Shana Abe - The Sweetest Dark

“Do you mean … I did it?” I asked. “I made him figure it out? What he is?”

Jesse gave me an assessing look. “Like is drawn to like. We’re all three of us thick with magic now, even if it’s different kinds. It’s inevitable that we’ll feed off one another. The only way to prevent that would be to separate. And even then it might not be enough. Too much has already begun.”

“I don’t want to separate from you,” I said.

“No.” Jesse lifted our hands and gave mine a kiss. “Don’t worry about that.”

Armand practically rolled his eyes. “If you two are quite done, might we talk some sense tonight? It’s late, I’m tired, and your ruddy chair, Holms, is about as comfortable as sitting on a tack. I want to …”

But his voice only faded into silence. He closed his eyes and raised a hand to his face and squeezed the bridge of his nose. I noted again those shining nails. The elegance of his bones beneath his flawless skin.

Skin that was marble-pale, I realized. Just like mine.

“Yes?” I said, more gently than I’d intended.

“Excuse me. I’m finding this all a bit … impossible to process. I’m beginning to believe that this is the most profoundly unpleasant dream I’ve ever been caught in.”

“Allow me to assure you that you’re awake, Lord Armand,” I retorted, all gentleness gone. “To wit: You hear music no one else does. Distinctive music from gemstones and all sorts of metals. That day I played the piano at Tranquility, I was playing your father’s ruby song, one you must have heard exactly as I did. Exactly as your mother would have. You also have, perhaps, something like a voice inside you. Something specific and base, stronger than instinct, hopeless to ignore. Animals distrust you. You might even dream of smoke or flying.”

He dropped his arm. “You got that from the diary.”

“No, I got that from my own life. And damned lucky you are to have been brought into this world as a pampered little prince instead of spending your childhood being like this and still having to fend for yourself, as I did.”

“Right. Lucky me.” Armand looked at Jesse, his eyes glittering. “And what are you? Another dragon? A gargoyle, perchance, or a werecat?”

“Jesse is a star.”

The hand went up to conceal his face again. “Of course he is. The. Most. Unpleasant. Dream. Ever.”

I separated my hand from Jesse’s, angling for more bread. “I think you’re going to have to show him.”

“Aye.”

A single blue eye blinked open between Armand’s fingers. “Show me what?”

...

He must have known this moment was near, because only this morning he’d gotten up in time to venture out to the back meadow, where lush knots of foxtail and buttercups nodded through the grasses. By the light of dawn he’d picked a dewed bouquet—he’d thought for Lora—and brought it back to the cottage.

It rested now in his mother’s green glass vase on the sill of his bedroom window, all the dew dried, fragrance sowing wild and heady into the blankets and pillows of his bed.

Too much to hope, it seemed, that he could have shown it to his dragon-girl in there.

Jesse beheaded one of the buttercups, brought it to the table where the two of them waited, Lora with her hair down and her gaze steady on his, still chewing her slice of bread. A smudge of jam traced an endearing curve along the bottom of her lip.

And Armand, leashed but so coiled inside, looking absolutely as if he’d rather be anywhere else in the world right now than here with the two of them.

You and me both, mate, Jesse thought.

He uncurled his fingers to reveal the buttercup in his palm. Armand’s gaze flicked to the flower, but that was all. Lora, who knew what was imminent, wiped at the jam, closed her eyes, and turned her face away.

He would never, ever let her down. Jesse steeled himself, opened his soul to the fire, and let the agony come.

...

“A star,” Eleanore said once more, after the light had faded and Mandy had gotten his vision back.

He’d shoved away from the table without being aware of it; his chair now laid on its side by his feet. Holms no longer had that brilliant, horrifying glow that had blinded Armand, that had seemed to boil his blood to a peak and send his mind into a fierce frantic babble: It can’t be, it can’t, it cannot be.

“Dragon protects star,” Eleanore announced coolly from her place across the table, her half-eaten bread pinched between two fingers. “Star adores dragon. And now you can’t betray us.”

...

Like a dazzling reminder of the impossible made possible, the golden buttercup shone upon the table, lucent metal against the duller wood. Armand couldn’t seem to stop staring at it, even as we talked about the letters. Even though he’d held it in his hands and turned it over and over, searching for the hoax that wasn’t there.

