The Girl at Midnight (28 page)

“Echo, you didn’t tell me it would be cold,” Ivy grumbled, pulling her hands into the sleeves of her jacket. “I didn’t think to pack my winter wear when I was kidnapped.”

And just like that, the last vestiges of Dorian’s small smile died. Wordlessly, he unbuttoned his coat and slipped it off. He held it out to Ivy, who stared at it, blinking rapidly. Caius knew he wasn’t the only person holding his breath. Something delicate was happening, and he had no desire to disrupt it.

With a trembling hand, Ivy took the coat. Dorian turned away, walking toward the station steps. Ivy looked from the coat to Dorian’s retreating form. Her dark eyes were shiny.

“Thank you,” she said.

Dorian paused. He nodded, without looking back, before heading down the platform steps. Caius met Jasper’s eyes from across the platform, and Jasper shrugged.

“Are we just going to stand around staring at each other all day,” Echo said, “or are we going to get this show on the road?”

Caius turned and was surprised to see her looking at him, holding his eyes for a few seconds before heading toward the station steps. It was the first thing she’d said to him since New York.

The moment they crossed the wards surrounding the Black Forest, Dorian felt the faint hum of magic in the atmosphere. The farther they walked, the less he noticed it, but it was there all the same. Brittle twigs and paper-thin leaves crunched beneath his feet, and the crisp forest air made puffy little clouds of his breath. The branches of the birch trees around them danced in the light wind, leaves rustling. The chalk white of their bark was painted a soft buttery yellow in the early-morning light. It would have been lovely if Dorian’s mood hadn’t been so foul. His still-healing wound and the sight of Caius shooting strange, searching glances Echo’s way made for a dire combination. He trudged along, hardly noticing when Jasper sidled up next to him. How strange it was that he should be so comfortable in the presence of an Avicen, but there was something about Jasper that defied convention.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Jasper asked, reaching behind
Dorian’s ear. With a flick of his wrist, he produced a shiny copper coin.

Charlatan
, Dorian thought, fighting back a smile. Jasper was a pest, but an effective one. The more he pushed at Dorian’s walls, the harder it was to stay irritated.

“My thoughts are my own,” Dorian said. He tore his eye from Caius’s back. There was little use in studying the set of his shoulders, or the angle of his gait, or the way his eyes lingered on Echo a beat longer than they had the day before. Caius was walking away from him, in more ways than one.

Dorian met Jasper’s gaze, and he knew that Jasper had been watching him watch Caius.
A clever charlatan. The very worst kind
.

“And even if my thoughts were for sale,” Dorian said, “I doubt you could afford them.”

Jasper smiled, toothy and winsome. It was a refreshing change from the smirk he wore as faithfully as Dorian wore his eye patch. To each his own mask.

“Behold,” Jasper said, rolling the word around on his tongue as if it was something to be savored. “It speaks.”

Just to spite him, Dorian said no more. They walked in a silence that shouldn’t have been amicable, with Dorian being who he was and Jasper being who he was. Dorian was beginning to suspect that somewhere between Japan and Germany, he had completely lost control of his life.

He looked at Jasper from the corner of his eye. The Avicen seemed at home in the woods, despite his complaints, bountiful as they were. Dorian wasn’t sure if Jasper’s jewel-toned feathers were always brighter in the light of day, or if his eyes were always that shade of gold bordering on yellow, or if his skin always held that touch of bronze that stood out
against the backdrop of dusty-white birch trees. He especially wasn’t sure when he’d started noticing the vibrance of Jasper’s many colors to begin with.

“You know,” Jasper mused, “I wouldn’t have actually sold you out, right? I just wanted someone to tell me what the deal was.”

Dorian shrugged. “I had my doubts.”

With an indignant gasp, Jasper laid a hand over his heart. “You wound me, sir. I’ll have you know I
do
have a moral compass.” He paused. “Even if I’m the only one who can read it.”

Again, Dorian had his doubts. He cast another glance at the sea of birch trees around them. They needed a watchful eye on the forest to see if their enemies had found them, but he was beginning to realize that an Avicen threat of an entirely different sort was walking right beside him.

“Why are you here?” Dorian asked.

