The Girl at Midnight (12 page)

The Ala nudged Echo aside, placing herself between Echo and Altair. Echo was short enough for her view of Altair to be blocked by the Ala. The Ala kept one hand behind her back and wiggled her fingers at Echo. She seemed to know, without being told, that Echo had returned with something. One of the many perks of being a Seer, Echo supposed.

“How dare you?” the Ala spat, voice loud enough to guarantee she had Altair’s attention. Echo slipped the locket into the Ala’s palm. With a flick of the Ala’s wrist, it disappeared into the folds of her gown. “Echo is my charge, which means she’s under my protection. You have no right to come in here and make threats. She’s but a child herself and has broken no laws.”

“Broken no laws?” Altair laughed, hard and cold. “She’s a thief. Any Aviceling could tell you that. The girl’s hardly innocent.”

The girl
. As though Echo weren’t standing right in front of him. No matter how long she lived among the Avicen, Altair would always see her as other. As lesser. She pushed in front of the Ala, wrapping her resolve around herself, donning it like a suit of armor.

“What are you going to do about Ivy?” Echo said. She would not hide behind the Ala because she was afraid of Altair. Not now, when her friend had been taken from her. Not when it was her fault. “And Perrin?”

Altair cocked his head, eyes blazing with restrained anger. “I don’t owe you an explanation. If the Ala deems you a child, then you will be treated like one. Run along.” Altair turned away from her to face the Ala. “This is none of your business.”

“Excuse me, but my friends are my business.” Before she had time to think about what she was doing, Echo grabbed Altair’s arm, yanking him around to face her. Altair stared at her hand, so small against the thick, corded muscles of his forearm, and she fought not to flinch under that steady gaze.

“I’ve had it with you, girl,” Altair said, towering over her, the deep brown and brilliant white of his feathers as breathtaking up close as they were from afar. “One more word out of you and I swear, I will toss you into a nice comfy cell, child or not.”

Echo stared at him, hands twitching into fists at her sides. As children, she and Ivy had taken to raiding the Ala’s closet and parading about in her long, flowing gowns. More often than not, they were returned worse for wear. The Ala had given them both a stern talking-to and told them to never do it again. Naturally, Echo convinced Ivy to double their efforts. The Ala had figured out very early on that the fastest way to get Echo to do something was to tell her not to do it. Altair had never paid her enough attention to learn that same lesson.

Leaning forward, chin angled upward, Echo met Altair’s orange eyes, still hard and cold despite the warmth of the torchlight around them.

“Try me.”

The dungeons of Wyvern’s Keep were an unforgiving place. Dark stone walls, stained with the grime of years, swallowed light whole until only the faintest illumination was left to guide Dorian’s steps. A metallic odor hung in the air, with a hint of something wet and cloying. Sort of like blood mingled with moss. Dorian breathed through his mouth, and he could almost taste the stench of burnt flesh and charred feathers. Tanith’s interrogations were nothing if not thorough.

He stopped by the shopkeeper’s cell first. Perrin, that was his name. Dorian strained to see the figure that lay prone on the floor of the cell, pressed against the far wall as though he’d fallen when cowering before the last person he had encountered. Tanith had that effect on the weak. On most people, really. The light was dim enough that Dorian had difficulty detecting the rise and fall of Perrin’s chest. A few moments passed without the slightest inhalation to
break the silence. The shopkeeper lay there with the perfect stillness of death. Dorian frowned. Perrin had little honor to speak of, but Tanith’s methodical attentions were something Dorian would have wished only on his worst enemy.

The sound of rattling chains came from the cell at the other end of the dungeon. The Avicen girl. The one who’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. She’d refused to give him her name, and Dorian wondered if Tanith had met with better luck. He walked to her cell door, making sure his footfalls were loud in the disquieting silence of the dungeon, so as not to spook her. She was crouched low in the corner of her cell, huddled to make herself as small as possible, but even the darkness did nothing to hide the fine tremors that shook her body. Her white feathers were stained with soot and blood, and she tensed as he approached.

Dorian rested his hands on the thick iron bars of her cell. “What’s your name?” he asked, voice as soft as he could make it.

