The Sweetest Dark

Chapter Sixteen

“A francba!”

I jumped back, smacking the wall, and knocked into the portrait, which clattered heavily and began to tilt. Jesse, very near and very swift, reached out and steadied us both, one hand on the frame and the other on my shoulder.

He was a genie, a wizard, a boy who’d materialized from nothing but cigarette smoke and shadows, because he had not been there a second ago.

“All right, Lora?” He waited for my nod, then used both hands to straighten the painting. “What did you just say?”

“What?” My heart was still pounding. I’d flattened a palm over it, pressing back the fright.

“Just now. You said something in a foreign language.”

“No, I didn’t. Did I?” I dropped my hand. “Where did you come from?”

Jesse stepped back from the duke and his disturbing attire—properly aligned once more, still smiling down at us bloody cold—and faced me, too tall and real and solid to have simply appeared from thin air.

“You’ll find this castle keeps many secrets, some ancient, some not.” His fingers clasped mine, instant warmth. “This is one of the oldest ones. I’ll show you.”

He stepped back again, and again, pulling me with him all the way to the wall, only the wall wasn’t there any longer. A gaping black space was where there should have been stone, where there surely had been stone when I’d first crept down this hallway.

One final step, and the darkness consumed him. His voice floated out to me.

“Don’t be afraid.”

“I’m not,” I replied, irritated that he’d guessed the truth. I made myself follow without him having to pull. “Of course I’m not.”

“Good. There’s a landing here, feel it? Hold on while I …”

We had paused just inside the wall, standing almost chest- to-chest. He shifted against me, his arm reaching past my head, and without any noise at all the wall closed up again, sealing us inside—what? I didn’t know. The innards of the castle, I supposed. It smelled like rats and dirt and rotting wood. It smelled like a crypt.

Jesse struck a match, held it to a lantern hung on a hook behind us. Yellow brightness bloomed.

We were in a tunnel. On a rickety wooden landing in a very narrow tunnel that plunged down and down into the depths beyond the light. There were stairs going down it, too, just as rickety, as clear an invitation to this is a bad idea as anything I’d ever seen.

Jesse grabbed the lantern, holding it up high. “The early defenders of this land built the fortress to withstand all manner of attacks. But they were men of short lives and brutal deaths, and they knew that nothing was ever foolproof. So the walls of Iverson are hollow. There had to be a way to get the castle folk out should the invaders get in. A secret way.”

“All the walls?” I asked, shocked.

“No, not all. But many.”

“Is that how you manage—”

“Yes.” His arm lowered. The lantern burned between us, painting gray and gold along the contours of his face; he sent me a sideways look. “Not the walls of your tower, Lora. Rest easy. You’re truly alone up there.”

Yes. Until His Right Royal Lordship decides to show up again.

“Does Mrs. Westcliffe know?”

“Not that I’ve been able to tell. It’s possible she knows about them but thinks them sealed up or filled in. Some are. In all the years I’ve been here, I’ve never seen any footprints in the tunnels, besides my own. I don’t think even Hastings knows about this. At least, not about all of it. He knows about the grotto, of course.”

“The … ?”

“Come on. It’s why I called you. You’re going to like it.”

He took my hand again, and the honey-sweet pleasure of his touch mingled with the thrill of fear that was skittering up and down my spine. The combination was nearly unbearable.

“You called me,” I whispered.

“And you came,” Jesse Holms answered, a green-eyed glance back at me, a half-smile that dissolved my bones. Then we were moving hand in hand down the rotting plank stairs.

I seethed with questions. I was ready to burst with them, and at the same time I was focused on putting one foot in front of the other, avoiding the gaps in the planks, trying not to examine too closely the rot in the wood or the thick pitch black that yawned beneath us. I could not smell an end to it. We might as well have been descending into the center of the earth.

It’s Jesse. I’m safe. It’s Jesse, so I’m safe.

I found myself watching either the lantern or the back of his head, both shining, both slipping deep into the dark heart of Iverson without falter, even when the air began to change and smell more of salt than stone. More of trapped waters than long-dead rodents.

Eventually I realized I could see more than just Jesse and his lantern. I could see the ceiling and walls and the outline of his body glowing an unlikely, pale slate. The stairs were revealed to look, if possible, even more rickety. Some of the planks had fallen away altogether.

