The Sweetest Dark

CHAPTER 14




That night, no matter how I tried, I could not fall asleep.

It seemed to me a far-off thunderstorm roiled the sky, but when I paced to my window to find it, all I saw were stars. The tide had come in, the surf dancing silver along the shore in its own deliberate rhythm, but that wasn’t the storm.

I returned to my bed. I got up again. My skin felt too tight; my muscles burned to move. Even my joints burned. I felt as if I could sprint for miles, nimble as a hart.

Instead, I stood at the window and watched heaven turn on its unhurried axis, finally deciding I needed to get outside to the green and then to the woods.

It was an unexpected thought, something I’d never even considered doing before. Curfew was ten o’clock every evening, and breaking it would mean a great deal of trouble should I be caught. Yet once the idea burrowed into me, I couldn’t shake it. If Jesse could slink about at night without anyone spotting him, surely I could, too.

Almeda always performed the final check of the evening, usually around eleven. Sometimes she knocked, sometimes she didn’t; tonight she’d already been by, so I didn’t have to worry about that.

Certainly the forest would be less confining than my little tower. Despite my nagging feeling that there was a thunderstorm—yes, there is—there wasn’t. The night was clear. I ached to run.

At the very least I’d see more stars.

The tower stairwell ended at my door, so there was no way to slip out but down along the main corridors. I crept along the stony halls of Iverson in my bare feet, boots in hand, grateful once more that Blisshaven had outfitted me in the dullest of colors.

When I got to the hall that led to the wing of the other girls, I stopped to listen. It was very late or very early, depending, but if any of them were up, I wanted to know.

All I heard was muted breathing. A few of them snored.

The suites of the younger students were interspersed with those of the older ones, so a pair of lamps at the end of the hall were kept burning through the night, the better to ward off evil dreams.

As I stole by, they sat cold and dark.

Curious—but not enough to make me turn back.

Eventually I reached the main doors. I fancied they’d be locked, but I’d try them anyway before searching for another way out. If nothing else, the windows of the front parlor had looked promising.…

Yet my hand closed on the wrought-iron latch and it gave at once. It seemed a fairly shocking lack of security, but I reminded myself that this wasn’t the city or anything remotely resembling the dodgy streets of St. Giles. Who would bother to venture all the way out here for thieving? We were an island of leftover pin money and probably miserly teacher salaries.

If anyone wanted to steal anything, they’d have better luck simply walking straight into the shambles of Tranquility, where they’d have their pick of priceless, neglected things.

I opened the doors a crack and squeezed through.

My hair swished back over my shoulders. My face lifted and I breathed deep, as deep as I could until it hurt, and then let it all out in a rush. I raised my arms above my head and stretched hard, wind whistling through my spread fingers.

Freedom smelled of wild waters; it glimmered in a path of stars above my head. Freedom tasted like sea salt on my tongue.

It was another amethyst night, like the one when I’d first arrived. There was that long streak of Milky Way, bright in its cloudy curve, but the very heart of the sky was a purple so intense it was closer to jet.

The castle and the woods and I—the whole of the earth—lay bathed in its fey, colored beauty. We were soaked in purple night.

I bent to shove my feet into my boots, hitched up my skirt, and ran.

The green had been shaped by human hands, so it was easy to cross. Wide and smooth, it had been designed to showcase lovely young ladies moving sedately into their well-polished futures. Only when I reached the first shaggy trees of the forest did I have to slow, and even then not by much.

The woods felt instantly better, safer, than Iverson’s lawn. Secrets could live in here, tucked between tree trunks, hidden in the boughs, and no one would ever see. Secret things, secret hearts, could open up wings and thrive.

Shadows swallowed me in slippery black. The air took on a richer, loamy note. The ground crunched with leaves, and ferns slapped at my shins and knees, painless. I splashed through brooks and left footprints in peat. Crickets called in time to my stride, a steady chee, chee that never broke.

I was running swifter than a hart, swifter than even the advancing night, because that was outside the forest and everything surrounding me here was enchanted, as I was. I didn’t know where I was going, but it didn’t matter. Sooner or later I’d run out of land, and then I would turn back.

But I began to slow before that happened. Not because I was tired, but because I realized I was coming close to something, and although I was sure I’d never been here before—I hadn’t, not to this part of the isle—I knew I was getting near to where I needed to be.

