The Sweetest Dark

by Shana Abe

  “Aye,” he said, softly.

  “You’ve got to stop, then! Stop making gold. Stop doing anything like that that brings you nearer to dying.”

  Despite the lines of exhaustion, his lips smiled. “Breathing? Existing? Being who I am?”

  I buried my face against his knees, then wrapped my arms around his legs to pin him in place. I realized then that the blanket I wore was one of the fleece ones that had been in the carriage on the very first night we’d met. It was his, not the school’s. All along it had been his, and he must have put it in there for me.

  Because, even then, Jesse Holms had known what I needed.

  His fingers began a glide up my arm, across my shoulder. Down my back. He drew figure eights upon me, five-pointed stars, our initials entwined.

  “When will it happen?” I asked, to his knees.

  “Well, not tomorrow, in any case. Or the next day, or the next. I’ve years in me yet, dragon-girl. Don’t fret.”

  We stayed like that, he in the chair, me on the floor, with his hand tracing those clever, soothing patterns along my skin, until the sky began to pale and the morning larks began to stir in the woods and break into their own versions of heavenly songs.

  Chapter 24

  “The Duke of Idylling has invited you to go yachting with him and his son.”

  “Yachting?” I knew I was gaping at Mrs. Westcliffe, but I couldn’t help it. The last thing I’d expected was for Armand to try to reach me by way of his father. I wasn’t even entirely certain what yachting was.

  I guessed my expression made that clear. “Yes, Miss Jones,” said the headmistress testily. “Yachting. It means to go out to sea on a yacht. For pleasure.”

  It was a bright and balmy Friday afternoon, and I was trapped in her office. Blue sky, blue as cornflowers, shone through the tall windows around us. One of them had been opened; bridal lace surged and fell with a lazy breeze, and everything smelled of cut grass.

  All the other students were off enjoying the hours of freedom that stretched from now until Monday morning, but I had been summoned here and directed to one of those fat, sinking wing chairs to contend with a person whose mood seemed far more suited for a wintry day than this one.

  “How kind of him,” I said. It seemed a benign enough response.

  “The trip is scheduled for Sunday. I suppose, just this once, you may be excused from chapel.”

  I sat in silence, trying to make sense of it. Was this good? Was this bad? Was this how I wanted next to encounter Armand, trapped on a boat with him?

  Mrs. Westcliffe talked on. “I am unclear on the precise number of guests attending. A few of the better sort of locals might be present, along with any visitors currently staying at the manor house. Everything will be perfectly proper. I am confident you will have a most delightful time.”

  “Yes.”

  “But,” she added—a hard, expelled sound; perking up, I thought, Ah, here’s the rub—“none of the other students are included in this invitation. Only you.”

  I pursed my lips. I looked innocent.

  Westcliffe pressed her palms together atop her desk, forming them into a steeple. “Miss Jones.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I understand that you have been without proper social or maternal guidance for most of your life. It’s possible you do not understand all the potential consequences of this situation.”

  “Indeed,” I said, waiting for her to simply go ahead and forbid it.

  “It is considered an honor to be … plucked from the crowd, so to speak. There are fine families in the district who have lived here for generations, none of whom have been so favored with the duke’s attention. Yet I wonder if it’s not truly His Grace himself behind this invitation, but his son.”

  “Perhaps there’s a piano aboard.”

  Her nostrils flared. “Don’t be pert. This is not a matter of jest, Eleanore. If you go on that yacht, your every move will be scrutinized. Your every word will be dissected. Your manners must be irreproachable, and they must be so at all times, even if you believe you are alone. Do you understand me?”

  Do not steal anything. Do not belch or scratch your arse.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Should Lord Armand choose to favor you with his attention, you will react politely, graciously, but always with an aloof, dignified demeanor. It could be that he believes you to be … less than what you are. You will show him the error of that thought.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  He’d already seen me naked. I supposed everything from there would be a step toward dignified.

  “Do you still have the bangle he presented to you?”

  The cuff, I wanted to correct her. As if I was going to lose it.

