The Deepest Night (17 page)

The larder was the problem.

Most of its shelves were bare, but for four sealed canisters and a great many mouse droppings. The canisters contained four different things: sugar, noodles, something fetid that might once have been powdered eggs, and strips of dried meat.

That was it.

The meat was a welcome find (I thought maybe it was venison), but I couldn’t imagine what to do with the rest of it. I might soak the noodles in cold water and wait until they softened, then sprinkle them with sugar … 

That sounded disgusting, even to me.

We still had some tins left in the knapsack, plus the apples, but we’d decided to save them if we could; neither of us knew what lay ahead.

I devoured a couple of pieces of venison as I rooted around to make certain there wasn’t anything else hidden anywhere else (there wasn’t, only more droppings), then carried the canister upstairs with me to check on Armand.

I walked slowly, my feet feeling the way step by step, the wooden banister smooth and warm beneath my hand. The bedroom was slightly less dark than downstairs had been, probably because of the series of windows meant to take advantage of the view. I was able to pick out the contours of the bed, the silhouette of Armand within it.

“Hullo,” he said, and even though he’d spoken softly, it rang abnormally loud in my ears.

“Hullo.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve brought back some strudel?”

“Even better.” I held up the canister. “Desiccated meat.”

His voice held a smile. “My favorite.”

“It will be.”

I sat upon the edge of the bed and opened the lid. I had to admit, the strips tasted better than they looked. I reached in, took a few, and passed them to him.

Our fingers touched. His felt like fire.

“Mandy!”

“Beloved.”

“Stop it.” I reached for him blindly. “Come here. I need to feel your forehead.”

Obediently he leaned forward. My hands found his neck, his jaw. The firm shape of his nose and then that welt on his forehead, which I’d cleaned and rebandaged, so what I really felt there was padding. I’d given him some aspirin then, too, but it didn’t seem to be working.

I brought my face to his and touched my lips to a bare spot above the bandage.

I felt him go very, very still.

“Eleanore,” he said, and if his voice had been soft before, now it was barely a sound at all.

I pulled back, unnerved.

“It’s how you check for a fever,” I explained, glad he couldn’t tell that I was blushing. “My mo—”

My what? My mother? My mother did that? I shook my head, and the tickle of memory was gone.

“I think my mother taught me that,” I finished. “Or someone. I don’t know.”

He bowed his head, seemed to be examining the venison in his hands that I knew he couldn’t really see.

“Do I? Have a fever, that is?”

“I don’t know,” I said again. “Honest to God, Armand, I don’t know how anything works anymore.”

Likely it was the darkness freeing me, freeing my tongue. Likely it was that I didn’t have to look into his eyes and acknowledge what I’d find in them, the constant hunger, the unwavering focus that made me feel both huge and tiny at once: selfishly pleased to be the recipient of his desire, inwardly terrified because I didn’t know if I’d ever be worthy of it, or even able to return it.

I’d loved Jesse. I had. And it had been easy.

But now, with Armand … everything was topsy-turvy. Jesse was the star I couldn’t hear. Mandy was the dragon at my fingertips, right here, right now, and he wanted me.

I’d never have to wonder what he thought. Where he’d gone. I’d never have to wonder how he truly felt.

Only how
I
felt.

Which was … confused.

not
alone,
sang the stars, a refrain that shimmered through the cool, dark air, chasing shadows.

“I think I need to sleep now,” I said.

“I know,” he answered, and moved over in the bed to make room. “Come on, Lora. It’s soft, just like you’d hoped.”

“I should get you some more aspirin first.”

“Later.”

“But—”

“It can wait. Everything can wait until tomorrow, waif. When there’ll be sun.”

I was too knackered to argue. I placed the canister upon the floor and crawled toward him, not even bothering to remove my boots. I let myself slump into the bedding, a pillow downy beneath my cheek. Armand didn’t try to get closer, only lay there beside me, but eventually, after counting out more than two minutes silently in my head, I felt his hand clasp mine.

Fire, still.

Weary as I was, it was a long while before I fell asleep.

Chapter 24

Shed
this
skin.

He didn’t sleep. He couldn’t. He felt wrapped in flames, tortured by the simplest sensations: the weave of the sheets. The revolting smell of the dried meat. The dampness of the night.

