The Girl at Midnight (34 page)

Caius fought on, sword glancing off a fallen Warhawk’s armor. The Warhawk’s cloak was as white as the others, his bronze armor identical to that worn by his comrades, but Echo would have recognized the set of his shoulders, the curve of his jaw, and those golden speckled feathers anywhere. Altair had led his troops into battle, and Rowan—loyal, brave, beautiful Rowan—had followed him. As if he
could feel her eyes on him, he turned, catching her gaze, brows drawn tight over hazel eyes. Rowan shouted for her, but the roar of the battle swallowed his voice, scattering his words aloft on the scorched air. He looked at her as though he had never seen her before, as though she were something new and strange and terrible. Just as Caius lifted his blade, ready to cut down Rowan for good, a crack, loud as lightning, sounded from the mouth of the Oracle’s cave.

Fire billowed from the entrance as if the cave were belching it out. Tanith stood in its archway, arms raised as she called flames to do her bidding. She was going to burn the entire forest down around them. Echo felt as small and helpless as she ever had. They didn’t stand a chance against Tanith. They would die here, in the Black Forest, burned to a bloody crisp.

Cowering behind the drooping branches of the willow beneath which she’d been placed, its green leaves yellow in the light of Tanith’s fire, Echo was seven years old again, hiding from the monsters outside. But she heard Rose’s voice whisper the words she’d spoken as Echo had floated in that black netherworld.
Your friends need you
.

She was not seven years old, and she was not alone. She would not hide, not from Tanith, not from Altair, not from anyone. Not if she could help it. Not when her friends needed her.

Echo summoned every ounce of courage she had and hauled herself to her feet. She expected to feel the sharp bite of pain where the blade had pierced her chest, but looking down, she found that her skin had healed, leaving only the faintest pucker of a scar.
Well, that’s a fun new skill
.

She felt the moment Tanith spotted her. They were too
far apart for Echo to be able to make out her eyes, but she remembered them, red and furious, even if the memory didn’t belong to her. It was like looking into a distorted mirror, showing glimpses of someone else’s life as though it were her own, when Tanith had brought Rose’s cabin burning down around her. A ferocious thrill of hate cut through her.

Yes
. Rose’s voice echoed in her head.
You know what to do
.

Echo raised her hands the way Tanith had. She didn’t question it. She didn’t second-guess herself. She simply held out her palms, summoned the fire she felt burning beneath her skin, and thought,
Burn
.

From the corner of her eye, Echo saw Caius turn from Rowan, who was blessedly still breathing, staring at her as if she were something from a nightmare. Caius ran, trying to place himself between Echo and Tanith, but Altair muscled his way through the tangle of bodies to reach him first. His sword arced through the air toward Caius. Time crawled to a stop, and Echo saw it happen in slow motion. Altair brought his blade down, aiming squarely for the center of Caius’s chest. Again, she thought,
Burn
.

Flames poured from her open palms, black and white, as crisp and clear as a magpie’s feathers, so different from Tanith’s riotous reds and yellows. The blaze strengthened, first in stuttering pulses, then growing stronger and stronger until it burned as bright as the sun and as dark as night. The violent pounding of her heart was like wings beating against her bones. Power simmered beneath her skin, fighting to be free, but Echo’s body was a cage, and she held the power of the firebird within. She laughed, and her fire surged forward. Flames twisted and twined through the air, colliding with Tanith’s blaze. But Tanith didn’t so much as flinch.

The black and white flames flickered with Echo’s uncertainty. She poured everything she was, everything she had been, and everything she thought she would ever be into her fire, but it wasn’t enough. Tanith was too strong and Echo’s power was too new, too weak. Tanith’s blaze battered Echo’s until her brilliant flames muddied into a sad gray.

In the distance, Caius fell to his knees, Altair’s body lay behind him, feathers smoking. Caius stared at Echo, expression open and raw. Something deep and secret twisted in her gut. Her blaze strengthened, and she felt Rose push inside her mind. Tanith fought back, and Echo fell her to knees, fire dying in her open palms.

She couldn’t die now, not again. She wasn’t ready. She wasn’t done. She needed to see Ivy one last time, to tell her that she was glad to be her friend. And Rowan. There were so many things she had to say, so much that she owed him. She had to thank him for freeing her, to apologize for Ruby, for betraying his trust, for running away from him. She wanted to tell the Ala she loved her. The last thing Echo heard before she passed out was the rustle of feathers, like wings on a breeze. The black of the in-between surged over the forest, and then there was nothing but silence.