“Mind yourself here,” he said, and paused to help me over a particularly large gap.

I could have jumped it alone. But of course I never said so.

There was something both foreign and hair-raising about having a boy hold my hand, not only for pleasure but for protection. I had no memory of it ever happening before and could not imagine that, if it had, it could ever have been better than this: a firm grip and a callused palm, sweet honey thrills zinging from my fingers all the way up my arm.

Because this was not just any boy. And beyond his silhouette was that growing glow that lent him a sort of unearthly halo, as if he really were made of starlight.

“Cheers,” Jesse said, and sent me another glance. “We’re here.”

Here was a cavern with glimmering seawater as most of its floor, wet limestone walls streaked with minerals and moisture, and rivulets of crystals twinkling in the uneasy light like fireflies. Man-made columns, eight of them, broke the waters, reaching from seafloor to ceiling. They looked colossal enough to support the weight of the whole island.

The slate-colored light was shining up from the water. A half-moon wedge of day blazed a brighter gray against the far wall, where the top of the sea met the top of the cavern entrance and air still got through.

The tunnel had ended in a wide, cut-stone embankment that fronted the salt water. Centuries of restless tide had lapped its edges smooth as glass.

As with the castle and it secrets, a long-dead someone had thought up the scale and bones of this space. Someone had discovered the grotto and constructed the rest, hauling in the rounded blocks for the columns, swimming down to the unknown bottom of the cavern to anchor the base of each. Someone had labored over every inch of the glassy embankment beneath my feet, using minds and hands and tools to ensure evenness, stability.

Many someones. Generations of someones, perhaps.

Except for where Jesse’s palm met mine, I felt clammy with cold. The weight of all those spirits in the air seemed to press down on me, pushing into my skin.

“You’d moor your boat here.” Jesse used the lantern to indicate the column closest by, exposing eerie, ring-shaped stains of rust marking a row down its side. “You’d wait for the tide to go nearly all the way out at night, just high enough so that you could still row away in the dark. By the time anyone in the castle noticed you, hopefully their ships would be beached, and you’d be far enough gone to find safe harbor. Or at the very least be beyond the range of cannons or crossbows.”

“Jesse,” I said, and he turned around.

I wanted to address what had happened last night, our kiss, my fainting, him carrying me back here. There was a weight in my chest that felt like an apology, although I didn’t know how to phrase it or even if I should try. There were too many layers of truth between this boy and me, obvious layers like, I don’t even know you, and layers more subtle, ones that whispered, I’ve known you forever.

I let our arms stretch out into a bridge between us. The flowered cuff crooned its pretty song. And what I said was, “Am I dreaming this?”

He hesitated, then shook his head.

“Then”–I swallowed–“am I crazy? Have I gone truly crazy?”

“No, Lora.”

“But how … how am I a dragon? How are you a starman?”

“I don’t think of myself as a starman, exactly,” he said soberly, though I sensed he wanted to smile. His hand released mine, the bridge broken; he moved to hang the lantern on a shiny new hook dug into the wall behind us. “I was born here, on earth. Not even far from here, in fact. Just over in Devon. My parents died young, when I was only five. Hastings is my great-uncle and he took me in, and I’ve lived here ever since. But I’ve always known what I am, as far back as I can remember. I’ve always been able to do the things I do. The stars have always spoken to me.”

“And you … speak back to them?”

“Yes,” he said simply.

“But not to people.”

“No. Just to Hastings, and to you.”

A shiver took me; I crossed my arms over my chest. “What do the stars say?”

“All manner of things. Amazing things. Secret things. Things great and small, things profound and insignificant. They told me that, throughout time, there’ve been only a scattering of people like me, folk of both flesh and star. That even the whisper of their magic in my blood could annihilate me if I didn’t learn to control it. That I’d crisp to ash without control. Or, worse, crisp someone else.” His smile broke through. “And they told me about you. That you were born and would come to me when the time was right.”

“Did you summon me here?” The muted echo of my voice rebounded against the firefly walls: here-here-here. “To Iverson, I mean?”

… mean-mean-mean …

He didn’t answer at first. He looked at his feet, then walked to the edge of the embankment and squatted down, raking his fingers through the bright water near the toes of his boots.

