The Sweetest Dark

Chapter Fifteen

There are certain moments in life when hard, hot truth shines at you like a spotlight from heaven, like the focused beam from a lighthouse on the shore of yourself, and you find yourself stripped naked in its light. You can’t hide from it. You can’t close your eyes and wish it away. It’s truth; easy truth or unbearable truth, either way, it won’t be vanquished. And there you are for all to see, stuck in its merciless glare.

One of those moments for me came that night with Jesse, there in his cottage in the island woods. I was caught in the glare of not one but three impossible truths:

I wasn’t human.

Neither was he.

And he had kissed me. On the lips.

One of those truths—I couldn’t even tell which—kept me standing in place before him with a hand pressed to my mouth, as if I could hold in the soft, lingering sensation of that kiss, the cinnamon-vanilla-rain taste of him. The last bit of heat from his body, which I was already growing cold without.

My eyes were wide as saucers as I stared up at him, so I shut them, opened them again.

I was a … what?

He was of the stars?

The candle flame continued its merry little dance, undaunted by anything but the breeze. A cricket hopped close to the door, right up close, and chirped a few bars before leaping back into the dark.

Jesse was looking down at me with that patient expression, a suggestion of worry now mixed in. This time he was clearly waiting for me to say something, so I said, “Oh.”

Brilliant. I still couldn’t bring myself to lower my hand, so I’d said it around my fingers.

“Are you breathing?” he asked.

I nodded.

“I can prove it,” he said. “My part, at least. Not yours.”

He didn’t need to prove it. I believed him. It was crazy, as wildly insane as anything I’d ever heard at Moor Gate—but I believed him.

Yet the words remained stuck behind my closed lips.

He walked to the piecrust table, threw a glance over his shoulder at me through the fall of his hair to make sure I was still paying attention. As if I’d be looking anywhere else.

He needs a haircut, I thought, my mind clinging to any sliver of rationality. He needs a haircut, but it looks so good like that.

“You don’t have to come closer,” Jesse said. “In fact, you shouldn’t. But watch.”

His arm stretched out. His hand reached down, index finger pointing, the others slightly tucked, a familiar contour both elegant and timeless, like that Michelangelo painting on the ceiling at the Vatican. He touched a single petal of one of the white flowers that he’d shaped in that half circle on the wood. Touched just the very tip of it.

And light poured out of him at the touch. Light, golden as he was but shimmering brilliant, a shower of sparkles, of glittering diamonds or gold-leaf confetti—I was processing what was happening but wasn’t; for heaven’s sake, he was shooting light. In an instant it engulfed not only the flowers but his hand, and then his arm, and then all of him, and Jesse Holms became the spotlight that I could not bear to see, and I had to turn my face away from his brilliance and truth.

Shadows cut crisp and black around me. The table, all the chairs, every tuft of the rug, every wooden plank of the floor, illuminated. I heard the air leave my lungs again. The thin whoooo of my breath, hollow as could be.

I sucked it back in, and the golden light faded.

His back was to me. His shoulders were bowed. He stood for a moment without moving, but there was something about him anyway that read pain. He stood as if he hurt, his body held smaller, tighter, than it’d been before. His face was a pale mask in the reflection of the window. His eyes were closed.

“Jesse?”

“Yes. I’m all right.”

I guess to confirm it he straightened and returned to me, graceful as ever, offering me the flat of his palm.

He had the braid of flowers balanced there, still in their half circle. But they were changed now. They weren’t white any longer or even alive.

They were made of gold.

Actual gold, because they sang to me, just like the circlet of roses had. Just like the regular rings and earrings and bracelets and stickpins of all the people I’d ever known.

Jesse had turned the living flowers into metal.

He lifted my arm and slipped them over my wrist. Rigid in their golden death, they hugged the bones of my arm snug like a cuff, like they’d been made specially for me.

Which, I supposed, they had.

