The Sweetest Dark (24 page)

“Have you ever wondered,” Armand said, “if anything around you is really real? What if it's all made up? What if all this is just my mind playing tricks? Dragons and smoke and bloody gold stars. What if you're an illusion, Eleanore? Wishful thinking?”

I couldn't help my laugh. “Do you truly suppose you'd wish for me?”

His lips tightened. He shook his head, squinting out, and I knew I'd said the wrong thing. His knuckles had gone white on the railing.

“I want to show you something.” Still clutching my hat and pins, I pushed back the cuff of my sleeve, lifted my arm before him so that my wrist showed. “Do you see that? That scar?”

Armand tossed the other champagne glass overboard—it whistled end over end before making its splash—then used both hands to bring my arm closer. “No … wait. Yes.” He looked up. “What's it from?”

I said, very steady, “That's what happens when you tell other people about the foolish things that live in your head. When you begin to wonder aloud about illusions and reality to those around you, when you have none of the power and they have it all. You become dangerous to them. You're a threat, even if you're only a child. We hear the songs. They don't. But they're right and we're wrong, and when they strap you into the electrical-shock machine, they use these leather restraints, see, and they strap you in hard because they know that when the lightning shoots through your body, you're going to buck and scream. So they gag you, a special gag so you don't bite off your tongue. And you jolt against the board, and the leather binding your wrists and ankles cuts into you until it's actually red with blood.
Red
red, always stiff. And that is why, Armand, you should shut the hell up about the nature of illusions. Forever.”

His face had gone, if possible, even paler than before. There was none of the horror I'd expected to see; I'd been trying to provoke it, because horror was more tolerable than compassion. But, once again, Armand did the unexpected. He bent his head and pressed his lips to the inside of my wrist, right up against the scar and my hammering pulse.

My fingers opened. The pins clattered to the deck and my hat floated free. Out to sea.

“I hope the Germans get them,” I said. “I hope they blow that place to hell along with everyone in it.”

“I hope it, too,” he said.

...

The rains did catch up with us, but not before a group of the linen gentlemen had a chance to cast their lines off the back of the yacht. That was about all they did with them, too. They stood in the shade with their drinks and laughed and told jokes while three of the servants sweated and baited the hooks and minded the nets and everything else, calling, “Here, sir, if you please,” should any of the strings hitch.

Then the gentleman in question would come up, grab the pole, and reel in his fish. Easy as pie—for them, at least.

The sky began to lower upon us. The clouds simmered black and grim. From a place that seemed not all that remote, lightning flashed and the thunder that accompanied it rolled in a deafening
boom!
across the waves.

The yacht started turning about. Everyone was packing it in, but then one of the lines snapped hard, lifting up from its dragging angle.

“Sir! Sir!” summoned the servant, and a man bustled up to take over the rod.

He couldn't spin the reel against it, whatever it was. Even with the manservant struggling to help, it wasn't working. In the white wake of the boat, the creature fought ferociously for its life, thrashing and twisting, trying to break free.

It took three men and a brace to reel it in. Two men to net it. There were cries of excitement and hands thumping backs in congratulations, and all the cheery fellows shouting, “A shark! A shark, by gad!” as it spasmed on the deck and gradually bled to death in the confusion of netting. Before it was completely lifeless, they hoisted it up by its tail on a hook and let it hang upside down while they all postured by it, still grinning.

I stood far back from the commotion; Armand had become swallowed in the crowd. I don't know how, I don't even know if it was true, but I felt that shark's dying gaze, its cold flat eye fixed on me.

I couldn't look away from it, all the blood and silver skin. An unspeakable thought had entered my mind and it would not leave.

This is what they do to monsters. This is what they'd do to me.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Try thinking about something else after witnessing that.

I couldn't.

We'd landed back at the wharf in the pouring rain. I'd been driven back to Iverson in the pouring rain. I'd dragged myself out of the motorcar, along the driveway, wrenched open the castle doors, all through the pouring rain, and all I could see the entire time was the gasping death of that fish.

