Shana Abe - The Deepest Night

But his words only sting. No. No, you left, and now I’m alone! I’ll always be alone.

there is no shame in being alone. if this is the path you choose, lora, there is no shame. but there are more fates now than yours and mine to consider. there is one of your own beyond this place. he’s trapped and in pain, much as you are here. will you leave him to his suffering?

The air tastes of copper. The Machine has reached a whine that means it is ready. I know that whine, that particular pitch. It has scored me in ways I will never be able to heal.

A doctor’s hand reaches for the lever. I look desperately at Jesse, who straightens and sends me one last smile.

dragon-girl. feel free to hit him hard, he says, and the lever is thrown and everything goes red.

I jerked awake. Jesse’s hand was still at my cheek, caressing.

“Jes—”

The hand slipped from my cheek to the collar of my nightshirt, to the first button at my breastbone, already undone.

“Eleanore,” rumbled a voice, and the feather mattress sank with the weight of the person at its edge.

I sat up and struck out in one swift motion, my fist connecting with something fleshy that crunched.

Lieutenant Clayworth gave a cry and fell off the bed. Across the hallway, his aunt’s snoring sputtered, stopped—then resumed.

Laurence had landed on his backside, both hands cupped to his nose. I flipped back the covers and leapt to the floor, ready to hit him again.

“What the hell … ?”

I believe that’s what he said. It was pretty garbled from behind his fingers.

“Are you lost?” I whispered, unmoving. “Perhaps searching for a chambermaid up for a tumble?”

“I thought you were up for a tumble,” he growled, coming to his feet.

“Yes. Because we got on so splendidly this evening, didn’t we?”

Laurence lowered his hands, examining the blood that I could not see but could definitely smell.

I’d learned dancing and deportment at Iverson. At Blisshaven I’d learned how to punch: do it fast, do it hard, keep your thumb tucked and your wrist straight. Don’t run away unless you have to. Make damned sure you win, because if you don’t, you’ll be watching your back for weeks.

“You’re a ruddy bitch, you know that?”

“And you’re a ruddy cad. I know you must know that. The only reason you’re in my room is because you think I’m Armand’s summer dalliance. That makes me fair game, eh?”

He leered at me, ugly. “Why should he have all the fun?”

“Because he’s your friend, you jackass.”

“What’s the matter? Don’t you want to give it a go with a real man? I’m not some blighter too afraid to enlist. I’m an officer, Eleanore. I’m out there fighting for us.”

Some blighter too afraid to enlist. He meant Armand.

“Try it with me,” Laurence cajoled, sidling closer. “Try it with someone sane. I’ll make it ever so good for you, I swear.”

My body went to ice. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“Or we can get as deranged as you want.” He kept inching toward me. “If that’s what you fancy. Howling mad, if that’s what—”

“You think he’s mad. You think Armand’s mad?”

“Can’t blame him if he’s off his onion. Look at his parents. Anyway, better mad than a coward.”

“You rotter,” I breathed. “You stinking, prissed-up, preening bastard. You don’t know anything about him!”

“I know what people say.”

“People like you. People who’ve never even been to the front, I’d bet, who’d piss themselves with fear in a real battle. You’re more someone’s secretary than an actual fighting man, am I right? Rich boy like you, no need to get your hands dirty.”

He surged toward me. “Shut up, bitch.”

Dragon reflexes, dragon strength—I hit him again. It was easy. He didn’t even have time to flinch as my arm came up.

He didn’t land on the floor this time. But there was a lot more blood.

“You’re going to leave this place,” I told him, very quiet. “You’re going to leave first thing in the morning, before breakfast. If you don’t, I’ll tell Armand everything. Let him realize what a great friend you are.”

“Like he’d believe a slut like you—”

Something happened then, something I didn’t understand at first. There was a flash of light, silvery purplish, very bright. It showed me Laurence’s face and the blood smeared down his nose and lips, the walls behind him and the furniture and curtains. Everything intensely sharp and clear.

And in that split second of light, I saw myself reflected in his pupils, shining there, frozen. I saw a radiant-eyed monster caged inside a girl.

A Thing within me shifted. A Thing that was huge and twisting and hungry, rippling beneath my skin.