I’m not proud of what happened next. In my defense, it had been a long, strange day followed by a sleepless night, and I was more than a little unnerved from—well, from everything. The tea, the duke’s ruby song, Armand and Chloe and the bombs and then Jesse and the night and the kiss and not being human. Not being human.

All I remember is that I was looking down at the cuff, at the perfect composition of the flowers, how they connected petal-to-petal in the most miraculous way, humming warm against my skin. I thought that the king’s own jeweler could not have designed a better bracelet and how funny that was because I was surely as opposite the King of England as a person could be.

Anyway, I wasn’t anticipating it: The shadows from the floor rose up in a rush and clasped me in opaque arms. They encased me and Jesse and the entire room.

Yes, I fainted.

Even as I fell, I realized how humiliating it was. My very last conscious thought was, Please let me wake up alone in my own bed.

And I did.

...

You’re wondering if I awoke with the cuff.

Because if I didn’t, perhaps it had all been nothing but a dream. Or my own particular brand of insanity, my notoriously hysterical imagination. Even before we’re out of short pants and pinafores, we’re taught to dismiss both dreams and imaginings as if they count for nothing, and without the cuff, I would likely have done just that. With every fiber of my being, I yearned to be normal. To glide through my days at Iverson without incident. The last thing I wanted was to indulge in my differences from everyone else.

But with the proof of those braided flowers, I’d have to face the fact that my life was about to unfold in a very, very different way than I’d ever envisioned. Normal would become forever out of reach.

The answer, of course, is that I awoke with the cuff.

At first I didn’t even feel it. At first, with the light of day creeping over me—a gray light, a cloudy light, because even though the sky last night had stretched so limpid, by morning a rainstorm was rolling in—I felt only grit in my eyes and the gnawing awareness that if I didn’t get up soon, I’d miss breakfast. And I was hungry.

I staggered out of bed and over to the bureau, yanking open the drawer that contained my Sunday blouse and skirt. It was only then I understood that the heavy thing about my wrist was Jesse’s flowers.

It stopped me cold.

I remembered it all, everything at once in a sickening flood.

I was a …

I was …

The beast in my heart said nothing. Ever since Jesse’s revelation, it had gone still as death. I had to finish the thought all alone.

I was a dragon.

Reflexively, I ran my hands up and down my sides, feeling my ribs, my hips, my legs. Except for my boots, I was still wearing every bit of last night’s clothing—thank you, Jesse—and it didn’t take long to tear it all off entirely so I could examine my skin.

No scales, no plated spine or new, hideous claws where my toenails used to be. No hint of anything dragonish at all. Even when I twisted around practically in half, using the looking glass to try to glimpse my backside, I still looked … ordinary. I still looked just like me.

But there was the cuff on my wrist, singing a soft, soft melody. And what had happened with the piano. And how I’d made Malinda choke. And all those years of all those silent songs.

This is only the beginning.

There was only one person who could explain it all to me. I had to find Jesse again, had to find him right now—

Downstairs a door slammed, followed by startled laughter. The exodus to breakfast was well under way.

Damn. It killed me, but Jesse would have to wait. If I didn’t show up for breakfast, Mrs. Westcliffe would send Gladys or Almeda looking for me. I’d heard that the only excuse for missing chapel or meals was illness, and if you were ill, you could expect a sizable dose of cod-liver oil and bloody little else.

I tugged on my clothes and hurried down the tower stairs, only just managing to join the final stragglers darting past the dining hall doors. I made my way to the tenth-year table, hardly registering the customary tittering that churned in my wake.

“Lovely coiffure,” commented someone beside me. “Was the price of a few hairpins really too dear?”

I glanced to my right, where Chloe stood with a hand atop the back of her chair. The runny-nosed girl slouched beside her. Both of them were smiling small, malevolent smiles.

“Excuse me?” I said.

