It is considered an honor to be…plucked from the crowd, so to speak. There are fine families in the district who have lived here for generations, none of whom have been so favored with the duke’s attention. Yet I wonder if it’s not truly His Grace himself behind this invitation, but his son.”
“Perhaps there’s a piano aboard.”
Her nostrils flared. “Don’t be pert. This is not a matter of jest, Eleanore. If you go on that yacht, your every move will be scrutinized. Your every word will be dissected. Your manners must be irreproachable, and they must be so at all times, even if you believe you are alone. Do you understand me?”
Do not steal anything. Do not belch or scratch your arse.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Should Lord Armand choose to favor you with his attention, you will react politely, graciously, but always with an aloof, dignified demeanor. It could be that he believes you to be…less than what you are. You will show him the error of that thought.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
He’d already seen me naked. I supposed everything from there would be a step toward dignified.
“Do you still have the bangle he presented to you?”
The cuff, I wanted to correct her. As if I was going to lose it.
“I do.”
“Wear it. Let him see that you value it, but take my strong advice on this, Eleanore. Do not accept another such gift from him. One is permissible. Two becomes a suggestion.”
“Oh.”
“Do we understand each other?”
“Yes, ma’am. We do.”
A smatter of laughter and applause reached us from beyond the open window. Some of the girls had set up a game of lawn pins, and the sudden crack! of a ball hitting its mark echoed through the room.
“One last thing,” said Westcliffe.
“Yes?”
“Wear your uniform. It won’t hurt to remind everyone of where you belong.”
I puzzled over that for the rest of the bright day.
My, my,” Chloe murmured, studying the chocolate she held. “I do believe this one’s gone off. It stinks like a cesspit.” Her eyes lifted. “Oh, wait. It’s only the guttersnipe.”
“Or perhaps it’s your perfume,” I said cordially. “You always smell like a whore.”
“It’s French,” retorted Runny-Nose, before Chloe could speak.
“Then she smells like a French whore.”
“Aren’t you the eloquent young miss.” Chloe’s gaze cut to Sophia, standing close behind me. “Slumming, little sister? I can’t confess I’m surprised.”
“I’m merely here for the show,” Sophia said breezily. “Something tells me it’s going to be good.”
I took the brooch from my pocket and let it slide down my index finger, giving it a playful twirl. “A fine try. But, alas, no winner’s prize for you, Chloe. I’m sure you’ve been waiting here for Westcliffe to raise the alarm about her missing ring, ready with some well-rehearsed story about how you saw me sneaking into her office and sneaking out again, and oh, look isn’t that Eleanore’s brooch there on the floor? But I’ve news for you, dearie. You’re sloppy. You’re stupid. And the next time you go into my room and steal from me, I’ll make certain you regret it for the rest of your days.”
“How dare you threaten me, you little tart!”
“I’m not threatening. You have no idea how easy it would be to, say, pour glue on your hair while you sleep. Cut up all your pretty dresses into ribbons.”
Chloe dropped her half-eaten chocolate back into its box, turning to her toadies. “You heard her! You all head her! When Westcliffe finds out about this-“
“I didn’t hear a thing,” piped up Sophia. “In fact, I do believe that Eleanore and I aren’t even here right now. We’re both off in my room, diligently studying.” She sauntered to my side, smiling. “And I’ll swear to that, sister. Without hesitation. I have no misgivings about calling you all liars right to Westcliffe’s face.”
“What fun,” I said softly, into the hush. “Shall we give it a go? What d’you say, girls? Up for a bit of blood sport?”
Chloe pushed to her feet, kicking the chocolates out of her way. All the toadies cringed.
“You,” she sneered, her gaze scouring me. “You with your ridiculous clothing and that preposterous bracelet, acting as if you actually belong here! Really, Eleanore, I wonder that you’ve learned nothing of real use yet. Allow me to explain matters to you. You may have duped Sophia into vouching for you, but your word means nothing. You’re no one. No matter what you do here or who you may somehow manage to impress, you’ll always be no one. How perfectly sad that you’re allowed to pretend otherwise.”
“I’m the one he wants,” I said evenly. “No one’s pretending that.”
I didn’t have to say who.
She stared at me, silent, her color high. I saw with interest that real tears began to well in her eyes.
