The Treasure Keeper

Chapter Fourteen

She refused to cook.

Zoe stared down at the spoon she'd dipped into the stew Hayden and the dragon-boy had concocted, watching the greasy mess of it drip, one splash at a time, back into the boil of the pot. It smelled rancid; they must have had it simmering for days. There had been beef in there once. Some onions or leeks. What it had reduced to now, however, she could not say.

She dropped the spoon back to a counter. She turned around and took in once again the cellar kitchen, the dusty cupboard holding one solitary egg and a bottle of grayish oil, the half-eaten loaf of bread. What appeared to be tarragon growing sickly green upon the shelf of the window.

There was a tin of very fine Ceylon by the water basin. Boiling water was not the same as cooking, she reasoned, and the fire was already going. Tea would be bracing.

Wine would be better, but there wasn't any, not that she had found. So. Tea.

While the water heated she sat upon the bench by the servants' table. The sole illumination in the kitchen came from the fire in the hearth; it maintained a constant, meager little glow, tarnished light all along the folds of her dress. She kept her gaze willfully upon her hands, her fingers bare of rings, and tried not to notice the rising darkness of a shadow leg, trim and muscled in brown breeches, appearing very near hers.

"Pray do not speak," she said, very low.

He didn't. After a few minutes he did shift on the bench; the water on the fire was bubbling into soft little pops.

She pushed back without glancing at him. She dumped a measure of Ceylon into the ceramic teapot that had been set next to the tin, poured in the water, and capped the pot. Then she sat again, taking the bench opposite his.

"I hope you're not going to eat what ever's in that kettle," said the shadow. "It smells like glue." Zoe lifted her eyes to his.

From across the table, Rhys sent her his most bland smile. "I'm sorr—

"Stop talking."

"I merely wished to express my—"

"Stop. Talking."

He leaned back a little with his hands flat upon the table, looking wounded. "Zee."

She stood again and left the kitchen.

The rear stairs led to a landing just by the backroom; she found herself opening the door, stepping out into the contained dusk of the backyard garden.

Hayden and the black-haired boy remained in the house. She felt them there, still in the parlor, probably, trying to decide what to do with her.

She could leave. She could head back to Tuileries. They'd likely not track her there for days, if at all. Paris was enormous, far bigger than she'd ever even conceived. It could take them weeks to catch her scent.

Instead she plunked down upon the rear steps, common as a scullery maid, her skirts ruched between her knees, listening to the gemstones they'd buried in the dirt. Diamonds, little ones, larger ones, blue and pink and clear and yellow. They tinkled with song, lifting into light, pretty melodies now that she was so near.

The ghost of Rhys slid over one and it didn't change its tune in the slightest degree. Even diamonds were immune to him.

Only she saw him. Only she had to look upon his face and witness the emotion that burned behind his winter-pale eyes.

"Are you well pleased?" Zoe whispered. "Delighted at the turn of events?"

"Are you?" he countered, and settled upon the dying grass at her feet.

She looked away, up to the translucent purplish-blue heights of the evening sky. The stars peeking out from between the buildings marking the horizon.

"He's alive," said Rhys, indifferent.

"He was happy to see you. I think you surprised him, that's all."

Her eyes had begun to tear; she would not blink against the blue.

"We should go home," the ghost said. "It's time now. He's safe. We need to head home."

For an instant she thought he was speaking of the palace. But when she looked down at him he was plucking at a blade of dried grass, his fingers pulling at it over and over, his hair falling in waves of deep brown along his face and over his shoulders.

"Darkfrith," she said.

"Yes."

She watched him trying to pinch the grass. "I can't imagine that. I can't imagine going back there."

"It's where we belong, Zee." "Hayden is my home."

"Oh?" His tone sharpened. "Well, your home that is Hayden evidently also wishes you to return to Darkfrith. A double endorsement, rather."

The diamonds were picking up volume with the twilight; sweet, airy music that swirled about her with the sighing of the breeze.

"Is this what it will be like there?" she asked quietly. "You and I, forever and ever?"

He glanced up at her. "What d'you mean?"

She leaned forward with her hands clasped between her knees, intent. "Will you haunt me forever?"

His jaw tightened; the evening breeze took the catkins of an alder directly behind him and shivered the leaves. She could see it. Through the gloom and him. Right through him.

"Because I really don't think I deserve that," Zoe went on. "I never wished you any true ill in life. I wish you only peace in death. Why won't you leave me be?"

"I ..." He shook his head, a blossoming of smoke. "Wait. What are you saying?"

"I can't exist with you here. Always here. I can't be expected to live my life like that. It's not right. You shouldn't be my shade, Rhys. I don't know where we go after we—I don't know what comes after our deaths. But you shouldn't be with me."

He regarded her with those chill green eyes. "Whatever happened to I swear I'll avenge you?"

"I can't do that from Darkfrith."