“Your hair.” Chloe pulled out her chair, turning away. Her ladyship was already bored. “Quite the rat’s nest, isn’t it? Either you can’t afford even cheap pins or else you simply don’t care how you look. Either way, it’s an obvious indication of inferior blood.”

“Obvious,” echoed Runny-Nose, pulling out her chair, too.

I had forgotten. I’d gotten dressed and even ensured I’d picked the skirt without the rip, but I had forgotten all about my hair. It hung loose and tangled down my back, and in my haste I hadn’t noticed it at all.

Chloe was shaking out her napkin, her back to me. Snug against the laden table, snug amid her bootlicking friends, she had all the power and she knew it. “Run along, guttersnipe. Your stench is truly overwhelming. I swear, you’re already curdling the milk.”

Blood rushed to my cheeks. I came closer. I placed my hand on her arm.

“Listen—” I began.

I don’t know what I might have done just then. What I might have said. I was angry and mortified and angry that I was mortified, and the darkness in me–magic or dragon or whatever it was–was rising in my throat like a black vicious bubble. It was my power and I was going to use it. But then two separate things happened, and I never got the chance to finish my sentence.

Mrs. Westcliffe walked by, so near her skirts brushed mine.

And Chloe spotted my cuff.

“Why, what a cunning bangle!” she said, in a far louder voice than any of the nastiness before. “Didn’t you think so, Mrs. Westcliffe?”

The headmistress dutifully stopped and turned around.

I made myself still. I made myself swallow the black bubble and keep my hand at my side instead of jerking it behind my back, as I wished to do. It wouldn’t matter that it wasn’t technically a bangle; it was precious and I was poor, and that would be reason enough to raise suspicion.

Yesterday’s brooch might well have been borrowed. Yesterday I had been Cinderella, and the roses pinned to Lady Sophia’s dress hadn’t raised an eyebrow.

Today I was plain cinders again.

“A bangle?” Mrs. Westcliffe moved her hawk-sharp gaze to me.

“I only just noticed it myself,” Chloe said, all innocence. “Rather interesting piece, so modern, especially for an Iverson girl. Of course, since you approved it, Headmistress, I’m sure it’s fine.”

I didn’t wait to be asked. I lifted my hand and allowed the flowers to show against my wrist, gleaming their delicate gold. Mrs. Westcliffe bent down for a better look.

“I was going to bring it to you after chapel,” I improvised. “I didn’t want to bother you before breakfast.”

“Ah,” was all she replied. And then, “Where did you get it?”

“It was a gift.” I turned my gaze to Chloe. “From Lord Armand.”

The effect of this little burst of brilliance was truly gratifying. Her eyes bulged. Her mouth fell open. No sound emerged.

“Oh?” said Mrs. Westcliffe, in a very different tone.

“Yes.”

“Liar!” exclaimed Chloe, apparently unable to stop herself.

“Lady Chloe,” said Mrs. Westcliffe at once, “I’ll thank you to remember who and where you are and maintain a civil discourse.”

“But—he …” She trailed off, biting her lip, her face growing brighter and brighter.

“Ask him,” I said to both of them, to everyone listening—which by now was everyone within earshot. I wasn’t thinking about the consequences of pulling Armand into it or of a single moment to come beyond this one. I was brimming with the confidence of my lie, skating fast and happy on Chloe’s bitter chagrin.

Who’s curdling the milk now?

“He gave it to me during the tea yesterday. I tried to refuse it, of course, but Lord Armand insisted, saying it was a welcome gift and that he would be insulted should I not accept it. And I thought, well, as a guest of the duke, as a student of the school, I could not graciously continue to decline.” I looked straight into Mrs. Westcliffe’s eyes. “Was it the wrong thing to do, ma’am?”