His heart, too large in his chest now, too large and too desperate to get out, because it hammered and hammered against his bones with such violence it would splinter him into a million pieces. Every bit of him smashed, right down to his cells.

Only her touch was still right. Only Lora’s hand, lax around his, felt like the anchor he so greatly needed.

Armand remembered what Rue had written about the first Turn of the
drákon
as if he’d composed the words himself:
It’s going to hurt. It’s going to hurt so very much that you will wish you could die.

But he couldn’t die yet. He hadn’t saved his brother yet. He hadn’t confronted his father. He’d never even kissed the girl he loved, not really, and if he died here, tonight, she’d be the only one who’d ever truly know what happened.

It would ruin her, the burden of that secret. Somehow he knew that it would.

Finish
this
life.

The Turn was building inside him, a tidal wave of smoke and disintegration so colossal it blotted out everything but his fear.

He dug his fingers into the sheets and stared up at the black timbered ceiling.

Shed
this
skin. Finish this life. In the twinkling of an … 

The dam of his willpower crumbled, spent.

The air went to syrup, too thick to breathe.

His heart slowed. Slowed.

Stopped.

He couldn’t die—

Chapter 25

I jolted upright. I didn’t even realize I was awake until I heard the mournful piping of the water bird again, and I looked at the windows because it sounded so near.

I was awake, and I was alone in the bed. I felt ill and sweaty for no reason I could think of, as though I’d just broken a fever.

A fever.

I looked down and yes, there they were: his shirt laid out flat, the bandage that had been around his head fallen to his pillow. Beneath the sheets I’d find his trousers and underwear, too.

I sprang from the bed.

“Armand! Where are you? Mandy!”

I didn’t bother to keep my voice down. There was no one else here, no one at all.

All the windows were closed tight. If he’d left as smoke, it hadn’t been that way. There was no fireplace up here, but there was the one downstairs, and the door—

I hit the stairway so hard my feet slipped; only my grip on the railing kept me from spilling all the way down. As it was, I had to skip and hop and finish the last few steps at an awkward run, my boots cracking against the floorboards of the landing.

The front door gaped open. The night sky hung beyond it, coal black dappled with treetops and stars.

I tried to Turn. It didn’t work. I raced out into the open and scanned the heavens, searching for him.

There were some clouds, that persistent haze hanging over the lake. No smoke that I could see. But he had to be here. He had to. He wasn’t going to be one of those unfortunate young
drákon
who Turned and dissolved into death, because I was going to save him—

“Where is he?” I shouted to the stars. “Where?”

rise
up,
came their response; even they sounded mournful.
rise
up, fireheart.

And then, as if they’d unlocked the hidden shackles that had bound me, I could.

I went to smoke, freed from the earth. I left my garments behind, the lodge, its mossy roof. I launched upward, and suddenly I could see all of the lake, the bristly stretch of forest encircling it, the mist that shifted and curled above the surface of the water … 

Hold
up.
There was no wind, no reason for that patch of curl there near the center of the lake. I moved closer to better see. It spun and whirled like a miniature cyclone, no natural thing.

Armand.

I flowed over to him, became thin and hollow and surrounded him as best I could. I couldn’t tell if he realized I was there; now that I knew where and what he was, I felt him as strongly as ever. It was obviously Mandy, gone to smoke but in such a furious way. The force of his whirling was sending me spinning, too, tearing me into tendrils.

I was beginning to feel ill again, so I had to draw free and let him alone.

What was he doing? Below us both, the water grew stormy, thick wide ripples that slapped all the way back to shore.

I wished he’d stop. I wished he’d move away from the lake, because if I accidentally Turned to girl here, I probably wasn’t going to be able to swim to safety. I was rotten sick of nearly drowning.

He went faster, faster. He was pulling a spiral of water up into his middle, sending drops in every direction. I hung back farther, baffled, as the spiral became a funnel, and the drag from his rotation became something stronger and more ominous.

What’s happening to him?
I asked the stars.

They didn’t answer. I wandered higher and hunted the heavens, but Jesse wasn’t anywhere in sight.

Tell
me
why
he’s doing this,
I demanded.

shape
and
form,
they sang to me.
form
and
shape.