  “I do.”

  “Wear it. Let him see that you value it, but take my strong advice on this, Eleanore. Do not accept another such gift from him. One is permissible. Two becomes a suggestion.”

  “Oh.”

  “Do we understand each other?”

  “Yes, ma’am. We do.”

  A smatter of laughter and applause reached us from beyond the open window. Some of the girls had set up a game of lawn pins, and the sudden crack! of a ball hitting its mark echoed through the room.

  “One last thing,” said Westcliffe.

  “Yes?”

  “Wear your uniform. It won’t hurt to remind everyone of where you belong.”

  I puzzled over that for the rest of the bright day.

  • • •

  That night, Jesse said to me, “You should go.”

  We were in the grotto, the remains of our midnight meal scattered around us. I was sleepy and full and in his arms, and I’d never known that wet stone and a couple of blankets could be so comfortable.

  I’d gone to smoke five times more since my trip to the stars, but no dragon.

  I’d tried, though. For Jesse, I’d tried. Smoke was all I’d been able to accomplish.

  “Armand needs to see you. He’s had all this time to think things through. He’ll have questions. He’d rather go to you with them than to me.”

  “I hardly have answers.”

  “Then guess.”

  I huffed a laugh. “Are you serious?”

  “I am. Either you guess or I do.”

  That brought me upright. “You mean, you’ve only been guessing at what you’ve been telling me?”

  He gave a grin, folding his arms behind his head. “Not entirely. Sheathe your claws, love. The stars tell me most of it. I hypothesize the rest.”

  “You guess.”

  “Very well. If that’s the word you want.”

  “That was your word!”

  “Come back down,” he invited silkily, opening up the blanket again. “It’s cold without you.”

  I didn’t, not right away. I fixed him with what I hoped was a steely look, but Jesse was right. Without the shared warmth of our bodies, the grotto rippled with cold after nightfall.

  “What is a yacht?” I asked, burrowing back against him, yawning. “Is it like a fishing boat? Like a steamer?”

  I was a child of the city, remember. The only boats I knew were the punts and masted ships that went up and down the brown waters of the Thames.

  “It’s a symbol for the sort of men who’ve never had to fish to eat, and who would board a steamer only if it were one of style. You were born on a boat, you know.”

  Every muscle in my body went rigid. “What?”

  “Not a boat,” he corrected himself. “A steamship. A big one.”

  “Jesse—”

  “Aye, I got that from the stars. But that’s all they’ll say of it. Believe me.”

  I lay there, my mind spinning, trying to make sense of this gift I’d been so casually given. Trying to seize hold of its enormity.

  I knew something about my past now. I knew.

  A steamship! I’d only ever seen adverts for them in the papers. They were huge, sharp-edged iron monsters topped with funnels big enoug
h to swallow whole homes, far too massive to dock anywhere near London. They had names like Mauretania, Lusitania, Olympic.

  So I hadn’t spent my entire life in the city, as I’d thought. Once I’d known the ocean and at least a port town.

  “Water dragon,” Jesse whispered. “If you don’t accept the duke’s invitation, people will talk.”

  “I don’t care about that.”

  “I know you don’t. But it’s not merely you who will be affected by this.”

  “Really? You like Armand so much?” I heard the skepticism in my voice.

  His chest expanded on a long inhalation, lifting the upper half of me with it, since I had draped myself over him. “Star adores dragon. Although I wouldn’t say I adore him precisely, or even like him. It’s more that … now that you’ve come, now that his powers are awakening, I’m connected to him. Like brothers, almost. And we don’t get to choose our families.”

  “If you say so.”

  “We’re in a bubble here, Lora. The island, the school, even the countryside. We’re all encased in a beautiful bubble, and the war seems far beyond our ken. But it’s not. Anything might happen. It won’t hurt to have Armand on your side, no matter what comes.”

  “On our side, you mean,” I said sharply.

  “Yes. That’s what I meant.”

