The Sweetest Dark (15 page)

And it was. All of it. The cheese, as well, every last tangy speck. I ate like I was famished, like I hadn't put away a heap of kippers and bacon a few hours before.

I held out the last hunk of bread to Jesse. He refused it with a smile, so I ate that, too.

I suppose that would have sealed the deal, were he Fay. I'd eaten his food and drunk his wine, and if he offered I'd gladly have taken more.

Fay or fateful stars, same difference. I looked at him and thought,
Now I'm surely yours.

But I didn't say it aloud.

“I thought this would be a good place,” Jesse said. He had drawn up his knees and wrapped his arms loose around them, like I had, gazing out peacefully at the water. I could feel the heat of his side so close to mine, as if he radiated it. As if the golden light that lived under his skin was really a fire, banked now but steady. Eternal warmth.

“Good place for what?”

“For you to find yourself. Your true self.”

I didn't respond.

“You're going to have to do it sometime, Lora. I can help you with it. Some of it, at least. It's going to happen whether you will it or not. Better to plan ahead now, don't you think?”

I stared down at the twill covering my knees. I stared hard at the tufts of wool that poked out here and there, the sturdy, diagonal weave of brown over brown.

“We can meet down here on weekends or after your classes. We might consider the woods, too, but there's always the danger there of someone passing by.”

“Doesn't anyone else ever come here?”

“No. People say it's haunted.”

I looked back up at him.

“By a single ghost,” he explained, the corners of his lips lifted. “A very gentle one. I'm sure she won't mind sharing the space with us.”

“I—I honestly can't tell if you're joking.”

“Either way, does it matter? I told you you're safe with me, and I meant it. The grotto is perfect for us. It's secluded but still open enough to hide something … large.”

“I don't understand. What is it you think I'm going to be able to do? I'm just a girl.”

“To begin, you can stop thinking of yourself as
just
anything. I have a word for you, one I want you to keep in your heart.” Jesse unlocked his arms and turned to face me fully, holding me in a gaze that resurrected that shiver of before.

“Drákon,”
he said.

And I knew it. I knew that word, even though I was positive I'd never, ever heard it fall from anyone else's lips.

Drákon.

If the beast inside me had still been raging, it would have sucked on the word like Jesse's sweet cherry wine. It would have gotten drunk on it.

“That's what I am,” I said, as the truth of it rolled through me over and over, riding that cherry-wine crest. “That's what we're called. My—my kind.”

“Yes.”

“How did you know that? How do you know
any
of this?”

His hand lifted, a graceful palm cupped toward the ceiling, toward the universe we could not see beyond water and rock.

“Is there a word for you?” I asked.

I glimpsed a dimple in his cheek with his wry new smile, one I'd never noticed before. “Jesse.”

“That's it?”

“Do you prefer
starman
?”

“No.”

Jesse, star-bright. Jesse Holms. Jesse-of-the-stars.

I heard myself say, “Are you going to kiss me again?” and realized, horrified, that maybe I was the drunk one.

“Yes,” he answered.

“Er … soon?”

“I hope so. But not right now.” He climbed to his feet, reached out a hand and pulled me to mine, looking down at me ruefully. “Next time I'll definitely remember to bring the water.”

...

God, he hated tea.

Armand Diego Lorimer Louis stared down at the steaming liquid in its cup, wan brown with little chewy bits of leaves mucking about near the bottom, and came to the conclusion that it was actually more than he could bear to lift the cup to his lips to drink.

There was lemon or cream to add to it, if he wished. Sparkling white sugar. All of it set out in silly little china containers painted round and round with podgy, smirking cherubs.

But nothing helped tea. It simply was what it was, which was boiling hot and flavorless.

Tea was the beverage, Mandy thought, of dreary, civilized people. People who would never lie without guilt, never steal without reason, never fornicate anywhere but in their own beds. With the curtains closed. In the dark.

He shouldn't have stayed. He should have gone home after leaving her room. Truth was, his hair was mussed and his cuffs were damp and she wasn't even present, and now here he was trapped beside Chloe yet again, suffocating in her noxious perfume. Pretending to listen to her natter on about a dress or a hat or her new gloves—it was always a dress, a hat, or new gloves; all right, and sometimes shoes—with his spoon gripped so tightly in his hand that his thumb and forefinger had gone white, and the tea bits whirling about in some awful, endless pattern, everything the same, every day the same, just as it always was. Just as it always was going to be.

