Shana Abe - The Sweetest Dark

The latch gave at my touch. The cat’s-eye knot watched me go in.

A shadowed place. A place of shadows. I had the feeling all the lamps in the world wouldn’t illuminate the cottage again. Jesse had been its light, the heart of these woods.

Pine, soap, coffee. Cinnamon, vanilla, rain. Scents that wrapped around me as I walked, a last trace of him. It was awful comfort.

I drew my fingers along the tabletop, remembering the buttercup turned to gold set there on that wood, how it had sung and gleamed. But then, Jesse’s home had always sounded like song to me. Even at night, in our sweetest dark as I’d lain in his arms, golden songs had drifted over me.

Like now. Right now.

I glanced around and saw nothing but the expected. The table and chairs and stove and plates. The rug and fireplace. His closed bedroom door.

Ah. The bedroom. It was coming from in there.

I rested my hand on the knob and knew that I had to go in, that he had wanted me to go in. That’s why there were songs resonating from inside. It was a message just for me. A message from dead Jesse.

But … the bedroom. The bed. Quilts we’d slept under. Sheets. His drowsy smile, half tucked against a pillow. The glass vase on his windowsill, pinkish-green with the first flush of dawn.

I hadn’t come out here for his bedroom. I hadn’t planned on being strong enough for that.

My hand pushed open the door.

I stood fixed in place, not breathing. I had no breath left in me. All the gold in the room had stolen it, and I might not ever breathe again.

I’d dreamed once of a forest of gold, and Jesse had done what he could to give it to me. His bedroom had been transformed into a wonderland of leaves and flowers, pinecones and branches of birch and oak, all of it glimmering, all of it singing. The bed was covered, his chest of drawers, the sill.

Much of it was jumbled together, beautiful for what it was if not its presentation. Jesse had last left this room on the night of his death, right after he’d called to me, right before he’d gone to the castle. So he would have been scattering his final gift in haste, knowing he worked against the clock.

Knowing, somehow, what was to come.

Which meant he’d been making gold for weeks. When I’d seen him so tired, when he’d told me all those nights that we should rest apart … he had been doing this.

For me.

A folded note had been set upon the bed. My name had been scrawled upon it.

I love you was all it said inside.

I sank to the floor. I looked up and all around as the sun danced through the window and turned Jesse’s room into an ambered heaven of song and shimmer and sparks.

That was how Armand found me, hours later. That was what he saw, as well, what he heard, as he walked slowly into the chamber and eased down beside me to rest his back against the bed.

We sat there together, listening, marveling.

In time, his hand reached out and took firm hold of mine.

So now you know the beginning of her story, and the ending of mine. The end of my mortal time with her, at least.

But I’m not really gone. I’ll never really leave her. How could I? She had been carved from the mud of the world just for me. I had fallen from the stars for her.

I told you before: Once a drákon holds your eyes and touches your flesh, you belong to them. And, believe me, when that happens, you’re glad for it. You lay your heart at their feet and hope for their favor, knowing its true worth.

Our time together had been so short. Every turn of the planet, every hour and minute and second, I had loved her and celebrated her. And I considered myself blessed, even unto death, to have known her smile. The rapture of Eleanore.

Blessed to offer myself up for her.

Lora-of-the-moon. She’ll fly my way again. I know it.

I dwell high above her now, back with my first family. The path of my dragon’s earthly life shines before me like a skein of glittering crimson thread. It crisscrosses the mortal plane, tracing its way from the Atlantic, where she took her first breath, east to Europe, where she will take her last. Armand’s thread glitters, too, plaited through hers.

The war will entangle them even more. The war will do its best to snip both threads short.

It is a thing of gore and violence. War cannot abide magic of any sort, much less a magic as brilliant as theirs.

I’ll be the star above them both, watching. Singing.

I’d waited for her nearly all my life. I can wait a while longer, until she turns her ear up to the night skies, ready to hear my ballad once more.

I have blessed with the best people: Annelise Robey and Andrea Cirillo, and everyone at the fabulous Jane Rotrosen Agency. Shauna Summers and all the brilliant folks at Random House who work so hard to make me shine. Sean, of the steady hand and kind soul. And, of course, all of you reading this now. Thank you.

SHANA ABÉ is the bestselling author of thirteen novels, including the acclaimed Drákon Series. She lives in Colorado in a happy house with a good many pets.

www.shanaabe.com