  I chewed on my lip. “I wish …”

  He waited, no sense of urgency in his body or his breathing, only his customary, contemplative peace.

  I tipped my face to see him. “I wish all this was over,” I said. “I wish there was no war and that I wasn’t in school. I wish I didn’t have to do what everyone else says and that we could just … be. Together. The two of us.”

  … us-us-us …

  I don’t know if he heard the question beneath my tone, if it was as blazingly obvious as I feared it was, or too smothered to detect. But Jesse lowered his lashes and met my eyes; he looked much more like himself now than he had a few nights ago. Clear gaze, golden glow. Summer storms behind the green.

  “We’ve all the time in the world,” he said, and bent his head for a kiss, one of those sweet drowning ones that filled me with nectar and honey.

  I hoped it wasn’t a guess, but I didn’t have the nerve to find out. I wanted too badly to believe him.

  • • •

  I walked into my room the next afternoon following tea and realized at once that it had been violated.

  Not that you could tell by looking. It looked just as it should: bed made, furniture dusted, floor swept, pitcher of clean water. Everything looked right.

  But it wasn’t.

  I stood poised at the doorway, my eyes reflexively searching for what they couldn’t see. Sight didn’t help; my other senses did.

  The air feathered a chill across my skin.

  It tasted of chemical perfume, of jasmine and sugar.

  And the music of my tower had changed. Gruffer, coarser, a cry of warning rising from the golden buttercup and oval leaf tucked in the armoire, taken up now by my cuff—but the circlet of roses was silent. In its place wavered a thin new song, one I’d heard only once before.

  I crossed to the bureau and opened the drawer where I had stored the circlet, stuffed behind my stockings …

  … and pulled out instead Mrs. Westcliffe’s green sapphire ring.

  “Well, sod you, too, Chloe,” I muttered, and clamped my fingers hard around it.

  I raised my chin, closed my eyes, and listened. She couldn’t have been here that long ago. I’d been gone only an hour, and her syrupy scent still polluted everything. She’d taken my brooch … where?

  Downstairs. Its song came to me high and faint.

  Not the wing housing my fellow students. Not the teachers’ wing, either, which was a relief. And she hadn’t taken it outside the castle. Not yet, anyway.

  I stalked the corridors with the sapphire ring still in my fist, slicing my way through the listless Saturday clusters of students and maids.

  Winding up, finally, in front of Mrs. Westcliffe’s closed office door. My brooch sang from behind it.

  Not good.

  A pair of fifth-years by the turn in the hall spotted me and paused, curious. I bent down and began to work at the heel of my boot, as if it had come loose. They moved on, and I was alone.

  I stood and tapped lightly at the door.

  “Mrs. Westcliffe?”

  No response. The door eased open.

  “Ma’am?”

  I took a step past the threshold.

  “I just came by to ask if … you … knew …”

  The office was empty. I tossed a quick glance back at the hallway, then tiptoed all the way in.

  “… that you could use some bleeding locks in this school,” I finished.

  Chloe’s perfume began a fresh assault upon my nose. I wrinkled it in distaste as I hurried toward the desk.

  As I’d suspected, one of the drawers had been left conspicuously agape. There were papers and glass weights and a broken jeweler’s box inside, everything a mess. And there, right beneath it on the rug, was my brooch. The pin to secure it had been bent practically in two.

  Amateur. Anyone wanting to wear it would have noticed if the pin was that damaged. She’d have been smarter to warp it just enough so it no longer met the hook.

  Chloe Pemington was in sore need of a lesson in being smart.

  I stuck the brooch in my pocket and straightened the contents of the drawer as best I could. I shoved the ring back into its box—there was nothing I could do about the broken hinge—and was closing it all up again when I heard an unmistakable castanet-clip of footsteps echoing down the hall.

  I jumped up, looking wildly about for a place to hide: nothing. The curtains were useless, the bookcases too shallow, the secrétaire too exposed. If I went to smoke, I’d leave my clothes behind—and the brooch—and my cuff—

  “… excused absence, of course,” Mrs. Westcliffe was saying. “I assume you will remain in contact with Miss Bashier during this time?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Sophia. Westcliffe and Sophia, right outside the door.

