Shana Abe - The Sweetest Dark

“I must say, it wasn’t swill.”

We broke through a cluster of prattling sixth-years heading the other way, parting them like sharks moving through minnows.

“I didn’t know we were allowed to have any,” I said.

“Mercy! If you feel the need to ask permission for every little adventure, what a tedious life you’re going to lead.”

“True,” I agreed, matching her drawl. “The absolutely last thing I would want is to lead a tedious life.”

“Well, naturally. I mean, for a girl like you, life has likely had its little excitements already. You’ve come from some hovel near Cheapside, I presume. Some dreadfully squalid place. And now you’re here. You should have tried the champagne is all I’m saying. You would have quite enjoyed it.”

“Perhaps Lord Armand will smuggle some in for tea,” I snapped. To my surprise, Sophia turned and regarded me with sparkling eyes.

“Wouldn’t that be marvelous? I wager he would, if you asked him.”

I laughed, uncomfortable. “Not likely.”

“You’ll never know until you try. It’d be such the coup.”

We’d reached the library. I walked purposefully up to the nearest set of shelves, hoping to shake her from my heels, and pretended to study the titles.

The Ladies of Leicester’s Guide to Successful Housekeeping, 1906.

Charts of the Principal Cities of the World, Including Railroad and Telegraph Lines.

One Hundred Uses for Pigs.

Sophia had lingered at my side, very much unshaken. She leaned her back against the shelves and twirled a strand of flaxen hair around one finger. “You are, after all, Armand’s inamorata of the moment.”

I gave up on the titles. “I’m his what?”

“Inamorata. It means lover.”

“I know what it means.”

She took in my face and slanted a smile. “Dear me. Have I offended you?”

“Only by your ignorance. I’m not his lover. I’m not—anyone’s anything.”

“But you could be, if you wished it. If you looked at him the way he looks at you …”

“You’re imagining things.”

“I’m not. Everyone’s noticed.”

“What does it matter to you?” I flashed.

Sophia’s smile faded; she gazed at me thoughtfully. “It matters to Chloe. Isn’t that enough?”

I glanced around the room. Lillian and Stella were watching us from a table by a window, worry etched along their mouths. Mittie and Caroline stood taut nearby. What was their queen bee doing talking to the worker drone?

I smiled back at Sophia, pleased to etch their worry a shade deeper.

“You’re right. It’s enough.”

“I like you, Eleanore,” she said, straightening. “Believe me, I’m just as astounded by that as you are.” She took a couple of steps toward the others, then paused, sending me a pale-blue look from over her shoulder. “But my head is not tiny.”

...

I laid back against the smooth clamminess of the embankment. Water purled near my feet, the sound a balm against my skin. Without the light of a lantern—I hadn’t chanced carrying one—the entire cavern glowed with its unearthly cool light, as if the moon had sunk to the bottom of the sea and now shone upward at me, silvery and serene.

Better. Much better here. Even the press of stone against the back of my head and shoulder blades didn’t bother me. It felt like relief.

I could try to become smoke again, I realized. I didn’t need Jesse for that. Did I?

As soon as I thought it, the itching returned, ten times worse than before.

“All right,” I said aloud.

… right-right-right …

“Smoke,” I whispered, staring hard at the stalactite directly above me. “Smoke.”

Graceful and thin. Weightless. Less than air, less than …

It happened.

And once again it happened without pain and before I could fully even take it in. One second the stalactite loomed over me; the next I was sliding sideways toward it, rising in curls. No more itch, no more gravity. No more Eleanore, just the outline of my clothing below me, still laid out on the stone.

I wanted to laugh. I wanted to dance! I could see myself, how I’d become like vapor. I could control—mostly control—all the tendrils of me. My density.

I heard that celestial song beckoning again from beyond the roof of the cavern, the summoning of the stars, and I ached to reach them. I coiled and tumbled, wrapped around the fangs of rocks, and searched for a fissure to slip through. I was going to fly so, so far away—

The hidden door inside the grotto creaked open. The boy who stepped through it wasn’t Jesse but Armand Louis.

I churned in place for a moment in confusion, concealed in the toothy pattern of the ceiling.

