by Shana Abe
Matters were not exactly proceeding as she had envisioned.
They sat in matching flaxen-striped chairs at opposite ends of the parlor. As the room was fairly small, this was no great inconvenience, but still Zoe wished they were closer. She found herself leaning forward, perched at the edge of the stuffed horsehair seat, just trying to feel nearer to him. Just trying to feel, still, that he was real.
The dragon-boy stood with an arm resting upon the soapstone mantel behind Hayden. He kept his gaze largely pinned to the rug, only occasionally glancing up at either of them, or else pulling a finger through the knot of his bandanna. A small snapping fire burned behind his legs.
Rhys was gone. She didn’t know when he’d left, only that after she’d lifted her face from Hayden’s chest he was no longer anywhere in sight.
She wished the dragon-boy would leave as well. She wished Hayden would rise from his chair, and take her by the hands, and pull her back into his arms to hold her so hard it would hurt. But after only a brief, astonished embrace—sandalwood, hair powder, silk, and a faint tang of ink—he’d led her here, seated her as delicately as if she were the dream she’d imagined he was, careful not to jostle either of them awake.
For a long while they’d only gazed at each other. He was exactly as she remembered, exactly the same: blue eyes like woodland flowers, lips that curved upward at the corners, lending the impression that he was always about to smile. He sat with his fingers interlaced and his feet crossed at the ankles, shapely calves in plain stockings, the buckles to his garters discreetly visible, small rectangles of reflected fire.
When he finally managed to utter something beyond her name, it was to ask if she wanted tea.
Tea.
She’d declined. Her stomach was clenched so tight, she might never eat again.
“Well,” he said, still staring at her. “I believe … I believe we have some boeuf bourguignon from the other night, if you like.”
“Hayden,” she said on half a laugh. “Don’t you even want to know why I’m here? How I’ve come?”
“Yes.” He blinked a few times. “I do. Of course. Very much.” And there, at last—his focus returned, and he smiled at her. “Forgive me. I find myself beyond astonished. I don’t know why you’re here, or even how. But I’m so very—happy to see you.”
The pain in her stomach dissolved; she smiled back at him. Then she told him.
Not everything, of course. Until they could be truly alone, she didn’t want to delve into the mysteries of her Gifts, so Zoe glossed over a few of the trickier details, speaking in a matter-of-fact voice, her eyes fixed to his or else drawn to the world outside the window beside her, an uncluttered street declining into dusk, with human families taking strolls, and three boys playing leapfrog on a lawn across the way.
And since she would not speak of the Gifts, she would not speak of Rhys. He was a secret on the tip of her tongue, but somehow trying to explain him—caustic and clever, her persistent shadow guardian—to Hayden, to the strange young drákon with the shuttered look upon his face, was more than she wanted to attempt at the moment. It occurred to her as she spoke that she had no proof of him in any case. No proof that the presence of the missing Lord Rhys was anything beyond her lonely nights and imagination.
She’d tell Hayden later. She would.
The shadow reappeared just as she was getting to the part of the sanf inimicus and the dance hall. He floated straight upward through the floor, rising before her from the center of the rug with a clear smirk at her startled break in her narrative.
Hayden came to his feet in a rustle of satin; the banyan flowed about his knees. “You followed my coachman to a common dance hall? Alone? In a foreign city?”
“Prig,” said Rhys conversationally, turning to face him.
“Yes.” Zoe tried not to look at Rhys.
“To dance,” Hayden said, shaking his head. “To hunt.”
She concentrated on him more clearly, detecting the change in his voice.
“I did. To find you. Hayden, I thought—oh, I thought the very worst. I thought you were dead. That they had discovered you, and you were dead.”
“And this man would somehow help you?”
“He was the last person I could locate who had contact with you.”
Hayden’s handsome forehead became a crinkle. “Good heavens. When I think of what might have happened to you, Zoe. If you’d been even an ounce less fortunate—”
She found her feet as well. “Nothing terrible happened.”