Where I’d come out tonight to be.

By the time I reached the cottage, I was walking. I was following a path that seemed like a whisper, a bare impression in the earth, the slightest break in woolly grasses bounded by huge, gnarled birches and beeches and mossy logs and flowers that I could smell but not see.

There was a single candle lit in the front window. The door was open and the way stood empty, exactly as it always was in my dreams.

I slowed to a stop, a little winded still, engulfed in the perfume of wildflowers and the fragrance of the candle, paraffin, and smoke.

Go on, urged the fiend, pushing hard from within the cage of my chest. We’re not afraid.

So I finished the last of the whispering path that led to Jesse’s door.

I knew what awaited me beyond. The dreams had shown me so many times before that, when I ran my fingers along the frame of the doorway as I passed, I found the protruding knot that was always there, a cat’s-eye shape at the height of my shoulder. When my feet met the rug beyond the entrance, I didn’t have to look down to see that it would be red and sage and teal, a design of intertwining vines ending in an ivory fringe.

The cups and plates on the shelves along the kitchen wall would all be arranged largest to smallest.

The cast-iron stove would be sooty and scorched. An oversize mug would be placed nearby, knives and ladles poking out of it in a sharp metal bouquet.

There would be a river-rock fireplace to my left and a dining table with four chairs.

And there would be one other door, the only other one in the house. I knew that, too, because it led to Jesse’s bedroom.

Dark Fay, reminded the fiend. Dark dreams. Dark desires.

A window—no curtains—was shiny with night, directly across the room. Jesse was seated in one of the two armchairs before it, relaxed, unmoving. He appeared to be gazing out at the trees that slept just beyond the glass.

“Lora,” he said. In the reflection of the panes, I might have seen him smile. “I’m glad you came.”

The candlelight hardly revealed him; he was more wily shadows than light. It must have danced along me a good deal more clearly as I lingered there by the front door.

“I don’t know why I’m here,” I said, and it was true. Somewhat.

“That’s all right.” He nodded toward the chair opposite his. “You still can come in. I won’t bite.”

I swallowed, abruptly remembering my idiotic threat to Armand—biting your lip off—and fighting a bloom of something in my throat that felt perilously close to panic.

“I’m not giving back the brooch,” I said.

Jesse Holms turned in place to see me. Even by the solitary candle, even from this small distance, I was near flattened by his beauty: hair, skin, jaw and brow, throat and shoulders, every inch of him golden. Every inch of him perfect, as if he’d been sculpted by the gods from some lovely, impossible stone.

“No, you shouldn’t,” he said. “That was for you.”

I tore my gaze from his and edged a step toward the free chair, then gathered my nerve and made it all the way. I sat down, feeling guilty, flustered. I’d been braced for at least a token argument. After all, I had no idea how he’d gotten it. It might have been his mother’s, or his grandmother’s, or he might have spent every last penny he’d ever saved on it, just to offer it to a girl he hardly knew. I hadn’t actually expected to keep it, but the words had popped out, anyway.

A round piecrust table, surprisingly delicate, separated the armchairs. A jam jar holding a collection of starry white flowers gleamed square in its middle. I pulled free one of the stems, inspecting it as if it held all the answers to every question I’d ever ask.

It sounds peculiar, but touching that stem, feeling the cool smoothness of it in my hand, made me realize that I truly was inside Jesse’s home, unaccompanied and unchaperoned and far, far from where I was supposed to be. I didn’t even have the debatable comfort of knowing that this was another dream.

This is how girls get into trouble, I thought. This is how charity girls end up shunned and starving on the streets. They venture out alone at night to beautiful boys, silly stupid moths to incandescent flames.

The crickets outside seemed suddenly, embarrassingly loud.

“I hope it didn’t cost much,” I said at last. “The brooch, I mean.”

“It depends.”

“On what?”

“On how you might … characterize cost.”

“Pardon?” I glanced back up, confused.

This time Jesse’s smile was aimed straight at me. “Don’t fret, Lora. I can easily afford you that brooch.”

“But why?” I blurted. “Why would you just give it to me?”

I knew I sounded ungrateful, but I didn’t care. The truth was, the brooch was exquisite. I’d never be able to repay him for it, not with money, and we both knew it.

He tipped his head, thoughtful. “Well, you didn’t like the orange I left you. So I tried something else.”