“We are such stuff as dreams are made on,” he said softly to the water. “Both infinite and finite, human and not. I’m of comet and clay and the sparks of sun across the ocean waves.” He sighed. “I know what it’s like to doubt yourself, to comprehend that you’re so unique you’re forced to wonder about … everything. But, yes, I called you to Iverson.”

It made a dreadful sense. It actually made far more sense than anything anyone had told me so far. More sense than the notion that an orphan girl, a girl so mentally damaged she’d been institutionalized, would somehow find herself accepted into the finest finishing school in the kingdom just because there’d been an opening… .

I understood then that from the moment I’d heard Director Forrester first utter the words, I’d been invisibly balanced along a razor’s edge, waiting for everyone else around me to snap to and realize what I did: The entire situation was preposterous.

“You did this?” I moved to Jesse’s side, gazing down at the crown of his head. “All this, me and the school, and the bombs—”

“I only called you. The universe arranged the rest.”

“And the war,” I continued, abruptly queasy, “my God, the war. Are you saying that you and I are the reason for that?”

“I’m saying that the true nature of our world is for matters to arrange themselves along the simplest of paths. The war happened, and you came here because of it. Through it. We all slide along our destinies, Lora, and the war is how you came to slide to me.” He stood and flicked the water from his hand. “I’ve been calling you since the day you were born. Every day. Every night. If I dared to praise any single consequence of this tear between nations, it would be that it brought you to me.”

I was surprised to discover myself suddenly sitting on the stone floor, my tailbone aching. Luminous water sloshed before me, up and down and up, and I had to look away.

Then Jesse was there, his face close to mine.

“You don’t eat enough,” he said, frowning.

I covered my eyes with one hand and let out a laugh; I couldn’t help it. “I agree.”

“Your metabolism isn’t ordinary, especially now. You burn energy at a much higher rate than regular people. You need to consume more.”

“Perhaps you’d care to inform Mrs. Westcliffe,” I suggested, still hiding my eyes. “If I attempt anything beyond two paper-thin slices of cake at tea, she looks as if she’s planning to throttle me in my sleep.”

“No,” he said, decisive. “I’ll do better than that. Hang on.”

I drew up my knees and rested my head on my crossed arms, listening to the sounds of Jesse and the sea, both of them moving in small, mysterious ways beyond the red of my lids. When he returned, he was carrying manna in a woven reed basket: a round loaf of flour-dusted bread, a block of orange cheese, and a bottle of liquid, corked and greenish-dark.

He settled beside me and broke open the bread, handing me a chunk.

“Have you had wine before?”

“No,” I said. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Try some now. Just a sip. You’ll feel better.”

He uncorked the bottle and handed it over. I smelled cherries and sugar and something like chocolate. Mindful of what had happened with the whisky, I tipped the bottle to my lips and touched only the tip of my tongue to the liquid.

“Sorry there’s no water. Next time I’ll bring some.”

“This is nice,” I said. I took another swallow. It was red wine, not green. It tasted like nothing I’d ever had before.

“I thought you’d be hungry. I packed this last night, so the bread might be stale.”

“No, it’s delicious.”

And it was. All of it. The cheese, as well, every last tangy speck. I ate like I was famished, like I hadn’t put away a heap of kippers and bacon a few hours before.

I held out the last hunk of bread to Jesse. He refused it with a smile, so I ate that, too.

I suppose that would have sealed the deal, were he Fay. I’d eaten his food and drunk his wine, and if he offered I’d gladly have taken more.

Fay or fateful stars, same difference. I looked at him and thought, Now I’m surely yours.

But I didn’t say it aloud.

“I thought this would be a good place,” Jesse said. He had drawn up his knees and wrapped his arms loose around them, like I had, gazing out peacefully at the water. I could feel the heat of his side so close to mine, as if he radiated it. As if the golden light that lived under his skin was really a fire, banked now but steady. Eternal warmth.

“Good place for what?”

“For you to find yourself. Your true self.”

I didn’t respond.

“You’re going to have to do it sometime, Lora. I can help you with it. Some of it, at least. It’s going to happen whether you will it or not. Better to plan ahead now, don’t you think?”

I stared down at the twill covering my knees. I stared hard at the tufts of wool that poked out here and there, the sturdy, diagonal weave of brown over brown.

“We can meet down here on weekends or after your classes. We might consider the woods, too, but there’s always the danger there of someone passing by.”

