by Shana Abe
Rhys felt as if his heart was a dry well that had been unexpectedly reflooded with life. He overflowed. He lay next to her and nuzzled his face into silver-glossy hair, and let the waters pour through him.
Let them spill over.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The hive of the sanf inimicus reeled only very briefly from the discovery of their losses: the house they’d secured breached; the Romanian half-blood they’d persuaded into servitude stolen; the Frenchmen they’d recruited so carefully murdered.
The body of the beast in the cellar missing. The precious shards of diamonds that guarded him taken too.
It took them almost no time at all to abandon the house. They’d scrubbed out the blood from the floorboards, wiped down the walls until there was no trace of flour or dust. They’d removed all the boards and shelving of the false pantry to restore, more or less, the original entrance to the cellar. They’d rehung the door.
They would leave no element of themselves behind. Their enemy was cunning, and they would not be caught so short again.
The woman named Réz shuffled slowly through each chamber, her nose lifted to the air, her withered fingers tracing nooks and crannies, the hard corners of the wainscoting. When it was done, she pulled the hood of her cloak low about her face and stepped outside.
Her carriage awaited at the curb. She trundled closer, sighed at reaching the bottom of the towered steps—and the horses in their restraints rolled eyes white with fear.
When I asked her later what she’d felt as she’d entered the ruined house, tasted the Leftover emanations of the drákon who had ransacked it, the shock of grief that lingered like a preternatural slap over the one who had perished there, her answer was: naught. She’d felt naught.
Our Gifts are tremendous burdens. You will discover that among us, for all our grandeur, there are those who cannot survive beneath their weight.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Sunlight flared red behind her lids. Zoe turned over, reached for a pillow to pull across her eyes, and gradually in that sliding strange world between deep sleep and full awake, realized why there should be no sun on her face.
Because she wasn’t home. She wasn’t somewhere safe. She was in Tuileries, and she had ensured that the drapery was very firmly closed the night before.
She opened her eyes. A shadow man stood against the window, contoured in light, spreading the tall heavy curtains with both arms.
He turned in place and looked back at her. Yellow sun proved what wasn’t shadow: the curvature of a cheekbone; the hard, smooth arc of a shoulder. The muscles of his stomach, rippled and flat. He wore the breeches again, had tied the corners into a knot to keep them fixed without buttons.
Before she could tell him to do so, Rhys let the curtains fall closed in a pall of spinning dust.
“Awake yet? Come with me. I have a surprise.”
He did not give her time to figure her regrets about last night, or wish for a moment alone, or even to do more than toss on her nightgown—which she did, swiftly, using the cool crumpled linen to momentarily hide the heat rising in her face. He kissed her as she’d emerged from the neck hole, kissed her hard and then soft, his lips like velvet, the cuts that were healing still tasting a little of blood. Then he wrapped a hand lightly about her wrist and led her out of the apartment.
Down the silent, grave hallways of the palace, the bare green tiles. He didn’t head toward the servants’ stairs, the way she always went, but instead to the main grand staircase, with its black iron design of fleur-de-lis topped with a sickle-curved rail of gold-plated brass, the royal coat of arms set within the iron every six treads.
They went down together, one step at a time.
There were windows meant to illume the space, grand, imposing windows, but they had been sheeted, and so they descended three full levels by uncanny, impure light, her gown billowing with a draft of unseen air, Rhys’s hair a mussed drape down his shoulders.
Past galleries of slender pillars and wide arches, ormolu garlands draped along the walls. Faces carved into the decorative friezes gazing back at them with blank stone eyes.
She’d been here before, but only in the dark. By day it seemed more haunted; through the cool solemnity of the open atrium she could easily imagine the long-dead Others who’d lived here, who’d touched the banister as she did, who admired the ocher-banded colonnades and intricate shining details of the garlands.