“That’s right.” I gave the barest smile. “Me, not you. Think about that tomorrow, when I’m with him on the yacht. Think about how he watches me. How he listens to me. Another stunt like this”-I held up the circlet-“and you’ll be shocked at what I’m able to convince him about you.”
“As if you could,” she scoffed, but there was apprehension behind those tears.
“Try me.”
I brought my foot down on one of the chocolates, grinding it into a deep, greasy smear along the rug.
“Cheerio,” I said to them all, and turned around and left.
I’m spending until dawn with you,” I said firmly. “Don’t bother to argue.”
“God forbid,” said Jesse, solemn.
I pushed past him into the cottage. He’d been waiting up for me, I could tell. There was a book spread facedown upon the table, a pair of lamps lit beside it.
“I thought you said you were resting tonight.
“Aye. I was. But then it occurred to me that the bed wasn’t nearly so comfortable without you. So I got up and hoped.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and dug my toes into the soft nap of the rug. The cottage had been built within a protective circle of birches; even during the heat of the day, it was never very warm.
“You hoped for me?” I asked, uncertain.
Jesse came close, put his arms around me, and buried his face in my hair. “As always. As ever.”
“And I came,” I whispered, closing my eyes, breathing him. The ache behind my forehead began to unbind.
“And you came,” he agreed.
And he summoned the magic that was all his own, beyond stars and starfire. A magic of mortal lips and hands, of bristly new whiskers scraping my chin, of melting kisses that made the whiskers unimportant.
Our bodies entwined, or hearts. Our lives.
I think that was the night a very quiet, very powerful part of me began to comprehend how it was going to be. I think the part of me that was magic, that had broken away from the practical earth to slip along Jesse’s celestial family of stars, to allow them to bind me in their spell…
That part of me knew.
Armand towed me up and Jesse hustled me away. I staggered against him, looking past his shoulder just in time to see my nightgown dance over the rim of the roof, a twirling, empty ballerina blowing away to the stars.
“That was stupid,” I said loudly.
“Too right it was.” None of Armand’s fury had left him.
“No, I mean you. Both of you. Following me like that. You could have been killed!”
“We were doing well enough until you-did that! Went to smoke like that.”
“He couldn’t shoot smoke!”
“He could have shot the half-wit on top of him!”
“But he didn’t!” I swallowed, a lump of something sick rising in my throat. “I didn’t kill him, did I?”
Armand seemed to shrink a little. He looked back at the duke and shook his head. “No. I think you knocked him out. He’s breathing.”
“Has anyone a coat?” I asked, and found myself crumpling down to the roof, a leisurely sort of collapse. Armand grabbed me by the arm again and I managed to remain seated instead of prone.
“Dragon-girl.” Jesse was stripping off his shirt. “Bravest girl. I keep telling you to eat more.
I thought that ground fire couldn’t reach the zeppelins,” I said. “I thought that guns on the ground didn’t have the range.”
“Eleanore. Do you imagine for one particle of one second that he was thinking clearly enough to fathom that?”
“He was thinking clearly enough to fathom all of this,” I retorted, my hand flung out to encompass the roof. Blood stained my palm. “Clearly enough to have men haul all these crates into the castle in broad daylight all week long, so that everyone could see them and wonder what was actually inside!
Right,” I said once more, because it sounded firm, and because Armand’s brittle desolation was beginning to eat at me. None of this, after all, was his fault. “We get him downstairs. We sneak him out of the castle, back to your motorcar. You take Jesse to a doctor and take your father home. Lock him in a room, pour some wine down his throat. Laudanum. Whatever you have to do to keep him out while I get rid of the guns. None of this ever happened.” I looked at Jesse. “Are there hidden tunnels to use? So no one sees?
Shana AbeI wasn’t even certain if my wings were meant for flight. I hadn’t exactly had any luck with it the one time I’d tried.
I could glide, though. Probably.
Maybe.
Should worse come to worst, I could smoke up to them. Turn to dragon right there, dig my claws in, and hang on. That might do it.
Looked like I was about to find out.
What I hadn’t thought about, what I’d completely managed to forget about, was that I wasn’t exactly skilled at maintaining my transformed shape, either. The reminder came to me rather forcibly as I was streaming my way east, over the channel, and felt myself beginning to solidify.
