The Girl at Midnight (19 page)

“I haven’t forgotten,” Ivy said. She smeared a salve over the wound. It was bracingly cold at first, stinging upon contact before fading to a slight chill. The flesh around the wound numbed as she gently layered strips of gauze atop the salve.

“So why?” He didn’t ask what he really wanted to.
Why are you being this kind? How can you be this kind?

“Because,” she said, reaching for the tape on the bedside table, “there’s enough cruelty in this world without me adding to it.”

Ivy tore off a few strips of tape and applied them to the edges of the gauze, securing them with a gentle press. Wiping her hands on the towel Jasper had provided, she stood, surveying her work with one final nod. Without another word, she turned and walked away. She hadn’t made eye contact, not once, and it left him feeling terribly, undeniably small.

As Echo watched Ivy, she felt someone’s gaze settle on her. She turned to find Caius watching her. He’d gravitated to the high-backed leather chair beside the mantel, and he didn’t just sit in it. He sprawled, taking up space as if he owned it. Echo was perched on the corner of a too-soft sofa, feeling dwarfed by the openness of Jasper’s loft. Fatigue had settled deep into her bones, but at least she had on clean clothes. After her first shared job with Jasper had resulted in an unfortunate incident with a septic tank, she had carved out a tiny space for herself in the bottom drawer of his dresser. She’d spent an hour picking mud out of his hair-feathers, and she strongly suspected it was gratitude that kept Jasper from complaining about her claiming the space for herself. Echo stretched the sleeves of her sweater over her thumbs and met Caius’s gaze. Until this moment, she hadn’t seen him in artificial light, and it was quite the view.

Small lamps dotted the loft, their bulbs covered with
stained-glass shades that cast the room in soft reds and purples. Back at the keep, Caius’s eyes had looked like emerald flames, catching the light from the sconces on the walls and dancing with it. Now, they were so dark they were hardly green at all, as though the swirling black of his pupil had swallowed the iris whole. Echo stared for a minute before she realized what she was doing. Tearing her eyes from his, she felt the traitorous heat of a blush creeping up her cheeks. She turned away to hide her flush, watching Ivy tend to Dorian.

“Your friend is talented,” Caius said.

There was something about being here with him that made Echo’s tongue feel too large for her mouth. She simply nodded and kept her eyes forward. Jasper was loudly rearranging cutlery in the kitchenette, signaling that he was giving her some privacy. What for, she had no idea, but that was par for the course. She usually had no idea what motivated Jasper to do the things that he did.

“He’s a strange one, isn’t he?” Caius’s voice was soft, conspiratorial even.

“Jasper?” she asked, finally looking back at him. He was trying to make small talk.
What fresh hell?

Caius raised an eyebrow as if to say
Who else?
The blush returned, heat crawling up the back of Echo’s neck like a spider.

“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, he is.”

“I’m curious,” Caius said, leaning forward to unbuckle the leather straps of the harness that held the two long knives on his back. “I’d like to hear about the time you saved his life. You seem so young to be having such adventures.”

Echo felt a prickle of annoyance at his words and held on to it. It was better than blushing. “I’m not a child.”

If embarrassment had not been beneath a hardened Drakharin mercenary, Echo would have sworn that the flash of emotion that crossed Caius’s face was just that. But she blinked and it was gone.

“I meant no insult.” Caius laid the knives on the floor beside the chair. Echo hated herself for noticing the way his chest strained against the bloodied fabric of his tunic. When he looked up at her, the hint of a smile he wore was almost sheepish. “But you
are
young. Too young to be spending your nights on the run from Drakharin soldiers, surely.”

“I don’t feel young,” said Echo. It hadn’t been the first time she’d been forced to run for her life, but the muscles in her legs ached in a way they never had before. A dull twinge settled into her lower back, creeping its way up her spine and across her shoulders. A faint throb had begun behind her eyes, and she knew she would be nursing a monstrous headache soon.

“The young never do,” he said softly. She didn’t know how to respond to this version of Caius. Antagonism she understood, but this newfound camaraderie was strange.

“How old are you?” Echo asked.

“How old do I look?” Caius’s lips twitched into a small grin. If he was tired, he wore it well.

“A lot younger than you probably are.”

