by Shana Abe
“Don’t be alarmed.” She spoke soothingly. “You were sleepwalking, I think.”
“I was? I say, that’s … I’ve never …”
She scooted to the end of the bed, making certain her shins were covered. “How do you feel? Are you well?”
“I don’t remember any of it. My dear! I beg your pardon. I fear I must have been far more weary than I even realized. Was I … did I do anything to—er, to offend you?”
“Not in the least. I awoke when you touched my wrist. That was all.”
He pressed back against the door. He regarded her without moving, a golden-haired stranger who had embraced her with such passion only minutes before. There might have been a darker shadow beside him, to the left; a trick of the night or something more devious.
The annoyance from before spiraled deeper, twisting more into anger and a curl of unexpected grief, so she added, “But you may stay if you like, Hayden.”
“Dearest girl.” He reached for the knob behind him, caught himself short and sketched a curt bow. “I apologize most sincerely for all this. It won’t happen again.”
He was a spot of brighter gloom in his voluminous shirt, there and gone with the closing of her door. Zoe fixed her gaze to where that deeper darkness had been, now vanished as Hayden was.
“No,” she agreed, clenching her fists. “It surely won’t.”
She waited sitting up in her bed, unable to sleep now in any case, an oil lamp burning a small yellow flame upon the bureau in the corner. Outside roosters were beginning to crow; she’d opened the curtains and the shutters, and the skyline of Paris was burning pink and orange. Cathedral bells clanged and clanged, challenging the roosters.
“Rhys.” She shaped his name with hardly any sound. She thought it, she felt it, and cast the cloak for him, dragging back a wake of blue nothing.
“Rhys. Come to me.”
There were clouds in the heavens. They were green on top, green with fire-painted edges.
“Rhys Sean Valentin Langford.”
She felt him before she saw him. Felt the air change, felt her body change, tiny hairs standing on end, an acknowledgment of his winter presence.
He was by the window. The colors of the dawn misted through him, mother-of-pearl through his outline of smoke.
“That was unkind,” she said, just as quiet as before.
He looked away from her as if bored, toward the daisies on the wall. His arms were folded across his chest. Linen shirt, silver waistcoat. Those leaves of embroidered holly.
Just like Hayden’s riding coat, she’d stitched that waistcoat herself. She remembered it well; his sister Lia had commissioned it one Christmas, years past, and Zoe had chosen for it the deep green thread she thought would best go with his eyes.
“Promise me you’ll never attempt it again.”
He shook his head.
“Promise.”
“No. I won’t promise.” He spoke forcefully. Unlike her, he was free to be as loud as he pleased. “Why should I?”
Her temper began to unravel. “Because it’s wrong. It’s wrong to—to toy with me that way. To meddle with my affections. With him, as if he’s nothing more than a puppet!”
“I’m not toying. I’m dead serious.”
She paused. “Was that supposed to be humorous?”
“If you like.” He sounded surly.
“Well, I don’t.” Her fingers curled against the sheets. “I don’t like any of this. I’ve told you that you need to leave, and you respond like this, like it’s all a game to you, like nothing in this world matters to you but what you want, and what you desire.” She tossed back the covers and climbed free of the bed, her nightgown a ruffled restraint at her ankles.
He watched her come close. He watched her with eyes that now better matched the ethereal clouds. “Was it so unpleasant?” He was a lord, or had been, and he looked it still: regal and proud and handsome enough to steal the very light from the sky. “Tell me, Zee. Was it?”
She lifted her hands, frustrated. “It was a lie. So yes, it was unpleasant.”
He dropped his gaze. “Not for me.”
“You must never do it again, Rhys. I mean that with all my heart. Never again.”
He tipped his head without raising his gaze from her feet. His lips made a mirthless smile. “We’ll see.”
And he disappeared before she could speak another word. The view beyond the window blazed clear again.
* * *
Against his will, by the haunting of his shadow music, he began to dream it: a life with her. Darkfrith, with her. Children, with her. By their living laws she was already his, and Rhys found it easier and easier to slip into the reverie of that notion.
