“And close your eyes,” I added around clenched teeth, because I’d started to shiver.

He glowered at us a moment longer, then turned his back. Rigid shoulders, ramrod spine, legs apart, spoiling for a fight. If his eyes were closed, I couldn’t tell, but I took advantage of the moment, anyway, as fast as I could.

“I think you should just keep this,” Jesse said to me, again with that smile. He brought the lapels of the peacoat together over my chest. “You can grow into it.”

Armand turned back around. When he spoke again, it was still in that ghastly, deathly voice. “What’s happened to your legs?”

I glanced down. The coat reached to the middle of my thighs; the scratches I’d made last night gleamed a vivid red against the bluish-pale rest of me.

“Did he do that to you?”

“No,” I said. “I did it. I was asleep.”

“Fuck,” said Armand, very clearly, and walked back to his own pile of clothing and shoes. “Get on with whatever you want. I’m leaving.”

“Wait.” I trailed after him. “You can’t tell anyone about this.”

“Can’t I?”

“Armand. Mandy. You can’t tell.”

He slung his coat over a shoulder and smiled at me, but it was a dire smile, as deathly as his voice.

“How charming,” he said, “to hear you say my nickname at last.”

“Please.”

From behind us, Jesse sighed. “It’s no use. It’s time to enlighten him.”

“Oh, are we going for enlightenment now?” Armand’s eyes narrowed; he pushed again at the chestnut hair plastered against his forehead. “Excellent. Here’s some for you both. I’ll have you sacked, Holms, and I might have you expelled, Jones, but I’ve not quite made up my mind about that yet. After he’s gone you might be more in a mood for a toss with me, since it’s clear you’re that sort of girl. All it’s going to take is one quick discussion with my father to end your liaison forever, as no doubt you both know.”

I walked forward. My hand lifted. Before I had realized it happened, I’d struck him, a ladylike slap that would have gotten me mostly jeers back at the orphanage, but I was angry enough to put some force behind it. His head whipped to the side.

Time stopped. None of us moved.

A slow, spiky throbbing began to flood my palm.

Just as slowly, Armand brought his face back to mine. There was my handprint upon him, red on white, just like the scratches along my body.

“You have no idea what you’re set to destroy,” I bit out. “You’re not thinking. You’re acting like a child.”

“Actually,” murmured Jesse, wry, “he’s acting like a drákon.”

We both shifted to stare at him.

“What?” Armand said, a stifled sound.

“What?” I said, much louder.

“Show him, Lora.” Jesse placed a hand on my shoulder. “Show him what you can do.”

I shook my head. Of course I wouldn’t. Of course not. Going to smoke was one of the very best secrets that lived between us. I wasn’t going to add Armand to that.

“Lora. It’s important.”

“He won’t tell on us. I’m sure he won’t—”

“Dragons do not exist,” Armand interrupted, still so white.

“You’ve got to show him.” Jesse held my eyes, sober and determined, love and light behind his gaze. “He must see to know.”

“But—”

“He said dragon, and I said drákon. Didn’t you hear it? In his bones and in his heart, he already grasps the truth. His mind needs to see.”

Armand clenched his fists. He looked from me to Jesse, back to me, and the fear that enveloped him now was strong as stink. “You’re barking mad. Both of you. I won’t listen to this.”

“Oh,” I said, hushed. “Oh.”

Because in that moment, that heavy and wild moment there in the cool moon grotto, with the sea and the rocks and the sparkling walls, I understood what Jesse was telling me but what he had not actually said. I took in Armand’s sharp, unhappy face and saw my handprint again, saw myself.

And everything clicked. Everything sorted out into big, obvious truths. I understood the connection I’d always felt with this reckless son of a duke. I understood his stifling fear. Without me even speaking to him of it, Jesse was confirming that all I’d suspected of Armand and his mother last night was, in fact, real.

 … the true nature of our world is for matters to arrange themselves along the simplest of paths… .

What could be simpler than grouping us all together?

“You don’t have to be afraid,” I said, looking past Jesse to Armand. I tried to smile at him, but my lips felt numb and I don’t know how successful I was; he glared back at me like a cornered animal, desperate to bolt.

Jesse’s fingers tightened on my shoulder, a silent message of reassurance.

