The Deepest Night

Chapter 31

The night had shattered. A clamor shuddered up through the stone walls sheltering us, fed by gunfire and cries far below. I gave a final glance to the moon, then went to my knees beside Aubrey, combing my hair over my chest.

“You knew I was coming,” I said.

“Yes.” A small rush of a word, imbued with every sort of meaning: faith, trust, wholehearted relief.

“The stars,” I said.

“The … boy.”

“The boy in the stars. Jesse. He sings to you.”

A bare nod.

I cocked my head, genuinely curious. “And you didn’t think you were going barmy? Or maybe trapped in a nightmare?”

The sound he made this time was more like a laugh. The fingers with the blackened nails twitched.

“Worse … than this?”

Good point.

“Is Jesse, perchance, singing to you now? Telling you what we should do next?”

His brows drew together, his lips pulled into a grimace. I took that as a no.

I sighed. “Listen. Here’s the rub. I can’t hear him. I’ve come here with Armand—yes, he’s below. Don’t try to move yet. I’ve come with Armand, and he’s alive but injured, and you’re alive but injured, and”—I tugged at my hair, frustrated—”damn it all, so am I. So I don’t know what we’re supposed to do now. This place is crawling with soldiers, and I stirred up something out there, but I’m not sure what, if it’s enough to sneak you out or not, and now … now …”

I ran out of things to say. The bleak cold of the floor was seeping into me, congealing me, skin to muscle to joints.

“Heard … you’re something.”

I looked at Aubrey. The grimace had relaxed back into a smile. His hair was blond; his eyes were gray. His lashes were long and thick, just like his brother’s.

“Scales,” he said. “Wings. Helen of the skies. Like to … see that.”

A Helen of the skies. Like Helen of Troy, whose beauty had moved armies. But all I could move was me.

I shook my head, forcing myself to return his smile. What I really wanted to do was curl up and cry because I was chilled and leaden and at a loss for any clever way to go on. I might try to drag him down the stairs to the bottom of the tower, but there were probably more guards between here and there. I could try to Turn to dragon to get him out, but the window was too small for anything but smoke to fit through. And even if I did succeed at any of that, there was still the matter of maneuvering Aubrey onto my back and getting both of us safely out range of the gunfire. And the aeroplanes. And maybe even zeppelins; nothing would surprise me at this point. For all I knew, the Germans had already constructed their own mechanical dragon and we’d have to dodge that as well.

The riot sounds outside were growing louder and louder, and I was worried about Armand, even though he wasn’t technically inside the prison, because what if the dogs or the guards found him anyway, while he was still unconscious? What if—

“I’m a pilot, you know,” Aubrey rasped.

“I know,” I answered, distracted.

“Know the hazards. Good hands.”

I studied him, trying to understand.

“I can hold on,” he said. “Let’s … clear out.”

And all at once, I understood that there was only one way out. There had really only ever been one way.

I leaned very near to him, letting him look square into my eyes.

“Our circumstances are about to become much more precarious. Don’t let go of me no matter what, understand?”

“Yes.”

I came to my feet, turned a circle to measure the chamber, then Turned into a dragon crouching over him, pressing him down into the cot but not—please, please—squashing him.

The tower was too small for me. I’d been counting on that.

I arched my back against the ceiling. I felt the stones shift. I heard the mortar grinding, and the tower resisted me like a monster holding in its last meal.

Yet I was monster, too.

I arched higher, pushing, pushing. My face was smashed against one wall and my tail against its opposite; I pushed harder, squeezing my eyes closed, holding my breath against the powdery grit of the air.

The ceiling began to come apart. Little fissures at first and then—with a mighty crack!—the entire roof exploded, and I was standing up into the night, still arched like a cat, my head free, my tail thrashing away at the walls. Stones began to rain the earth below us, provoking fresh shouts.

My wings opened before I remembered my wound, but I couldn’t let it control me now. I’d give in to the pain later. Right now I needed to fly.

I’d been seen, of course. I was difficult to miss. The machine guns were aimed at me once more, and I swiftly flattened, covering Aubrey again.

I twisted my neck around to find him. He was cradled against my belly, staring up at me, eyes wide. But he met my gaze and nodded.

Gently, gently, as gently as I could, I wrapped my front talons around his body. Without lifting him yet from the cot I held him in place and stretched my head upward, peering out over the rim of the wall. I was going to have to do this next part exceptionally quickly.

