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.
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 midsentence.
“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.
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.
Why do you want to know?”
The shrug again. “Just wondering.”
“Really. You’ve skipped your lawn tennis or duck hunting or whiskey drinking or whatever else people of your sort do all day, only to come all the way out to the island to ask me about the piano piece. Because you were just wondering.” I pushed away from the door. “Coming here to kiss me would have been more believable.”
“Well, it was second on my list.”
“I’m not intimidated by you,” I said, blunt. “If you’re hoping I’ll turn out to be some pathetic, blubbering little rag-girl who begs you not to ruin her, you’re in for a surprise.”
“That’s good.” Lord Armand met my eyes. “I like surprises.”
We gazed at each other, he on the bed and me by the door, neither of us giving quarter. It seemed to me that the room was growing even more dim, that time was repeating the same ploy it had pulled in Jesse’s cottage, drawing out long and slow. The storm outside railed against the castle walls, drowning the air within. It layered darkness through Armand’s eyes, the once-vivid blue now deep as the ocean at night.
Beyond my window the rain fell and fell, fat clouds weeping as if they’d never stop.
“Nice bracelet,” Armand said softly. “Did you steal it?”
I shook my head. “You gave it to me.”
“Did I?”
“As far as everyone else if concerned, yes. You did.”
“Hmm. And what do I get in return for agreeing to be your…benefactor?”
“The answer to your question.”
“No kiss?” he asked, even softer.
“No.”
His lips quirked. “All right, then, waif. I accept your terms. We’ll try the kiss later.
I didn’t think students were allowed below the main floor. I knew the kitchens were there, as were most of the servants’ quarters; the professors and Mrs. Westcliffe had their own aboveground wing on the other side of the castle. No one had ever specifically told me not to go below stairs, however-probably because a true Iverson girl would never, ever dream of mingling with the help.
I could always say I’d gotten lost. The pillars of the world would hardly collapse. The sky would not shatter. I was barely a hairbreadth away from being the help myself.
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.
Armand needs to see you. He’s had all this time to think things through. He’ll have questions. He’d rather go to you with them than to me.”
“I hardly have answers.”
“Then guess.”
I huffed a laugh. “Are you serious?”
“I am. Either you guess or I do.”
That brought me upright. “You mean, you’ve only been guessing at what you’ve been telling me?”
He gave a grin, folding his arms behind his head. “Not entirely. Sheathe your claws, love. The stars tell me most of it. I hypothesize the rest.”
“You guess.”
“Very well. If that’s the word you want.”
“That was your word.”
“Come back down,” he invited silkily, opening up the blanket again. “It’s cold without you.”
I didn’t, not right away. I fixed him with what I hoped was a steely look, but Jesse was right. Without the shared warmth of our bodies, the grotto rippled with cold after nightfall.
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.
You need to get home, both of you. Louis, I’d like to keep the letters here, if you don’t mind. I want to go over them again.”
I came to my feet. “And ask the stars about them?”
Jesse nodded. Armand only shook his head, gloomy. There were bruises under his eyes that hadn’t been there yesterday.
“Ask the-fine. Splendid. Keep them if you like. Burn them. Turn them to gold or silver or lead. In the morning I’ll wake up and none of this will have happened.”
“No, lordling,” I said to him. “You’re never going to wake like that again, and you’re never going to be able to forget.”
“Bugger you, waif.”
“And you.”
He walked past both of us without another glance or another word, opened the door, and disappeared into the night.
I went to Jesse and wrapped my arms around him. After only a second’s hesitation, his arms lifted to embrace me, too.
“I don’t want to go,” I whispered.
I felt his chest expand beneath my cheek. “This is going to be much more difficult than I anticipated.”
“Which part?”
“All of it.” He brought a hand to my hair, his fingers weaving through. “Things are about to change rapidly now, Lora. He’ll come back to us stronger and stronger. He’s going to crave you more and more, and not having you will eat him raw.”
I frowned up at him. “What do you mean?”
Jesse tucked a strand behind my ear, his eyes emerald dark, his lashes tipped with candlelight. “It will be in his nature. He’ll feel compelled to claim you, and he won’t stop trying to do that. Ever. When that happens-“
“That is not bloody going to happen.”
“When that happens,” he said again resolutely, “I want you to remember two things. One: I’ve loved you since before he even knew you lived. Two: Spare a little pity for him. This isn’t entirely his fault. He was born into his role, just as you and I were. But, Lora-of-the-moon-only a little pity, all right?”
“My pity may reach as deep and wide as the ocean,” I answered. “But my heart is already claimed.”
To prove it, I clutched his shirt and lifted myself to my toes and brought my lips to his.
Sweeter than raspberry jam, warmer than candle flame, softer than bread.
People often spoke with religious rapture of milk and honey, but if I had nothing but Jesse to consume for the rest of my days, I’d die a heathen beast, content.
The shelf number for the book would be inked in beside it, but each shelf contained about fifty books, so you had to hang there on the ladder and read every spine of every one until you came across yours.
Let it be said that nothing was ever accomplished in haste at Iverson.
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