A blatant lie, and as soon as she said it she regretted it, but it hardly mattered, because he wasn’t listening anyway. He was muttering things like such a rash risk and not like you at all, and the shadow had crossed to him fully, was marking a circle around him in leisurely paces, trailing smoke in tails.
It was more than bizarre, seeing them together. Hayden, so tall and clear-cut, so very alive: broad-shouldered and warm, his wig stiffened white. The tucks and folds of his cravat glowing with the fading light in mathematical, cascading lines.
And Rhys: the same height, no wig or flour, no twilight to illume any part of him. Untamed hair. Cool and smoky dim. The horsehair chair, the embroidered cushions, the dragon-boy and the flickering glow of orange and gold from the fireplace—all still visible as he passed, only their outlines blurred by his shape.
And yet he seemed both more elegant and somehow infinitely more dangerous than anything else in the room, even as a being of mist and devoured light.
Hayden had paused to hold a hand to his head. “I suppose there’s no way around it. I must send you home alone.”
She tore her gaze from Rhys. “Excuse me?”
Hayden looked to the other drákon for support; the boy stared back at him impassively. “I’m sorry, my dear. Certainly there are—events taking place you cannot have realized, but I can’t imagine you’ve thought this all the way through. You’ve become a runner. You’re female. You’re vulnerable. You’ve no special talents or Gifts—”
“You never told him?” Rhys arched a brow back at her.
“—only an inordinate sense of recklessness—”
“You never told him.” Rhys was facing her now, grinning a pirate’s grin. “Lovely sense of trust, that.”
“Kindly keep quiet,” said Zoe, and Hayden closed his mouth with an abrupt snap.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Darling. Did you think I came all this way for a lecture? Your letters stopped. It wasn’t a far leap to assume you were in trouble. As you are my fiancé,” she emphasized, still purposely not looking at Rhys, “I could not think of a better person to ride to your rescue, so to speak.”
Once again, his blue eyes widened. “You came to Paris to rescue me?”
“I am,” said Zoe darkly, “full of surprises.”
He gawked at her a moment, then, almost reluctantly, began to chuckle. It turned into a laugh: a rich, deep, mellow sound, roundly melodious and almost soothing. She remembered his laughter so well; it was one of the reasons she thought she might be able to fall in love with him.
Hayden stepped forward—right through Rhys—still chuckling, and brought both her hands to his lips.
Just behind him, Rhys had lowered his gaze to the floor; as soon as she glanced at him his eyes lifted slightly, cool green veiled with black lashes.
“I amend my statement of before,” he said. “Insufferable prig is more like it.”
She leaned forward, closing her eyes and lifting her chin. Hayden’s kiss was short and hot and spiced very slightly with brandy; when they pulled apart, the timbre of his voice had warmed measurably.
“My brave girl. Why would you think I needed to be rescued?”
“Well, as I said.” She gave his fingers a squeeze. “Your letters stopped.”
The crinkle returned to his brow. “My letters.”
“Yes! To me, to the council.”
He released her hands, taking a step back. The dragon-boy behind him blew a breath
from between pinched lips.
“Oh,” she said. A surge of cold began a slow, slow sweep from her chest to her cheeks. She curled her fingers into her palms. “Oh, I see. Not to the council. Only to me.”
“I’m sorry, beloved.” He lifted his hands, repentant. “I realized in Dijon I had to mention it to them. It seemed the sanf inimicus had somehow discovered me, and I am the tribe’s instrument, after all. I hold the council’s complete trust. Their instructions came back exceedingly clear. They did not wish us to communicate. They did not wish for any stray letters to be intercepted.”
She swallowed. “Not even a good-bye?”
“Not even that,” he said kindly. “I apologize. I did not mean to worry you.”
“Worry me,” she repeated carefully, and was only barely able to check the rise in her tone. “Worry me.” Rhys was a hovering dark shimmer at the edge of her vision; she dragged in air past the cold in her chest, spoke through stiffened lips. “But the council still received your missives?”