Zoe could not prevent her periodic, nervous glances toward the gloomier corners. She was ready to Turn if she had to, she could shed the nightgown quickly. They were so very open to discovery. Yet Rhys limped his way down the inlaid marble steps with an elan that was almost cheerful. She wouldn’t be surprised if he started to whistle.
A thin, scorched aroma teased her nose, stronger, then weaker, wafting once very close before disappearing altogether. Smoke—not dragon smoke, but ordinary smoke from ordinary wood. The occupied chambers of the palace were still quite distant. Perhaps one of the groundskeepers had lit a torch outside.
Rhys had moved ahead. Like her, he kept a hand upon the banister, but gripped it harder. His limp was growing more pronounced.
At the bottom of the staircase he angled to a sealed doorway to the right, double doors, and she knew what was behind them as well; she’d visited every room on this level at least once, and this, she recalled, had been a parlor.
It was a parlor, but surely one for a queen, for the floors were a mosaic of sky blue and pink marble, and the arabesque flourishes covering the walls had been done in pure silver, still singing bright to her ears but long since tarnished to black.
There was a picnic laid out upon the floor. A blanket with china dishes—fruit and bread and sliced roast. An Oriental teapot that smelled of warm chocolate, and two thick plain ceramic mugs.
“I know how you feel about cooking,” Rhys said.
“How did you—” She only just stopped herself from glancing down at his hands. “Where did you get all this?”
“Here and there.” He smiled at her—oh yes, that special smile; her heart gave a little squeeze—and backed into the chamber. “Have you been to the kitchens in this place? One might house the entire English militia in a single corner. Even with only the few, poor hardscrabble souls living here, there were plenty of delicacies to choose from.”
“You stole it?”
His lashes lowered; his smile grew more wry. “Let’s say pilfered. It sounds more debonair, don’t you think?” He lifted his hands and flexed his fingers, and his claws blurred in a cascade of wicked symmetry. “Call me cynical, but I doubt they would have volunteered it, beloved, no matter how sweetly I asked.”
“But how did you manage to …” She remembered the odor of woodsmoke. “You set a fire.”
“Just a small one.”
“Rhys!” She caught herself, lowered her voice. “You set a fire to draw them away?”
“You’re welcome. See all the trouble I go to for you?” He came forward at her look, held her gaze in a straight green reply, then leaned in to buss her cheek. Soft, soft, like bluebell petals, a bare tempting brush of sensation.
“A fire,” she murmured, shaking her head. “What a madman.”
“Excruciatingly small. Hardly any grass burned, I promise.”
She surveyed the meats and fruits and the peony-painted pot and thought of how much work it must have been for him to get it all here. How he must have made three trips at least in his mangled human form, and the kitchens were nowhere near the queen’s elaborate pink-and-blue world.
The bread was so fresh it sent out waves of yeasty perfume. Her stomach gave a loud rumble.
“Lovely timing,” her shadow said, and lowered himself to the blanket. She stood there watching him, watching how his face went blank and his muscles clenched, his arms and back and calves, how his claws dug ten pointed holes into the immaculate marble floor. When it was done he released a breath and looked up at her. His scar seemed reddened but that was all. She
saw not a trace of the pain that must have racked him left on his features.
“My lady. Won’t you dine with me?”
She gathered up her nightgown and sat beside him with her legs tucked under, close enough to feel the heat of his gold, because like everything in Tuileries, the parlor was cavernous, and her body was chilled.
She was glad to have the cook’s uniform after all. Its tan-and-brown stripes would make her blend better with the teeming crowds of peasants, and it was going to be easier to hide amid them than in the extravagant pockets of nobles who picked their way about the city like jeweled birds hopping through rubble. She could stoop her shoulders and stuff her hair beneath a cap, and if she kept her face lowered, she would gather hardly any attention. Especially with a measure of dirt rubbed upon her cheeks and neck.
It was brilliant. No matter what Rhys said.