“Doesn’t anyone else ever come here?”

“No. People say it’s haunted.”

I looked back up at him.

“By a single ghost,” he explained, the corners of his lips lifted. “A very gentle one. I’m sure she won’t mind sharing the space with us.”

“I—I honestly can’t tell if you’re joking.”

“Either way, does it matter? I told you you’re safe with me, and I meant it. The grotto is perfect for us. It’s secluded but still open enough to hide something … large.”

“I don’t understand. What is it you think I’m going to be able to do? I’m just a girl.”

“To begin, you can stop thinking of yourself as just anything. I have a word for you, one I want you to keep in your heart.” Jesse unlocked his arms and turned to face me fully, holding me in a gaze that resurrected that shiver of before.

“Drákon,” he said.

And I knew it. I knew that word, even though I was positive I’d never, ever heard it fall from anyone else’s lips.

Drákon.

If the beast inside me had still been raging, it would have sucked on the word like Jesse’s sweet cherry wine. It would have gotten drunk on it.

“That’s what I am,” I said, as the truth of it rolled through me over and over, riding that cherry-wine crest. “That’s what we’re called. My—my kind.”

“Yes.”

“How did you know that? How do you know any of this?”

His hand lifted, a graceful palm cupped toward the ceiling, toward the universe we could not see beyond water and rock.

“Is there a word for you?” I asked.

I glimpsed a dimple in his cheek with his wry new smile, one I’d never noticed before. “Jesse.”

“That’s it?”

“Do you prefer starman?”

“No.”

Jesse, star-bright. Jesse Holms. Jesse-of-the-stars.

I heard myself say, “Are you going to kiss me again?” and realized, horrified, that maybe I was the drunk one.

“Yes,” he answered.

“Er … soon?”

“I hope so. But not right now.” He climbed to his feet, reached out a hand and pulled me to mine, looking down at me ruefully. “Next time I’ll definitely remember to bring the water.”

...

God, he hated tea.

Armand Diego Lorimer Louis stared down at the steaming liquid in its cup, wan brown with little chewy bits of leaves mucking about near the bottom, and came to the conclusion that it was actually more than he could bear to lift the cup to his lips to drink.

There was lemon or cream to add to it, if he wished. Sparkling white sugar. All of it set out in silly little china containers painted round and round with podgy, smirking cherubs.

But nothing helped tea. It simply was what it was, which was boiling hot and flavorless.

Tea was the beverage, Mandy thought, of dreary, civilized people. People who would never lie without guilt, never steal without reason, never fornicate anywhere but in their own beds. With the curtains closed. In the dark.

He shouldn’t have stayed. He should have gone home after leaving her room. Truth was, his hair was mussed and his cuffs were damp and she wasn’t even present, and now here he was trapped beside Chloe yet again, suffocating in her noxious perfume. Pretending to listen to her natter on about a dress or a hat or her new gloves—it was always a dress, a hat, or new gloves; all right, and sometimes shoes—with his spoon gripped so tightly in his hand that his thumb and forefinger had gone white, and the tea bits whirling about in some awful, endless pattern, everything the same, every day the same, just as it always was. Just as it always was going to be.

He had a swift and utterly lucid vision of himself in this position in thirty-odd years. Loathsome tea, hot steam, silver spoon, and fifty-year-old Chloe seated opposite him talking about clothing, because to her it was categorically, absolutely, the most fascinating topic on the planet.

Besides, of course, herself.

For an unflinching instant, Armand wished with his whole heart that he were dead.

Then, at the very edge of his perception, something changed.

He glanced up.

She was passing by the doorway, walking with that fluid, nearly animal grace that no one else seemed to capture or even notice.

He was given four steps of her.

One: She moved from the hallway shadows into the light cast from the parlor. He saw her illuminated, drab colors gone bright; her skin alabaster, reflective; her hair tinted pink and gold and pink again.

Two: Her gaze met his, finding him past all the other people crowded inside the stuffy mirrored room, dying by inches and taking their tea.

Three: He was paralyzed. He couldn’t move, couldn’t smile, couldn’t nod. He was pinned in the gray of her eyes, a prisoner to their piercing clarity.

For an unflinching instant, Armand felt his heart explode like a firework, and the future seemed unwritten.

Then four: Eleanore looked away and passed the doorway. He was stuck with tea and dresses once more.