Her head tilted, just slightly. I was mightily aware of being judged, of my words, my sincerity, being weighed. I was a nonentity compared to Chloe Pemington; all the sincerity and credibility in the world be damned, she was a member of the peerage and I a nameless orphan, and nothing would ever change that. But throw in the backing of the school’s noble patron and his son …

“No,” Mrs. Westcliffe concluded at last. “From your description, it appears you behaved correctly, Miss Jones.”

“But—” Chloe clenched her hand into her napkin.

“Yes, Lady Chloe?”

“She didn’t even show it to you before wearing it! She broke the rules.”

“That specific rule applies to jewelry worn with the school uniform. As it is Sunday, and Miss Jones is not in uniform, the spirit of the rule remains intact.” Mrs. Westcliffe gave a nod. “Good morning, girls. Oh, and, Miss Jones. Kindly do put up your hair before chapel.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Another nod, and she was gone.

All through the meal, the girls at my table kept pretending not to stare at the cuff. I didn’t attempt to hide it, nor did I attempt to flaunt it. I acted just as I imagined any of them would, allowing it to slide oh so casually along my wrist as I ate my food, as I sipped from my cup. When a short-lived sunbeam slipped across the table and I reached into it for the sugar, a spray of light dappled my skin and the china bowl like sparks from a bonfire.

All the girls appeared curious, but none of them appeared either especially pleased or dismayed, except for Lady Sophia.

From her place down the table, Sophia looked from the cuff up into my eyes, making certain I noticed. Then she smiled, smugly satisfied, like the cat that’d gotten the cream.

...

Whatever else Chloe cared to insinuate, I did have hairpins. In fact, as luck would have it, I had two in my pocket that I’d stuck in there last weekend, because I’d been bored and restless in chapel and they’d been digging into my nape.

Two were sufficient to hold up my hair—perhaps not as neatly as the other students’, but then again, none of them were of my particularly inferior blood. So who cared?

I had Jesse’s gold and Jesse’s attention, and they didn’t, so who cared?

It saved me a trip to my room and granted me an extra fifteen minutes of delicious breakfast, which is why it was after chapel and well after noon when I finally made my way back to the tower. The clouds were shedding their promised rain, decreasing the temperature by a good ten degrees and tinting any light that seeped into the castle the shade of murky steel. Raindrops peppered every window, as if the wind could not decide in which direction to blow.

I would need my oilskin for the trip through the woods. Magical or not, I’d caught colds before.

Shadows lapped the tower stairs, charcoal over gray. My door was ajar, but I thought nothing of it. Gladys would have been in and out by now, making my bed, straightening my things, likely spitting in my water.

The bed had been made, but the quilts were all rumpled. That’s what happened when someone sprawled atop them, as Lord Armand was when I opened my door. Armand, in a wrinkled shirt and trousers and black woolen socks, his coat and tie and shoes dumped in a soggy heap on the floor. It looked for all the world like he’d been napping.

I stood for a moment without moving, my fingers tight and cold on the knob.

“Hullo,” he said sleepily, rubbing a hand along his jaw.

He’s here in my room, right in the middle of the afternoon. Great God, there’s a boy in my bed in my room—

I came to life. “Get out!”

He yawned, a lazy yawn, a yawn that clearly indicated he had no intention of leaving. In the moody gray light his body seemed a mere suggestion against the covers, his hair a shaded smudge against the paler lines of his collar and face.

“But I’ve been waiting for you for over an hour up here, and bloody boring it’s been, too. I’ve never known a girl who didn’t keep even mildly wicked reading material hidden somewhere in her bedchamber. I’ve had to pass the time watching the spiders crawl across your ceiling.”

Voices floated up from downstairs, a maids’ conversation about rags and soapy water sounding horribly loud, and horribly close.

I shut the door as gently as I could and pressed my back against it, my mind racing. No lock, no bolt, no key, no way to keep them out if they decided to come up… .

Armand shifted a bit, rearranging the pillows behind his shoulders.

I wet my lips. “If this is about the kiss—”

“No.” He gave a slight shrug. “I mean, it wasn’t meant to be. But if you’d like—”

“You can’t be in here!”

