The Girl at Midnight (18 page)

Echo leveled another glare at Caius. He held up his hands in mock surrender. “Joking,” he said.

“Not laughing.” She pulled away from him as they emerged onto the plaza surrounding the cathedral. Caius had kept close enough to her that she felt colder when she stepped away, losing the nearness of his body heat.

Shoving her hands in her pockets, Echo walked up to an ornately carved door, the figures in the pietà above its lintel gazing down with unseeing eyes. There was something about churches that she found unsettling. Everything seemed overly concerned with death, as if someone had forgotten that the basis of the religion for which they’d been built was a rebirth.

“This is it.” Echo waved her hand in front of the door, feeling the faint buzz of energy that signaled the presence of magic. It felt like a weak electric current, almost as though she’d been rubbing her socks on a carpeted floor. She had been to Jasper’s only a few times, but she remembered the ward on the door that doubled as an alarm. If Echo kept poking at it, Jasper was bound to respond. Eventually. Hopefully. If he was home. The thought that he might be out hadn’t occurred to her until that moment.

“Echo?” Ivy drew up behind her, peeking over her shoulder. “What if he’s sleeping?”

“He won’t be,” Echo replied. “Jasper’s a bit of a night owl.”

The seconds ticked by in tense silence, and Echo felt the cruel pinch of hopelessness in her stomach. Even if he was home, there was no guarantee that he would answer. And why would he? If Jasper checked the small security cameras pointed at the door—the very ones Echo had helped him rig—and saw her there, with two Drakharin, one of whom was busy bleeding all over the place, he would be wise to turn them away. Her desperation crescendoed. Desperate times called for desperate measures. She ran out into the plaza, eyes fixed on the cathedral’s steeple.

“Jasper!” Echo shouted at the top of her lungs, the sound bouncing off the walls of the buildings bracketing the plaza. “Jasper, open the goddamn door!”

Ivy, Caius, and Dorian stared in stunned silence.

“Jasper!” Echo yelled again, and Caius moved so quickly that he had one hand plastered over Echo’s mouth and the other wrapped around the back of her neck to hold her still before she even saw him approach.

“What are you doing?” he hissed. “Are you trying to wake the entire city?” The hand at the back of her neck tangled in her hair, and his nails dug painfully into her scalp. “In case you haven’t noticed, the rest of us don’t exactly blend in.”

As if the moon itself wanted to help Caius prove his point, the clouds cleared just enough for his scales to catch the faint bit of light that peeked through, refracting it into a million tiny rainbows scattered across his cheekbones. He became, for a brief instant, the loveliest thing Echo had ever seen up close. But then the clouds returned, and all she saw was his anger, the sharply angled planes of his face making him look even more severe.

His hand was still covering her mouth, so when she
spoke, her words were muffled. Caius retracted his hand, slowly, as if he didn’t trust her not to start shouting again.

And really, he shouldn’t have.

“Jasper!”

“You rang?”

Four pairs of eyes snapped to the now open door, where a figure stood silhouetted by soft yellow light. Dorian had his sword drawn, though it trembled in his hand as if his grip wasn’t quite secure. Ivy looked as though she couldn’t decide if it would be safer to run toward Jasper or away from him. Echo batted Caius’s hands away, brushing past him as she walked to the door.

Jasper stood in the doorway, arms crossed over his slender chest, sinfully lovely even when annoyed. The warm brown of his skin glowed prettily in the gentle orange light of the streetlamp. His smooth, short hair-feathers were waves of purple, green, and blue. Jasper was a peacock, through and through. He was so striking that even the scowl on his face seemed more like adornment than genuine irritation. His well-worn jeans and white T-shirt were simple enough not to clash with the rest of him—a deliberate sartorial choice. If Echo had a dollar for every time Jasper claimed that beauty was his cross to bear, she could have treated them all to a lovely steak dinner.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Jasper asked.

“Hello to you, too.” Echo smiled, far too brightly. Jasper’s frown deepened. He would not be charmed. Not by her. Not tonight.

“Interesting company you’re keeping,” Jasper said, eyes roving over the two Drakharin behind her. Echo wouldn’t swear to it, but she thought they lingered on Dorian longer
than was necessary. Like any good thief, Jasper had an eye for shiny, pretty things. She supposed that Dorian, with his silver hair and sparkly blue eye, could be considered both shiny and pretty.

