Shana Abe - The Deepest Night

Children shrieked and laughed, playing in the sand. Out on the boardwalk people tottered about in heels and hats and talked about the weather and listened to an organ grinder playing song after song for copper pennies.

I stood upon the balcony and shielded my eyes from the sun with one hand, letting the sea breeze push cool and welcome through my hair.

“Wife,” said Armand from behind me, very quiet. “Will you come to sleep with me?”

I turned around. He was resting atop the covers, propped up by pillows with his broken leg out, just as he’d been at the hunting lodge, except now with a proper cast. The wallpaper behind him nearly made me smile: giant pink and lavender lilacs entwined with pale green vines. He was dark and scruffy against it, a pirate again, stranded in a room of pastel blossoms.

Since we’d been sleeping in each other’s arms for days now, I knew he wasn’t truly asking about sleep.

“Yes,” I said. “After.”

“After what?”

“There’s one last thing I must do. I’m going to see your father.”

His hands clenched. “I’ll come with you.”

“And undo all that good work on your leg by Turning to smoke? I think not.” I abandoned the balcony and its uncluttered sky, plunging back into the shadows with him. “Besides, I imagine one drákon materializing in the middle of an insane asylum will be plenty. Let’s ease him into the story of you, shall we?”

He was silent, studying me. I could practically feel him weighing my words, his options. How much of a fuss I was going to make.

“I’ll be back soon,” I promised.

“Then I’ll be waiting.” He watched me with those blue, blue eyes. “Fireheart. I’ll always wait.”

Mental asylums are solid places. Everything locked up all right and tight, all the time. But the architects and doctors, the burly guards with batons, were thinking only of the delusional. The shackled. The helpless.

They never anticipated me.

The duke had iron bars on his windows (which probably didn’t open anyway) but also his very own fireplace. Which meant a chimney.

I emerged as smoke in his cell. His Grace was seated in the same chair before the hearth as he’d been the first time I’d visited him. He was staring blankly into the distance, perhaps to a place that did not have barred windows and locked doors and the scent of human misery lingering beneath that of bleach.

A cup of tea had gone cold on a table, next to an ashtray overflowing with crumpled cigarettes. A pair of electric lamps burned upon the writing desk, tiny dots of heat. There was no crackling fire to warm him today.

I took my shape behind the wing chair facing his, my fingers curled atop its back.

“Reginald,” I said.

“Rose?” His eyes regained their focus, surrendering whatever private realm had held him.

“No.” My lips curved. “Eleanore.”

“This isn’t a dream, is it?”

“It is, if that’s what you wish.”

“No.” His face hardened. “I’ve done enough dreaming, I think. Is he safe?”

“He is alive.”

“I know that!”

“He is no longer a prisoner. He’s in France now, being cared for. He’ll be home again.”

“Tranquility,” he whispered.

“Yes.”

The duke became old and small in his chair. “Good,” he sighed, gazing at his lap. “Good.”

Past his door sounded footsteps, masculine voices too hushed to make out. Beyond all that was a woman crying, the heartbroken sobs of the forgotten, muffled and endless, as if she’d never draw steady breath again.

“Perhaps you might renew my scholarship to Iverson, Your Grace.”

“What’s that? Oh.” He looked back up at me, puzzled but calm. “Is that your price?”

“My price? No. Merely a request.”

“You desire to be a schoolgirl again? A beast such as yourself, bound to classroom schedules and lectures about etiquette?”

I dug my toes into the rug beneath me, all the way down to the nubby base.

“Yes,” I said.

“Very well. I shall inform Irene you’re to be readmitted for the fall.”

I smiled again, performing a mock curtsy behind the chair. The duke did not return my smile.

“One last thing, Your Grace. If you do dream again—if you share dreams with that boy in the stars again, tell him this. I’m ready any time he is for the bargain to be concluded. I’m ready to hold up my end of the pact.”

“As you say,” he agreed, unruffled.

I nodded, he nodded, and I left.

The next four nights were amethyst, but I resisted them. I would not go outside to bathe in purple light; I would not listen to the stars. Despite what I’d told Armand, we were only sleeping in the bed at the inn, sleeping with the balcony doors open and the surf and the gulls and the salty breeze that flitted in and out of the suite like a suitor who could not make up his mind. And it was all that I required.

Armand would need to travel to London soon. I would need to return to Tranquility, and then to Iverson.

Yet neither of us spoke of what we needed to do, allowing instead the mild lazy hours to waft by.

During the day, I counted out the planks of the boardwalk. I walked to the end of the pier and back, and gave the organ grinder pounds instead of pennies, and carried seashells and toffees to Mandy, who was gradually looking less like a pirate and more like a nobleman, albeit one itching to shed his cast.

It was quite a honeymoon. At least, that’s what the innkeeper thought.

