The Deepest Night

by Shana Abe

  … you-you-you …

  “Eleanore.” Armand placed his hand upon my forearm. “Aubrey is my brother. He matters to me more than I can say, and I’ll do what I can for him. But I’ve given you the honest answer to your question. I’m not going to be able to carry on without you. Haven’t you figured it out yet?”

  His fingers felt cool against me. The breeze whispered between us, an invisible barrier that would be so easy to defeat.

  “I love you,” he said, almost hopeless. “I can’t stop it. I can’t change it. I’ve certainly tried. So this is how it is. I don’t ask that you love me back. No one could ask that. But do me a favor and don’t die, all right? Because I can’t … be here without you.”

  The breeze. Goose bumps. I was holding my breath, or it had been stolen from me. I was gazing into his eyes and falling and falling into a place I did not know. Into cobalt oceans. Into deep blue nights that held the promise of everything lush and silken and wonderful, dreams and desires. I knew I’d just been given a gift I’d never anticipated: Armand without the veil. A gift so raw and powerful I could barely comprehend it. I was too small, and he was so lovely and bright.

  He couldn’t be without me. Yet I would be leaving so that he could stay.

  All I could think was, What am I going to do?

  Men began to shout below us. We both flattened at once, then crept to the belfry’s edge.

  They hadn’t seen us; they were reacting to something else. People choked the warehouse doorway, soldiers mostly. They were pushing at each other, and then one in a helmet topped with a silver spike emerged carrying our knapsack in his arms.

  My clothing. Armand’s. Our pistol and food and medical supplies.

  I dropped my head into my arms and made a sound between a sigh and a groan.

  “Do you believe in fate?” Armand whispered.

  “No,” I mumbled into my arms, because of course I did, and what I knew of bloody fate was that it was cold and capricious and could turn on you in a heartbeat. And then you were naked and hungry in a bell tower, wondering if this was going to be the last day of your life.

  “Lora. Look.”

  I raised my head. He was staring at a point in the distance, at one of those outlying hills. I followed his gaze, seeing only woods and rocks.

  “What?” I said.

  “Look,” he repeated, patient, and this time pointed, keeping his hand close to his chest.

  I squinted at the hill. At the faraway rocks, which were almost uniform in a way, structured, gray and brown like … like a fortress, almost. Like the ruins of one.

  All the soldiers in town, so far from the front. The major, who had been going to want to question us—

  “It’s Schloss des Mondes, I’m sure of it,” Mandy said.

  I lifted up a bit to make it out more clearly. “Really? It might well be any old ruin.”

  “No. That’s it.”

  I tried to remember the etching from the travel journal. Mostly what I recalled was that it’d struck me as a pen-and-ink version of romantic drivel: picturesque towers collapsing into piles, wild roses rambling this way and that, a moon as round and blank as a wheel of cheese behind it all.

  I tipped my head, searching for a resemblance.

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  He was taut and eager, a weapon primed. “I feel it. Even from here, I feel it. It’s like a blood clot in a vein, isn’t it? Like a blemish across the sun. Dark and viscous and awful. And this place. This town, living off it, feeding from it.”

  “Mandy …”

  “Aubrey’s in there. I feel it in my bones.” He rose to his knees. I grabbed him by the wrist before he did something foolish, and when he glanced down at me, I didn’t see oceans any longer.

  I saw the dragon. I saw wrath.

  “Tonight,” I said, and didn’t let go until he nodded.

  Chapter 30

  Schloss des Mondes, in case you didn’t know, means “Castle of the Moon.” I suppose that’s why the artist of the etching had made the full moon so prominent.

  On the night we went in for Aubrey, we had nothing like that. We had a sickle moon still, an eerie smile in the sky.

  And Star-of-Jesse, above it and to the left.

  I’d wanted to survey the prison before nightfall, but the truth was, I needed sleep more. I’d spent nearly all of the previous night flying, and I refused to count the time I’d been knocked unconscious as useful rest.