The girl did not so much as raise her head. Dorian sighed and reached into his pocket to retrieve his master key. At the sound of the door being unlocked and opened, the girl pressed herself more tightly against the wall. As if she had anywhere left to go. She buried her face in her knees and shivered.

Dorian knelt before her. “I won’t hurt you,” he said. Not that she had any reason to believe him, but faced with her sorry state, he didn’t know what else to say.

The girl peered at him over her knees, large black eyes reflecting the glow of the torch outside her cell. She blinked, long and slow, before hiding her face in her knees once more.

“What’s your name?” Dorian asked. “I’m not going anywhere. I might as well call you something.”

The girl mumbled so quietly, he couldn’t catch it. “Come again?”

She spoke, only slightly louder, but it was enough for him to make out a single word. “Ivy.”

“Ivy,” he said. “That’s a lovely name.”

“Are you supposed to be the good cop?” the girl asked, voice raw and cracking.

“Excuse me?”

“The good cop.” The girl—Ivy, he reminded himself—looked up. She coughed, and a few droplets of blood spattered on the dirty white feathers of her forearms. “The blond one, with the red eyes. She was the bad cop. So you must be the good cop.” She coughed again. “I watch movies.”

Dorian had no idea what she was talking about, so he let it go. “It doesn’t need to be this way,” he said.

Ivy raised her head higher. “Is this the part where you tell me that if I talk, you’ll let me go, just like that?”

“No,” he said. There was little point in lying to her. She might have been young, but she wasn’t an idiot. “I won’t let you go, but I can make sure that Tanith never returns. I can keep you safe from her.”

The girl studied him for a moment, blinking owlishly in the darkness. “Liar,” she said quietly.

“Believe what you will.” Dorian rose to his feet, brushing off his breeches. “We aren’t all monsters. That’s what you Avicen call us, isn’t it?”

He could feel her eyes on him as he turned away, key in hand. When she spoke again, her voice was scarcely louder
than a whisper, and her words were lost to him. He turned back to her, dropping to his knees.

“I didn’t catch that,” Dorian said, leaning in as far as he dared. Her hands might have been chained, but one of the warlocks who’d brought her in bore a neat row of teeth marks on his arm. She hadn’t been taken without a fight.

She cleared her throat before speaking. “How did you lose it?”

Dorian raised a hand to his eye patch, aborting the motion halfway. Her trembling had all but ceased, and she looked at him with a steady gaze, the tightness around her eyes the only sign that she was still frightened.

“Altair.” He had no idea if the name meant anything to her, but when a humorless grin tugged at the corners of her lips, something black and venomous settled in his gut.

“Good.” She spat blood and saliva on the floor beside her. “I hope he kept it. I hear he loves a good trophy.”

Dorian’s hand flew out before he even realized what he was doing. He struck the side of the girl’s face, knocking her against the wall. Tears trickled down her cheeks, though her weeping was soundless. The fine tremors that had seized her body before returned, stronger this time.

The urge to apologize was almost overwhelming, but Dorian quashed it. He would not explain himself to an Avicen prisoner. He stalked out of the girl’s cell, slamming the door shut behind him. He locked it and strode out of the dungeon, not bothering to acknowledge the Firedrakes on the door.

Once he was far enough away that the smell of blood and moss was nothing more than a rotten memory, Dorian paused, sagging against the corridor wall. The rough stone
was blessedly cold on his skin. Bile rose in his throat. He felt as though he might be sick. Such obvious weakness disgusted him, and though he would have liked to think that it was the girl’s weakness that sickened him so, he knew, without a shred of doubt, that it had been his own.

The only light in the Nest’s cells came from the quivering glow of sconces mounted on the walls. Echo rested her head against the wall behind her for a split second. The stone was damp, as if it had things growing on it. Or at least the potential for things to grow.

She leaned forward, hands resting on her knees, butt numb from sitting on hard stone. A single tattered blanket, marked with stains whose origin Echo was happier not considering, was all that separated her from the cold stone floor of her cell. Her current lodgings were positively medieval, and not in a way that was even remotely charming, like the time she had bundled Ivy up in layers upon layers of knitwear and dragged her to Medieval Times in New Jersey. She’d had to swipe at least a dozen wallets to pay for the bus fare and their tickets, but they’d eaten turkey legs with their bare hands, and the Green Knight had given Ivy a rose after defeating the Black and White Knight in a joust.