"By God, Zee," he burst out, coming to his feet. "You can't do that anywhere. Don't you understand? I'm not choosing to be with you. I can't help it. You're the sole light in my universe, and if I'm stuck with you, I have to guess there's a damned good reason for it. You don't know what happens after death? Well, neither do I. All I know is that when I'm with you I feel again, and I see again, and it's like there's actual blood in my veins." He slapped a hand to his chest. "In my heart. You drown the song, Zoe, you alone. If anything were to ever happen to you—"

"You might be free," she whispered.

"No." He shook his head again, smaller; his hair scarcely stirred. "No, love. I'd just be alone. Again."

"Zoe?"

She turned to find Hayden standing above her, his gaze bright as the sky, a hand spread upon the open door.

"Who are you talking to?"

"The diamonds," she answered, taking up her skirts and climbing the stairs to him. "The jasper."

"Come inside," he said, and placed that hand upon the small of her back as she passed. "Come talk to me instead."

* * *

They had found him two days beyond Dijon. He hadn't realized it was the coachman who'd betrayed him; all Hayden knew was that at some point during the night in the rustic inn they had settled upon he'd awoken to the tiny, persistent scratch of a pick working at the lock to his room. And even then he'd assumed it was just a common thief determined to ransack his luggage; France, he said, was rife with such rogues. Until he'd caught a whiff of saltpeter and nervous sweat. The oiled metal of the guns.

Hayden was full drakon. Although the council had instructed him not to use his Gifts unless his circumstances turned truly dire, he figured a quartet ofsanf inimicus breaking through his door was dire enough.

"You Turned?" Zoe asked him, nursing her cup of too-strong tea. "To smoke or to dragon?"

"Oh, to smoke, of course," he said, taking a sip of his own tea. They had moved from the front parlor to the drawing room across the hall, where there were frosted-glass lamps and a settee wide enough for them both. The curtains here were heavy damask, white with saffron flowers. "A dragon would have shattered that little matchbox of an inn to slivers, even without trying."

"It was mostly spit and thatch," agreed the dragon-boy, who had shunned the pungent tea for brandy. He sat by the fire once again. The engraved glass in his hand winked in constant, cinnamon sparks.

Zoe glanced at him. "You were there?" Twice since beginning his tale, Hayden had granted the boy the honorific His Grace, and once,His Highness. Sandu was Zaharen, obviously, from that clan of Transylvanian drakon that so worried her own. He seemed quite young to be both a lone hunter and a prince, but there was no mistaking that air of jaded, adolescent regality about him. He even held his brandy in a studied way, the stem and cup supported between two slender pale fingers.

In any case, Hayden would not be wrong.

"I was," said Sandu. "The sanf were tracking your husband. I was tracking the sanf. Our sudden convergence was most fortuitous.""They weren't expecting us both. We made short work of them," Hayden said mildly. She lowered her cup. "Are they dead?"

"Really, my dear. I can't imagine you'd find any gratification in the details!" He leaned over to touch a hand to her knee and almost as quickly removed it. "Suffice it to say you need never worry about those particular humans. They shall not trouble us again."

"Yes," said Sandu, sending Zoe a short, candid look. "They're dead."

"I like this boy," commented Rhys. "I confess it. I like him more and more."

The ghost of Rhys had followed them inside. He'd taken a chair by the windows, as relaxed against the cushions as the young prince seemed to be, and up until now at least, he'd been silent.

She'd decided to ignore him. It was her only hope of slipping back into her normal life. If she refused to acknowledge him, if she refused to interact with him, perhaps he'd give up. Perhaps he'd fade away and go where he was meant to, wherever that was.

Not here. Not at her side.

When she moved her hand, the loose leaves of tea at the bottom of her cup spun in diminutive eddies. She looked from them deliberately back up at Hayden. At his profile, so golden and fine.

"Why are you both in Paris? I thought the council wanted you to reach the Zaharen in the Carpathians."

It was Sandu who finally answered; Hayden had gone stiff, avoiding her gaze. "Because ... Paris is where they are. Paris is where they've hidden their heart."

She nearly spilled her tea. "What? Thesanf? "

"That's what we discovered that night." Hayden murmured the prince's name, but the boy only spoke over him. "Their leader is ensconced here. They're building ranks. There might be hundreds of them already in the city alone. They're preparing for something big, bigger than they've ever attempted."

"Darkfrith," Zoe guessed, then caught her breath.

"We fear it so."

Darkfrith. Cerise and the little children. Uncle Anton, gray and slow. All her kin, the village and farms and the unprotected downs . and that menacing phrase the cloak had captured for her back in the Palais Royal:over two hundred sanf—

Sandu shifted, adjusting a velvet pillow behind his back. "There's more. We discovered they're holding one of our kind. We don't know who. We don't even know why. It's not a ransom or exchange, and they're not using this drakon to hunt us, as they've done in the past. They're keeping him—or her—prisoner, a body bound. It could be one of your tribe or mine. You're missing your Alpha's second son and that young maiden. My own people are scattered, and we don't . track ourselves as you do, so it might be nearly anyone. Whoever it is, the individual seems vital to the sanf inimicus. Vital enough not to dispose of. Yet."