“Yeah, funny story about that. How about I tell it to you inside?”

Jasper stared at her as if she’d sprouted an extra head. “No,” he said, and turned away. Echo grabbed his arm, holding him in place.

“Jasper—”

“I said no, Echo.” He looked pointedly at her hand on his arm, but she refused to move it. He was their last hope, and she wasn’t about to give up that easily.

“You owe me.”

Jasper met her gaze with a hard stare, golden eyes unblinking. Just when she was beginning to think that maybe there was no honor among thieves, that he would turn them away, tell them there was no room at the inn, Jasper sighed. He rolled his eyes so hard she could almost hear them rattling around in his skull.

“Picking up macarons is one thing, but this?” Jasper gestured at the four of them. They must have made for a sorry sight. After a moment’s hesitation, he heaved a weary sigh.

Sweet victory
, Echo thought. Jasper was squishier on the inside than he would ever admit.

“Fine,” he said with such an air of martyrdom that she wouldn’t have been surprised to find his likeness mounted on the cathedral’s walls alongside the saints. “Come in. And wipe your feet before you enter. You all look like crap that’s been dragged through mud and then set on fire.”

If someone asked Dorian how his life had gotten to this point, he wasn’t entirely certain that he’d be able to give them an answer. Not a satisfactory one, at least. They were ushered up a long flight of stairs by a flamboyantly colored Avicen who kept lamenting the inevitable ruin of his carpet.

Dorian dug his fingers deeper into the flesh on both sides of his wound. Perhaps he was dreaming. Perhaps he would wake up and find himself in his own bed, down the hall from Caius’s chambers, and laugh about his wild nightmare later. But a very real pain flared through his gut, and he didn’t wake.

When they reached the top, Dorian was so light-headed he was only vaguely aware of the voices around him. He must have lost more blood on the climb than he had on the walk from the river. Echo was leading a circle of introductions around him. He hardly noticed anything beyond the hand Caius placed on his back to steady him. Resting his
head against the doorjamb, he let his eyes droop closed and focused on not passing out. Collapsing in a puddle of his own blood would lack a certain dignity.

“And who is this tall drink of water?”

It took Dorian a solid minute to realize that the Avicen was talking to him. He blamed the blood loss. He opened his eye to find all four of them staring at him. Caius was closest, brows drawn together in worry. Echo looked at him the way one might look at a wounded animal by the side of the road, concerned but not overly invested in its survival. Ivy stared openly at his wound. Judging from the speed at which she was blinking, it must have looked even worse than it felt. Jasper was appraising him with an amused tilt to his lips that was almost a smirk. It probably would have been had Dorian not been bleeding all over his formerly pristine white carpet.

Caius’s lips were moving but sound wasn’t reaching Dorian the way it should. From the shapes Caius’s mouth was making, he might be saying his name. Dorian closed his eye again and sound rushed back, as if his body could focus on only one sense at a time. How very economical. Without his sight to distract him, he heard Caius ask, “Dorian, are you all right?”

Dorian respected Caius. Admired him. Occasionally felt more for him than was entirely appropriate in a royal guard. But sometimes, even he had to admit that Caius wasn’t always the sharpest knife in the armory.

“Are you dying?” Jasper asked. As if it weren’t obvious.

Dorian’s answer was a wordless groan. He brought his other hand up to his wound, and little flecks of red spattered on the carpet.
No
, he thought.
There is no way this looks worse than it feels
.

Caius was using both arms to support Dorian now, and for that, he was grateful. Sliding down the door and onto the floor in a graceless, bloody heap was becoming a very real possibility.

“He needs medical attention,” Caius said, wrapping an arm around Dorian’s waist.

That’s nice
, Dorian thought.

Jasper moved toward them, and without thinking twice, Dorian pressed himself against the wall as if he were trying to push through it. The cluster of scars on his eye socket pulsed with an intensity that matched the wound in his side. He closed his eye, and for a brief and terrible moment, he was back on that battlefield, with a brown-and-white-feathered Avicen leaning over him, bloodied knife in one hand, dead blue eye in the other. Caius’s arm tightened around him. It was enough to pull him back to the moment. Dorian drew in a shaky breath. The metallic scent of his own blood was oddly comforting.