  Up in that bell tower I’d had no mirror, but I daresay I looked a lot like Armand, red-eyed, pallid with strain. Two beggars without a home.

  We smoked to a house at the edge of town that smelled only of empty rooms and sadness. Like the lodge, there was dust everywhere and very little food, but we carried all the quilts we could find up into the attic and made a bed there. I fell in first and Mandy right after, and I didn’t even protest when he drew me into his arms.

  At least I’ll know he’s still here, I thought. I was a husk of a girl, hollow and drained. If I can feel him, I’ll know he’s still beside me.

  I slept.

  When I was finally able to climb back up out of that deep, soft oblivion, I found Armand seated at my side, watching me by the light of the oriel window high in the eaves. He was bathed in silvery blue.

  Starlight. The day had come and gone, and I was still around.

  “I realized that I hadn’t thanked you yet,” he said. “For doing this. For freeing my brother.”

  I scrubbed the sleep from my face. “Criminy, don’t jinx it! Thank me after.”

  “No. I needed to do it now.”

  I lowered my hands. He smiled at me, but it was slight. Almost grave.

  “Just in case.”

  “In case of what?” I asked, but straightaway wished I hadn’t, because of course I knew what he’d meant.

  He seemed so calm, practically serene, painted with the distant light of the heavens. And even though he must have seen the regret on my face, he answered me anyway.

  “In case it’s you instead of me who’s left behind. You who’s meant to go on and rescue Aubrey alone.”

  What I remembered then was my final goodbye to Jesse, also by starlight. How I’d felt so desperate, looking into his eyes. So bloody stupid terrified, it was as if all my bones had gone to jelly.

  How he hadn’t bothered to lie to me by saying that all would be well, but only told me—calm, so calm and grave, just like Armand—to leave him. He hadn’t even told me that he loved me, although I knew that he did.

  After that night, my world had tilted. Jesse was gone from the earth. For such a long while I’d felt as if I was, too.

  But it’s not going to be like that with Mandy, I reassured myself. I’ve made a deal. I will never, never feel pain like that again.

  Because I really rather would be dead than suffer the loss of this boy, too.

  I sat up, surrounded by my nest of quilts. “That’s rather enough of that sort of talk. You’re not going anywhere, lordling. Well, except to that ruin, and then home to Tranquility with your brother.”

  The smile faded. “And with you, waif. Home with my brother and with you.”

  “That’s the plan,” I agreed. I didn’t consider it a lie, since it was what I wanted to be true.

  I stood, as did he. He took my hand. We descended the stairs in silence together; he opened the front door to the house we’d borrowed; we both smoked away.

  Perhaps there was more to have been said, but I had no more words, truthful ones or falsehoods or anything. Sometimes silence illumes more than words, anyway. I’d been by Armand’s side for what had amounted only to days, but already it felt as if years had passed between us. As if we’d been doing this together for years, flying and hiding and hurting and hunting, and now, togeth
er, we were traveling into whatever came next. I think it was clear to us both that our final few moments of peace were done. It was either finish the job now or perish in the attempt.

  So, again: Sickle moon. Jesse above us, along with all the other stars. They were singing without verses, marking our flight with arias and harmonies too complex to follow. Armand and I soared and floated, joined in our unique dance again, moving as one away from the town and toward the hills that cradled the prison Schloss des Mondes.

  That’s definitely what it was. Once we were near enough, I recognized all the telltale signs. One long wall and three decrepit towers still endured, but were shored up now with freshly cut timbers and brick. The wild roses still bloomed, but between strands of shiny barbed wire. Even the moon had done its bit: It was hanging nearly where it’d been in that etching, but it was spooky now, a grinning warning that slid through me in a whispered chill.

  where is he? hissed the whisper. I realized it wasn’t from the moon but from the stars. where does he fall?

  What?

  I glimpsed a flash of pale flesh, arms flung out. I swooped after him, but it was too late. Armand hadn’t been able to hold his shape, and I wasn’t near enough this time to save him.