The metal buttercup sang a metal song now, and it was clear both of us heard it. A very pretty song, too, jingling soft as fairy bells beneath our conversation.

I’d definitely remember to slip it into my pocket before I left. Armand probably had mountains of gold stashed away somewhere inside his mansion, anyway.

“I knew it was your mother’s side,” Jesse was saying, perusing one of the letters, “but I didn’t know how far back it went. These are over a hundred years old. That’s, say, four or five generations. Possibly even six. And for each generation, they could have passed through either the matriarchal line or the paternal. It’s astonishing your mother had them at all.”

“But who was the author?” I asked. “Who was Rue?”

“No idea.” Armand ran a hand through his hair. “Reginald hasn’t been too keen to talk about my mum or her family. I do know she was the only child of a baron and that her parents, my grandparents, died right before the marriage. He mentioned once that their estate was sold off, taxes or something. And it seems that Rue was a member of the nobility, whoever she was. It’s signed M. of L. in each. That’s how titles were disguised from the public in the news back then, the dailies and such. So maybe she was still wary enough of this ‘tribe’ to hide her true name.”

“And that of your ancestor.” I tapped my finger to one of the sheets. “Or someone was, since she dictated it. That might be why there are no other proper names besides Kit, and no envelopes.”

“M could only stand for Marchioness. Surely not too difficult to track down. We’ve a copy of Standish’s Peerage of the Empire back at Tranquility. I think it traces lines back past the fifteenth century.”

“Unless your Rue wasn’t of the empire,” Jesse pointed out.

“Or she fabricated it,” I added. “That’s what I would have done, if I’d truly wanted your line kept hidden.”

Armand dropped his head into his hands and made a sound like a groan. “If I wasn’t barmy already, I’m going to be.”

From somewhere in Jesse’s bedroom, a clock gave a single chime.

“It’s half past three,” he said abruptly, standing. “You need to get home, both of you. Louis, I’d like to keep the letters here, if you don’t mind. I want to go over them again.”

I came to my feet. “And ask the stars about them?”

Jesse nodded. Armand only shook his head, gloomy. There were bruises under his eyes that hadn’t been there yesterday.

“Ask the–fine. Splendid. Keep them if you like. Burn them. Turn them to gold or silver or lead. In the morning I’ll wake up and none of this will have happened.”

“No, lordling,” I said to him. “You’re never going to wake like that again, and you’re never going to be able to forget.”

“Bugger you, waif.”

“And you.”

He walked past both of us without another glance or another word, opened the door, and disappeared into the night.

I went to Jesse and wrapped my arms around him. After only a second’s hesitation, his arms lifted to embrace me, too.

“I don’t want to go,” I whispered.

I felt his chest expand beneath my cheek. “This is going to be much more difficult than I anticipated.”

“Which part?”

“All of it.” He brought a hand to my hair, his fingers weaving through. “Things are about to change rapidly now, Lora. He’ll come back to us stronger and stronger. He’s going to crave you more and more, and not having you will eat him raw.”

I frowned up at him. “What do you mean?”

Jesse tucked a strand behind my ear, his eyes emerald dark, his lashes tipped with candlelight. “It will be in his nature. He’ll feel compelled to claim you, and he won’t stop trying to do that. Ever. When that happens—”

“That is not bloody going to happen.”

“When that happens,” he said again resolutely, “I want you to remember two things. One: I’ve loved you since before he even knew you lived. Two: Spare a little pity for him. This isn’t entirely his fault. He was born into his role, just as you and I were. But, Lora-of-the-moon–only a little pity, all right?”

“My pity may reach as deep and wide as the ocean,” I answered. “But my heart is already claimed.”

To prove it, I clutched his shirt and lifted myself to my toes and brought my lips to his.

Sweeter than raspberry jam, warmer than candle flame, softer than bread.

People often spoke with religious rapture of milk and honey, but if I had nothing but Jesse to consume for the rest of my days, I’d die a heathen beast, content.

Monday dragged on. The lack of sleep I’d been accumulating over the past week or so was creeping up on me. I fell asleep in my chair during Vachon’s lesson in the ballroom, listening to Caroline struggle to add some brio to her Rossini.