No. No!
Yes.
Several thousand feet up in the air, I Turned back into a girl. Screaming, cartwheeling, everything topsy-turvy purple as gravity reclaimed me and I plummeted down to the water.
fly! sang the stars, weighing in past my screams. fly, beast!
It was a damned near save. I was a girl and then I wasn’t, managing the Turn so close to the sea that the foam from the cresting waves splashed up through the smoke of me.
Good thing I didn’t have a real heart just then. It would have stopped entirely.
I’ll start in the air,” I said, far more steadily than I thought I could, considering. I knelt to tie the shirt around his thigh, cinching it tight above the wound; he stiffened but let me finish the knot. “The air first, the airship, and then-then I’ll dive.”
“You can’t swim,” broke in Armand. “You told me that you can’t.”
“Maybe I can now. If I’m a dragon.”
“Don’t be an idiot! If you can’t swim, you can’t swim, Eleanore! You’ll drown out there, and what the bloody hell do you think you’re going to do anyway to a U-boat? Bite it open?”
I stood again. “Yes! If I must! I don’t hear you coming up with a better-“
“You’ll die out there!”
“Or we’ll all die here!”
“We’re going to find another way!”
“You two work on that. I’m off.” I fixed them both with one last, vehement look, the Turn rising inside me.
Remember this. Remember them, this moment, this heartbreak, these two boys. Remember that they loved you.
Armand had reached for my shoulders. “I forbid-Eleanore, please, no-“
“No,” echoed Jesse, speaking at last. “You’re not going after the submarine, Lora. You won’t need to.”
Armand and I paused together, glancing down at him. I stood practically on tiptoe, so ready to become my other self.
Jesse climbed clumsily to his feet. When he swayed, we both lunged to catch him.
“Armand will take me to the shore. I’ll handle the U-boat.”
“How?” demanded Armand at once.
But I understood. I could read him so well now, Jesse-of-the-stars. I understood what he meant to do, and what it would cost him.
I felt myself shaking my head. Above us, the airship propellers thumped louder and louder.
“Yes,” said Jesse, smiling his lovely smile at me. “I already sense your agreement. Death and the Elemental were stronger joined than apart, remember? This is our joining. Don’t waste any more time quarreling with me about it. That’s not your way.” He leaned down to me, a hand tangled in my hair. His mouth pressed to mine, and for the first time ever I didn’t feel bliss at his touch.
I felt misery.
“Go on, Lora-of-the-moon,” he murmured against my lips. “You’re going to save us. I know you will.”
I glared past him to the harsh, baffled face of Armand. “Will you help him? Do you swear it?”
“I-yes, I will. I do.”
I disentangled Jesse’s hand, kissed it, stepped back, and let the Turn consume me, smoke rising and rising, leaving the castle and all I loved behind me for the wild open sky.
I remember thinking that the Germans must have had a very fine view of all the neighborhoods they were obliterating.
Shana AbeBut Holms had proven stalwart and valiant. When Miss Jones had shown up to discover them in the castle hallway, because she’d heard a suspicious noise and had feared for her schoolchums’ safety, they’ d had to bring her along. She’d wanted to run straight to the headmistress, of course, but Armand had persuaded her not to. How he regretted that decision now!
The duke had fired his guns at them all. They’d retreated, thought to go to the automobile to fetch a doctor and the sheriff, but they’d stumbled the wrong way and fallen down the slope to the beach instead. All three of them. And there, noble Jesse had died.
Fact. Fiction. Likely because so much of it had happened, and because Armand’s red-eyed, stoic distress seemed so genuine, the adults around us had accepted it as truth.
Mostly.
I think if I hadn’t been discovered wearing only Armand’s coat as I knelt next to Jesse’s body, Mrs. Westcliffe might have found the whole thing easier to swallow.
Yet the official version ruled the day. And here we all were basking in it, breathing fresh sea air, warmed by the generous spring sun. Burying a hero. A far, far greater hero than anyone standing around me at his funeral would ever suspect.
Somewhere in deep-blue briny waters, a U-boat rested, filled with live torpedoes and solid-gold men.
I thought I better understood Rue’s letters now. I understood her warning about the pain that would come with my Gifts.
I understood my sacrifice.
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