Shana Abe - The Deepest Night

Since we’d been sleeping in each other’s arms for days now, I knew he wasn’t truly asking about sleep.

“Yes,” I said. “After.”

“After what?”

“There’s one last thing I must do. I’m going to see your father.”

His hands clenched. “I’ll come with you.”

“And undo all that good work on your leg by Turning to smoke? I think not.” I abandoned the balcony and its uncluttered sky, plunging back into the shadows with him. “Besides, I imagine one drákon materializing in the middle of an insane asylum will be plenty. Let’s ease him into the story of you, shall we?”

He was silent, studying me. I could practically feel him weighing my words, his options. How much of a fuss I was going to make.

“I’ll be back soon,” I promised.

“Then I’ll be waiting.” He watched me with those blue, blue eyes. “Fireheart. I’ll always wait.”

Mental asylums are solid places. Everything locked up all right and tight, all the time. But the architects and doctors, the burly guards with batons, were thinking only of the delusional. The shackled. The helpless.

They never anticipated me .

The duke had iron bars on his windows (which probably didn’t open anyway) but also his very own fireplace. Which meant a chimney.

I emerged as smoke in his cell. His Grace was seated in the same chair before the hearth as he’d been the first time I’d visited him. He was staring blankly into the distance, perhaps to a place that did not have barred windows and locked doors and the scent of human misery lingering beneath that of bleach.

A cup of tea had gone cold on a table, next to an ashtray overflowing with crumpled cigarettes. A pair of electric lamps burned upon the writing desk, tiny dots of heat. There was no crackling fire to warm him today.

I took my shape behind the wing chair facing his, my fingers curled atop its back.

“Reginald,” I said.

“Rose?” His eyes regained their focus, surrendering whatever private realm had held him.

“No.” My lips curved. “Eleanore.”

“This isn’t a dream, is it?”

“It is, if that’s what you wish.”

“No.” His face hardened. “I’ve done enough dreaming, I think. Is he safe?”

“He is alive.”

“I know that!”

“He is no longer a prisoner. He’s in France now, being cared for. He’ll be home again.”

“Tranquility,” he whispered.

“Yes.”

The duke became old and small in his chair. “Good,” he sighed, gazing at his lap. “Good.”

Past his door sounded footsteps, masculine voices too hushed to make out. Beyond all that was a woman crying, the heartbroken sobs of the forgotten, muffled and endless, as if she’d never draw steady breath again.

“Perhaps you might renew my scholarship to Iverson, Your Grace.”

“What’s that? Oh.” He looked back up at me, puzzled but calm. “Is that your price?”

“My price? No. Merely a request.”

“You desire to be a schoolgirl again? A beast such as yourself, bound to classroom schedules and lectures about etiquette?”

I dug my toes into the rug beneath me, all the way down to the nubby base.

“Yes,” I said.

“Very well. I shall inform Irene you’re to be readmitted for the fall.”

I smiled again, performing a mock curtsy behind the chair. The duke did not return my smile.

“One last thing, Your Grace. If you do dream again—if you share dreams with that boy in the stars again, tell him this. I’m ready any time he is for the bargain to be concluded. I’m ready to hold up my end of the pact.”

“As you say,” he agreed, unruffled.

I nodded, he nodded, and I left.

The next four nights were amethyst, but I resisted them. I would not go outside to bathe in purple light; I would not listen to the stars. Despite what I’d told Armand, we were only sleeping in the bed at the inn, sleeping with the balcony doors open and the surf and the gulls and the salty breeze that flitted in and out of the suite like a suitor who could not make up his mind. And it was all that I required.

Armand would need to travel to London soon. I would need to return to Tranquility, and then to Iverson.

Yet neither of us spoke of what we needed to do, allowing instead the mild lazy hours to waft by.

During the day, I counted out the planks of the boardwalk. I walked to the end of the pier and back, and gave the organ grinder pounds instead of pennies, and carried seashells and toffees to Mandy, who was gradually looking less like a pirate and more like a nobleman, albeit one itching to shed his cast.

It was quite a honeymoon. At least, that’s what the innkeeper thought.

“Mrs. Pendragon! How about some nice scallops for tonight, eh? Or fresh clams in chowder, or lemon sole. We’ve got—”

“All of it,” I’d say.

“Righto.” He winked at me, merry as a child at Christmas.

We were rather dear guests, I presumed.

But on the fifth evening the feeling of dreamy suspension I’d nurtured so carefully would not come. I could not ignore the summoning of the stars any longer. I could not ignore the color of the heavens suspended over the sea, that dark purple velvet dotted with fire, the deepest night beckoning.

We’d spent the afternoon on the sand, getting crusty and sunburned, watching the white lip of the tide rolling and reaching and retreating once more. We’d brushed the sand from our clothes and eaten our dinner and sipped our wine. I’d cleared the dishes and gone out to the balcony and at last given in, breathing in deep, allowing the stars to garland me with songs once more.

fireheart! fireheart! fireheart! Beneath the drumbeat of the surf, it was all I could hear.

Then, a counterpoint:

lora . low and lovely, sad and far.

I swallowed, searching until I found him, golden green, more beautiful than the moon.

Jesse.

miss you.

I couldn’t think of a reply. I could only smile and close my eyes so I wouldn’t cry.

above you, inside you, within and without, he sang. forever and always. remember?

Yes.

so we can wait. we can wait a while longer. love the earth while you can. love this last gift of time. love the dragon i’ve given you, who already loves you.

I did not need to see him to know that Armand had come to stand beside me on the balcony, leaning against the railing. But I opened my eyes anyway. He was watching me, somber, purple in his hair. The wind slipped between us, separating, then shifted and pushed the other way.

Jesse had become a nimbus, a shadow of light behind him.

“Thank you,” Mandy said to me. “It’s all right to say it now, isn’t it? Now that it’s over?”

I nodded. There were too many words crowding inside me to speak, words like I suppose so and You’re welcome and Don’t stand so near and Please come nearer .

“Thank you,” he said again. “Thank you, Eleanore, for saving me.”

He bent his head, slowly, slowly, never taking his eyes from mine. So when our lips met I was ready and not, because his kiss was more fiery than I’d thought it’d be, and sweeter, and spread like a wild and unknown fever right into my blood. I was alight.

He tasted of wine and magic. He tasted of hope.

I lifted my arms and wound them around his neck. We were pressed together at the rim of the world, water and sand, enchantment and flesh. Two beings fleetingly, lusciously exploring how it felt to become one.

Beneath the silver netting of the stars, I reveled in Armand’s kiss, and offered it back to him.