“And yet, Eleanore, here I am. You know, I remember this room from when I used to live in the castle as a boy. It was a storage chamber, I believe. All the shabby, cast-off things tossed up here where no one had to look at them.” He stretched out long and lazy again, arms overhead, his shirt pulling tight across his chest. “This mattress really isn’t very comfortable, is it? Hard as a rock. No wonder you’re so ill-tempered.”

Dark power. Compel him to leave.

I was desperate enough to try.

“You must go,” I said. Miraculously, I felt it working. I willed it and it happened, the magic threading through my tone as sly as silk, deceptively subtle. “Now. If anyone sees you, you were never here. You never saw me. Go downstairs, and do not mention my name.”

Armand sat up, his gaze abruptly intent. One of the pillows plopped to the floor.

“That was interesting, how your voice just changed. Got all smooth and eerie. I think I have goose bumps. Was that some sort of technique they taught you at the orphanage? Is it useful for begging?”

Blast. I tipped my head back against the wood of the door and clenched my teeth.

“Do you have any idea the trouble I’ll be in if they should find you here? What people will think?”

“Oh, yes. It rather gives me the advantage, doesn’t it?”

“Mrs. Westcliffe will expel me!”

“Nonsense.” He smiled. “All right, probably she will.”

“Just tell me what you want, then!”

His lashes dropped; his smile grew more dry. He ran a hand slowly along a crease of quilt by his thigh.

“All I want,” he said quietly, “is to talk.”

“Then pay a call on me later this afternoon,” I hissed.

“No.”

“What, you don’t have the time to tear yourself away from your precious Chloe?”

I hadn’t meant to say that, and, believe me, as soon as the words left my lips I regretted them. They made me sound petty and jealous, and I was certain I was neither.

Reasonably certain.

Armand’s smile briefly grew wider, then vanished. His fingers moved back and forth, playing with the dips and peaks of the crease.

“Where did you learn that piece?” he asked. “The one you played on the piano yesterday?”

And there it was again expanding between us, that electric, ill-defined challenge that felt like danger. Or excitement. I knew his question wasn’t casual. He might have been a selfish wretch, but I wasn’t the only one who’d get in trouble if we were discovered. It was Visitors’ Day, after all, and he could have easily cornered me at the tea. If he’d felt it necessary to sneak all the way up to my room to ask me about the song, it meant he didn’t want anyone to overhear.

Perhaps that might give me the advantage.

I remembered how his face had looked when I was finished playing. How white. How shocked.

“Why do you want to know?”

The shrug again. “Just wondering.”

“Really. You’ve skipped your lawn tennis or duck hunting or whisky 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 is 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 sighed. “I made up the piece at the piano.”

He said nothing, only stared at me.

“Truly,” I said. “I made it up. Right then. It’s …” Now I shrugged. “It’s just something I do.”

Armand cleared his throat. “You’d never heard it before?”

“No.” I took a step closer to him, frowning. There was something odd going on here; the power between us had shifted. I felt it, that danger feeling fading and something new growing in its place.

Something like fear.

“Had you heard it before?” I asked, startled.

“Of course not. How could I have, if you just invented it?”

“Yes,” I murmured, not taking my eyes off him, exploring that odd new energy between us. “How could you have?”

He came to his feet. “It’s only that my mother used to do that sort of thing. Invent songs like that. It was her Steinway, in fact, a wedding gift from my father. Yesterday you—you gave him a start, I suppose. Gave us both a bit of a start. Bent over the keys like that, your hair all tumbling down. You really resembled her.”

“How old were you when she died?”

He pulled on his coat, spattering water on us both. “Around three.”

“Oh,” I said carefully. “But you remember her playing?”

“I s’pose so.” Shoes on, the tie shoved into his pocket– Armand turned to face me and, just like that, I knew I’d lost him. His gaze had gone cool and his smile faint. He was entirely a lord once more.