“It is one of their requisites.”
“They never told me.”
“No? I’d hoped they’d might, but—well. They have their rules, don’t they?” Hayden’s expression lifted into a sudden smile. He gave her a pat upon her shoulder. “Don’t fret. We’ll sort it all out. I’m sure when we explain to them why you left, you’ll be pardoned. No doubt they’re working themselves into a frenzy trying to figure out how you managed it; we can use that as a bargaining chip for your return. I’ll post a note first thing tomorrow. I’ll make it very clear that in exchange for your cooperation, they must not discipline you.”
The cold surrounded her entirely. It sealed her lips shut at last, preventing her from saying all the words trapped inside her, all the unwise words that pushed hard to come.
That she had risked so much. That she given up so much, her home and her family and her peace—the murder of that human coachman, his life fading beneath her hands—all because of them. Because of a council of ruling males, who’d cut her off from the one bright hope in her future simply because they could. On a whim. Because of what might be. And none of them had even bothered to let her know.
And him. Hayden, their willing lapdog, who only looked at her with those melting blue eyes and smiled and expected her to forgive all, his silence and his death.
No, she realized, examining that smile. She had it backward. He was busy forgiving her.
“My,” murmured Rhys, sweeping closer to her side, his lips a fresh chill against her ear. “He’s quite the obedient little dragon, isn’t he? What an agreeable life the two of you will share.”
She could not speak; the cold consumed her. She had to walk away.
He didn’t follow. He wanted to; he wanted it badly enough that he drifted to the door after her to mark the colors she inflamed, the walls and furniture and ceiling brightening and fading as she passed. Only because of her did Rhys know that the curtains here were green, and the floor was beech, and the rug was Turkish red.
But her back was stiff and her knuckles were clenched; she’d flashed him a single look of black warning as she’d stalked away.
She was enraged, her fury so tangible he could practically taste it. He could scarcely blame her; James’s smug pronouncements about the council, about her, were honest-to-God boorish. It was as if her fiancé had no notion at all of who she was, the fire and passion and crazed selfless valor that burned beneath her perfect union of flesh and bones.
Perhaps he shouldn’t have provoked her with that final taunt about James. Perhaps Rhys would let her be. For the moment.
Besides, he wanted to hear what holy-gilded Hayden James had to say next.
Without Zee, the parlor settled into its gray dull façade. The fire, blazing so brightly only moments before, paled and shrank, pallid flames. Even the smattering of pops and crackles from the logs grew indistinct, smothered with the newly rising strains of the symphony he could not escape.
The young drákon named Sandu straightened. “She is very beautiful.”
The boy spoke in English, a minor surprise, but Rhys kept his gaze on James, who still stared at the empty frame of the doorway where Zoe had been, not bothering to chase after her, his hands poked deep into the pockets of his robe.
“Yes,” said Hayden James slowly. “She is. A veritable icon.”
“An angry icon. I don’t think you’re going to convince her to go back to Darkfrith easily.”
James smiled again, that small and handsome smile that made Rhys wish strongly to strike him across the chin.
“Perhaps not easily. But she will go.”
“You should tell her,” said the boy, collapsing into the chair Zee had occupied. He stretched out his legs. “She’s come all this way for you. Tell her why we’re here. Tell her what we’ve found.”
Hayden’s smile wiped away. “There’s no need to do that.”
“Why not? Don’t you trust her?”
“I trust her implicitly. I trust her intentions, at least. She’s headstrong, spirited. Brutally intelligent. Were she a male, runner or no, I’d have no hesitation about including her, but …”
“Were she a male, you’d be in a fix! And our world would be sadly lacking that face—and that figure.”
“You are impertinent, Highness,” chided James, but his tone was placid. “Zoe Lane is my wife, or soon will be, and I will not abide her in danger. Not any more than she’s in already.”
