists to measure intelligence. The humble magpie is the only bird that can recognize its own reflection.”
Caius looked back at the dagger, turning it over in his hands. “Your human scientists do the strangest things.”
“I don’t know that I’d call them my human scientists,” Echo said. “I haven’t had many dealings with”—she curled her fingers into quotation marks in the air—“my kind.”
He responded with a quiet huff. He had eyes only for the dagger and the seven little magpies flying around its hilt. “Why did you steal it?” he asked.
“There was a map in the locket. It told me to go to the Louvre, and so I did.” Echo wasn’t sure how much she should tell him. She didn’t trust him, not yet, and she knew that being guided to the dagger by some unseen force wasn’t exactly what one would call normal.
Caius held the dagger at eye level, turning it slightly so that it glittered in the light. “Yes, but why this?”
“That’s classified,” Echo replied, for lack of a better response.
Letting out a small laugh, he said, “You know, we’re going to have to start trusting each other sooner or later.”
Echo smiled, just a little. “Baby steps.” She watched him study the dagger, seemingly mesmerized by the play of light across its surface. “Why is it so special to you?” she asked, hoping to distract Caius from his line of questioning
“It’s not,” he said. “It just … it reminds me of someone I used to know.”
There was a weight to his words that Echo thought she understood. “A girl?”
A different breed of smile graced his face, but there was no joy in it. “Isn’t it always?”
The sum total of Echo’s romantic endeavors was limited to the past two months she’d spent with Rowan. She felt young and inexperienced in the face of Caius’s centuries. “So they say.”
She watched him trail his fingers down the hilt, tilting it to better catch the light, the onyx and pearl of the magpies’ wings and bellies glinting prettily. With a sigh, he handed it to her, hilt first. “Here. It’s like you said: finders, keepers.” He left off the asshole. It was nice of him.
Echo took the dagger, turning it over in her hands. If the music box had led her to the locket, and the locket had led her to this, then there had to be something about it that was special, something that would tell her what he
r next step should be. She examined the dagger closely, gaze raking over every detail. The silver on the handle had darkened from age, but it had otherwise been well maintained. The onyx and pearl inlays shone as bright as new, and the blade was sharp enough to pierce skin. She squinted, searching for a clue.
If I were hiding something in a dagger, Echo thought, where would I hide it?
With methodical fingers, she traced every centimeter of its surface, from the guard between handle and blade to the rounded edge of the pommel on the bottom of the hilt. There were only so many places to conceal something in a dagger. Caius kept quiet as she searched by touch, and after a few seconds, she felt it. A seam, right where the base of the pommel was screwed on like a cap. Caius leaned forward, watching as she coaxed it loose. It was screwed on snugly, which was hardly a surprise since it clearly hadn’t been opened in years. Echo held the handle tightly, grimacing as her palm went raw. She twisted and twisted and twisted until the rounded cap came off. Caius slid off his seat, coming to kneel near Echo.
“Well?” Caius asked. “Is there anything in there?”
“Oh, I bet there is.” Holding the dagger firmly, she shook it, hoping to dislodge whatever might be hidden within the handle. A rolled-up piece of paper slid out, falling onto her lap. “God, I love it when I’m right.” She looked up at Caius to find him smiling back at her, eyes alight with curiosity. The game was afoot, and they were playing it together. Drakharin or not, maybe he wouldn’t make such a bad partner in this adventure after all.
Caius nodded at the paper in her lap. “Go on, open it. Maybe it’s another map.”
“Here’s hoping.” She set the dagger aside and slowly unrolled the paper. It was old, just like the maps of Kyoto and Paris, and one of the edges crumbled at her touch. When the paper was flat against her lap, she needed only seconds to recognize what it depicted. It was a small section of New York City. Her home. A straight line bisected the map’s length, with FIFTH AVENUE written down the center in neat block letters. The numbers on the street were so small, they were hard to read, but Echo didn’t need them to tell her what she was looking at. A building in the center of the page was circled in faded red ink. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Beneath it, another four-line poem had been written in the same hand that had penned the clues on the other two maps. Caius leaned over to read it, breath ghosting on her hands.
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