The Girl at Midnight (6 page)

The golden glow of his tan was made for the late-afternoon sun. Echo had always thought it was a shame he had to hide so much of it under his many layers. London might have been a liberal city, but Rowan’s tawny feathers would have caused quite a stir, even in Soho. The short, sleek plumage he had in place of hair was tucked up under a charcoal-gray beanie, and a pair of fingerless knit gloves hid the light dusting of feathers across his knuckles. His jacket was zipped up nearly to his neck, leaving just a triangle of golden skin exposed at the throat. Echo zeroed in on it like a hawk. His hazel eyes—as human as her own, courtesy of some mixed genetics in his ancestry—twinkled, and she knew that he’d noticed. She wasn’t sure when she’d transitioned from believing he had cooties to nursing a crush so
catastrophic it could level whole cities, but it had worked out rather nicely, since, as luck would have it, he’d developed his own city-destroying crush on her. The past eight weeks had been the happiest of her life, though the dynamic among their trio—once as inseparable as three peas in a pod—had altered somewhat. Tensions had been running high between Ivy and Rowan, and Echo knew her budding relationship was to blame.

Ivy pretended to heave all over the table. “Hi, Rowan. Why, hello, Ivy, how nice to see you. Have a seat. Don’t mind if I do. Ah, why don’t I help myself to your fiendishly expensive éclair,” she said as Rowan did just that.

He smiled as he bit into the éclair, and Echo cursed herself for noticing the way a stray bit of cream caught on his lower lip. She cursed herself doubly for noticing the way his tongue snaked out to catch it. If her hormones had a face, she would slap it.

“What brings the Avicen army’s most promising recruit to this fine establishment?” Echo asked. Rowan’s
aw-shucks
faux-humble preening wasn’t fooling anyone, but she liked it anyway.

“Swung by the Ala’s to see you.” He smiled at Echo, all straight white teeth and effortless charm. His hand inched across the table to cover hers. The feel of his skin against hers was electric; she wondered if the novelty of it would ever wear off. “And she said I might find you here. Warhawk training was suspended for the day.” He released Echo’s hand to wash the éclair down with a sip of her tea. How he managed to make food thievery endearing, she would never know. “Some guys were talking about a recon team
that disappeared a couple of days ago, and Altair’s been busy dealing with that. It’s kind of nice having a break.”

His fingers were long and elegant, and they cradled the teacup as if it were the world’s finest china. Echo extricated the cup from his hands to refill it. “I didn’t think Altair knew what a break was,” she said.

Rowan shrugged, reaching for Ivy’s éclair again. She poked his hand with her fork, wearing a scowl that didn’t quite work on her delicate features.

“He’s tough but fair,” Rowan said, rubbing the back of his hand. He cast his puppy-dog eyes at Ivy, but she was immune. She always had been, unlike Echo, even when Rowan had made a habit of stealing their scratch-and-sniff stickers when they were little. His thievery had been marginally less charming then.

“Ugh, spare me,” Ivy mumbled. “I see their brainwashing has started to take hold. You’ve been in the army for, what? Two weeks? You just turned eighteen, and you’ve already drunk the Kool-Aid.”

Echo buried her face in her hands. “Please don’t start this again, you two. I would like to go one afternoon without having to remember there’s a war on. Even if it is a cold war or whatever. Just one afternoon. Just. One.” She waved a hand at the cramped tearoom, with its Basquiat-inspired crayon drawings, and relief sculptures made of yarn and pushpins, and brightly colored carnations dotting each table. “I would like, just once, to be able to enjoy victory drinks with my best friend and my gentleman caller”—she waved her teacup in the air, sloshing Earl Grey down its side—“in peace.” Calling him her boyfriend, out loud, when people
could hear it, still felt a bit too real. The word never escaped her mouth without the accompaniment of a giggle, and Echo did not giggle. She chuckled. She cackled. Occasionally, she even chortled. But giggling? Heavens, no. For good measure, she added, “Your bickering is ruining my appetite.”

“As if anything could,” said Ivy.

“Hey, man,” Echo said, scooping a dollop of cream off her plate, “once you know what it’s like to go hungry, you never turn down food.”