“I told you,” Jasper said, rolling his neck with a studied grace, eyes drifting shut slowly. He looked like something out of a painting. “I’m in it for the glory.”

“Caius and Echo almost died the other day.” Dorian scanned the trees. He needed to not be looking at Jasper. “It seems like a great deal of trouble just for glory.”

Jasper hummed, twirling the coin between his long, elegant fingers. “I have my reasons. Besides, anything worth having is never easy to get.” He settled his yellow-gold gaze on Dorian, quiet and searching. Dorian decided not to read into Jasper’s words. It was better that way.

“And what about you?” Jasper asked, hands dancing as he made the coin disappear and reappear in his palms. “Why are you here?”

“Duty,” Dorian replied. The answer was instinctive. While it wasn’t a lie, it was—arguably—not the entire truth.

Jasper’s eyes fixed on a spot in front of them. Dorian didn’t need to follow them to know that he was looking at Caius. “Is that all?”

“It’s enough.”

And, because the gods had not seen fit to smile on Dorian as of late, Jasper saw right through him. “I think we both know that isn’t true.”

Dorian looked away, bereft of a response. He hated to think that his feelings were so transparent, but Jasper was right. Not that he would deign to admit such a thing aloud. The Avicen’s ego didn’t need the help. He trudged on, watching the trees, trampling dry grass beneath his feet.

“And maybe it’s just because I’m so self-serving,” Jasper continued, “but it seems a strange thing, to devote one’s entire life to someone who can’t see what’s right in front of him.”

“Caius would give his life for me,” Dorian said, almost too quickly. He knew that it was true, but he also knew, no matter how badly he would have liked to cling to the lie that had sustained him for so long, that it simply wasn’t enough. Not anymore. Perhaps it never had been. Perhaps he’d been dishonest with himself for so long that he’d come to believe his own lie.

There was a knowing wistfulness to Jasper’s slow smile. “But it’s not his life you want, is it?”

Dorian had an answer for that, but he didn’t feel much like sharing it. He slid his hands into the pockets of his borrowed jeans and walked on in silence. The birds of the Black Forest chirped while Dorian kept his peace.

“Yeah,” Jasper said, pocketing the coin. “I didn’t think so.”

Echo surveyed the ruins before them. They had been an abbey once, though the front wall had collapsed, and the interior had long since been picked clean of anything of value. But there were still three solid walls, and nature had reclaimed it, granting it something of a roof from the branches of an overgrown oak tree. Echo assumed that Caius had chosen it as their camp for the night because it was dry and defensible, not because it was pretty.

“You’re joking,” Jasper said as Dorian walked the perimeter, carving runes into the dry earth with the tip of his sword.

“No,” Caius replied, gaze raking over the ruins. “Not joking.” He caught Echo’s eyes for the space of a single heartbeat before she turned away, wrapping her arms tightly around herself. There was too much knowledge in his eyes, too much understanding. It had comforted her before, how he seemed to know when she needed to be left alone and
when she needed comfort, but now it was just disconcerting. She didn’t like that he had learned to read her so well after so little time.

Jasper dragged out his sigh for so long that Echo wondered how he had any air left in his lungs. “Why did I ever agree to come on this wild-goose chase?”

“I thought you were in it for the glory,” Dorian tossed over his shoulder with a tiny grin that was halfway to becoming an actual smile.

“Glory is overrated,” Jasper replied. “I think I’d much rather have a soft, warm bed, thank you very much.”

Echo listened to their banter for as long as she could. Dorian had grown more comfortable around the two Avicen in their little party. She felt as though she had missed something vital over the past few days. Even Ivy had begun to thaw. Dorian was obviously trying, and Ivy had always been the forgiving kind. She was a good person. Better than Echo.

Jasper was laughing at something Ivy had said, and the sound turned Echo’s stomach. She couldn’t acknowledge that the world was full of things like mirth when she felt as if she were decaying from the inside out. With a mumbled excuse, which she didn’t care if they believed, or even heard, Echo turned away from the camp. Picking her way over fallen logs and bits of broken abbey wall, she walked deeper into the woods, silent and alone. An owl hooted in the distance, and another answered it, their unearthly cries filling the sky with song.

