by Shana Abe
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 dismal at 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.
“What did you say?”
His tone was defiant, although his eyes slid from hers. “Love is stronger than death.”
“This isn’t love! You can’t love me!”
“You can’t make me not.” He shrugged, drifting back to the hearth, and the embers of coal that shone like rubies through his legs. “Anyway, it’s too late.”
She gaped at him. She could not think of a single thing to say.
“You know how we are, Zee. All that dragon business about constancy and fidelity, our bonded hearts. One mate for life.” He smiled gently, sadly. “For death too, I must suppose.”
“No, but—”
“You’re unconventional and you’re loyal. You don’t think or act like anyone else in the tribe, and you don’t give a damn about it, either. All the other drákon believe there’s ice in your veins but they’ve got it all wrong. It’s fire in you, Zee. You burn so bright inside, you outshine the sun. No one else knows that but me.” His smile lost its melancholy. “And you don’t like to cook.”
“You think you know me? Honestly? A few days and nights tossed together and now we’re bonded?”
“Is it James?” he asked, taking a seat atop the table, kicking his feet into the air. “Because you don’t love him.”
If it would have made a difference to throw something at him, she would have. “Do not presume to think you understand my heart.”
“Well,” he said with another shrug, “you don’t. If you did, you would have trusted him enough to tell him about your Gifts.”
She was cold because the kitchen was cold, that was all. The sullen fire in the hearth did little to dispel the chill of September and walls of earth behind stone, and the square of sunlight bore hardly any heat.
“And don’t think I didn’t notice how you neglected to mention the wallet of the sanf inimicus, either. Were you afraid to let him know how you’d gotten blood on your hands?”
She’d presented a deliberately tame version of the night of the dance hall. She’d made it sound like the two men had destroyed each other, because, yes, it had been easier than the entire truth. And there was a part of her, an appalling, cowardly part, that worried about what Hayden would say if he knew everything she was. What he would think.
That she was mad. That she wasn’t Gifted; she was cursed.
Zoe found her voice. “I’m going to tell him. And all this is simply your reaction to my Gifts. You never loved me before, not in all tho
se years. Now that you know who I—what I can do, you’ve convinced yourself it’s more than what it is. It’s simple instinct.”
“Perchance you’re right. But the result is the same, isn’t it? We were meant to be together in life. That’s our law, because that is our instinct, the natural order of our kind. Strongest mates to strongest.”
She took the steps necessary to stand before him. She held out a hand to him and he accepted it, lightly, his fingers cradling hers; the needles of his winter touch crept along her nerves. “This is not life, Rhys.”
“No.” He studied their locked hands, the pulse in her wrist, his smoky haze. “But it is still love. Just as I loved you when we were young—”
“Stop it,” she whispered.
“My heart beats for you.” He released her fingers—the pins and needles of his contact fading at once—and gave her that faint, sardonic smile. “Figuratively speaking.”
“I am going to marry Hayden.”
“I know. And I’m still going to love you.” The smile deepened. “Sorry.”
* * *
They arrived back at the house close to dusk. She’d kept her word and not ventured beyond the perimeters of the property. It was more difficult than she’d thought it would be, remaining in her place, exploring the maison and the back garden, thinking of all the avenues and shops and bridges of Paris she’d walked so freely only an afternoon before.
And now to be here. One house. Eight rooms. A bakery down the street offering fragrant croissants and breads and pies, all beyond reach.
Odd how she’d never felt so captive in Darkfrith. She’d never even really noticed the boundaries of the shire beyond the common sort of ways of we don’t go south of Blackburn Road; we don’t go east past the River Fier. Possibly because those rules affected everyone, young and old, male and female alike.
She’d never before come to dislike the confinement of brick and mortar so very much. And they did not return until dusk.
They were dirty, even Hayden, and brought with them the odor of muddy river. And … chocolate.
She met them with a lamp at the back door. Hayden touched his lips to her cheek, took the lamp from her, and handed her a paper box. Raspberries gleamed inside it, dipped into rounded jewels of thick chocolate, sprinkled with colored sugar.
He’d remembered. Her sole weakness for sweets, rich dark cacao, the darker the better. And fresh raspberries at this time of year; he must have fair combed the city for them.
Zoe lifted her eyes to his, and smiled.
* * *
Sandu had no idea what Hayden James might be waiting for. It wasn’t as if the man wasn’t engaged to the most glittering female Sandu had ever seen. And it also wasn’t as if he didn’t crave her: He could see it in just the way the other drákon’s eyes followed her about, how when she was near Hayden simply stopped what he was doing to stare at her, absorbed. The fellow practically radiated heat when she passed.
Not that Sandu blamed him. There were a good many joyful things about Zoe Lane to stare at. He was having a deuce of a time himself keeping his gaze from wandering to certain enticing parts of her.
She’d been with them four days. Four days. Five nights. And now all the rooms of the maison were scented of her, and all of Sandu’s clothes were scented of her, and everything she touched—everything—smelled like wonderful female. Like honey and desire.
They’d been engaged for years, Hayden had told him. She was still fresh as a flower for all that time—despite her own efforts to change matters otherwise. He’d heard them that first night in the hallway, even with his hands over his ears. Heard her pretty whispers, her invitation … and Hayden had only walked away.