He had a swift and utterly lucid vision of himself in this position in thirty-odd years. Loathsome tea, hot steam, silver spoon, and fifty-year-old Chloe seated opposite him talking about clothing, because to her it was categorically, absolutely, the most fascinating topic on the planet.

Besides, of course, herself.

For an unflinching instant, Armand wished with his whole heart that he were dead.

Then, at the very edge of his perception, something changed.

He glanced up.

She
was passing by the doorway, walking with that fluid, nearly animal grace that no one else seemed to capture or even notice.

He was given four steps of her.

One: She moved from the hallway shadows into the light cast from the parlor. He saw her illuminated, drab colors gone bright; her skin alabaster, reflective; her hair tinted pink and gold and pink again.

Two: Her gaze met his, finding him past all the other people crowded inside the stuffy mirrored room, dying by inches and taking their tea.

Three: He was paralyzed. He couldn't move, couldn't smile, couldn't nod. He was pinned in the gray of her eyes, a prisoner to their piercing clarity.

For an unflinching instant, Armand felt his heart explode like a firework, and the future seemed unwritten.

Then four: Eleanore looked away and passed the doorway. He was stuck with tea and dresses once more.

Chapter Seventeen

We drank, of course, at the orphanage.

We were crafty about it, or at least tried to be, and nearly universally tight-lipped regarding the specific whens and wheres and whos. Rules ensnared every aspect of our lives, Blisshaven's rules and our own, which were tacit and far more savage. From the time we were old enough to understand what gin was, we procured it and drank it. Anyone suspected of being a snitch tended to end up in the infirmary, usually missing teeth.

We had no money. We were given no allowance, not even a ha'penny for a peppermint stick or a cup of lemonade during our precious few outings into the city. So those who landed the gin were usually the quick-fingered older boys. The ones on the verge of something larger than themselves, with cracking voices and cunning gazes, who knew that the future rushing toward them was going to be even more desolate than their lives in the dorms. Who bonded into packs for dominance, who skulked about like hungry dogs let loose in the halls.

Who could slink away from our minders without getting caught. Who could distract a shopkeeper or pubmaster—and then run.

But even though they got their gin for free, they were still dogs. The gin wasn't free to any of the rest of us.

As I said, we had no money. So it won't astonish you to learn that although I'd never tasted fine wine before—or even mediocre wine or whisky or champagne—I
had
tasted the raw, crude distillation of juniper berries in alcohol, quite a bit.

Jesse's kiss, staggering as it was, was not my first.

I had learned the same lessons as most of the other girls in Blisshaven. Bargain for limits on time and body parts. Don't let them use their tongues. Avoid Billy Patrick at all costs—grinning, vicious Billy Patrick—because no amount of gin he ever offered would be worth the bruises he left.

And never drink so much that you regretted your morning. The teachers were particularly short-tempered before noon. They weren't likely to go soft on anyone lethargic, even if you said you were feeling off.

I had measured out my sips, my kisses, savoring the one while pretending I was someone else for the other, and in all my years there, I never went to bed intoxicated.

It was disheartening to discover myself so quickly affected by Jesse's sweet red wine, but at least I knew the cure. I couldn't risk the Sunday tea—especially after I'd glimpsed Armand in there, his blue eyes like flames—so I retreated to my room and slept.

By breakfast the next morning, aside from a dull ache in my forehead and a fuzzy coating on my tongue, I was more or less hale again.

Drákon.

I whispered it to my mirror-self before dressing, watching her face, her eyes, round black pupils, purple-gray irises shrunk into gleaming rings.

“Drákon,”
I said aloud, and the girl in the mirror slowly smiled.

Even now I don't think any lingering consequences of the wine were responsible for what happened that Monday. I think it was just something that was bound to be: Jesse's all-knowing stars casting their own directions for the unruly path of my life.

...

“All right, then, ladies. Let's be off,” commanded Professor Tilbury.

Tilbury was our history professor, potbellied and aged and with a voice that reached dangerously close to a squeak whenever he tried to raise it. He stood before us with his back to the large slate that had been fixed to the wall of our classroom. A single word,
Iverson,
had been chalked across the slate, with a long, uncharacteristic flourish of a tail completing the
n.

We sat two by two in assigned rows, because the history classroom was crammed up short against the southern edge of the castle, which meant it was very narrow and unexpectedly lofty.