  He saw me. He was facing upward, looking right at me, his brown hair thrashing, a strange almost-smile on his lips, and I wasn’t near enough. Right before he hit the ground, he brought both hands to his mouth, then flung them back at me.

  He landed in a tangle of roses and barbed wire, just outside the perimeter of the prison. It was over in seconds—there hadn’t even been time for me to Turn to dragon—and from start to finish it had happened without a sound but for the muffled thud of his body meeting dirt, because he’d kept our precious silence and hadn’t shouted or called out for me.

  Instead, dear God, he’d blown me a kiss.

  Dogs began to yowl. Lights flared on. There was nothing to see, though, not yet. Only a streak of gray vapor and a boy covered in gashes and brambles, unmoving in the brush.

  I blanketed him in smoke. I smoothed his face, his eyelids, waited until I was drawn in past his lips and became a part of his lungs, his very breath, and his heart beat for both of us, and his blood whooshed by and I flowed with it and I knew that he lived.

  I became a girl crouched over him, ignoring the sting of the thorns. I brought my lips to his ear.

  “Mandy. Mandy.”

  His lashes fluttered. His lids did not open.

  You can’t take him. You said you wouldn’t!

  fireheart, whose time is ours: this act is not of us.

  A searchlight passed over me, carving the dark into pieces. I ducked lower.

  “Mandy.” I swallowed. “Sweetheart. Wake up.”

  His respiration puffed fragile against my cheek. He’d missed the barbed wire but the brambles had slashed into him anyway; some of the cuts were deep. I ran my hands all along him, smearing rose petals and blood.

  His right leg. It lay crooked, all wrong. I stared down at it with fright a stone in my chest, certain his leg was broken. It was the one I’d bit, too.

  One broken leg. It might not be so bad. He could survive that, couldn’t he? He’d be all right once it was set. Once we were home and it was set.

  “Wake up, Armand. Damn it, wake up!”

  The sugar-ripe perfume of the flowers began to suffocate me. The moon grinned and the dogs howled and the stars began to toll, solemn as a knell, go, go, go—

  I estimated the tower ruins to be around a hundred yards off. The dogs sounded even farther than that but were getting closer. A series of large tents covered the grounds between here and there; they were filled with soldiers and maybe prisoners, too, a harsh gabble of voices rising through the night.

  go, go, go—

  So far none of the guards had figured out exactly where we were. Chances were they didn’t really know what had happened, just that the dogs were barking like mad and something might have fallen from the sky. Most of the searchlights were spearing the heavens instead of the hillsides. Perhaps they were hunting for a mechanical dragon.

  A dragon …

  “Stay here,” I murmured, my hand over Mandy’s heart. “If you can hear me, don’t move.”

  I glanced upward. Tell him, I entreated the stars. When he comes to, tell him what I’ve done, that I need him to stay hidden.

  go! they insisted.

  I lifted as smoke, found a pair of good, strong searchlights crossed against the black like swords, and Turned to dragon within their doubled brilliance.

  Not mechanical, but amazing nonetheless. My body reflected the light in scintillating gold. My wings brushed it into shadows, lifting me, allowing me to weave in and out of their beams, to enjoy the din that arose from the ground in a great surge that drowned out even the dogs.

  Shots pinged past. I went to smoke, waited, Turned again, farther from Armand this time, drawing the men and their fire after me.

  The tent city spread below me. I dipped down, extended a talon, and sliced open the roof of the nearest one. Faces gaped skyward, raggedy men with open mouths. And then—

  The men began to shout. To cheer. They were lifting their fists to the air, jumping up and down, exuberant.

  “Huzzah!”

  The prisoners! They must have heard about the new British weapon from their guards, or the papers, or the contagion of underground gossip. But now they saw that I was real, not gossip.

  They thought I was here to save them.

