I struck the earth and went end over end, and my right wing got crushed and my tail hit something solid that squealed, and the next thing I knew I was on my back seeing stars—fake ones, woozy orange balls, up and down, up and down—and when I could focus again my brain was screaming, Breathe! So I did.
A human was running toward me. No, not a human.
Armand, his eyes gone an incredible, luminous blue.
I turned my head and looked at him, dazed and happy in some weird, detached way, despite the fact that I felt broken in about a dozen places.
Armand’s eyes could glow, just like mine.
Armand was just like—
“Lora!”
He fell to his knees beside me, his hands roaming frantically along my face.
“Lora! Are you hurt?”
I smiled. Well, I would have. It was more like I showed him my teeth, which didn’t have nearly the same effect. He scowled down at me, and his eyes reverted to normal.
“Eleanore, it’s me. Don’t you know me?”
I sighed, then Turned back to girl.
“Ouch,” I said.
“Oh!” He lurched away from me. “Oh, ah, you’re—you don’t have any—”
“Just toss me my coat, will you?”
I kept my eyes closed until I heard him return and the rough wool weight of the peacoat was draped over my torso. The ground was lumpy and there was a rock digging into my thigh, but I didn’t feel up to moving yet, so I ignored it.
“Mandy. Do you know what just happened?”
He settled down at my side, running a hand along my arm. “You managed to destroy my father’s favorite car?”
I sat up, clutching the coat to me. The motorcar had a series of long, gaping gashes angled down its side, all the way from the bonnet to the back door. The tears were as neat and clean as if someone had taken shears to the steel.
My tail, I realized. My barbed tail.
“Uh … ,” I said.
“Don’t worry. There are a dozen more you can go through before we have to start buying new ones.”
“No, not that. I mean, I’m sorry about that, of course—”
“As long as you’re not injured—”
“No, listen! Armand, you … your eyes. They were dragon eyes! Just now, when you came to me.”
He looked confused; I dug the rock out from beneath me and threw it toward the sea.
“Dragon eyes,” I emphasized, smiling. A real smile this time, one I couldn’t have stopped if I’d wanted. “And they were beautiful.”
“Are you certain?”
“Yes.”
And only then, with the wind whispering and the sea crashing and the mist rolling along the waves … only then did the stars come to life.
not alone, was their sudden chorus, a wily, sparkling tune. not alone, beast, not alone.
I rose to my knees and hugged him, the coat trapped between us. His arms came up and encircled me; he turned his face to my neck.
“A dragon,” Armand said against my skin, so soft and awed I barely caught it.
“Not alone,” I said back, but without sound, because I wasn’t ready for him to hear it yet.
After that, everything changed.
We still met at night, because it was obvious I needed all the practice I could get. The owls and herons were our witnesses as I shifted from one form to the next, over and over, mostly getting it right but sometimes not. Armand was always there for that.
During the day, however, he avoided me. I didn’t notice at first; I was busy with my vastly crucial duty of ensuring that long strips of woven cloth were rolled precisely to measure. I spent hours in what once was the reading room but now housed (according to the sign on the door) “Necessary Supplies.” The sage-green window treatments and white paneled walls had been hidden behind temporary metal cases holding everything from iodine to powdered gravy. My workstation was exactly in the middle of the room: one table, one chair, reams of cloth.
It wasn’t unpleasant. I didn’t have to see Chloe, and I didn’t have to deal with maggots or scrubbing up blood.
Even Sophia lost me for a while, though once she realized where I was and what I was doing, she brought another chair and joined in—if you could call sitting beside me and doing none of the work joining in.
“It’s so much cooler in here than out there,” she commented, taking a sip of iced tea from the service she’d insisted we have on hand.
“No, it isn’t,” I said.
“No, it isn’t.”
“Quieter,” I noted, adding one of my finished rolls to the pyramid I’d been building on the table.
She tipped her head to the side, musing. “Less …”
Death, I might have said. Suffering. Dying men wasting away in their beds with nothing to be done.
“Fuss,” she finished, flat, and I nodded.
She placed her empty glass on the nearest shelf. “Where is Armand?”
“I don’t know.”
And I didn’t. That was one of the things that had changed. It wasn’t that I couldn’t feel him around in a general way. I still did. But he’d become less than even a specter to me now. He’d become someone who shunned me. No more swimming lessons; he’d told me that since we weren’t likely to drop into the Channel, I didn’t need them. No more taking meals together; Sophia’d overheard the butler informing the chatelaine that Lord Armand was much too busy to formally dine.
When we met now at night, I noticed how he kept a firm distance between us. How he would stand at the edge of the cliff and watch me fly, but never touch me again, not even to offer me my clothes.
I was accustomed to his bridled admiration, I admit. I’d come to expect it.
Losing it irritated me.
“Lovers’ quarrel?” Sophia inquired, rising to get more tea.
“We’d have to be lovers for that to happen.”
“You’re blushing.”
“I am not. I am hot.”
“Yes, indeed. Rolling bandages must be such awful exertion!”
“Perhaps you’d care to try it,” I shot back. “Then you could find out.”
She sent me a cat’s smile. “No, thank you. I’m quite content over here with my nice, cold drink.”
I slapped my latest roll on top of the pyramid, destroying its fragile unity. It broke apart into bouncing pieces, bandages unfurling down the table and all across the room.
“Lovers’ quarrel,” Sophia said wisely, and left it to me to pick everything up.
“This time I’m flying with you,” Armand told me that night upon the cliff.
He said it without inflection, without even looking at me, standing with his arms crossed to confront the rising yellow moon.
No mist tonight; the moon threw a flickering path along the waves that led straight back to us.
“I don’t know,” I hedged.
“Don’t argue. It’s past time for it. You’ve done fine for the last two nights, haven’t you? No unexpected changes?”
“That doesn’t mean they won’t come now.”
“And it doesn’t mean they will. What are you scared of, waif?” His eyes glanced back to mine, heavily shadowed; I couldn’t read them at all.
“Killing you,” I said bluntly.
He shrugged. “Everyone dies sometime.”
“Oh, am I supposed to be impressed with that? You’re so brave and noble, willing to leave me with your blood on my hands?”
He looked at me fully. “Is that what you envision will happen?”
Yes. No. I couldn’t bear thinking about it long enough to decide.
“Tonight,” he ordered, in that cool, distant tone he used with me now.