Каарон Уоррен - The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2018 Edition

Thuan stopped, at a loss for words. He laid Kim Cuc on the grass, blinking once, twice, as he knelt by her side, looking for a pulse—feeling it, slow and strong. “Come on, come on,” he muttered.

“She’s alive,” Sare said.

She must have come out of the wing straight in his wake, but he hadn’t heard her. Everything felt… unbearably real, unbearably distant, and he couldn’t seem to process thoughts. Magic flowed from Sare into Kim Cuc. She convulsed, the bruises on her wrists becoming darker. “You—” Thuan said, struggling to speak.

Kim Cuc’s eyes opened. “Thuan? What—what happened?”

“It’s all right. You’re safe.” He could have wept.

“I would advise you not to bring Fallen magic into the House,” Sare said. Her face was smooth once again, emotionless. “Not unless you’re strong enough to use it.”

Thuan looked up. The wing was quiescent once again, the thorns a fading smear of darkness against the door handles. “Sare—”

She wasn’t listening to him: she’d moved, coming to meet an older woman with the same kind of smooth face, wearing a doctor’s white gown over the colors of the House. “Iaris.”

Iaris nodded. “Apologies for the delay. I needed to figure out how to keep this contained.”

“And—?”

“A slip-up,” Iaris said. “My mistake. We hadn’t checked the wards on this wing for a while. It won’t happen again. I’ve set magicians to reinforcing them. We can’t have the House seeking out magic to maintain itself.”

As if they’d care.

“I saw.” Sare closed her eyes. “I saw him. Samariel.”

Iaris’s face tightened. “Samariel is dead. You’d do well to remember this. And whatever you saw is dormant now. Contained, and it will remain so for centuries, God willing.”

“Let’s hope so,” Sare said.

“You all right?” Leila asked Thuan.

Thuan still held Kim Cuc’s hand. She’d fallen back into unconsciousness, looking older than she should, weak and vulnerable and fragile. Any time now, she was going to open her eyes, and make some flippant, sarcastic remark. Any time.

But she didn’t.

“I’m not sure,” he said, finally, to Leila. “I didn’t know you could use magic.”

“You learn things, in the gangs.” Leila squeezed his hand, briefly. “Besides… we’re a team.”

Thuan stifled a bitter laugh. “For the tests? I don’t think these turned out very well.”

“Oh, I don’t know. The éclairs tasted nice, even though they were a bit wet in the middle. I gave mine to Sare, before she entered the wing.”

“You—” Sare hadn’t mentioned this, but why would she? “What did she say?” He didn’t even know what it’d have tasted like, half-made and with the pastry filling falling out of it.

“Nothing,” Leila said. She shrugged. “I know it looked horrible, but we might as well not waste our work.” Her face grew serious again. “This isn’t about tests.”

He stared at her, for a while; thinking of the streets and how lonely they could be. “We are a team,” he said. “Thank you.” He couldn’t give her everything that he wanted, but friendship? The dragon kingdom would surely let him spare that.

Except, of course, that he wouldn’t be able to tell her the truth about who he was, or Kim Cuc would box his ears out. Some friend.

One problem at a time.

Beside them, Iaris and Sare were still talking. “The Court of Birth.” Iaris snorted. “As if that’d have impressed Lord Asmodeus.”

Sare didn’t answer. She was opening and closing the clasp of her pendant. “It might have. Dredging up the past.”

“We’re looking to the future,” Iaris said. “He has plans, believe me.” Her gaze rested, for a moment, on Thuan, moved away. “The mourning period is over.”

“I see.” Sare closed the pendant with an audible click. “Plans. That will be good.”

Plans. Thuan’s ears prickled. But neither Iaris nor Sare appeared ready to discuss further. Of course. Not in front of outsiders.

“Do you want to debrief them, or shall I?” Sare said.

“You can do it,” Iaris said. “Report to me afterwards, will you?”

“Yes,” Sare said. “I will.” Thuan held Kim Cuc’s hand, and said nothing. Sare hadn’t seen anything. He’d barely used any magic, and he’d smooth it over. He’d have been worried in other circumstances: but if she wanted him dead, he’d already be.

“And once the wing is shored up, we’ll have to reschedule the tests.” Iaris sounded annoyed.

“Oh, I don’t think so.” Sare turned, briefly, to look at them. “I know exactly who passed.”

Iaris raised an eyebrow. “That’s… unusual.”

“You have objections?”

“None. It’s your own business, Sare.”

“My responsibility. Yes, I know.”

“So these three?”

Sare shook her head. “Two.”

Two. Leila and him. Thuan looked at Kim Cuc. “Sare—” he said.

“I told you,” Sare said. “Resourcefulness. And strength. I appreciate your loyalty to your friend, but—”

But, from Sare’s point of view, she’d been nothing but trouble.

He needed Kim Cuc. He couldn’t possibly take on the House by himself, couldn’t make it far without her support. He needed her jokes at his expense, her reminders of his failures in bed and elsewhere—and, more importantly, he needed to not be alone in Hawthorn. Leila, for all that he liked her, wasn’t from the kingdom, and could never fill that role.

He…

He’d gone through this all, without her help—and now he’d have to do much, much more. The breath in his lungs burnt, as bitter as ashes and smoke. “I see,” he said. “Thank you.”

“Good,” Sare said, briskly. “Welcome to the House, Thuan.” She smiled mirthlessly. “I’m assigning you to the kitchens to start with. Your pastries were too soggy, but not that bad, considering. Never fear, you’ll have plenty of classes to learn better cooking skills.”

Thuan forced a smile he didn’t feel. He remembered darkness flowing to fill his entire world, that feeling he would never escape the corridors.

“I’m glad I passed,” he said, smoothly, slowly. He stared, in silence, at the looming shape of the House before him, at the fading imprint of thorns on the handles, and wondered how many secrets it still held—how many things waiting to bite and grasp, and never let go.

The dreamer, born bleak, invents an existence elsewhere. He tosses in his sleep, his hair tangled. His hands grasp at nothing, and his nightclothes oppress him. He roams a land of chill seas and stony cliffs, and when at last he arrives at a kingdom, he passes through its gate cautiously, seeking a fire, but finding only silvery surfaces surrounded by cliffs. It is a frozen place, no metal, no wood. It is a place where even the knives are made of ice.

There is a tower before him. The dreamer enters the tower and climbs the staircase.

In the tower there is a creature, and in the creature there is a heart made of lost love. The heart takes flight from the creature’s breast, and a raven rises against the frozen gray sky, over a coastline bordered in coffins, a world of women with bound hands and blindfolded eyes.

As the heart departs, the dreamer wakes a poet.

He stumbles to his desk and opens a pot of ink. He dips the raven’s feather in it and begins to write, sleep still half upon him, his mind full of creatures that fade as he commits them to paper, caging them line by line, his pen drawing their prison.