Sitting with her upon the banks of the lake. Walking through the woods with her, the snow. Leaping to the stars with Zoe Langford laughing on his back.
Sleeping with her. Wrapped in long ivory hair every night, skin to skin, heat and pleasure. The taste of her lips.
Zee.
All his. At last.
Chapter Seventeen
Breakfast was a quiet affair. By the listless light of the kitchen hearth, she’d slapped together a meal from the sole items left in the larder: poached eggs and olive oil, a crumbly white goat cheese, and sausage links fried in cast iron. Coffee and milk and the last lemony wedge of the tarte au citron from that bakery down the street, almost half of which she devoured herself while cooking the eggs.
So the eggs were overdone. She’d disguised it by adding more oil to them than they required, but the results were adequate.
If Hayden and the Zaharen wanted an actual chef, they should have hired one.
Both were up and dressed by the time she was finished. She was on her second cup of coffee when they joined her in the dining room. She was seated upon the bench of the bay window with a hand lifted to hold back the lace panel curtain, watching the people leave their houses, sleepy-eyed maids and wives off to buy bread. Footmen walking dogs. Shopgirls. Knife grinders hauling clunky wooden carts. Errand boys in ragged shirts and loose stockings. The sun was rising into a sharp new sky, layering shadows tinted lapis across the trees and sidewalks and everyone below.
She could not see Rhys. It was strange, though, because she could feel him. That touch of glacial cold, a subtle shiver to the air. But she did not call to him, and he never showed his face.
That was fine. Better than fine. For what she was about to do, she needed no distractions.
Hayden and Sandu fell upon the dishes she’d brought to the sideboard. The poached eggs were the last to disappear, but in the end, there wasn’t even the smallest speck of cheese left.
“I’m going out today,” Zoe said into their silence.
Both of them only looked at her. She was wearing her lavender gown this morning, a necklace of amethysts and sapphires that sparkled with her every breath. The matching earbobs were heavy but she wore them as well, and a bracelet of solid worked gold.
“I can’t stay locked up here any longer. I’m useless and I’m bored. I want to come with you. I want to hunt. No—” She lifted a hand as Hayden opened his mouth; she could almost hear his my dear girl in that particularly melodious tone. “I’m going. With or without you, I’m leaving this house. And there’s more. Pay close attention, both of you. There’s something I must show you.”
She Turned invisible. The prince started in his chair and exclaimed something in a flowing, unfamiliar language; Hayden only blinked a few times at her necklace.
She’d wanted to be clearly seen both beforehand and after. She’d wanted the jolt of resplendent jewels floating in midair, for there to be no mistaking what they were witnessing. From the expressions on their faces, her plan was successful.
Zoe willed herself visible. She looked directly at her fiancé, into his shocked gaze.
“That’s how I did it. That’s how I escaped Darkfrith. If we return there unwed, they’ll take me from you, Hayden. They’ll give me to the Alpha. To someone in his line. I
don’t want that. I hope that you don’t, either.”
“Zoe.” He pushed back his chair and crossed the room to her, kneeling before her. He took her hand in both of his; the bracelet slid back upon her arm. “For the second time in too few days, you’ve handed me the revelation of a lifetime. You’re Gifted. I had no idea. Darling.” His voice sank into a hush. “I had no idea.”
Rhys was there. Suddenly, a mist against the wallpaper, standing alone.
“It was a revelation to me as well,” she said. “And I wanted to tell you before. Truly.”
“Are there more like you?” asked the Zaharen prince eagerly. He leaned forward with his elbows on the table, his thin face alight. “More females in your tribe who can do that?”
“No,” answered Hayden and Rhys together, and when she looked at him, Rhys lifted his chin and curved his shadow lips. His gaze swept her from head to toe from beneath thick lashes. “She’s the only one.”