I'd bet that someone was eating it by now. I'd bet they sautéed it in chunks. Chopped off its fins, stewed its head. Tossed its guts to the cats. Hacked free its jaws to mount on a wall, good for drunken reminiscences for years to come.

I buried my face in my pillow. A scream was building within me, but instead of freeing it I dug my fingers into the sheets and pushed it lower and lower into my chest, until it came out as a rasping moan.

Why did you think there aren't any dragons around anymore?
whispered a voice inside me—not the old voice, the familiar fiend, but one of plain ordinary common sense.
What did you think happened to them? That they all died off of old age?

I hadn't thought of it. I hadn't considered it once, to be honest.

But the history of Europe had always included dragons. And knights. And lances. And lots and lots of stabbings through hearts.

I remembered what Rue had written about a
drákon
council and their rules about secrecy. Despite her obvious disdain for them, perhaps those rules had worked somewhere. Perhaps somewhere what was left of her tribe still existed, huddled and human-looking, like me.

But in a bottomless-pit-fearful part of me, I knew it wasn't true.

Don't worry about it. You're not really even a dragon, are you? All you are is a girl who's sometimes smoke. No one's going to stab that.

I sat up. I dragged the pillow to my lap and bit my lip and stared hard into the darkness of my room. I hadn't lit my lamp or candles.

Rain pelted the diamond window.

Just a girl. Just smoke.

It pelted my hands, then my arms as I opened the hinge.

Just an orphan. Just a guttersnipe. A nobody.

“No,” I said out loud. “I'm a dragon.”

For the second time ever, I Turned in the tower and flowed out the window, but I wasn't headed for the stars or even Jesse's cottage. I was going to the far woods, the ones that ended at the cliffs overlooking the sea, where no one lived, and no one worked, and no one would be.

Raindrops shot through me, but they didn't hurt. I might well have been part of the mist that curled up from the ferns and grass, that reached wraithlike arms up through the boughs. I skimmed lower and lower until I
was
the same, except that the mist was wet and I was not. Smoke is always dry.

I didn't really choose a place to Turn back. I was simply going until I wasn't any longer, vapor until I wasn't, and then I was standing in a small clearing. I was skin now. Definitely getting wet.

I looked up, blinking at the sting of the shower. I took in the clouds and the black crowns of trees encircling me, so much taller than I was. Branches shivered; water plopped to peat. Drenched bark gave off the scent of pungent wet wood. Mud and grass squelched soft between my toes.

I stretched my arms above my head. I tipped back my face to the elements and opened my mouth to drink in the storm.

Now,
I thought, washed clean and cold.
I'm ready now.

Since it was true, it happened.

Smoke came first, but only for a wink of a second, too quick for me to register anything like disappointment. Then smoke transformed into solid shape, and it was not my human one.

I was still standing in the clearing in the grass-threaded mud. Yet I was on four legs, not two. I blinked again at the rain beginning to bead upon my lashes, which had gone thick and were faintly shining. Looking around the clearing, I could tell that I stood higher up than before. Much higher. My neck was slender and long and I could bend it nearly all the way about to take in my body: also slender, also shining.

I was a dragon of gold, as if Jesse had touched me and transmuted me but not taken my life. I was sinuous and covered in lustrous golden scales, all the way almost to the tip of my tail, until they faded into purple.

I had a mane, too, mapping a line down my back. It looked like a ruff of silk or cut velvet. I folded my neck around almost double so that I could rub my chin on it. Silken, yes, but also jagged. Combing my chin through it sent quivers of pleasure down my spine.

Then I saw my wings. They were folded against my back, metallic. Without knowing how I did it, I opened them, using muscles I didn't even have as a person. The ache of moving them for the first time felt delicious; I did it again to fully bask in it.

I had
wings.

I don't know how to describe what I felt then. I was amazed and afraid and boiling feral inside. I slashed my tail through the rain and realized that it was barbed only when I hit an oak tree and got stuck.