The cell’s odor was positively medieval, too. Echo couldn’t tell where the smell was coming from. Maybe it was coming from the floors. Or the walls. Or everywhere. She took a deep breath, and all she smelled was damp soil.

Petrichor
, she thought, flicking a loose clump of earth across the small cell.
The smell of dirt after rain
.

Without light, it was hard to tell how much time had passed. So far, a pitiful plate of bread and cheese and a tin cup of water had been pushed through the bars of her cell twice. Hours, then. No more than a day. It felt like an eternity. The Warhawks who’d tossed her in had refused to respond when she peppered them with insults. Hardly sporting of them. At least Ruby would have given as good as she got.

Echo tried to distract herself with thoughts of places more comfortable than this. She thought of the first time she’d ever slept peacefully, curled up on a mountain of throw pillows in the Ala’s chamber, while the Ala sang her a lullaby about a magpie and sorrow. She thought of the warmth of Maison Bertaux’s tearoom, where she’d laughed with her friends and felt young and invincible. She thought of Rowan. What would he think of her? He was one of them now. Their most promising new recruit. He liked Altair. Respected him. And Altair had just chucked her in a cell. In Rowan’s eyes, would she be disgraced? The thought hurt, but only a little. Like a paper cut. She’d always been a bit of a disgrace. It was really only a matter of time before Rowan figured that out.

Echo wished she had paper. Writing would break up the monotony. She thought about what she’d write on her theoretical paper with her hypothetical pen. Her prison memoirs. A letter, maybe. But to whom? Rowan? Ivy? Thinking about
Ivy made the pit in Echo’s soul expand, like a black hole devouring matter, so she tried not to. Though not thinking about Ivy, and where Ivy might be, and what Ivy was doing, and whether or not Ivy was afraid was like asking herself not to breathe. She might be able to redirect her thoughts, to hold her breath, but eventually her mind would rebel, and her lungs would demand oxygen, and she would be plagued with thoughts of Ivy again. Ivy alone. Ivy scared. Ivy hurt. And all because of Echo and that stupid goddamned firebird.

She sniveled, and wished she hadn’t. It was a sorry noise. A pathetic noise. She had learned when she was a very little girl to cry without making any sound, but the thought of Ivy in pain, maybe even dying, her white feathers matted with blood, was too much to bear. She bit the inside of her cheek hard and willed herself to become steel. Sniveling wouldn’t save Ivy, but swords were steel, and she swore to every god on high that she would run one through the first person who harmed a single feather on Ivy’s head.

Echo sighed. She was going to rot down here. The knowledge was almost comforting. The matter of her rotting was wholly out of her hands. She rested her head against the wall and couldn’t even be bothered by the dampness. Eventually, sleep took her, and as she fell into its embrace, she prayed it would be dreamless.

Echo woke to the sound of a gentle tapping against the bars of her cell. She bolted upright, scrubbing a hand over her face and wincing when a cascade of cracks and pops accompanied the roll of her spine. The stubborn spiderweb of sleep
clung to her, and the remnants of her dream evaporated like wisps of smoke on the wind, forgotten.

“Psst. Echo.”

Echo scrambled to her feet, squinting through the dark. “Who’s there?”

A figure emerged from the dark, half in shadow, but Echo would have recognized those tawny golden feathers anywhere.

“Rowan,” she breathed, hooking her fingers through the bars. “I’ve never been happier to see you.”

He wore the same armor as the Warhawks who had locked her in the cell, and Echo hated it. She hated the shiny newness of the bronze breastplate, and the pristine white cloak that hung from his shoulders, and the little chains dangling from his epaulets signifying his rank as a new recruit. It wasn’t him. It wasn’t him at all. This war had wormed its way into her world, swallowing her friends one by one.

Rowan reached through the bars, lacing his fingers with hers. His hazel eyes were full of worry, and the feel of his skin on hers made something inside her twist into an elaborate knot. He rested his forehead against the bars. “I heard you were down here, and I came as fast as I could. I told the guards on the door I’d take their shift. What the hell happened?”