Shadow of Night(233)

You’ll find Matthew with the queen. He’ll explain everything.” I tried to keep my voice steady, but it trembled. Matthew had told me about his sister in modern Oxford, while we drank tea by his fireplace at the Old Lodge. She was as vicious as she was beautiful.

“You dare to utter his name?” Kit was wild with anger.

“Do not speak again, witch, or I will let Christopher remove your tongue after all.” Louisa’s voice was venomous, and I didn’t need to see her eyes to know that poppy and blood rage were not a good mix. The point of Ysabeau’s diamond scratched lightly against my cheek, drawing blood. Louisa had broken my finger wrenching it off and was now wearing it herself.

“I am Matthew’s wife, his mate. What do you imagine his reaction will be when he finds out what you’ve done?”

“You are a monster—a beast. If I win the challenge, I will strip you of your false humanity and expose what lies underneath.” Louisa’s words trickled into my ears like poison. “Once I have, Matthew will see what you truly are, and he will share in our pleasure at your death.”

When their conversation faded into the distance, I had no way of knowing where they were or from which direction they might return. I was utterly alone.

Think. Stay alive.

Something fluttered in my chest. But it wasn’t panic. It was my firedrake. I wasn’t alone. And I was a witch. I didn’t need my eyes to see the world around me.

What do you see? I asked the earth and the air.

It was my firedrake who answered. She chirped and chattered, her wings stirring in the space between my belly and lungs as she assessed the situation.

Where are they? I wondered.

My third eye opened wide, revealing the shimmering colors of late spring in all their blue and green glory. One darker green thread was twisted with white and tangled with something black. I followed it to Louisa, who was climbing onto the back of an agitated horse. It wouldn’t stand still for the vampire and kept shying away. Louisa bit it on the neck, which made the horse stand stock-still but did nothing to alleviate its terror.

I followed another set of threads, these crimson and white, thinking they might lead to Matthew. Instead I saw a bewildering whirl of shapes and colors. I fell—far, far until I landed on a cold pillow. Snow. I drew the cold winter air into my lungs. I was no longer tied to a stake on a late-May afternoon at Greenwich Palace. I was four or five, lying on my back in the small yard behind our house in Cambridge.

And I remembered.

My father and I had been playing after a heavy snowfall. My mittens were Harvard crimson against the white. We were making angels, our arms and legs sweeping up and down. I was fascinated by how, if I moved my arms quickly enough, the white wings seemed to take on a red tinge.

“It’s like the dragon with the fiery wings,” I whispered to my father. His arms stilled.

“When did you see a dragon, Diana?” His voice was serious. I knew the difference between that tone and his usual teasing one. It meant he expected an answer—and a truthful one.

“Lots of times. Mostly at night.” My arms beat faster and faster. The snow underneath their span was changing color, shimmering with green and gold, red and black, silver and blue.

“And where was it?” he whispered, staring at the snowdrifts. They were mounting up around me, heaving and rumbling as though alive. One grew tall and stretched itself into a slender dragon’s head. The drift stretched wide into a pair of wings. The dragon shook flakes of snow from its white scales. When it turned and looked at my father, he murmured something and patted its nose as though he and the dragon had already met. The dragon breathed warm vapor into the frigid air.

“Mostly it’s inside me—here.” I sat up to show my father what I meant. My mittened hands went to the curved bones of my ribs. They were warm through the skin, through my jacket, through the chunky knit of the mittens. “But when she needs to fly, I have to let her out. There’s not enough room for her wings otherwise.”

A pair of shining wings rested on the snow behind me.

“You left your own wings behind,” my father said gravely.

The dragon wormed her way out of the snowdrift. Her silver-and-black eyes blinked as she pulled free, rose into the air, and disappeared over the apple tree, becoming more insubstantial with every flap of her wings. Mine were already fading on the snow behind me.

“The dragon won’t take me with her. And she never stays around for very long,” I said with a sigh. “Why is that, Daddy?”

“Maybe she has somewhere else to be.”

I considered this possibility. “Like when you and Mommy go to school?” It was perplexing to think of parents going to school. All the children on the block thought so, even though most of their parents spent all day at school, too.