“I’m sorry I hit you,” I said, and meant it, right before I went to smoke.

Jesse, I noticed, caught the peacoat before it reached the ground.

...

We met that night in Jesse’s cottage. Armand had wanted us all to go to Tranquility, but Jesse pointed out, correctly, that it was far less risky for Armand and me to steal away to the cottage than it would be for Jesse and me to steal into the manor house.

“You’ve got a staff of—what?—thirty? Thirty-five these days?” Jesse asked. “Lora can’t be found alone with either of us at Tranquility. Her forced departure from the school would be an inconvenience to all of us. But the only person who cleans my home is me.”

I thought personally that if I was able to evaporate quickly enough, it wouldn’t matter who caught me where or what they said. It might even prove amusing.

Oy, guv’nor, she was there and then she turned into bloomin’ smoke, I swears it! Only three pints of ale tonight at supper, guv, I swears!

But I didn’t want to sneak all the way out to Tranquility, so I said nothing.

Armand and I sat across from each other at Jesse’s table. A stack of letters and a diary had been placed in the middle between us. The diary was mostly jaunty and newer, but the letters were very old, combed with very old, spidery writing. Combined, they’d spelled out a message that was nothing short of electrifying.

When I’d finished reading the last page, my fingers were trembling.

Jesse, of course, had noticed. He’d said we could discuss everything after eating and was now moving about in the tidy little kitchen, slicing bread, finding jam. Stoking the coals in the oven into brightness for a kettle and tea. He’d muted his music again and so these small, comforting sounds were the only noises to be heard; thankfully, tonight had a brilliant moon, so the Germans weren’t bombing. Even the crickets were quiet.

It jarred me to see Armand in Jesse’s setting. His dark hair, his intense blue eyes. His posh tailored shirt and high starched collar and clean fingernails. He seemed to just gleam more than either of us. Perhaps that’s what being born into a fortune could do. Polish you up to a shine, light up the world, no matter where you wandered. I expected this was as informal as he ever got, but compared to schoolmiss me and hired-hand Jesse Holms, he was done to the nines.

Even in the half-light of the candles, Lord Armand looked ill-suited to this rustic place, a foreigner discovering himself in a foreign land.

The kettle began to steam. The berry-ripe scent of the jam caught in the vapor, wafted over to me in long, draping coils.

Do you even know how to do that? I wondered, watching Armand from beneath my lashes. Have you ever even had to boil your own water for tea?

I should try to be kinder. He’d had more than a shock today, I knew, and it wasn’t as if I didn’t understand how it felt. But a mean little part of me still smarted over being derided as that sort of girl. If he was uneasy, that part of me was glad.

The brittle cold ice that had frosted inside him, that had connected us in the grotto, had melted. In its place was … I wasn’t sure what. Something new. Something that felt like swords and power. Gleaming, like him.

“What is it?” he muttered, his eyes moving to me. “Why are you staring?”

“I’m not,” I replied. But I felt the blood rise in my cheeks.

Jesse thwacked a plate piled with bread between us, followed by half a brick of butter and a crock of raspberry jam. A knife–the long skinny kind that looked like it should be used for poking things, for digging insects out from tree bark–stuck up from the middle of the red goo.

Armand regarded it all without moving. I reached for the bread.

“How can you eat? After everything, how can you be hungry?”

“I’m always hungry.” I used the knife to smear butter across the bread, and then jam. It was brown bread, sour to the jam’s sweet, but I didn’t care. It tasted superb.

Jesse served the tea, then took the chair beside me. As soon as I was done with the bread, he laced his fingers through mine and brought our joined hands to rest atop the table, in plain sight. Happiness began its tingling spread up my arm.

It wasn’t subtle, but it was clear. Armand leaned back from the light, staring disdainfully at a fixed point beyond us both.

“How long have you known about him?” I asked Jesse, using my free hand to gesture toward his guest.

“Forever. Nearly as long as I did about you.”

“God, Jesse. Why didn’t you say anything?”

“He was a shadow of you.” Jesse shrugged. “His background is diluted, his dragon blood less strong. Even with you in his proximity, I wasn’t certain any of his drákon traits would emerge. He hasn’t anywhere near your potential.”

“Pardon me,” Armand said, freezingly polite, “but he is still right here with you in this room.”