“It won’t work,” he insisted stubbornly. “You’re still too pretty. You can smear yourself with all the mud from here to the Seine, and I still won’t believe for a moment you belong in that woefully hideous frock.”
“I’ll keep my face down.”
“And I’ll see the nape of your neck. And your hands. And your chin. And your lips. It’s no use, Zee. Everything about you screams of aristocracy.”
“That’s ridiculous. I’m the daughter of a seamstress.”
“You are Lady Rhys Langford,” he said, coming up to her. “And it shows.”
It was the first time he’d used the title the tribe would give her—that all of English society would give her. It pricked at her conscience and made her take a sliding step back from him, averting her gaze.
She was going to hunt. Nothing he said or did could change her mind about that. She’d accepted his body last night, his caresses, but that was all. It granted him no dominion over her, despite what he believed.
And still … the beauty of last night, the joy of discovering true physical acceptance, had been a rare revelation. Their merging. That devastating conclusion. Whenever she found herself slipping back into daydreams about it all, her blush rose again, and she’d swear—she’d swear—he felt the change in her, pinned her in a cool green gaze and sidled close. Close enough that, if she wished, she could lift a hand to trace the curves of his lips. Enact a slender motion of her arm to have it brush his. His essence of outdoors, that warm summer scent, wrapped around her in constant invitation and desire.
And she did desire, she did. As sure as if he’d lifted a veil from her eyes, Zoe saw herself more clearly now than ever before. He’d been right, all those days ago: She burned inside, more vivid than the sun. A hard, steady burn that kindled only for him. She wanted his touch. She wanted it in the most intimate places on her body, and she wanted his tongue in her mouth, and she wanted him inside her again. If she let her imagination fly too far, her blood peaked and her nipples hardened and even the pain between her legs seemed insignificant.
She’d never felt this way for Hayden. It was a niggle of discomfort crawling through her, a small ugly truth: never this way for Hayden, nor any of her other suitors over the years. None of them had had eyes of winter and jade, or a smile so staggeringly sweet it eclipsed scruff and grief and scars. Only Rhys.
But last night had lifted into morning, into right now. She was bathed in daylight, hard autumn daylight, and last night was done.
Zoe was going to hunt. She was going back to the Palais Royal and use the cloak and finish what she’d begun in the house of the sanf.
Rhys, of course, was determined to go with her. She’d already presented her arguments about why he should not:
He was weakened.
He countered that by Turning back and forth from man to smoke, ten rapid times in succession.
He was noticeable.
Not with the proper garments, he replied.
His body, she said.
He bent and touched his toes, ten times again, and she’d had to bite the inside of her cheek against the agony he concealed with that proud, blank mask.
His claws, she said.
Easily hidden beneath a blanket. Elderly gents were often wheeled about by their nurses in chairs.
His hair, she pointed out. His brown-and-metal hair.
“A wig,” he’d answered. “A nice, dodgy, old-fashioned sort of wig, I think, with horsehair and lots of stiff curls. I’d wager there’s a good one somewhere in this monster abode. And a rolling chair,” he’d added, before she could open her mouth again. “You can wheel me about. Pretend you’re going to pop me over the riverbank into the rapids.” His tone softened. “Honestly, Zee. You can’t possibly believe I’d let you go alone. Not when you have me. But I’m an old goat, you see. I don’t need a cook. I need a nurse.”
So they removed the apron from the dress. They had no scissors, and of course, did not need them. Rhys used the smallest finger of his left hand to sever the threads.
By the time they’d worked out the details, it was past teatime. They were seated upon the bed, both of them, and Zoe was so absorbed in using her fingernails to tweeze free the last, frayed threads left from the apron from the bodice that at first she didn’t notice his silence.
She looked up when she rolled the crick from her neck, and only then realized he’d been staring at her for minutes with his hands cupped atop his knees, his expression pensive. That lock of chestnut down his forehead, still rakish and charming, a clash to the more sinister reality of his scar.
“This isn’t how I thought it’d be,” he said in an undertone.