  “Good. Good.” The door began to swing wide. “And may I rely upon you to convey our continued condolences to her and her family?”

  I leapt behind the door. I flattened myself against the wall as the wooden panel bumped to a stop against the toes of my boots.

  “You may, Headmistress.”

  Westcliffe hadn’t noticed the bump. She entered the chamber, leaving Sophia to linger at the doorway. With just the long, vertical gap of the door and jamb between us, we stood only inches apart.

  “I wired for flowers, naturally, but one does wish to offer a more personal touch in such times. Miss Bashier has been with us for many years. And she has, I believe, a younger sister nearly of school age …”

  “I’m certain the Bashiers appreciate your sympathy, ma’am.” Sophia’s voice had that unctuous pitch; she shifted on her feet, clearly ready to be cut loose.

  “Yes.” The headmistress had reached her desk and taken her seat. All she had to do was dismiss Sophia, who’d close the door and there I’d be.

  “Very well. Good afternoon, Lady Sophia.”

  “Good—”

  Perhaps I moved. Probably I did. With the door practically to my nose, I’d been holding my breath, and what likely happened then is that I released it. Regardless, what happened next is that Sophia turned her head a fraction toward the gap. Toward me.

  And she saw me. One pale-blue eye grew wide, then narrowed. I glared back at her.

  “I say!”

  Westcliffe spoke up. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Ma’am—did you see it?” Sophia dashed into the room, leaving the door untouched. “There, at the sill?”

  I peeked past the door’s edge. Sophia was pointing to the window behind the desk. Westcliffe rose to her feet, turning her back to me.

  “What?”

  “There—just there! It was a little bird pecking to come
in!”

  Westcliffe’s shoulders relaxed. “Is that all?”

  I angled around the door. Sophia prattled on.

  “Oh, but birds can become such a serious nuisance. I’m sure it was a mudlark, and they’re especially devious. One never knows what trouble they’ll get into next.”

  “Mudlark? I don’t believe I’m familiar with …”

  I was away! I took a few running steps from the office door before stopping, waiting for the inevitable. I stuck my hand in my pocket and ran my thumb over the golden roses, stroking a fresh song from their ridges.

  Sure enough, Sophia caught up to me within seconds, her eyebrows risen nearly to her hairline.

  My voice came out like ground glass. “Where is Chloe?”

  “The front parlor, maybe. Or her room. Someplace with mirrors.”

  I spun on my heel and headed toward the parlor, because it was closest. And that’s where I found her, laughing, and seated and surrounded by her toadies, a box of chocolates on the floor being shared between them.

  I walked up, and every one of them but Chloe glanced up at me—then began to snigger.

  “My, my,” Chloe murmured, studying the chocolate she held. “I do believe this one’s gone off. It stinks like a cesspit.” Her eyes lifted. “Oh, wait. It’s only the guttersnipe.”

  “Or perhaps it’s your perfume,” I said cordially. “You always smell like a whore.”

  “It’s French,” retorted Runny-Nose, before Chloe could speak.

  “Then she smells like a French whore.”

  “Aren’t you the eloquent young miss.” Chloe’s gaze cut to Sophia, standing close behind me. “Slumming, little sister? I can’t confess I’m surprised.”

  “I’m merely here for the show,” Sophia said breezily. “Something tells me it’s going to be good.”

  I took the brooch from my pocket and let it slide down my index finger, giving it a playful twirl. “A fine try. But, alas, no winner’s prize for you, Chloe. I’m sure you’ve been waiting here for Westcliffe to raise the alarm about her missing ring, ready with some well-rehearsed story about how you saw me sneaking into her office and sneaking out again, and oh, look, isn’t that Eleanore’s brooch there on the floor? But I’ve news for you, dearie. You’re sloppy. You’re stupid. And the next time you go into my room and steal from me, I’ll make certain you regret it for the rest of your days.”