My chair was next to Lillian's in the far back. From our shared desk, Professor Tilbury looked like a white-bearded gnome against the slate.

He surveyed the lot of us; no one had moved. “To your feet, young ladies! Today is a most special day indeed. Today we will enjoy a walking tour of the history of our own fortress.”

Beatrice and Stella, directly ahead of me, exchanged eye rolls.

“Sir,” said Mittie from the very front, in her most piteous tone, “isn't it cold out for a walk? We haven't even our shawls.”

It had dawned another overcast day, with a brisk spring wind blowing spray in fitful spurts across the channel, rattling the windowpanes. Still, pug-faced Mittie was far from any danger of freezing. She just liked to whine.

Professor Tilbury must have heard every whine before.

“The majority of our tour will be within the castle walls, Miss Bashier. If you didn't need your shawl for this chamber, you will not need it for the rest of them. However, if you truly feel a shawl is indispensable to your attire, you may fetch it now. The rest of us shall await you here. Naturally, any amount of time taken from the scheduled class period by your absence shall be made up by all of you at its conclusion.”

The hour after history was luncheon. Even Mittie wasn't stupid enough to push matters that far.

I arose from my chair, glad to be doing something besides sitting and scratching down notes, anyway. One by one, the other girls did the same.

Confident that he had made his point, Professor Tilbury offered us what, for him, passed as a smile. He had blocky yellow teeth.

“Excellent. Let us begin at the beginning. Do any of you know what this room used to be?”

None of us did.

“Iverson's original keep was constructed by the conquering sons of Normandy. It was ruled by barons who commanded the wealth of the ports and all the fertile lands nearby.” Someone tittered at the word
fertile
; Tilbury forged on. “Therefore, this fortress, even from its inception, was home to a powerful, prosperous lord and his family. It also would have been home to all his knights and servants and their families, as well. A castle this size might have had several hundred people living inside it, and that is before we even begin to consider the livestock.”

“How primitive,” sniffed Caroline.

“Primitive, mayhap, but necessary. So imagine you are that powerful lord who controls this castle, if you will. Where do you go for your privacy? Where do you retreat with your family to escape the everlasting noises and smells and demands of the general populace?”

A word came to me, a word from the past. It bobbed up from the blank ocean of my memory, untethered.

“The solar,” I said.

Professor Tilbury angled his head to find me standing in the back. “Yes, Miss Jones. Very good. The solar. Solar as in
solaris,
a place of the sun. Note our tall southerly windows, the near-constant light. Castles such as Iverson typically included a construct like this for the exclusive use of the ruling family, built above the ground floor so that the baron might observe the workings of his people below.”

“It's terribly small for a family,” doubted Stella, looking around.

“Correct, Miss Campbell. The solar of Iverson is no longer in its original configuration. It was partitioned off, probably sometime in the late seventeenth century. The remaining portion of it,” he gestured toward the wall with the slate, “was converted into private quarters for the dukes and duchesses of Idylling.”

We all pricked up our ears at that. The conjugal room of all those dukes, just beyond our slate? Only a layer of stones—and perhaps a secret tunnel—between us and a marital bed?

Malinda and Caroline jostled each other, snickering. Pale Lillian had blotches of pink spreading up her throat.

“If you please, sir,” said Sophia sweetly, covering the snickers, “who stays there now?”

Likely Mrs. Westcliffe. She might not be a duchess or even a baroness, but there was no question about her rule.

Yet the professor surprised me.

“No one,” he answered, curt. “No one has occupied those quarters in years. They are locked off.”

“Why?” asked Mittie.

“It is the wish of the current duke. And that is all I know on the subject, so kindly don't request that we venture into them. We will not. However, there are many, many other fascinating facts about Iverson to explore. Come along.”

He led us out of the room, talking all the while. I hung at the back of the crowd, as usual. I'd found I liked skulking behind the rest of the girls. It gave me the opportunity to disguise myself in their shadows. To the teachers I appeared proximate enough to be part of their group. The truth could be glimpsed only in the shifting, untouched space that stretched from the hems of their skirts to mine, never closing.

Good enough.

Everyone has a favorite something, and on that day I discovered that Professor Tilbury's was castles. The eight of us trailed behind him in our sluggish, uneven line, but he was so enraptured with his subject he never noticed our dragging feet; he practically danced a wee gnome dance ahead of us.

We learned about great halls and granaries, moats and bowers. A buttery was not, as might be assumed, a place where butter was produced. But the kitchen hearth might, as would be assumed, be large enough to roast a pair of oxen for the great lord's pleasure, should the need arise.