She let her hands fall to her lap.
“I wanted a different life for us,” he said. “I wanted peace for us. A home together. Babies. Laughter.”
“There has been an us for approximately twelve hours,” she said. “A bit too soon to become maudlin, don’t you think?”
“There has been an us since the day I first beheld you. Yes, I realize you don’t believe me. All those girls, all those years, and I didn’t even know myself how much of myself I’d lost to you. Given, rather. I don’t need you to believe me. But it’s true.”
“I don’t wish to discuss this now.”
“When?” he asked calmly. “After tonight, when we may both meet our fates? We’re not playing skittles and tops here, Zee. You desire to challenge our most earnest enemy. You’re determined to strike a blow, no matter the cost.”
She compressed her lips and pinched at the last white threads.
“I want you to know that I support you,” he said. “In this, in all your heart’s dreams. I know you loved him, and a part of you needs this. I’ll do what I can for you. But God’s truth, if it comes down to a choice of hurting the sanf or saving you from yourself, I’m going to choose you. It’s domineering and unfair and reeks of our tribal ways. But I want you to live, no matter what. I would do … anything to ensure that you live.”
“Why don’t you just knock me over the head right now?” she asked without looking up. “Save yourself some trouble. Hood me and bind me and trundle me back to England. It’s been done before.”
“Not by me,” he said.
She pushed the cook’s gown from her lap. She uncrossed her legs and slid off the bed, walking toward the door, veering to the mirror, touching a hand to the sheet that still covered it.
She would have sworn she could hear the chorus of voices swell from behind it. Could see the darkness shifting, small lights drawn into coronas around the tips of her fingers.
Rhys had managed to come up behind her without noise. He touched his hands to her waist, lightly, diffidently. She felt his head bend to hers, his exhalation at her temple.
He did not speak. He moved his lips to her hair. She turned in the circle of his arms and met his gaze.
He was wild and not, a green reflection of the woods, of home, and not. Because he was here too, he was a shadow creature tortured into the light, and he gazed at her with such a sober wild clarity it sent quivers of awareness crawling all along her skin.
“You should stay
here,” she managed, her voice a thread as small as those from the apron.
“No.”
Her fingers had found his own waist; she had changed into the salmon-pink satin but he still wore no shirt, only those breeches, torn and knotted, because she hadn’t had the courage to go into Hayden’s portmanteau and get him anything else.
His skin burned her. He was hot, very hot, still too slim. He felt as if he were a man cut from paper, so brittle and impermanent as if he might flame to ash at any moment. Wintry cold or sizzling heat, there was never anything temperate about Rhys Langford. His passions ruled him. He’d decided that this was love, and Zoe knew he’d never change his mind. She would be the one for him for the rest of their lives … however long that might be.
“Please,” she said. “Please stay.”
“I can’t. I’m tied to you. Don’t ask again.”
He kissed her, and this time there was nothing soft about it. It pushed her back against the mirror, a small bump of the frame against the wall. He shoved his body against hers and spread his legs, trapping her, talons jabbed into the garish red silk.
Her body arched in instant response. All the memories from last night, all the burning white heat that turned her face to his, that had her tongue meeting his. She tasted him and reveled in it: He was not paper, nothing insubstantial despite the bones of his ribs and the twisting claws. He was still drákon, his mouth open over hers, the breeches shifting down his hips as he pushed against her again and again.
She craved him. She wanted to taste him, to feel him. She wanted his scent on her and hers on him; there was an animal inside her after all, and the animal wanted to bend down and submit to whatever he desired. However he desired.
His mouth devoured hers; they were breathing each other, clinging to each other. When he drew a hand down between them she felt only a tug and a catch, heard the popping of stitches.
The bodice of the robe à l’anglais split in two. She wore no corset beneath it—she’d lost her final corset to the rainstorm—but only a chemise, thin and also a little ripped, cool air like a shock after the touch of his skin.