The Black Forest slowly fell quiet as twilight descended, as though even the birds kept their silence to appreciate it. The setting sun peeked between the trunks of trees on the horizon in violent shades of purple and red. Echo understood
why the Brothers Grimm had found inspiration here for their twisted tales. It was dark and magical, menacing and beautiful, and it made her heart hurt to look at it. It wasn’t long before she heard quiet footsteps behind her. She didn’t need to turn around to know that it was
him
.

Caius said nothing. He moved to stand beside her, but he seemed content to let her choose if she wanted to talk or not. She let several moments tick by in silence as they watched the sun slip beneath the line of trees in the distance. The sound of leaves whispering against one another was almost like a language, but an ancient one. One Echo couldn’t understand. The words hovered on the air, on the edge of meaning. Present, but utterly incomprehensible.

“Psithurism,”
she said.

Next to her, Caius shifted, boots crunching on dry leaves. She could feel his eyes on her.

“Psithurism?” he asked.

“The sound of the wind through the trees.”

“I didn’t know there was a word for that,” he said.

“There’s a word for just about everything if you look hard enough.” Her breath made little clouds in the cold forest air, as if her voice had shape and substance.

“Echo, I—”

She cut him off. “When I was twelve, I developed a crush on a boy. Rowan.” Beside her, Caius tensed. Putting two and two together, she assumed. After all, there were only so many Rowans in the world, and Caius had recently made the acquaintance of one. “We grew up together. I liked him, and I was so sure that he liked me, too.” He had. There was a chance—even a small one—that he still did, but Echo knew that she’d ruined any possibility of a future with him
after taking the life of an Avicen. The enormity of her crime was simply too grand. “But you know what Ruby did?”

She didn’t wait for Caius to answer. “She told him I was contagious. That if he touched me, he would catch what I had, and it would molt his feathers right off his flesh. I couldn’t understand why she did it or what I’d done to deserve it.”

Echo was incredibly aware of Caius’s eyes on her, tracing her profile. She wanted to look at him, but she also didn’t want to look at him. She didn’t know what she wanted, but now that she’d started and the words were out, falling from her lips of their own volition, she couldn’t stop them.

“Most of the other Avicelings steered clear of me after that. But that wasn’t even the worst part. Not really. Ruby had never liked me, and I didn’t exactly go out of my way to be nice to her, but …”

This was the part Echo had never shared with another soul. Not the Ala, who had held her, rubbing soothing circles on her back, when Echo had run to her, face streaked with tears, after Rowan had told her what Ruby had said. Not even Ivy, from whom she kept no secrets.

“There’s this fountain in the Nest, one that supposedly grants wishes. I went to it and threw a penny in. I thought about wishing for Rowan to fall in love with me. Or about making everyone forget what Ruby had said. I even thought about wishing for feathers of my own. But I didn’t ask for any of those things. Do you know what I wished for?”

Caius’s voice was soft and maybe even a little bit sweet. “What?”

“I wished that Ruby would die. I wished that she would die, and I would never have to see her again. Talk about
a self-fulfilling prophecy.” The words sat bitter on Echo’s tongue, and she swallowed them down with a broken laugh. She laughed because it was better than crying, but the laugh was all jagged edges and sharp corners, and it cut up her insides as it clawed its way out.

“For what it’s worth,” Caius said, “I wish you hadn’t had to do it.”

Echo thrust her hands into her jacket pockets. Her fingers were cold, as if the tips were slowly going dead. “I don’t think that’s worth anything.”

“I know, but it needed to be said anyway. I should have been faster; I shouldn’t have needed your help.”

“Don’t,” Echo said, shaking her head. “Don’t make this about you.”

“That’s not what I—” From the corner of her eye, she saw his hand reach out to her before falling away. “Echo, you did what you felt you had to do.”

“Did I? Did I have to do it?” Echo toed a log over with her boot. Little worms, unhappy to be exposed to the fading light, wriggled their way into the ground, seeking darkness. “I could have left you there. But I didn’t. I went back. I was scared for Rowan, but I was worried about you, too. And I don’t even know why. We aren’t friends, Caius. I barely even know you. But I couldn’t watch Ruby hurt you. I stabbed a person in the back for you. Literally.”