Oxen. We snaked only briefly through the kitchens, disrupting the hectic rhythm of the workers there, to their silent, tucked-chin displeasure. I saw Gladys arranging forks and white doilies on trays. Almeda was fussing over a cabinet of linens, snowy starched piles folded and stacked one atop another, towers of white.

A stink of blood and fried onions hung hot in the air. One entire counter was heaped with oozy plucked chickens; a sweaty brown-haired girl of about twelve was the plucker. Sticky bits of feathers dotted her apron and arms.

Everyone stopped what they were doing as we passed, dropping into half bows or curtsies, which my classmates regally ignored.

Only Gladys lifted her eyes to mine when I walked by. Her mouth hardened, taking on a scornful slant. I could tell exactly what she was thinking:
Just you wait, governess.

It shamed me for some reason. I don't know why. My world was a hidden blossom of gold and Jesse and the promise of searing magic, but through no fault of her own, stick-skinny Gladys would likely only ever be what she was right this minute. A servant.

I dropped my gaze from hers. For the rest of the tour of the kitchens, I kept it fixed to the floor, stepping over errant feathers.

Frankly, even before Tilbury's outing I'd experienced rather enough of Iverson's unspoken motto of
We few versus the masses.
The jolt of coming from Blisshaven to this cool and sparkling place had been shock enough for me.

I heard sighs of relief from both sides of the Great Class Divide when our tour snaked out the kitchen doors again.

Upward we climbed. Flying buttresses. Lacy Gothic wings of marble arching over us, fantastical and airy enough for an angel's delight. I began to sense that peering at the minutia of Iverson was like peering at a slice of petrified tree. Every ring from the past had been crystallized in situ, held frozen in place for all time. Had there ever been any real changes, they were unseen, fissures invisible to my naked, untrained eye.

Anything new was simply rough bark on its way to transforming into stone.

It
would
petrify. Give it time.

We ended our tour at the tip-top of the keep, emerging from a winding, enclosed set of stairs to the relative brightness of a section of the roof.

It was flat and scalloped with stones along the edge, designed for protection. For archers to run along and duck behind.

“Note the relatively small size of the merlons,” Tilbury enthused over the gusting wind. “Imagine fitting oneself against this sole slab of limestone between taking shots, knowing that it is all that stands between you and a very messy death. There are pockmarks still discernible on Iverson's outer walls, even after all these centuries.”

Mittie had hugged her arms around herself and was giving off fake shivers.

“I think it's perfectly dreadful,” she complained to no one in particular. “We shouldn't have to see such things. We're ladies, not beastly knights or soldiers.”

“Ladies of the castle were not immune from the fight,” countered Tilbury, as the wind lashed his hair into wild white spikes. “Should the men fall, or should they have been on a quest elsewhere when the attack commenced, the womenfolk would defend the fortress.”

“I should've
never,
” gasped Mittie. “How very
ple
beian!”

Sophia snorted. “Then you'd have been slaughtered. Or worse. Isn't that so, Professor?”

“Indeed.” Tilbury squinted at the pair of them, then at the rest of us. He blinked a few times, apparently just now grasping where the conversation was headed. “But let us reflect more on the bravery of such souls rather than the outcomes. It happens that, despite numerous attempts, Iverson was never completely overrun, not once. So the gentlewomen who dwelled here surely led lives of uncommon fulfillment… .”

I stopped listening. I walked away from the others to the edge nearest me and let my hand slide lightly along the border of a hiding-stone, feeling for pocks. The rock was cold and chipped, whether from invaders' arrows or time, I could not tell.

The channel opened before me in a wide, flat spread of navy chopped with froth and melting into forever. Even beneath the clouds, it was beautiful. More than beautiful.

It was … touchable. The high wind as well, now a tangible thing, thick as pudding. It filled my mouth and nose and ears, rushed into my senses. I leaned forward into it, testing its resistance.

I was certain,
certain
, I could raise my arms—a goddess of sea and sky, celebrating her reign—and allow the wind to lift me. And I'd be safe. I would not fall.

After all, I'd done it before, hadn't I? I'd forgotten about it—forgotten on purpose, let the grimy haze of my London life smear away the memory. Or perhaps it had been only a dream … but surely I'd stood like this before, tilted out over an abyss. If it
had
been a dream, it seemed so
real.