It was confounding. Honestly. No doubt Hayden was tired—he and Sandu spent each day in prolonged, serious hunt; they had no one in the city yet to aid them—but how tired could the fellow be? Sandu was sixteen years old; one sweet beckoning glance from a dragon-maid as fair as Zoe would have had him tripping over his own feet in his rush to get to her. Especially one so devoted as to chance throwing away her life for his; he knew little about the ways of the English drákon, but one thing he did know was that they were terrified beyond reason of leaving their sheltered shire. That they had rules against it, all manners of rules. And that breaking those rules led to punishments he would not inflict upon even the lowest of serfs in his domain.
For all their similarities to the Zaharen, the English were a different sort of breed. That much was clear.
Yet he was heartened when, in the depths of that fifth night, the smallest of sounds jolted him awake in his bed: the diminutive snick of a latch being released, a door softly opening—Hayden’s door, directly across from his. Footsteps on the rug. And then another snick, another sigh of wood pressing air: Zoe Lane’s door, just down the hall.
Sandu nodded to himself, glad for his friend, the sliver of jealousy that stabbed through him easily repressed. He pulled a pillow over his head and tried to think loud, loud thoughts.
* * *
Her dreams were darkly blue. She floated amid them, unable to speak, seeing the faces of all the spirits floating with her. Cerise and Thomas, both her young nieces. Hayden. Rhys. Mother and Anton and Zoe’s father too—his features flatly identical to the miniature her mother used to carry on a bracelet around her wrist, white-haired, glancing eyes of whiskey gold. Everyone here in the blue was someone she knew. All from Darkfrith. All crying out to her, many weeping. Hands raised, begging for her help, to stop them from all being killed—
“No, no.” Hayden’s voice came clearest, his cologne choking; she could actually see it, a spangle of silver mist twirling about her, binding her like chains. “No, love. Don’t cry.”
She felt herself gasping for air, trying to escape the chains, trying to evade the faces, their pleas and their skeletal hands—
“Wake up,” urged Hayden, so close, resonant in her ear. “Wake up, Zoe. It’s only a nightmare.”
She opened her eyes and he was there, flesh and heat, right above her, seated at the edge of her bed with his hands chafing her cheeks. She lifted her palms to cover his, clutching hard, still trembling, feeling the steady tension of his fingers.
“There,” he whispered. In the shuttered dark his teeth gleamed with his smile. “There you are.” His hands drew down her face to her neck, to the edge of her nightgown pulled in a taut line across her collarbone because she’d tossed and tossed in her sleep.
She sat up and threw her arms around him. She tucked her face into the curve of his neck and tried to breathe through her mouth, to lessen the reminder of sandalwood and chains.
“Ah, Zoe.” He placed a kiss on her temple. “Beautiful girl.” Another kiss, his hand sliding up to cup the back of her head; she felt his fingers tighten, urging her to lift her face. When she did, he leaned forward with new intent, his mouth brushing the corners of hers, slight, feathery touches. “You taste like rain.”
She felt filled with a slow wonderment. It was like another part of the dream, so much better than the rest, but everything was still strange and disorienting, and he was kissing her more fully now, slow, teasing circles, nothing he’d ever done before.
“Hayden,” she managed, breathless. “Hayden, there’s something I have to tell you.”
“Tell me later,” he said, and pressed her back to the warmth of the bed.
He came across her at once, heavy for a moment, too heavy, as if he’d lost his balance against the spongy mattress. But then he lifted up to his elbows, and she could inhale again.
Without the wig his hair hung silky pale above her, a bare tickle against her skin. She lifted a hand, running her fingers through the blunted strands. “No, really. It should be now. Before we … before …”
His response was a lush, deep plundering of her mouth, his tongue a sudden flavor, musk and more brandy and him. Urgency.
“I’m Gifted,” she blurted, as soon as his mouth lifted from hers. “All manner of Gifts. I can Turn invisible, Hay
den. I can read minds.”
He smiled against her cheek, his body stretched over hers. The covers were a wad of quilting between their legs.
“Amazing,” he whispered, and pushed his pelvis against hers. “So amazing.”
He felt heavy again, oddly ungainly. He was pulling at the ribbon drawstring of her gown.
“Did you hear me?” She caught her hand in his. “Invisible. Like this.”
He did pause then, lifting his head to stare down at her, his head cocked. The bedchamber was gloomy but it was certainly enough for him to see her—or not, at the moment—if she could see him. His fingers appeared suspended, curled around the empty space between them.
“That,” he said, husky, “is quite a trick.”
He released the ribbon and her hand, found her chin, nuzzled it with his mouth. Heat and sensation: another kiss across her lips.
Zoe felt a tingle of annoyance. “It’s rather more than a trick.” She turned her face away, visible once more. “I don’t understand you. I thought you’d be—angry, or astounded, or at least want to … discuss the …”
He had stilled, that ungainly weight, that sharp sandalwood scent. He lay propped above her, saying nothing, his heart drumming directly over hers.
“No,” she breathed, incredulous. She pushed at him, hard.
“No,” she said again through her teeth as he rolled off her, right back to the edge of the mattress, where he sat, silent and inert, a block of wood.
“Is it you?” She scrambled free of the covers, shoved a hand against his shoulder; he accepted the force of it, didn’t move otherwise. “Is it?”
Without warning, Hayden slumped forward, his hair dangling to his face. His torso lifted into a long, hoarse shudder; when he straightened again, he stared bemused about the chamber. He didn’t even see her there, on her knees right there beside him.
“Hayden,” she said, composed.
He looked back at her.
“Are you here now?” she asked.
“Zoe.” He gave a little shake of his head. “Why are you in my room?
“I’m afraid you’re in mine.”
He came instantly to his feet. He smoothed a hand down his chest—he wore a nightshirt, his legs bare, and she knew now there were no drawers beneath it—and backed away from her.
