“No. I needed to do it now.”
I lowered my hands. He smiled at me, but it was slight. Almost grave.
“Just in case.”
“In case of what?” I asked, but straightaway wished I hadn’t, because of course I knew what he’d meant.
He seemed so calm, practically serene, painted with the distant light of the heavens. And even though he must have seen the regret on my face, he answered me anyway.
“In case it’s you instead of me who’s left behind. You who’s meant to go on and rescue Aubrey alone.”
What I remembered then was my final goodbye to Jesse, also by starlight. How I’d felt so desperate, looking into his eyes. So bloody stupid terrified, it was as if all my bones had gone to jelly.
How he hadn’t bothered to lie to me by saying that all would be well, but only told me—calm, so calm and grave, just like Armand—to leave him. He hadn’t even told me that he loved me, although I knew that he did.
After that night, my world had tilted. Jesse was gone from the earth. For such a long while I’d felt as if I was, too.
But it’s not going to be like that with Mandy, I reassured myself. I’ve made a deal. I will never, never feel pain like that again.
Because I really rather would be dead than suffer the loss of this boy, too.
I sat up, surrounded by my nest of quilts. “That’s rather enough of that sort of talk. You’re not going anywhere, lordling. Well, except to that ruin, and then home to Tranquility with your brother.”
The smile faded. “And with you, waif. Home with my brother and with you.”
“That’s the plan,” I agreed. I didn’t consider it a lie, since it was what I wanted to be true.
I stood, as did he. He took my hand. We descended the stairs in silence together; he opened the front door to the house we’d borrowed; we both smoked away.
Perhaps there was more to have been said, but I had no more words, truthful ones or falsehoods or anything. Sometimes silence illumes more than words, anyway. I’d been by Armand’s side for what had amounted only to days, but already it felt as if years had passed between us. As if we’d been doing this together for years, flying and hiding and hurting and hunting, and now, together, we were traveling into whatever came next. I think it was clear to us both that our final few moments of peace were done. It was either finish the job now or perish in the attempt.
So, again: Sickle moon. Jesse above us, along with all the other stars. They were singing without verses, marking our flight with arias and harmonies too complex to follow. Armand and I soared and floated, joined in our unique dance again, moving as one away from the town and toward the hills that cradled the prison Schloss des Mondes.
That’s definitely what it was. Once we were near enough, I recognized all the telltale signs. One long wall and three decrepit towers still endured, but were shored up now with freshly cut timbers and brick. The wild roses still bloomed, but between strands of shiny barbed wire. Even the moon had done its bit: It was hanging nearly where it’d been in that etching, but it was spooky now, a grinning warning that slid through me in a whispered chill.
where is he? hissed the whisper. I realized it wasn’t from the moon but from the stars. where does he fall?
What?
I glimpsed a flash of pale flesh, arms flung out. I swooped after him, but it was too late. Armand hadn’t been able to hold his shape, and I wasn’t near enough this time to save him.
He saw me. He was facing upward, looking right at me, his brown hair thrashing, a strange almost-smile on his lips, and I wasn’t near enough. Right before he hit the ground, he brought both hands to his mouth, then flung them back at me.
He landed in a tangle of roses and barbed wire, just outside the perimeter of the prison. It was over in seconds—there hadn’t even been time for me to Turn to dragon—and from start to finish it had happened without a sound but for the muffled thud of his body meeting dirt, because he’d kept our precious silence and hadn’t shouted or called out for me.
Instead, dear God, he’d blown me a kiss.
Dogs began to yowl. Lights flared on. There was nothing to see, though, not yet. Only a streak of gray vapor and a boy covered in gashes and brambles, unmoving in the brush.
I blanketed him in smoke. I smoothed his face, his eyelids, waited until I was drawn in past his lips and became a part of his lungs, his very breath, and his heart beat for both of us, and his blood whooshed by and I flowed with it and I knew that he lived.
I became a girl crouched over him, ignoring the sting of the thorns. I brought my lips to his ear.
“Mandy. Mandy.”
His lashes fluttered. His lids did not open.
You can’t take him. You said you wouldn’t!
fireheart, whose time is ours: this act is not of us.
A searchlight passed over me, carving the dark into pieces. I ducked lower.
“Mandy.” I swallowed. “Sweetheart. Wake up.”
His respiration puffed fragile against my cheek. He’d missed the barbed wire but the brambles had slashed into him anyway; some of the cuts were deep. I ran my hands all along him, smearing rose petals and blood.
His right leg. It lay crooked, all wrong. I stared down at it with fright a stone in my chest, certain his leg was broken. It was the one I’d bit, too.
One broken leg. It might not be so bad. He could survive that, couldn’t he? He’d be all right once it was set. Once we were home and it was set.
“Wake up, Armand. Damn it, wake up!”
The sugar-ripe perfume of the flowers began to suffocate me. The moon grinned and the dogs howled and the stars began to toll, solemn as a knell, go, go, go—
I estimated the tower ruins to be around a hundred yards off. The dogs sounded even farther than that but were getting closer. A series of large tents covered the grounds between here and there; they were filled with soldiers and maybe prisoners, too, a harsh gabble of voices rising through the night.
go, go, go—
So far none of the guards had figured out exactly where we were. Chances were they didn’t really know what had happened, just that the dogs were barking like mad and something might have fallen from the sky. Most of the searchlights were spearing the heavens instead of the hillsides. Perhaps they were hunting for a mechanical dragon.
A dragon …
“Stay here,” I murmured, my hand over Mandy’s heart. “If you can hear me, don’t move.”
I glanced upward. Tell him, I entreated the stars. When he comes to, tell him what I’ve done, that I need him to stay hidden.
go! they insisted.
I lifted as smoke, found a pair of good, strong searchlights crossed against the black like swords, and Turned to dragon within their doubled brilliance.
Not mechanical, but amazing nonetheless. My body reflected the light in scintillating gold. My wings brushed it into shadows, lifting me, allowing me to weave in and out of their beams, to enjoy the din that arose from the ground in a great surge that drowned out even the dogs.
Shots pinged past. I went to smoke, waited, Turned again, farther from Armand this time, drawing the men and their fire after me.
The tent city spread below me. I dipped down, extended a talon, and sliced open the roof of the nearest one. Faces gaped skyward, raggedy men with open mouths. And then—
The men began to shout. To cheer. They were lifting their fists to the air, jumping up and down, exuberant.
“Huzzah!”
The prisoners! They must have heard about the new British weapon from their guards, or the papers, or the contagion of underground gossip. But now they saw that I was real, not gossip.