He was quiet for a few moments, and the ping of Jasper’s microwave made her jump.

“About two hundred fifty,” Caius said. “The years start to blend together after a while.” He shrugged, as if the notion were the most normal thing in the world. “And how old are you?”

There was something about him that seemed both young
and old at the same time. He lacked the gravitas of the Ala, who had always reminded Echo of a great oak tree, aged and eternal. In the face of two hundred fifty, any number Echo could have produced would have felt paltry by comparison, but the real answer seemed woefully inadequate.

“Seventeen.”

Caius blinked, slowly, as though opening and closing his lids took a bit of effort. “Seventeen,” he breathed. “Remarkable.”

“If you say so.”

“You still haven’t answered my question,” Caius said. “About Jasper.”

“Oh.” Echo had already forgotten it. The way Caius sat—no, sprawled—with his dark green eyes and his darker brown hair and his angular cheekbones made her slow, as if her brain had gone a bit rusty. She shook her head, as though the simple motion would clear it. It didn’t.

“Me and Jasper,” she said, though she didn’t quite like the way that sounded. Jasper had flirted with her, but he flirted with anything with a pulse. There was no such thing as
Echo and Jasper
. She didn’t know why it mattered to her that Caius shouldn’t believe there was, but it did. “About a year ago, we were both hired to steal the same thing. I got it. He didn’t. His employers didn’t like that very much.”

“What was it?” Caius stretched his long legs out in front of him, crossing them at the ankles. Echo busied herself with wondering what white-furred animal had died to make Jasper’s rug.

“A harp.”

“A harp?” Caius sounded almost amused.

“A harp.”

“Must have been some harp.”

“Supposedly, it was magical,” Echo said. “Legend had it that if you played it aboard a ship, you could call mermaids to do your bidding. But I don’t think mermaids even exist.”

“They do.”

And just like that, Echo’s world rearranged itself. It seemed to be doing that with alarming frequency these days.

“Did it work?” Caius asked. “The harp?”

Echo shrugged. “I didn’t stick around to find out. I was busy pulling Jasper out of the ocean. His employers threw him overboard when he told them I’d stolen it from right under his nose.”

“The Avicen aren’t overly fond of water,” Caius said. He made it sound clinical, as if he were reciting from a textbook.

“Some are, some aren’t,” Echo said. “Jasper can’t swim to save his life. Literally.”

“But you saved it for him.” Caius looked her over as if he was appraising her. She didn’t like it. “That was noble.” He made it sound more like a curiosity than a compliment.

“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” she said.

“I’m sure it did.”

They fell into a silence that wasn’t entirely uncomfortable. Echo gazed around the room, at the paintings on the walls—all stolen, all famous, all hideously expensive—and the little touches that made the loft feel like a home. A record player sat in the corner, vinyl albums stacked haphazardly next to it. A row of Japanese netsuke lined the windowsill, a tiny army carved of ivory. All stolen. Muted voices drifted from the kitchenette, where Ivy had joined Jasper.

Caius spoke before Echo could make a break for the kitchenette. “I’m sorry you were dragged into this mess.”

She blinked. “Really?”

“Really.”

“I just …” The words refused to come easy. There was so much she wanted to ask. “Why?”

Caius breathed long and deep before answering. “Because it isn’t your mess.”

“And it’s yours?” Echo asked. “I thought you were just the hired muscle.”

That small smile found its way to Caius’s face again. “We all have our jobs to do. The parameters of mine have simply changed.”

Echo raised her eyebrows. “And now they include teaming up with a bunch of Avicen?”

“There are some things more important than taking sides,” Caius said. “The … previous Dragon Prince tasked me with finding the firebird, and it’s a cause I happen to believe in.”

The clinking of ceramic cups from the kitchenette cut through the silence, but Echo couldn’t have torn her eyes away from Caius if she wanted to. The fact that she didn’t was problematic.

“The Dragon Prince,” Echo said. “What was he like?”

Caius looked down at his interlaced fingers. A few locks of hair fell in front of his face, and Echo’s fingers twitched with the urge to brush them back. She sat on her hands. He didn’t look up when he said, “Bit of an idiot.”

A mad giggle tore its way out of Echo. “What?”