“She doesn’t seem afraid of danger,” said the boy consideringly. “She must have hazarded a great deal to find you.”
“Precisely. She needn’t hazard more.”
Sandu gave a laugh, his head dropping back against the chair, his rough hair coming undone. “You should have seen her on the street, Hayden. You should have seen her expression as she came up to me. I thought she was going to Turn into a dragon and eat me then and there.”
“She cannot Turn.”
“A small miracle, I suppose. She frightened the devil out of the horse. And me,” he added bluntly, raising his head to pull the tie from his hair.
James walked back to the davenport against the wall but did not sit. He touched the tips of his fingers to the sheet of paper there instead, staring down at it with his mouth pulled into a line.
Rhys drifted over, the sonata surrounding him soaring stronger and stronger, trying to lift him off his feet. Without Zoe as his anchor, this room was growing too difficult to maintain. The corners were already melting into the walls of the Soho assembly hall, high and tall, that decor of mauve and rose and cream. Crystal chandeliers burning in hot rainbows above him.
He clenched his teeth, resisting it, bending over to skim the letter upon the desk.
Sirs,
We have discovered a nest. Within it, an egg, one of our own. Two eagles alone may strike well. They are only sparrows who guard the nest.
Rhys scowled at the penned words. A code, childishly simple, but it shot a spear of unlikely frost through him nonetheless—frost, when he was already cold to the core all the time. He pressed his palm flat to the paper and saw again the effect he had upon the living world: nothing. Nothing changed. Paper, quill and ink and letters, all the same, with or without him.
The chandeliers grew more vibrant. The prisms of color, dancing right there on the back of his hand.
“Then you’ll need to get her out of here before we go down there,” said the boy, his voice scarcely audible now beneath the rising notes. “You won’t want her in Paris when all hell breaks loose.”
“No,” agreed Hayden, and picked up his letter, smashing Rhys’s arm into splinters of smoke; he could not re-form them. He was cracking and cracking and cracking, his entire body wisping apart. “No, you’re right. I need to get her out of Paris before the operation begins.”
“Good luck with her,” grunted Sandu, lifting a leg to pull off his boot.
Aye, Rhys echoed silently, letting go of the parlor and the two drákon men, dissolving, sinking into his symphony. Go
od blooming luck.
Chapter Fourteen
She refused to cook.
Zoe stared down at the spoon she’d dipped into the stew Hayden and the dragon-boy had concocted, watching the greasy mess of it drip, one splash at a time, back into the boil of the pot. It smelled rancid; they must have had it simmering for days. There had been beef in there once. Some onions or leeks. What it had reduced to now, however, she could not say.
She dropped the spoon back to a counter. She turned around and took in once again the cellar kitchen, the dusty cupboard holding one solitary egg and a bottle of grayish oil, the half-eaten loaf of bread. What appeared to be tarragon growing sickly green upon the shelf of the window.
There was a tin of very fine Ceylon by the water basin. Boiling water was not the same as cooking, she reasoned, and the fire was already going. Tea would be bracing.
Wine would be better, but there wasn’t any, not that she had found. So. Tea.
While the water heated she sat upon the bench by the servants’ table. The sole illumination in the kitchen came from the fire in the hearth; it maintained a constant, meager little glow, tarnished light all along the folds of her dress. She kept her gaze willfully upon her hands, her fingers bare of rings, and tried not to notice the rising darkness of a shadow leg, trim and muscled in brown breeches, appearing very near hers.
“Pray do not speak,” she said, very low.
He didn’t. After a few minutes he did shift on the bench; the water on the fire was bubbling into soft little pops.
She pushed back without glancing at him. She dumped a measure of Ceylon into the ceramic teapot that had been set next to the tin, poured in the water, and capped the pot. Then she sat again, taking the bench opposite his.
“I hope you’re not going to eat whatever’s in that kettle,” said the shadow. “It smells like glue.”
Zoe lifted her eyes to his. From across the table, Rhys sent her his most bland smile.