Jasper paused, hands raised in front of him as though he were trying to calm a rambunctious colt. Dorian had enough wherewithal left to take offense.

“I have supplies,” Jasper said. “I can patch him up, but it won’t be pretty. I’m no healer.”

“You are,” Echo said, turning to Ivy. “You’re apprenticed to one, at least. Can you help him?”

Ivy’s gaze darted from Echo to Dorian. When her eyes met his, Dorian couldn’t read what he saw there. Ivy nodded slowly. “Yeah, I can help.”

Dorian’s injury-addled brain must have been playing tricks on him, because there was no way Ivy had just offered
to help him after the way he’d treated her. No one was that good. No one Dorian knew. He tried to stand, tried to convince them that, no, really, he was fine, but he swayed on his feet, falling against Caius’s chest. It was all very unseemly.

Jasper said something to Caius, but all of Dorian’s attention was on the task of not throwing up on Caius’s chest. Or his boots. Or any part of Caius, really. It wasn’t until he felt himself being moved, more than half carried by Caius and Echo, that he realized they’d been talking about laying him on Jasper’s bed. Dorian desperately wanted to protest. He was no fainting maiden to be coddled. Except maybe he was, because the next thing he noticed was the soft dip of a mattress beneath him.

Hands peeled back the layers of his clothing, and cool air prickled the skin on his bare chest as his shirt was cut off. Dorian tried to bat them away.

“I don’t need your help,” he slurred. Maybe if he said it aloud, it would magically become true.

“The gaping hole in your torso ruining my Egyptian cotton sheets says otherwise,” Jasper said, emerging from what Dorian assumed was the bathroom with Ivy, arms laden with various medical supplies. He hadn’t even seen them leave.

Dorian flinched when a cold rag was pressed to his forehead, wiping away the sweat beading at his hairline. A cup was held to his lips, and a hand, too small to belong to Caius or Jasper, helped him hold his head up.

“Drink this,” Ivy said, tipping the cup slightly. Bitterness exploded on his tongue, and he fought not to gag. A hint of mint lingered beneath the medicinal taste of whatever she’d given him, and it made his stomach roil in rebellion. Ivy set
the cup aside, turning to Caius and Echo, who hovered like mother hens. Dorian had the sneaking suspicion that Echo was more worried about Ivy than him.

“Give me some room to work, please,” said Ivy. Caius, Jasper, and Echo obeyed without question. Ivy’s white feathers were still covered in dirt and blood, but she sounded more sure of herself than Dorian had heard her since the warlocks he’d hired had dragged her before him. How different she seemed now, free and in her element. Something knotted in Dorian’s stomach that had nothing to do with his wound.

He blinked blearily, but it was less of a struggle to keep his eye open than it had been moments before. Whatever Ivy had made him drink was disgusting, but effective. Her small hands were fast yet methodical as she unrolled a generous length of gauze and set about cutting it into manageable strips. When she began to clean the wound, her fingers were gentle and efficient. The rest of her was as grimy as when they had fled Wyvern’s Keep, but her hands and forearms gleamed white, her skin and feathers clean and spotless. She’d washed her hands, so as not to pass along an infection. Dorian was oddly touched. He had been cruel to her. He did not deserve her kindness. He wasn’t even sure he wanted it.

“Why?” Dorian asked.

The sound of his voice startled her, and she flinched, fingers scraping the edge of the wound. Dorian hissed in pain. Ivy mumbled a terse apology, keeping her eyes on his wound.

“Why what?” she asked.

He lifted the arm opposite her, heavy from the combination of blood loss and medicine, to gesture loosely at his injury. “Why are you helping me?”

Ivy worked in silence for several minutes, and Dorian gave up the hope of getting an answer. She didn’t owe him one. He let his eye drift shut and focused on not wincing as she picked small bits of dirt out of the wound.

“I’m a healer.”

At the sound of Ivy’s voice, quiet but steady, Dorian opened his eyes. She said no more, as if that simple proclamation was answer enough. The medicine continued to work its magic, and Dorian’s vision cleared enough for him to see that the bruise on her cheek had blossomed to an angry shade of purple. He had put that there.

“I know,” he said softly. “I know, but I—” He gestured at the bruise on her face.