It was agreed that she would go out to replenish their supplies. She’d expected that much; they would consider shopping a feminine obligation, and the prince at least appeared cheerful enough to have her take it over. But both Hayden and Sandu balked at anything more daring. They refused even to consider taking her along on their stalking of the sanf; they were too close; the enemy was too easily spooked; should matters begin to turn out badly, she couldn’t fly, as they both could.
True, she could not fly. But if she were to decide to follow them anyway, she doubted very much either of them would notice. Definitely a human would not. But it would be ruddy cold stealing about Paris all day, through back alleys and passageways and God knew where, without a scrap of clothing to shield her.
She agreed to shop for them. She deftly did not agree to anything else but turned the conversation sideways whenever Hayden seemed about to grow adamant that she not place herself in danger: crowds, streets, the Seine, churches, docks, anything involving public gardens or theatres or musicians. That would eliminate about 98 percent of the city, she reckoned.
She was in her room, removing the jewels, when he tapped at her door.
“Come in.”
Yet he hung back at the doorway, looking decidedly awkward. He wore a lawn shirt that needed bleach and a vest of dull bronze satin. She turned amid the pink-and-yellow frill of her little chamber and waited for him to speak.
“I don’t know if you ever received my last missive to you. I franked it from this dot of a town near the coast … It was a long while ago.”
“Yes,” Zoe said. “I still have it.”
He flashed a quick smile. “Do you indeed? You might recall I mentioned finding something for you.” The floor squeaked when he shifted his weight; he came forward only a few steps. “It’s nothing much. Certainly nothing compared to what you already have, but when I saw it, I was reminded of you. I was hoping it might please you. I planned to give it to you once back in England, but I thought that now might be a better time.” He delved into the slit pocket of his vest with two fingers, retrieved a ring. She caught a flicker of pure limpid blue.
“It’s only a tourmaline. Not very rare, I’m afraid.” He placed it in her hand, and Zoe lifted it to the window.
“It’s beautiful.” And it was, a gold filigree band, the square-cut stone within it purling song and light. “Why, it matches your eyes,” she said, surprised.
He laughed, discomfited. “I know. How indecorous of me. It’s supposed to match yours, but the shop was so small, and the fellow didn’t have jet or obsidian or anything so fine a black. He had this.”
She closed her fingers over the ring. “I love it.”
“Do you? Really?”
“Hayden. It’s quite perfect.”
He let out his breath on a grin; in that instant, he looked years younger, almost boyish. “Splendid. Yes. Of course, I’ll buy you something better later on. Diamonds, naturally. All the diamonds you like.”
She slipped the ring on her finger, held it up between them to be admired.
“I say. It does look well on you, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.”
His smile faded. He stood there gazing at her, sun warming his face and eyelashes, glimmering in spears across the bronze-threaded vest.
“Zoe. I don’t like this plan of you going out alone, even to such communal places. I know, I know I agreed to it, but”—he ran a finger under his cravat—“it seems absurdly risky. We know for a fact there are more sanf inimicus layered throughout the city. They might have sensed us already. They might know where we are.”
“If that’s the case,” she said, “I’m hardly safer here.”
“Aye. I’ve thought of that too.” He lifted a hand, touched a lock of hair that lay across her shoulder, his gaze following the downward stroke of his fingers. “I have so many fears for you. Should anything happen to you, I don’t know what I’d do.”
Rhys had said nearly the same thing to her, not so very long past. The ghost of Lord Rhys, standing before her in the gloaming dusk of a backyard garden.
“Don’t think such thoughts.” She smiled up at him, and it was only a little forced. “Nothing is going to happen to me. I’m the most formidable creature on the Continent. You’ll see.”
* * *
The sidewalk of the gray street actually felt hard against his back. He found himself mildly surprised at that, that he would enjoy the sensation of pavers, a pebble digging into the tender center of his left shoulder blade. Rhys tried to recall if he’d ever noticed it before, that the street felt so genuine. That he could hear the leaves rustle on the yellow shrub and hear the wind tumble decayed filth and debris along the gutters.