So … Armand was attempting to hold on to his shape? To not Turn back to a human or into a dragon, but remain as smoke?

Why would he do that? Unless … unless he thought that if he didn’t, he’d have no form left at all.

this
beast
was
never
meant
to
be
fully
as
you
are. the thread of his life has always been destined to be severed here.

If I had had breath in a body, it would have left me then. I rushed upward, trying to see as many of them as I could.

No! You can’t take him!

we
do
not
take, fireheart.
Their song was so sad now. So chilling.
he
is
a
child
of
magic. by law of magic, he ascends to us.

I sped higher and higher.
Where
is
Jesse? Let me speak to Jesse!

Again, no answer. They glittered against a black, black sky, ice cold and remote.

You
told
me
I
wasn’t alone!

you
were
not. your span of hours with this dragon were freely given. that time is done.

Far below, the cyclone that was Armand began to break apart. The waterspout grew shorter, splashing into diamonds upon the surface of the lake. The mist settled. Armand spread thin … then began to rise.

I arrowed back down to him, surrounded him. I tried my own cyclone to keep him in place. He only twirled with me and then beyond me; I wasn’t able to stop him from flowing higher.

Please, he can’t die now,
I pleaded.

I had no hands to capture him. I had no words to encourage him. Within moments he was so diaphanous it was as if he had no substance at all, not even color. Zigzag rips began to cleave him; unvarnished night peeped through. A distant, horrified part of me wondered if it hurt.

I’m supposed to save him! I have to save him!

The stars burned in silence. I wanted to scream and I wanted to cry. I wanted to destroy the magic that was taking him. If I’d had a bullet or a bayonet, if I’d had a machine gun, if I could have killed this thing that was killing him … 

I watched, helpless, as the smoke of the only living soul who loved me wisped away, molecules falling skyward, gone forever.

And I realized that I had no true power, after all. Not over death.

I’d failed. I’d failed at everything.

A sudden new song swelled around me.

what
do
you
give
for
this
life? what sacrifice do you give?

My answer was instant, unthinking.

My
own
life. Mine for his.

agreed.

Have you ever done something so rash, so immense, that it takes an eternity of seconds for the magnitude of it to sink in?

I’d just committed suicide.

For Armand.

I had survived my youth immersed in storybook fairy tales. Spent the last few months of my life living one. The one thing I knew with absolute certainty about magical pacts was that they were binding, evermore.

I floated, suspended, waiting for it to happen. That same distant part of me that had been horrified for Armand was now cringing at my own impending pain, but I wasn’t going to try to fly away or Turn to escape it. I was petrified and defiant, and if I’d been in my girl-shape, I’d likely have been huddled in a ball on the ground, covering my head with my hands. But what was done was done.

So I floated.

Slowly, beautifully, the shredded bits of Armand Louis sifted down around me, growing longer and denser until I was threaded through with him. Strands of his smoke coiling around mine, reshaping the mass of me until I was new and unknown, even to me.

We twisted into helixes together. We joined and separated and joined once more, dancers on air. Dancers
made
of air.

I thought,
I
never
knew
it
could
be
like
this, this coupling. I never guessed. I wish I’d known, I wish—

No. I wasn’t going to waste the final few beats of my life wishing for impossible things.

Armand slipped free of me, sinking down to the water. I remained where I was, still waiting for the stars to claim me as he drifted toward the shore.

Eventually, since nothing else was happening, I drifted after him.

He Turned to boy in the mud. He was flat on his back, his knees raised, eyes shut. But his chest was rising and falling. He lived.

I returned my attention to the heavens. No songs now, only those brilliant flecks of light shining down.

If they were giving me another hour with him—blimey, another few seconds—I’d take it. I hurried to his side and Turned to girl, kneeling by his head.

“Armand?”

He moaned, deep in his chest. I touched my hand to his hair.

“Armand, how do you feel?”

In response, he rolled over and vomited into the water.

“Oh,” I whispered. I kept stroking his hair. It felt so soft against my skin. Had it always been like this?

“That,” he announced, guttural, “was truly, profoundly vile.”

“But you’re here. You’re alive. You’re going to be fine.”

I said the words as if casting a spell. I said them and thought,
This
is
so. This is what must be true. My life for yours.