“Mrs. Pendragon! How about some nice scallops for tonight, eh? Or fresh clams in chowder, or lemon sole. We’ve got—”

“All of it,” I’d say.

“Righto.” He winked at me, merry as a child at Christmas.

We were rather dear guests, I presumed.

But on the fifth evening the feeling of dreamy suspension I’d nurtured so carefully would not come. I could not ignore the summoning of the stars any longer. I could not ignore the color of the heavens suspended over the sea, that dark purple velvet dotted with fire, the deepest night beckoning.

We’d spent the afternoon on the sand, getting crusty and sunburned, watching the white lip of the tide rolling and reaching and retreating once more. We’d brushed the sand from our clothes and eaten our dinner and sipped our wine. I’d cleared the dishes and gone out to the balcony and at last given in, breathing in deep, allowing the stars to garland me with songs once more.

fireheart! fireheart! fireheart! Beneath the drumbeat of the surf, it was all I could hear.

Then, a counterpoint:

lora. low and lovely, sad and far.

I swallowed, searching until I found him, golden green, more beautiful than the moon.

Jesse.

miss you.

I couldn’t think of a reply. I could only smile and close my eyes so I wouldn’t cry.

above you, inside you, within and without, he sang. forever and always. remember?

Yes.

so we can wait. we can wait a while longer. love the earth while you can. love this last gift of time. love the dragon i’ve given you, who already loves you.

I did not need to see him to know that Armand had come to stand beside me on the balcony, leaning against the railing. But I opened my eyes anyway. He was watching me, somber, purple in his hair. The wind slipped between us, separating, then shifted and pushed the other way.

Jesse had become a nimbus, a shadow of light behind him.

“Thank you,” Mandy said to me. “It’s all right to say it now, isn’t it? Now that it’s over?”

I nodded. There were too many words crowding inside me to speak, words like I suppose so and You’re welcome and Don’t stand so near and Please come nearer.

“Thank you,” he said again. “Thank you, Eleanore, for saving me.”

He bent his head, slowly, slowly, never taking his eyes from mine. So when our lips met I was ready and not, because his kiss was more fiery than I’d thought it’d be, and sweeter, and spread like a wild and unknown fever right into my blood. I was alight.

He tasted of wine and magic. He tasted of hope.

I lifted my arms and wound them around his neck. We were pressed together at the rim of the world, water and sand, enchantment and flesh. Two beings fleetingly, lusciously exploring how it felt to become one.

Beneath the silver netting of the stars, I reveled in Armand’s kiss, and offered it back to him.

Who would hold a dragon in his hand?

Who would hold back love?

I, it seems, cannot do either. It’s just as well.

My love is a tether, but I never wanted it to be a bridle. She lives on borrowed time, and because I love her, because I did not lie when I told her forever and always, my sorrow is tempered by her joy. I want her still for my own, but he can give her now what I cannot, so I wish them both well.

I’m trying to.

I slide along the indigo vault of the ether. I sing with my brothers and sisters, peering into universes unseen. I descend into dreams, but I’m pale to them now, a memory, yet one that will never fully fade.

When I can, I tie knots in her path. I mean them to strengthen her, to better knit the thread of her destiny into something thicker and more sound than what has come before.

Because in the end, she’s still a girl. My dragon-girl. And soon another dragon will step across the open threshold of her life, and Lora-of-the-moon will have to look upon the face of her past without flinching.

It won’t be easy. Not for any of them.

I am the shooting star that lights their way.

I am the answer to the questions they have not yet asked.

I am patient.

I blaze above them, ready to be needed.

No matter how sweetly flowing the idea, a book takes hard work and a team of clever people willing to help and inspire. I owe so much to Shauna Summers, Annelise Robey, Andrea Cirillo, Ania Markiewicz, Sonya Safro, Sarah Christensen Fu, Sarah Murphy—really, everyone at Jane Rotrosen and everyone at Bantam/Ballantine/Random House, because the series would not have happened without them. Thank you forever.

Many hours of creative musing were aided by N.R., Monsieur Le Roi, B. Tigress, Gracelope, Hippy, Happy and Pahroo (and all those before, and all those to come).

Thank you to my fans! I love you, too.

And, finally, mahalo to Sean, who bought me a ukulele because I said out loud I thought it’d be fun to play. (It is.)

SHANA ABE is the bestselling author of fourteen novels, including the acclaimed Drákon Series and The Sweetest Dark Series. She lives in Colorado in a happy home with a good many pets. www.shanaabe.com

The Sweetest Dark Series

The Deepest Night

The Sweetest Dark

The Time Weaver

The Treasure Keeper

Queen of Dragons

The Dream Thief

The Smoke Thief

The Last Mermaid

The Secret Swan

Intimate Enemies

A Kiss at Midnight

The Truelove Bride

The Promise of Rain

A Rose in Winter