A few more bullets whizzed by, pocking the stones to my right. It was a mess down there, exactly as chaotic as I’d hoped, with soldiers in all manner of uniforms running in all directions, tackling each other, fighting. The strict order of the camp had disintegrated. I saw bodies motionless on the ground, raggedy men with arms and legs askew. I saw severed loops of barbed wire stabbing the air, figures vanishing into the darkness of the hills.

And, just beneath my tower, standing on one leg near the brambles: a man without a uniform. Without clothing at all. He looked up at me and my own joy pulsed through me (he’s alive, he’s here, he’s alive!) and then Armand lowered his head and touched his hand to his mouth, rather like when he’d blown me that kiss as he’d fallen.

But as his hand dropped away, a dab of yellow light followed. A dab of what looked like, I swear, fire.

It landed in the rose bushes, and before I could blink, they were aflame.

He blended with their smoke, moved around the corner, and did the same thing.

More flames. Fire licking the walls, spreading from plant to plant. Billowing thick smoke twisting up at me, obscuring the ground so completely that all I could see now was the patch of stars and sky straight above.

Armand had provided us cover.

I lifted Aubrey, clutching him like a doll to my chest. Then I took off, heading up into the cool blue starlight.

I flapped away from the camp, away from the town, away from all those prisoners snatching back their fortunes and their lives to become part of the Prussian woods. They were far from home, all of them, and as I struggled to leave them behind us my heart echoed the knell of the stars. I thought for all those men, Go, go, go.

Go forward and never look back. Find a better fate.

Aubrey dangled from my dragon fists. Armand was smoke at my side. We couldn’t continue long like this. It was too hard on Aubrey, and I didn’t trust that I wouldn’t lose Armand again, and anyway, my wing was killing me.

I found a meadow far from any lights. I set us down in sweet tall grasses. Armand Turned as soon as his brother was on the ground, leaning over him with his broken leg stretched out.

“Hello,” said Armand in a happy voice. “You look wretched.”

“Have you seen … yourself?”

I sat in the grass with my knees tucked under my chin, watching them.

I’d never really been ashamed before about my nudity from the Turns. Discomfited, yes. Ill at ease. But practically the only people who’d ever seen me like this were Jesse and Armand, and somehow, with them, it was almost as if it didn’t matter. As if the magic we shared made it nearly normal.

But now there was Aubrey in our mix, and I felt—aware. I wished for a dress, and settled for blades of grass.

At least it was still dark. The moon had set; the stars had gathered into different constellations.

Jesse was gone.

“How long have you been able to do that?” I asked, and both of them turned their heads.

I gestured to Armand. “Blow fire like that?”

“Oh.” He ruffled a hand through his hair. “When you spotted me? About ten minutes, I’d guess.”

“You did … what?”

“He blew fire,” I explained. “He breathed it, like in fairy tales. It was bloody amazing.”

“Well …” Mandy actually looked embarrassed. “I found out by accident. I woke up and you were gone, and I wanted to call for you and knew I couldn’t, and it just—it burned in me. Don’t know how else to describe it. I felt a burn in my chest, and then my throat, and I meant to cough. But instead …”

He began to laugh. I did, too. Right then, in that quiet meadow where everything smelled of grass and smoke and fresh blood, it seemed very, very funny. I laughed so hard I started to cry, so I pushed my face into my knees and let the tears come, dripping down my legs.

Armand limped to sit beside me. I felt his hand stroking my hair. He didn’t say anything, just kept stroking.

A bird began to sing far out in the coppices. It sounded like a nightingale. It paused, waiting, until it was answered by another. They caroled like that, back and forth, as piercing and passionate as the emotions careening through me.

Eventually my tears transformed into hiccoughs. My nose was running. My knees were sticky and wet.

“Don’t worry,” Mandy whispered. “I’m sure you can breathe fire, too.”

“Oh, God, I hope not,” I said around my hiccoughs. My life was abnormal enough as it was.

I looked up, wiping my nose along my arm.

“Doesn’t that hurt? Your leg?”

He glanced down at it with an air of surprise, as if he’d forgotten all about it.

“Er … rather.”

“I think we should return to the hunting lodge. We can do something about it there. We’ll wrap Aubrey in that blanket.” It had made the journey with him, caught in my claws. “Both of you ride my back.”

“Hunting … lodge?” Aubrey asked.

“There are beds there, and clothing. Food in the village close by.”

“Sounds like … paradise.”

I had to agree. It did.