He was retreating here more and more. Depressing as his little street was, he found it more palatable than the vivid colors and demolishing music of the assembly hall.
This place felt closer to life. It did have that.
He found his familiar stretch of stone and settled back. The street was bathed in daylight and the gray people passed hither and yon. Rhys took up an entire section of the sidewalk and although no one looked at him still, although not one single person glanced downward, no one stepped on him. Or through him, as the case might have been. Perhaps it was some deep-coiled human instinct, avoiding even unseen peril; none of the Others breached this space, even when they had to move around him or take a little hop over his arm or head. He lay undisturbed, staring up at the underside of the gabled hip roof overhead, and relived last night again and again in his mind’s eye.
James had been such a willing vessel. Inhabiting him had been far easier, and far more pleasant, than plunging into the dying coachman or the elderly flower gent. James was healthy, for one thing. Healthy and robust, and taking control of his body had been like slipping on someone else’s glove. A tight but tolerable fit. It had taken him a few minutes to get the hang of it, moving the lax arms and legs the way Rhys wished them to go. In the joy of fresh sensation—the cotton nightshirt upon his body, the blessed ordinary creaks and scents of a house bedded down for the evening—he’d nearly forgotten his true purpose.
Zoe.
Nearly, but not, needless to say, completely. And that had been the most intense joy of all.
Touching her. Tasting her. Feeling her response to him—to the Hayden/Rhys drákon he’d created, that sleeping body brimming to the brink with his own black passion—letting himself believe, just for those few fervent minutes, that it was only he whom she loved. That it was he she wanted to kiss. Had he been able to carry his plan to fruition, the evil symphony could have consumed him for the rest of his life—his afterlife—and it would have been worth it.
As it was, it had damn near been worth it anyway.
He could handle her anger. He could understand it, even. He’d freely admit the entire scheme had been underhanded, a despicable trick, and had he a wisp of scruples, he’d be feeling properly miserable about it all. But Rhys thought perhaps his scruples had vanished with his mortal body; he wasn’t sorry in the least. He regretted no
thing beyond wounding her through her discovery of him. Hayden James was a fatheaded imbecile not to have claimed her already, and Rhys regretted nothing.
Which brought him back to one of the other costs of his actions last night: He was weakened now. He had reached that state of numbed exhaustion that meant he would be prone here on this sidewalk for probably some while to come. He’d been able to slip into her world twice this morning, long enough for her chiding, and then, later, to watch her defiantly claim her powers in front of James and the other drákon—but that was all.
It was better to rest here a while, anyway. Let Zoe’s temper smooth itself out.
She’d forgive him this, he was certain of it. She had to, he needed her to. He loved her and would not let go of her; by their nature, she was his, in spirit and disposition, and he was even willing to share her with a living dragon if that was what it took to keep her. And so she would forgive him.
Despite Hayden’s admonitions, Zoe had come so very close to abandoning her word and tracking them across the city. It was a temptation that expanded inside her like a steel bubble, far stronger than she’d expected, and she’d had to sit down at a café on rue St. Denis to resist the urge to fling out the cloak and ensnare their trail of thoughts, to throw herself into the thick of their world, whether they liked it or not.
She hadn’t told them about the cloak. Part of her had to admit that it was more than just that she had not found the proper time or place; she could have done it this morning, probably. She could have tried to demonstrate it by capturing the thoughts of either of them, but unless the cloak cooperated, she’d be showing off nothing. Revealing her invisibility had been a furtive sort of test; she wanted to keep her most powerful secret in reserve, hold it close to her heart just in case they tried to restrain that too.
Just in case.
The day had lost its luminous clarity already, and clouds roiled an ominous yellow-brown along the eastern edge of the sky. The wind had a bite to it, and so when she took her cup of tea and biscuits she sat inside the petite café with all the other patrons, glad for her gown and serge coat, and the gloves of kidskin on her lap. Still, she could not shake the chill that seemed determined to sneak up on her; she’d chosen a table by the grate of the fire, and only the half of her body closest to it seemed to keep any warmth.