The hand Rowan rested on Echo’s knee was warm, even through her jeans, and his eyes went that soft shade of greenish gray she loved. His left eyebrow twitched upward, his way of silently asking, “Are you okay?” Echo smiled in response, letting him know she was. The day the Ala had introduced them all those years ago, he’d been eating a cupcake, and a significant amount of the frosting had found its way onto his face. When he’d caught her staring at the cake crumbling in his hand, he had—without the slightest hesitation—offered her the remaining half. Food, Echo thought, was the foundation upon which the very best friendships were built. Rowan gave her knee a single quick squeeze before resting his elbows on the table and turning back to Ivy.

“Look, Ivy,” he said. “Not all of us have the luxury of cushy healer apprenticeships. If I’m going to have to take orders from someone, I’d rather it be Altair. He’s not a bad guy, despite what you tree-hugging hippies might think.”

“Tree-hugging hippies?” Echo asked, dabbing at a few renegade drops of tea on the table. “Did hippies ever actually hug trees?”

Ivy opened her mouth, no doubt to say something unkind
to Rowan. Echo kicked Ivy under the table, digging the toe of her boot into the other girl’s shin. Ivy’s sunglasses did nothing to mitigate the force of her glare, but that was fine. Echo could handle a dirty look, so long as it was silent.

Rowan sighed, hands held up in mock surrender. “I didn’t come here to fight, Ivy.”

“Apology accepted,” Ivy replied. Haughty was not a look she wore well, so Echo knocked her boot into Ivy’s shin once more.

The remainder of Ivy’s éclair was swiped from her plate before she could react. Rowan’s megawatt grin could have lit an entire nation. “I also didn’t come here to apologize.”

Echo nudged her elbow gently into his side, making little grabby hand gestures at the éclair. Rowan broke it in half, offering her the slightly bigger portion. She took it with a smile, certain it tasted sweeter because it had come from him. Ivy looked as though she was ready to choke on the betrayal.

“Then, pray tell, why did you come here?” Echo said, ignoring the daggers Ivy was shooting from her eyeballs.

“Like I said, to see you,” Rowan answered, darting in to press a quick kiss on Echo’s lips. He stood and stretched, arms reaching high above his head. His shirt rode up, exposing a sliver of skin between his jacket and the top of his jeans. It had to have been deliberate, but Echo was strangely at peace with that. Rowan smiled as he said, “And to tell you the Ala was looking for you. She said she needs you for something.”

He pulled a battered leather wallet from his back pocket and tossed a fiver on the table. It was the wrong amount,
from the wrong country, but Echo appreciated the gesture nonetheless. “You heading back?” he asked Echo. “If you are, I’ll go with you.”

Ivy shook her head at Echo behind Rowan’s back. Echo studiously ignored her.

“Yep,” Echo said. “Don’t you have to do that thing, Ivy?”

Scrunching her nose in puzzlement, Ivy asked, “What thing?”

Best friends
, Echo thought,
should be able to read minds better than this
. All she wanted was some alone time with Rowan, but Ivy needed to get the telepathic memo first. “That thing you told me about that you have to go do. You know … that
thing
.”

With a slight sigh, Ivy acquiesced. “Oh,” she said. “Right. That
thing
I have to do. That’s … elsewhere.”

Echo shot Ivy a grateful smile. She owed her, but the friend economy would balance itself out sooner or later. She added her own money to the pile on the table, making sure to include enough to cover both the stolen éclair and Ivy’s tea.

“In that case,” Rowan said, “I’ll wait outside.” With a wink and a wave to Ivy, he sauntered away. Echo watched him go, denim clinging to his form in all the right places. Ivy slurped down the rest of her tea, as noisily as she possibly could, before saying, “Honestly, Echo, he’s still that sticky brat who’d steal all of the Ala’s cupcakes. I don’t know what you see in him.”

Callipygian
, Echo thought, watching Rowan depart.
Having a nice butt
. She took a moment to appreciate the scenic view before saying, “Honestly, Ivy, I don’t know what you
don’t
see.”

Caius was in a bed, but not his own. His head rested on a fluffy pillow, soft and sweet-smelling, and not the dark mahogany desk he had the vague memory of falling asleep on. The cry of seagulls outside the window and the warmth of sunlight on his face were signs enough that he was dreaming. The sky above Wyvern’s Keep was perpetually cloudy, and birds had not been seen over the northernmost tip of Scotland for years. The few that made it through the wards—the same ones that blocked it from the view of humans—were struck down by Drakharin archers. One never knew what form an Avicen spy would take.