  Hope lit from face to face, joyous disbelief. I saw the panic of the guards, and it fed me like nectar. My animal heart expanded, seeing them so afraid; I wanted more of that. Much more.

  I wanted, suddenly, not just to save one man. I wanted to tear this entire camp apart. I was savage with want.

  “Huzzah! Huzzah!”

  After all, I was a weapon, wasn’t I? I was a weapon of fangs and claws, of fantasy and fury. I was the accumulation of all that men feared, and despite the fact that I couldn’t breathe fire, I could still render this prison to ash. Turn it to dust, into a ruin again, instead of a place where people suffered and died, because I was sick of hiding, and I was sick of war, and I was sick of death stalking me and threatening me and filling me with dread.

  Let it come. I was ready.

  I wove higher, waited for a searchlight, dove down again. I pulled free a long span of fencing, until the barbed wire sliced apart in my claws.

  Another tent ripped open, more men spilling out, roaring encouragement. The guards around them yelling and pushing, trying to regain control.

  Another tent. Another.

  We played that game until I had all the soldiers in sight beneath me, pointing their guns at me. Little bursts of light popped from their barrels like embers in a fireplace, but tat-tat-tat fast, because they were no longer using their rifles, but machine guns.

  go, go, go, go!

  Heat punctured my wing—my good wing—ripping swiftly into pain.

  All my bravado evaporated. Instantly I was me again, only Eleanore, in trouble far over her head. I Turned to smoke and the pain dulled, but I’d been shot. Again.

  I retreated through an unglazed window atop the nearest tower, slinking into darkness. I Turned to girl against the wall and mashed my hands against my mouth, because even though I no longer had wings, the wound was crippling, bowing me in half, and there was a scream in my throat that I knew I could not afford to release.

  Tears filled my eyes. I bent my head into my palms and pressed them away.

  My face prickled hot, but the rest of me was cold as the rock wall at my back; my skin began to creep. The scent of meat and decay filled my nose.

  It was only then that I knew that I wasn’t alone.

  I lifted my head.

  There was a man in here, fl
at on a cot. Just one man; the rest of the chamber was barren. He was swathed in bandages that had seeped through with gore, holding himself very stiff and still, just like the mummy soldiers back at Tranquility who only moved once they recognized that no matter how immobile they tried to be, the agony was still going to come.

  I looked at the man. The faint gleam of his eyes confirmed that he was looking back at me. Neither of us spoke.

  Beyond the slit of the window, the stars sparked. The moon threw us light the color of bone.

  It was Aubrey. Exactly like Armand back in that bell tower, I felt him, the dragon locked inside him, faded as an echo. Somewhere beneath this mess of blood and linen was Lord Aubrey Louis, Marquess of Sherborne, ace fighter pilot, his father’s obsession and his brother’s salvation.

  Sssss. Sssss.

  His breath wheezed in and out like he was struggling to breathe through a tube, a horrible, scratchy thin sound. The bandaged chest jerked up and down. The fingers of his left hand were curled against the blanket at his waist, and all his nails were black.

  I lost myself then. Only for a moment. An awful mixture of rage and bitterness rose up inside me in a blind wave, obliterating all of my careful control, all at once, and I began to tremble.

  We’d come all this way. We’d risked so much.

  For nothing.

  There was no way in hell this man was going to be able to ride my back home. I’d be surprised if he could even sit up.

  Jesse, goddamn you, why? Why?

  I clenched my jaw and closed my eyes, digging my nails into my palms to stop the shaking. I waited for the wave to recede. When I was able to open my eyes again, Aubrey attempted to speak.

  “El …”

  He ran out of air. Moonlight made a slick, cool sheen over the wreck of his face. He drew in a slower breath.

  “ … leanore,” he finished. “At last.”

  And he smiled at me.

  Chapter 31

  The night had shattered. A clamor shuddered up through the stone walls sheltering us, fed by gunfire and cries far below. I gave a final glance to the moon, then went to my knees beside Aubrey, combing my hair over my chest.