“He was so busy looking for threats from the outside that he missed the one hiding right under his nose.”

“Tanith?”

Caius nodded.

“Who is she?”

“His sister.”

Echo drew her legs up onto the couch, crossing them at the ankles. What must that have been like, she wondered, to be betrayed so thoroughly by someone who was supposed to love you, wholly and unconditionally? Her own family—the biological one she’d run away from—had disabused her of the notion of innate and obligatory love long ago, but she’d always imagined the bond between siblings to be a sacred thing. Like her bond with Ivy. “Damn,” she said.

“That about sums it up.”

“What was his name?”

Caius shifted, long legs uncrossing and crossing, one hand rising to rub the base of his neck. “I don’t know. The Drakharin keep the name of their ruler well hidden from those on the outside. There’s power in names.”

The Avicen and the Drakharin had more in common than they realized, but Echo kept that thought to herself. Mortal enemies were touchy about being compared to each other. “So I’ve heard.”

Caius nodded again. “Thank you,” he said quietly.

“For what?”

“For this.” Caius gestured at the loft. “For bringing us here. For helping when you didn’t have to.”

“I didn’t have much of a choice, did I?”

Caius’s eyes went soft and distant, as if he was looking at her, and maybe also through her. “There’s always a choice, Echo. Even if it’s a bad one.”

“And which one was this?” she asked. Ivy and Jasper had gone curiously quiet, and Echo knew they were listening.

“The good one, I hope.”

Ivy and Jasper resumed their conversation, voices hushed, and Echo was glad of it.

“You aren’t what I would have expected,” she said. Now it was her turn to be quiet, to make the words soft enough for only Caius to hear. “For a Drakharin, I mean.”

He clasped his hands over his stomach and smiled wearily. Smiling made him seem younger, as though his age matched his looks, but now, with the fine lines of fatigue setting in around his eyes, he looked older. He was too handsome to ever be truly haggard, but his shoulders sagged, and he sank deeper into the chair, meeting Echo’s eyes with a half-lidded gaze.

“Should I apologize for that?” he asked.

Echo shook her head.

“What would the Avicen have you believe of me?”

“That you’re a monster.”

Caius arched an eyebrow. “And do you find me monstrous?”

She could have lied, but he’d see right through it. He didn’t come across as the sort you could sneak a falsehood past. “ ‘The devil is not as black as he is painted.’ ”

“Dante.” The corners of Caius’s lips curved upward just a touch. “You’re well read, I see.”

“I spend a lot of my time in libraries.” It should have felt wrong, to expose that part of herself to Caius, no matter how tiny it was. It should have. It really, really should have.

Caius studied her for a few heartbeats more before reaching into his shirt and pulling out the locket. Echo’s fingers twitched with her longing to hold it. Like Jasper, she had
always been drawn to beautiful things, but this was different. This felt as if it should have been hers, and she couldn’t have explained it if she tried.

“If the locket belonged to you once, how did it wind up at that teahouse in Japan?” Echo asked.

“I gave it to someone a long time ago.” Caius twirled the pendant between his fingers, running a thumb over the bronze dragon on its front. “I suppose she gave it to someone else in turn. Strange to think that it found its way back to me.”

Strange indeed. He was connected to everything—the firebird, the locket, the music box, the maps—in a way Echo couldn’t quite piece together, but there was a finality to his tone that didn’t invite further questioning. Perhaps in the morning, he’d be more forthcoming. Or, she mused, he would expect her to be as well. Maybe it was best if she didn’t pepper him with questions he clearly didn’t want to answer; that way he wouldn’t pry into her secrets with equal curiosity. With a sigh, she moved on to her next query. “Did you keep the dagger?”

Caius slipped the locket’s chain over his head and dropped it onto his lap. He must have replaced the broken one before their abrupt departure. Then he unclasped a small leather sheath on the side of his belt, removing the dagger in one smooth motion. He looked from the dagger to Echo, silent, waiting. Her fingers twitched again. She wanted to hold it, to feel the weight of the hilt in her palm, the onyx and pearl magpies against her skin. But there was one thing that had been bothering her since she’d found it.

“I don’t get it,” she said. “The locket had a map inside, but how does a dagger help us find the firebird?”