“Didn’t like it?” I began, but had to stop, because my throat had squeezed closed. I pretended to take in the view beyond the window; all I could see was the faint mirrored image of the chamber behind me, broken into rectangles. Jesse and me, fixed in the glass as if we’d been painted there in watercolors, transparent as wraiths.

I closed my eyes and tried again. “It’s not that I didn’t like it. It wasn’t the orange. It was that …” You were there in my room. You saw me sleeping. I think you stroked my face. I managed, “Food is extremely important to me.”

The emotion in my voice discomfited me. I sounded raw, far more pained than I’d meant to. I had to wait to open my eyes again. When I did, he was watching me without expression.

“It’s hard, isn’t it?” he said.

“What is?”

“Being here. Being around all of them. Knowing that none of them, not one, has ever known what it’s like to go without.”

I shook my head, which wasn’t an answer really but all I could muster.

I did not want his pity. I did not want to evoke that sweet, melting look in his eyes. I didn’t want to feel this unexpected sorrow mixed with trepidation and something else—desire, insisted the fiend—that grew with every shared glance between us.

Mad, get mad, I thought to myself, but it was no use. I didn’t feel angry.

I felt … different. Drowsy but wakeful, nervous but lulled, a victim of the soft sliding light and the candle and the calm, patient way this particular beautiful boy, this dangerous flame, was looking at me. As if he was waiting for me to figure out something he already knew.

I wanted to kiss him. I wanted him to kiss me.

The thunderstorm chose that moment to save me by rousing again, boom-boom-boom-boom! I angled in my chair to find it, but the crickets chirped on, and the woods remained unflustered. No rain, no lightning, no gusts. I glimpsed teasing patches of amethyst through the crowns of the trees but nothing else.

“It’s the Germans,” Jesse said. “Airships. They’re bombing the coast.”

That brought me wide awake. I leapt to my feet. “What? Now?”

“They’re not near. The channel intensifies the sound. Believe me, no one else around here will even hear them. They won’t make it this far west before dawn.”

“Oh, I …” I blinked at him, replaying his words. “What do you mean, no one else will hear them?”

“Just that. Only you and I hear them tonight. I’d guess they’re somewhere over Sussex right now. Brighton, maybe.”

Again, I could not speak. Jesse’s calm expression never wavered.

“It’s all right, Lora. You can relax. You’re safe with me, I swear it.”

“What do you mean,” I asked again evenly, not relaxing, “that no one else will hear them?”

His gaze angled away from mine; for the first time, he looked uncomfortable. He leaned forward to pull out some flowers from the jar, just as I had done. Long, tanned fingers began to weave the stems together, making a braid of blooms. Drops of water beaded the wood.

“All the world is like an ocean,” he said. “All of it, not only the water part. And nearly everyone skims along on just the surface of that ocean, accepting what their eyes and ears show them as truth, even when it’s not. Even when it’s merely the bright skin of the ocean covering the truth. Entire lives are spent skimming that skin, person after person bobbing along the surface of things like driftwood, never sensing aught deeper beneath them. To them, real truth remains unfathomable.

“No one else hears the bombs, Lora, because almost everyone else around us is driftwood, basic human. You and I are the only ones right now who break the ocean skin to glimpse the deep. We’re the only ones who can hear the bombs because, from here, they’re beyond human hearing.”

I allowed the crickets to fill the silence, ardent behind the glass. Jesse’s fingers wove in and out between the flower petals; he was shaping the braid into a half circle upon the table, smearing the water beads. He did not glance back up at me or smile to let me in on the joke.

“You’re not human, Eleanore Jones. I think that somewhere inside you, you must know that. You must always have known. You’re not made of ordinary bone or blood but of something else completely.”

“Really. What am I of, then? Kelp and jellyfish, I suppose?”

“You are made of magic.”

He said it in an absolutely unremarkable way, as if instead he’d just said, I had coffee this morning or the floor needs mopping.

His hands stilled and finally he looked up at me. No smile. I saw nothing but that infinite patience etched on his face.

He wasn’t joking.

Everything seemed to slow down, the seconds dragging out into a creeping crawl. My pulse slowed, and the dance of the candle flame slowed, and the wind outside slowed. I could not move or even swallow.

I wanted to respond with something cutting and urbane, something Sophia might muster at the drop of a pin—You are stark mad, Mr. Holms—but my mouth felt frozen shut. My whole body, in fact, had gone ice cold. I had become crystalline, see-through.