Armand, not Jesse. Armand, who’d spoken to me once about the grotto, who was likely the only other person alive who knew the secrets of the castle as well as Jesse did.

He saw my garments straightaway, crossed to them, and bent down, lifting my blouse in his hands. I wouldn’t suppose him to think they belonged to anyone but me. He’d seen me wearing them at least twice before, and the mud brown of Blisshaven was distinctive.

The golden flowers of my cuff gleamed up at me like a smile.

“Eleanore?” he called, looking around. But the grotto was echoing and empty. There wasn’t exactly anywhere to hide.

“Eleanore!”

He was searching the water now, so close to the end of the embankment, his shoes were getting wet.

I’m not here, I thought, frantic. Don’t look up; go get help, just go, just leave, so I can come down and get my things.

He was stripping off his coat and then his waistcoat. He was yanking at the laces of his shoes.

Yes! That could work! I could assume my human body again while he was underwater, snatch up my clothes and boots, and dash for the tunnel—

Yet it was only my second time transforming to smoke, and it appeared there were aspects of it I hadn’t precisely mastered. As Armand pulled off his first shoe, I began to thicken.

I could not prevent it. I could not slow it. And I didn’t even make it down to the ground before I was a girl again. I dropped from the ceiling with my arms and legs flailing, a surprised yelp wrung from my throat, and hit the water hard.

It seems almost unnecessary to mention that I was never taught how to swim.

I knew to hold my breath but not to close my eyes. It turned out that saltwater stings.

I was a fish without fins, sunk into the deep. I was engulfed in silver glow and bubbles and treacherous, looming chunks of pillars and craggy island stone. I was flailing still, unable to manage anything else, my body smacking against one of those huge ancient columns, scraping off muck.

Then there was a frothing of more bubbles, and a new shape was beside me. Armand, fleet as an arrow, grabbing me by the hair and then the shoulders. I clung to him and tried to breathe too soon when we broke the surface together, so I ended up inhaling mostly water.

He got me to the embankment, I’ll say that for him.

My fingers fumbled along the slick stone but couldn’t find a hold. Armand’s hands had become a painful pressure against my rib cage, but no matter how hard he pushed at me, I couldn’t do it. We were both flailing now.

Then, a miracle. Jesse was there, hauling me up to my feet, twirling us both about so that he stood between Armand and me.

I held on to him because my legs felt weak. I dropped my head to his shoulder because I was still heaving for air. I was naked and made of rubber and my hair was a long wet river draped along Jesse’s arm, and I wasn’t about to try to move anywhere else.

You can envision how it looked.

“Don’t,” Armand spat, pulling himself up atop the embankment with no apparent effort. I raised my head to see him better. He was pushing his hair out of his eyes and glaring at Jesse, his face white with rage. “Don’t you touch her!”

He was at us at once. At Jesse, I mean. He was shoving himself between us, trying to pull me away.

“No,” I rasped, holding on tight. “Let go, Armand! Let go!”

Jesse hadn’t released me, nor had he defended himself. He simply lifted a hand to Armand, grabbed him by the sleeve, and said a single word.

“Stop.”

And Armand did. He stood there dripping and panting, his gaze raking us both. Then he jerked his arm free.

“So this is how it is. This is what you’re about, Eleanore? This is what you like?”

“Don’t be smutty! It’s not what you think.”

“Actually, it is,” said Jesse.

Armand took a surging step toward us again. “Bugger you, Holms, and—what? What the hell? You can speak?”

I looked up at Jesse, who glanced down at me and offered a grave hint of a smile.

“What have you done?” I whispered.

“Right.” Armand was still furious. “What the bloody hell have you done, you lying bastard?”

“Not what you suppose, mate. Not yet, anyway.”

That was the barb that hit its mark. Jesse said it and instantly something in Armand shifted. It was real and utterly unmistakable: He was standing right there next to us, so close I could feel his exhalation on my neck, and that connection that had always existed between the two of us frosted into deathly ice.

“Get your hands off her,” he said, very quiet, very composed. “Or I swear I’ll kill you.”

Jesse met his eyes, then gave a nod. “You’re not going to kill me, Lord Armand. But I’m going to give Lora my coat now, so take a breath, and take a step back.”