The sheets beside Caius still held the warmth of the body that had rested next to his. Laying his palm flat against the soft linen, Caius rolled over, pressing his face into the pillow beside his own. The faintest trace of her scent lingered there. She had laughed when he’d buried his nose in the feathers on her head and told her they smelled like
pears. It was a strange thing, he’d said, to smell like pears, with a name like Rose.

“I hate pears,” she’d replied, but she had smiled, and that was all Caius wanted.

Here, he was warm. He was happy. The sun was shining, and the birds were singing, and they were safe. Caius needed nothing more than that to know none of it was real.

He cracked open his eyes, flinching at the onslaught of bright morning light. He couldn’t see her, but he knew Rose was there, sitting by the window. A gentle breeze rustled her hair-feathers, with their contrasting streaks of black and white. She was singing quietly, so as not to wake him, and it brought a sleepy smile to his face. He hummed along, just barely in tune. Rose turned to him then, a small, secret smile dancing at the corners of her lips. The moment was beautiful, like her, and as tranquil as still waters.

Naturally, that was when the world erupted into flames.

The firebird will be another mess of yours I’ll have to clean up
.

This was how Tanith cleansed. With fire and blood and death.

“Caius!”

Stumbling from the bed, Caius reached out for Rose, but he faltered on the glass that had shattered as wind and flames screamed through the windows, littering the floor with broken shards. Jagged edges cut into his skin, but he hardly noticed the pain. How could he notice anything when she was screaming, burning, dying? He tried to grab her, but she was beyond his reach. The curtains were on fire, and she was lost to view. Caius shouted her name, but he couldn’t reach her. The room was engulfed in flames, and Rose was dying.

“Caius!”

A strong hand wrenched him from the nightmare. Caius’s head shot up. The captain of his guard knelt next to his chair, one hand gripping Caius’s shoulder like an iron vise.

“Dorian,” Caius said, scrubbing at his face, wiping away the dream.

Silvery-gray bangs just barely brushed the top edge of Dorian’s ever-present eye patch. His one good eye was the cerulean of a Caribbean sea, mingled with the navy of a starlit ocean. Specks of teal danced in his iris if he stood in the right light. It was a shame about the other eye, for more than just his lost depth perception. Though the eye patch was stitched in a sapphire hue that complemented the blues and silvers of his tunic, the perfection of his face had long ago been marred by the injury sustained during the last open battle between the Avicen and the Drakharin. Dorian’s lips quirked up in a lopsided smile, tugging at the pale scars on his cheek. The smile didn’t quite reach his eye, but Caius took what he could get.

He needed a moment to orient himself. There was no cabin by the sea. No burning curtains and screaming ghosts. He was seated behind the mahogany desk in his library, right where he’d fallen asleep, surrounded by soaring shelves piled high with books he’d spent centuries collecting. Leather-bound atlases crowded against yellowing rolls of parchment. Slender volumes of spells rested atop chunky guides on every subject from medieval alchemy to modern cosmology. The room was silent save for the popping of the fire in the library’s elaborately carved stone hearth. Fanged wyverns danced around the flames, along with salamanders breathing little puffs of smoke, nagas crawling along a
shore, and nixes swimming beneath marble waters. If Caius squinted, the undulation of the flames made the carvings look as if they were moving.

“Caius.” It was Dorian’s voice, but an echo of Rose’s scream hid behind it. Caius closed his eyes and focused on breathing. In and out. In and out. It was all in his head. Dorian was speaking, just Dorian.

“Are you all right?”

Caius nodded. “Yes,” he said, voice cracking. The dream clung to his skin like a film. The fire blazed in its hearth, and the smell of burning wood was a special kind of torture. “Yes, I’m fine.”

He was not fine.

“You don’t look fine,” Dorian said. They’d been friends for too long. Caius hadn’t heard him enter the library. He hadn’t even heard the door swing shut, and he knew for a fact that its hinges were incurably rusty.

“You called for me,” said Dorian, brows drawn together. “Remember? Not going senile in your old age, are you?”

“We’re practically the same age, Dorian.” Two hundred fifty was hardly what the Drakharin would consider old, but Dorian was three whole months younger and never let Caius forget it. It seemed fitting for the youngest prince in Drakharin history to have the youngest captain of the guard, so Caius had arranged for Dorian’s appointment as his first order of duty.