No problem. I pulled it out and danced around, delighted at the fresh, gaping hole in the trunk.

My new body came with a weapon. That pleased me.

I recalled my worry about my tongue splitting—which seemed beyond funny now; I mean, my tongue was the least visible part of me—and flicked it out to see if that had happened, but I couldn't tell. I could taste the air, though. I could taste everything in it, minerals and salt and fat, fresh rain. Houses miles out. Horses and sheep, dogs and cows and foxes. People.

It was then that I realized that Rue had been wrong about this Turn, too. There was no suffering. There was only wonder.

If I was a monster, then by the stars, I was a glorious one. Jesse had told me once that I was a beast better than any other, and now I knew it to be true. If the shark-hunters or lance-bearers came for me, I'd chew them to chum. Maybe I'd do it, anyway.

I slitted my eyes at the clouds. Just looking at them made me hungry in a way I'd never felt before. Ravenous, but not for food.

For flight.

I crouched down, got ready to spring, and beat my wings.

I made it as far as the treetops before losing control and crashing back to the ground, taking out another oak and a grove of ferns.

I tried it again.

Again.

All right. Flying was turning out to be stickier than the Turn, but that was fine, too, because I had the rest of my life to practice.

I settled into the mud and examined my talons. Shiny gold, sharp as razors, and I could dig them as deep as I wanted into the flesh of the earth.

I smiled, or tried to. I laughed, but no sound came out.

I flipped around and rolled in the mess of the clearing, ripping out what was left of the grass, getting filthy, feeling as gleeful as I'd ever been. When I decided to stop, I was panting, sated somehow, so I stretched out my neck and rested my chin in the mire and let my eyelids sink not-quite closed.

Only then did they emerge. Two boys, their faces sketched ashen in the dark, both of them in slickers. They approached me from opposite sides of the clearing with oddly identical gaits: halting, cautious, moving sort of crablike sideways with a palm held out in front of them—as if to ward off my temper, which to my mind was a very good thing.

The blond one reached me first. He touched me carefully on the neck. His hand felt like cool fire.

I opened my eyes all the way again, studying him.

Then the brown-haired one, still mimicking the other. Another hand on me, higher up, though, and his palm felt like pure heat.

“Lora.” Jesse smiled. “Lora-of-the-moon.”

“Good God,” whispered Armand.

And with that, I Turned back into the schoolgirl they both knew, only one standing nude in the mud.

...

I thought I'd at least have the filth of my roll left covering me, but apparently when I Turned, I went stark clean.

Jesse got his slicker off first. The sleeves flopped past my hands and the hood obscured half my face.

“How did you know?” I asked, pushing back the hood.

Jesse only smiled again.

Armand said, “You—you called me.”

He sounded bewildered. Even wearing his raincoat, he looked like he'd gone for a swim in a sea of debris. I brushed a soggy clump of leaves from his shoulder.

“No, I didn't.”

“I heard you. I heard you clear as anything.”

“Yes,” agreed Jesse, as the rain flattened his hair and turned his shirt translucent. “I heard you, too.”

“I didn't call either of you,” I insisted. “I don't know what you mean.”

Armand scowled. “I was in bed, and I heard you say my name. Like you were right there in the room with me. And then I …”

“What?”

“He was pulled,” Jesse finished when Armand didn't. “Just as I was. Pulled out here by instinct to this place to be with you. To witness what you had become.”

What
I had become. I was a
what
now. I pressed both my hands over my heart, feeling its reassuring beat. Humanlike.

Jesse touched his lips to my cheek. “I told you I would be with you when it happened,” he said softly. “Well done.”

“Yes,” said Armand, hollow. “Congratulations.”

I went to my knees. I didn't want to, and as soon as I started to buckle, they each had me by an arm, but I still went down. Slowly, irrevocably, into the squishy suck of mud that didn't seem nearly as wonderful now as it had a few minutes past.

“Did you eat?” Jesse asked, just as Armand said, “Are you going to faint?”