“Go away,” I said. It came out strangled, hoarse. “Don’t ever come back.”

He backed up, one step, two, three—and then he was scrambling for the door. He ran down the hallway to the exact rhythm of Aunt Lottie’s snores.

I stood there, my hands still fisted, ready to strike again at something. Anything. The rippling, twisting Thing shuddered through me, growing stronger, eating into my marrow. My skin felt too tight and my heart was hammering, boom-boom-boomboomboomboom, wild and fast as a hummingbird’s.

I was panting. I was fever, I was ice. I was running to the closest window, shoving apart the heavy curtains. My fingers found the twin locks on the hinge and yanked, once, twice, until one released and the other broke apart in my hand.

I pushed at the glass. It opened just in time, air scented of night and mist bathing my face, and then I Turned to smoke and shot out into the dark like an arrow unloosed from the depths of hell.

Seconds later, the next Turn overtook me.

The one that uncaged the beast. The one that made me into a dragon.

I’ve mentioned that I wasn’t very good at the Turns, haven’t I?

I materialized upside down. Falling. My wings unfolded and began a frantic flapping. I rolled and managed a drunken veer that had me only just avoiding a collision with a corner of Tranquility’s roof. As it was, my right flank smacked into the leaden gutter, crumpling it like paper, and my tail whipped up and around and took out a row of slate tiles, sending them spinning like tops to the ground.

Better them than me. I flapped harder, gaining altitude. Soon I was flying straight, more or less, and Tranquility was a dollhouse beneath me, and the lawns and meadows and forests fell away, away, a map I no longer had to worry about or follow.

The rage that had driven me here, the feral anger and fear that had propelled me up into the sky, began to tear apart with the wind. Slivers, shards, blown into insignificance.

I thought, This is me. This is the most honest part of me, if not the very best part.

All those names flung at me recently, beast, bitch, thing, were true. If they were insults, then I would rip them inside out and make them my own. I was all of those words and a ferocious lot more, and right now—in this moment—I was glad for it.

I bared my teeth to the night. My talons clawed at the sky. The hummingbird hammer of my heart gradually calmed, becoming steady and strong, a constant guide.

I found a jet of air and let it snatch me south, opening my wings to it so widely they ached, but it was a good ache. I welcomed the pain.

I was a dragon of gold, by the way. Mostly gold, deep purple at my tips. My scales were glimmering, just as gorgeous as Jesse’s pinecone and flowers, and my tail was barbed and my wings—

My left wing had a hole it, I realized, craning my long neck to see. A bullet hole. Every beat of that wing brought a tiny whistle as the air rushed through. It didn’t hurt, curiously enough, though it looked as if it should.

war wound, sang the stars, watching me as they always did, glinting their rainbow colors, as they always did. war beast, dragon of war, fireheart. welcome back to us.

I faced ahead again. I stretched out my chin and climbed higher, higher, until all I could hear was my heart in my ears, and all I could fathom was the endless sapphire line between heaven and earth, ocean and night, and the slim golden thread of me tearing a path between them.

“This is most irregular.”

Aunt Lottie frowned at the note the butler had handed her, the black pudding and poached eggs she’d been served slowly congealing into a single, oozy glob on her plate. She adjusted her spectacles and held the note closer, perhaps hoping for less irregularity via a shorter distance from the paper to her nose.

“Most irregular indeed,” she huffed.

It was breakfast, a glorious full English breakfast, and for all of the massive sideboard jam-packed with platters of food, there were only three of us to dine. At the head of the table sat Armand, with Lottie to his right and me to his left. The rest of the chairs were empty, but like everything else about Tranquility, the table was huge. I’d wager forty more people could easily tuck in.

Forty orphans from the Home. I looked down the table and imagined them there, in the high-backed, buffed wooden chairs that all had carved lions for the arms, fidgeting and blowing their noses in the napkins, destroying the careful code of flatware arranged around the china, smudging the wax on the table with grubby fingers and sweaty palms. All wide eyes and growling stomachs and out-and-out disbelief, because, like me, not a single one of them would have been able to fantasize themselves from Blisshaven into this room, before this feast of eggs and fresh fruit and pickled fish and toast and hash and meat, meat, meat.