I wasn’t driftwood but an icicle, and the wrong words, Jesse’s next words, might shatter me to pieces.

Whatever they were, I didn’t want to hear them. Yet I couldn’t move.

Perhaps he understood. He watched me closely but didn’t try to approach.

“Think about it. Don’t lose your nerve now, just think. Where did you come from? Who is your family? You’ve known all your life you’re not like any of the creatures around you. You hear things, you sense things no one else does. You can do things that no one else can. Those weren’t the delusions or even the hopeful fantasies of a lonely child. It was the hidden part of you seizing the truth. Using it. An ancient magic created you, a powerful magic. It twines through you, growing stronger with every full moon. This is only the beginning. It’s going to consume you eventually. That voice inside you—”

“What?” I did lurch back a step then.

“The voice inside you,” Jesse repeated, gentle. “It’s not truly a voice, is it? It’s more feelings than that. Instinct. Animal. Bestial.”

“Are you—did you just call me—”

“A beast, yes. You are. Better than that, though. You’re better than all the other beasts in all the rest of the universe.” He paused, a smile breaking through at last. And it was a dazzling smile, one to melt hearts and lies and all manner of icy-cold things. He came to his feet and crossed to me, stopping a handbreadth away.

His eyes captured mine, summer green darkened to dusk. His voice became a whisper.

“Lora, beloved. Lora of the moon and sky. You are a dragon.”

Ah, sighed the fiend, swelling with delight inside me, filled with an awful, awful recognition. Ah, ah! AH!

“That is enough,” I shouted over them both; rather, I tried to shout, but my voice was so strangled it came more as a gasp. “I don’t know what you’re playing at, but I don’t appreciate your games. I—I came here to tell you to stop pestering me, and leaving me gifts, and smiling at me—”

“You dream of flying,” Jesse said, which cut me off mid-sentence.

“Aye.” He nodded, shadows and gold, tall and warm and much too near. “I know all about it. I know all about you. You have wings at night. You lift as smoke. And you come to me, don’t you? Always to me.”

I could not reply. I could barely take a breath.

This is a dream, this is all still a dream, it’s just a new part to the dream, that’s all—

“It’s why you’re here now, tonight. You’re drawn to me, as fiercely as I am to you. You didn’t even have to follow my song this time. I muted it, didn’t you notice? And you came anyway.”

For a long, long moment, I gave up on breathing. For a long, long moment, all I heard was my heartbeat and his, and a gull crying miles away, and the distant thunder of a German bomb exploding on innocent ground.

Jesse lifted a hand and placed it on my arm. His palm felt hot against the cotton of my sleeve, his fingers felt firm, and that rush of longing and pleasure that always overtook me at his touch began to build.

“Lora,” he whispered again, so quiet it was barely a sound. “Inhale.”

And when I did, he bent his head to kiss me.

• • •


He tried to be careful about it. He tried to limit himself to a barely there touch, just his mouth to hers, nothing alarming, nothing assumed. But her lips were even softer than he’d dreamed, and with their bodies this close her scent wrapped around him in a heady rush. Jesse felt like he was drowning in flowers and fever and delight.

He wanted to drown. This was so much better than he’d … ever …

It spun out longer than he’d planned. It was still a joining of near chastity; the as-yet-contained part of him was afraid to move, afraid to lift his hands to her face, as he desperately wanted, to discover the contours of her with his fingertips. To feel her bare skin.

But he didn’t want to frighten her, and he didn’t want the kiss to end.

When he pulled from her at last, they were both sleepy-eyed and breathing hard. She looked stunned, so flushed and so beautiful and so very much at the edge of what he knew her to be that he nearly smiled, which would have been a drastic mistake.

When her gaze met his, her irises were luminous, pooling bright silvery purple, a definitely inhuman glow.

He’d awoken the beast in her.

Good.

“What are you?” she whispered.

Jesse took a step back to clear his head, to free himself from the tendrils of her sorcery. It’d be easier for both of them if he could think straight.

Right. He needed to focus. He’d waited his lifetime for this moment, but, even so, the words came with difficulty.

It was never painless to bare a soul.

“I am both less than you and more,” he said. “An alchemist, an amalgamation of two opposite realms. I’m the fabric of the stars.”