“No, and no.” I pulled until both my arms were released, then lay back on the ground. Rain on my face, pooling in the corners of my eyes. If there were a few hot tears mingled in there, the pair of shadows leaning over me wouldn't be able to tell.

“Jesse,” I said. “Are there any more dragons left on the planet besides me?”

“There's bloody
me,
” Armand interjected. But he knew that wasn't what I meant and shot a look at Jesse, as well, expectant.

Jesse came down into a squat at my side. “I don't know. I'm sorry. Sorry to both of you. But I honestly don't. If there are … I don't feel them. Not like I did you.”

I swiped at my eyes and asked the question I'd never allowed past my lips before. “What about my parents?”

“No,” he answered, a single word with oceans of meaning.

No. Of course not. Because if they'd been alive, they would have found me by now, wouldn't they? If Jesse could summon me, if Armand could awaken to his powers through me, then certainly the two beings who had given me life would have figured out how to claim me before now. They would not have left me in Blisshaven, abandoned me to Moor Gate, on purpose.

The logical side of me realized I wasn't truly alone. But, oh, right then in the storm and the sludge, logic was useless. Lodged in my heart was a splinter, one that I knew was the death of my parents. The death of my hope for them. So
alone
wasn't even the best word for how I felt.

Left behind.
That was more like it.

My gaze landed on Armand. Like Jesse, he had given up standing to squat beside me. His hood had fallen away. His face dripped with rain.

“Remember that shark?” My lips barely moved. “From the boat?”

I didn't have to explain what I meant. He looked down and away. Nodded.

“Don't do this in front of anyone. Ever,” I said to him. “Don't let them see.”

“For God's sake, Eleanore, I seriously doubt that's going to be an issue. I have no clue how you did … that. I don't know how you spoke to me in my room at Tranquility. I don't know how you go to smoke or flash your eyes like that—”

“Flash my eyes?”

“When you're angry sometimes,” Jesse jumped in. “Or emotional, if you'll forgive the word. Your eyes luminesce. It's very beautiful.”

“I just hear the songs,” Armand said quietly, silvery black raindrops spattering his head and back and shoulders. “And I feel things. That's all.”

“That's how it begins,” I countered. I struggled to get upright again, and once again both of them helped. We stood linked in a row awhile longer, none of us speaking, until Armand dropped my hand and turned away.

“I've got to get the motorcar back before anyone notices. Bribery only goes so far, and I've already used up this quarter's allowance.”

Before either Jesse or I could say anything, he gave a hard shake of his shoulders, like a dog trying to dry its coat, pulled up his hood, and walked back into the blind of the trees.

“He's good at that,” I said.

“Lonely.” Jesse raised his brows at my look. “I can't help it. I feel him now, too.”

I didn't know why
Armand
would feel lonely. At least he had his father, and a brother. And a real home. And probably uncles and aunts and cousins, not to mention all of high society eager to befriend him.

Except for the ones who thought him mad, I supposed. The ones his father had turned against him.

“You should go, too.” Jesse ran a hand down my arm; his palm came away covered with mud. “You'll sleep well tonight, dragon-girl.”

As soon as he said it, I knew it'd be true, because the exhaustion hit me, drained what heat was left from my muscles, and sent me swaying again. But I held my ground.

“What about you?”

“I'll sleep,” he said, coming close, shining with water. He was really, really drenched.

“No. I meant, what about if I sleep with you?”

It was already a night of firsts for me. Why not add another one to the pile? Actually, two: This was the first moment I'd acknowledged to myself that Jesse had been gradually putting a distance between us. Not physically, but in every other way, and I knew I wasn't imagining it. He'd mentored me, he'd fed me, he'd encouraged me and shone the only true light upon my soul that anyone ever had. I belonged to him. Dark wine, dark longings. I'd been his since the moment his fingers had brushed mine that amethyst night by the carriage. Since I'd eaten the orange. Since I'd followed him into the grotto and listened, enraptured, to the legends he'd spun around us both.