“It’s been most delightful, Miss Jones. Let’s do it again sometime, shall we?”

I let him walk past me, swing open the door. He peered into the gloom of the stairwell before slipping down the first few steps. At the fourth step he paused, looked back up at me, and lowered his voice.

“Where did you get the bracelet?”

“Goodbye, Lord Armand,” I whispered. “Try not to get caught.”

I closed my door. I pressed my ear to the wood and remained there another whole minute until I heard him moving off, quick footfalls that faded into the more constant patter of the rain.

...

Jesse was not at home. I knew that without venturing even an inch into the sodden woods.

After Armand had left, I paused only long enough to remake the bed and blot up the water his coat had left on the floor. It was while I was doing that—on my hands and knees, my hair popped free of the measly two pins to tickle my neck—that I realized I was being surrounded by a new song.

Jesse’s song.

It rose around me in a lilting cadence, became a caress along my body, an invitation, our own secret code that echoed and repeated, and every single note meant come find me.

I stood and pushed the hair from my face. I crossed to my window to gaze down at the rainlit green, searching the fingers of fog that curled against the animal hedges and flower beds. The long, wet span of grass bereft of students or staff or too-early Sunday guests.

He definitely wasn’t down there. He didn’t seem to be outside at all. So … he must be somewhere within the castle.

Come find me.

My heart began a harder beat; I felt tingly, almost anxious.

Come.

Very well. I would.

I put on my oilskin, just in case. Then I went to answer Jesse’s call, sliding as carefully into the stairwell shadows as Armand had done a quarter hour before.

Downstairs, the maids were kindling batches of light, moving from lamp to lamp with their waxed-paper tapers to ward off the day’s dull chill. We’d entered that numbed, dragging stretch of hours before Sunday tea and after church, when Iverson’s genteel young ladies tended to wander off in their individual clusters to genteelly shred the characters of anyone beyond their circle.

Each year had claimed its own location, I’d learned. The older girls usually headed outdoors to brave the tame wilderness—and relative privacy—of the gardens, while the younger ones liked to remain ensconced safely inside, closer to the promise of biscuits and cake. On days such as today, however, all the girls in all the years recognized that they were made of spun sugar: Rain would surely melt them into puddles. Everyone was forced indoors.

The front parlor was out-of-bounds until four, so they’d draped themselves throughout the other common rooms instead. As I passed the library, I glimpsed Chloe and Sophia standing and chatting by the fire with every evidence of civility. But Sophia still had her cat’s smile, and Chloe’s cheeks were still red.

Perhaps it wasn’t so unpleasant to be without a family, after all.

I moved past the doorway without either of them noticing.

Jesse wasn’t with any of the other girls, anyway. He wasn’t in any part of the castle that I’d yet explored. The more I walked, the more I understood that even though I had gone all the way down to the ground floor, he was still below me somewhere, in the bowels of the keep.

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.

The only entrance to the lower level I knew of was down at the far end of the main hallway. I lurked by the sole painting there, gazing up in apparent fascination at the portrait of a man in a tatty fur coat with what seemed to be a dead weasel wrapped around his head. He stared back at me with a cold smile I recognized very well.

Olin, read the little plate screwed into the frame, 5th dk Idylling.

Like brown hair and lunacy, it seemed hauteur was passed down the family line. At least the current duke was a finer dresser.

A pair of maids holding spent tapers swished past. The servants’ door opened; the maids went through; light and voices and the blue-smoke sting of lit cigarettes boiled up into the hall until the door shut behind them, and it was just me and the dead-weasel duke once more.

Jesse’s song sparkled louder, so beautiful and wanting, it felt like an ache in my bones.

Come, love.

I glanced up and down the passageway: I was alone. I inched toward the door and put my hand on the latch.

“No, not that way,” murmured Jesse, close enough that I felt his breath on my temple.