Armand rolled flat again. His eyes were red and watery.

“Mind if we … walk back?”

“No.” I shot a frightened look up at the stars. “No, don’t Turn again.”

“If you insist,” he said weakly, and I helped him to his feet.

Daylight came. I must have slept through a good portion of it, because by the time I opened my eyes, the world was mellow and golden, as if the sun was already dipping to kiss the horizon.

I felt warm and comfortable. I was a lazy girl wrapped in woolly blankets and Jesse’s arms and—

No, I wasn’t.

I craned my head up. It was Armand holding me, not Jesse. He was awake, too, watching me. Our bodies were nestled close; he was the source of all that heat. Our legs had entangled.

“You looked cold,” he said, as if that explained everything.

It might have been true. All I had on was my shirt. The bedcovers had rumpled down by my waist.

He was also wearing a shirt. I’d helped him into it last night after we’d made it back to the lodge. I remembered that. I remembered … 

Oh, crikey.

I remembered it all. My warm lazy happiness swiftly evaporated.

I had changed something. Maybe everything. Armand was going to live now, and I was not.

It’s fine, it’s fine,
I reminded myself, trying not to panic.
A
fair
bargain. Worth it.

So why was I still alive? Why was I burrowed here in this bed with him and those generous rays of golden sun? How much extra time were the stars going to allow me, anyway?

Armand’s palm shifted against my shoulder, a sweet, familiar pressure. His lashes were long and ebony. A shadow of blue whiskers roughened the planes of his face. He held my eyes and gave the smallest smile. It was crooked, almost shy.

Right then I made a choice. Until the stars summoned me, until my thread was severed, I was going to finish what I had come here to do. Because if I was going to leave this boy behind, the least I could do was leave him with his brother.

“Was it only a dream?” he asked, losing the smile.

“No.” I sat up and pushed away the covers. Mud had dried into flakes all around us, grayish brown smears ground into the sheets. “It was real.”

“I Turned,” he said wonderingly. He picked up one of the flakes, which went to dust almost at once between his fingers. His eyes took on a fierce, faraway look. “I can’t … quite seem to recall most of it.”

I was surprisingly disappointed. “Oh?”

“Some. Perhaps you might fill in the gaps.”

“Well …” I had to weigh my words; I didn’t want to accidentally let him know too much. I could barely stand to think about what I’d done. I definitely wasn’t ready to talk about it yet.

Mandy was waiting. My fingers found the bottom button of my shirt and began to pluck at it nervously.

“I awoke, and you were gone. I found you over the lake, er, spinning.”

“Spinning? Like a top?”

I shook my head. “Like a gale. Like a windstorm that would consume the world.”

“There was the mist,” he said abruptly. “And the funnel of water.”

I glanced back at him. The fierce look hadn’t faded, but now it was directed at me.

“That’s right. And then we—we danced a little.”

“We did?”

I shrugged, embarrassed. I’d never danced with a boy before. All my lessons at Iverson had partnered me with Stella, because we were closest in height, and we’d had to take turns at playing the man. To be granted permission to dance in public was one of the most coveted ambitions of any young woman of any class. But to have your first-ever dance be with a genuine lord, no matter what form we’d had at the time—

I was sorry then that I wouldn’t be able to tell anyone about it. I jolly well would’ve enjoyed the expression on Stella’s face. It might even have made up for all the times she’d trod on my toes.

“Rather a dance,” I amended. “That’s what I’d call it, anyway. You don’t remember flying?”

He sat up, his brows knit. Blots of mud stained the back of his shirt, too. “I remember the pain. I remember tearing about, unable to …”

I tugged and tugged at the button.

“I remember the colors of the stars. How they were every color I’d ever seen, and more. Colors I can’t even name.” That hint of slow wonder crept back into his tone. “How exquisite they were. How they sang, and how I hoped they’d never stop.”

“What did they sing to you?”

“Just
come
.”

“Oh.”

He looked at me askance from beneath those black lashes. “I remember you as well. Now I do. I remember sensing you below me. Wanting to be with you so badly that I ached. Even more than the pain—more than the songs—I
ached
. And then it happened. I came down and we …” The crooked smile returned. “As you said, Lora. We danced.”