Rhys had sat up in his chair. His clenched fingers seemed to sink through the wooden arms.

"You're going after them," said Zoe, disbelieving. "Aren't you? The two of you alone, going for a rescue. Just like the heroes in a picture book."

The prince fixed her once again with that clear candid gaze.

"Of course," he said.

Hayden came to life. "And that's why you must leave. That's why I need you on the next coach to Calais. So you will be safe."

"Th etwo of you," she reiterated. "Against an entire hive of Others."

He granted her a sideways look. "Do you think it an uneven match, my dear?"

"I think it's suicide. You've just said there might be hundreds of them here. That their leader is here. Don't you think they'll have prepared for our kind? Don't you think they'll be ready to defend this body, this dragon, that they want so badly?"

"They're still merely humans," said the prince with a shrug.

"Humans with weapons! Humans with a list of proper ways to recognize us! To take away our sight!"

"But we have the better advantage," explained the boy slowly, as if she were exceptionally dense. "We know they're here. They don't know we are. You yourself said that the one who did locate you was killed by the other man, trying to protect you. So—there you have it."

She placed her cornflower china teacup delicately upon the table before her, centering it in its saucer, and shifted to face Hayden. He looked back at her gravely, not relinquishing his own cup.

"I won't be leaving. Not without you."

"Zoe .

"Think on it, Hayden. The sanf I encountered was a coachman. The man who worked for him was a coachman. I was fortunate enough to escape them both—" Rhys cleared his throat.

"—and certainly they won't be coming after me again, but if there was one thing they both made clear to me before they killed each other, it was that the sanf inimicus have infiltrated the coach yards of this city, purely in search of us. They discovered me once. There is no reason to believe they will not do it again. I might get all the way to Calais before they strike. But they will strike, dearest. They've proven that, again and again. And when they do, I shall be all alone." She lowered her lashes, tried to look vulnerable. "Practically defenseless."

"Oh, well done," praised the shadow in an exaggerated drawl. "I knew all that sly wit and duplicity would prove handy sooner or later."

Both the prince and Hayden were glowering by the light or their smallish lamps and fire; she'd taken the wind from their sails, she could see it, and could not help the slight curving of her mouth.

"I'm truly safer remaining here," she said, "with you. You must see that."

"Yes," said Hayden after a moment. "I'm afraid ... I'm afraid I do see. You're quite right. You could not possibly leave now. Not by any standard means, and I can't escort you yet."

"Bonehead," pronounced the shadow, throwing up his hands. "For pity's sake! I should have fleeced him at cards more often. Perhaps then he might have learned to recognize a sharp."

Zoe only smiled at her fiance, and lifted his hand to brush her lips tenderly across his knuckles.

* _{* *}

They left her alone after that. They'd gone as a group to Tuileries and fetched her things in the deep black hub of night; she was settled in the third bedchamber of the maison now, the smallest of the three still adequately furnished. It had walls papered in pink and the palest yellow stripes, and brown-centered daisies painted along the trim. It was the room of a child, but she didn't mind. It lacked both a crib and even a single looking glass. The indigo cloak—all those spirits— was forced back to the windowpanes, and Zoe kept the curtains pulled tight, so that she would not have to see.

She lay in the bed and stared up at the ceiling. The prince had retired to his chamber with hardly a glance at her, but Hayden had lingered at her door, his gaze combing the girlish bedroom beyond her as if he searched for something that was not there.

"Will you kiss me?" she'd whispered, as softly as she could. She didn't see Rhys but that didn't mean he wasn't nearby.

Hayden lowered his chin and smiled at her, a soft and shy smile. Then he'd lifted his hands and cupped her face, and rested his lips against hers in what was surely the most tame, most brotherly kiss a female drakon had ever received from her affianced mate.

"No," she whispered. "Like this." And had wrapped her arms about his shoulders and pulled him close, pressing her mouth hard to his.

For a moment it seemed to work. For a moment his hands pushed deeper into her hair, and his chest expanded against hers, and she tasted tea this time, tea over the brandy and him.

Then he broke it off. He drew a jagged breath, lifting his head with his smile now strained, and dropped his hands to her shoulders.

Zoe reached up to grab his fingers, fierce. "Can we not pretend? Just pretend we're wed already? Do we need to wait?"

"If we do not have our honor," Hayden murmured, his eyes roaming her face, "then we have nothing."

We would have each other,she wanted to say. We would have tonight.

"Good night, dearest girl. You do hold my heart, you know. And it will be soon. As soon as we're home safe again, I promise. The very first open date in the chapel will be ours."

"Good night," she'd managed, and watched him cross the hall to his room. Shut the door.

She rolled over now in the narrow bed. She pulled the quilt up high, inhaled the scent of goose down from the pillow, and tried to fall asleep.

In the darkest corner of her very dark room, the shadow stood and watched her, unmoving. Unspeaking. Until the first blush of dawn lit the carpet of flowers at his feet.