The first thing Jasper noticed was the pain. Pain was good. Pain meant he was alive, but it also meant that he wasn’t going to be happy about it. His head throbbed worse than the time he’d tried to match a bar full of warlocks drink for drink. The muscles in his abdomen jumped, spitefully, with every breath he took. He laid a hand on his stomach, and his fingers slid through something warm and wet. Blood.
Well then
.

The second thing he noticed was that it was not cold, hard stone beneath him, but the plush white of his own carpet. It was most assuredly ruined now. He would have to import an entirely new one.

The third thing he noticed, after opening his eyes, was a raven-feathered Avicen looming over him.

“Oh, good,” the Ala said. “You’re up. I was beginning to think I’d pulled a corpse out of that fire.”

“Whaaaa …” Jasper was usually capable of greater
eloquence than that, but for the life of him, he couldn’t seem to rustle up any.

Behind the Ala, Ivy’s white-feathered head bent over a very still body as she wrapped Echo’s palm with a thick white bandage. Jasper’s heart lurched. He tried to sit up, despite the rather vociferous protestations of his aggrieved abdominal muscles. With a single black-feathered hand, the Ala pushed him back down.

“She’ll live,” she said. “But you won’t if you don’t lie still.”

Lie still. Jasper could do that. Nay, Jasper could excel at that.

“You, with the eye patch,” the Ala called, looking over her shoulder. “Ivy looks like she could use an extra set of hands.” And then, sweet, immortal delight, she clapped twice. “Hop to it.”

Oh, how Dorian would love that. Even more splendidly, Dorian hopped to it, coming over to kneel beside Jasper, arms laden with clean gauze.

When Dorian pressed a bandage to the wound right below his ribs, Jasper bit back a yelp. What hurt even worse was the fact that Dorian mumbled a quick apology before letting his eyes drift over to where Caius was struggling to sit up beside Echo.

No
, Jasper thought.
None of that now
.

“Would you be surprised to know,” Jasper croaked, drawing Dorian’s attention, “that this is the first time I’ve wound up on the business end of a sword?”

Dorian’s quiet little laugh was bells on Sunday morning. “Just a bit, yes.” He looked at Jasper then. There was a softness in his eyes that made Jasper’s insides do all sorts of terrible things. “And you took a blow meant for me.”

“Are you sure?” Jasper asked, voice sandpaper-rough. “That doesn’t sound like me at all.” He coughed, and blood tickled his throat. “But then, I suppose I haven’t been feeling much like myself lately.”

“You saved my life,” Dorian said, swapping out the bandage for a fresh one. The one he laid aside was an alarming shade of red. Jasper decided he was better off not looking at it.

“And you saved our little dove,” Jasper replied, craning his neck to see where Ivy was still tending to Echo. “I saw what you did back there.”

Dorian’s lips twitched in a way that wasn’t entirely happy but was entirely appealing to Jasper on a level that should have been disturbing. “Yes, well, I owed her one.”

Dorian spared another surreptitious glance over his shoulder. Jasper followed his gaze. Caius was holding Echo’s hand, the one that Ivy was not bandaging.

Nope
, Jasper thought.
Bad Dorian
.

He laid a hand atop Dorian’s. It increased the pressure on his wound, but the feel of Dorian’s skin, warm and callused beneath his own, was worth it.

“You see him,” Jasper said. “But does he see you?”

Dorian turned away from Caius, silver bangs falling over his eye as he bowed his head. “No,” he whispered. Jasper had a feeling that this was perhaps the first time Dorian had ever admitted it aloud. “He never has.”

There was a whole host of comments Jasper had stockpiled in his arsenal, locked and loaded and ready to launch at the slightest hint that Dorian was willing to admit the futility of his unrequited love, but each and every one of them was rejected in favor of silently lacing his fingers with Dorian’s. When Dorian didn’t pull away, Jasper’s insides quivered.

Dorian was silent for a moment, his blue eye resting on their joined hands. Then, slowly, painfully, he raised his gaze to Jasper’s. “Do you?”

Jasper thought he knew where this was going, but he needed to be very clear on one thing. “Do I what?”

“See me.” Dorian swallowed. Jasper must have lost a lot of blood to be so easily hypnotized by the motion of Dorian’s throat.

Jasper answered by raising their linked fingers to his mouth, brushing his chapped lips over the scarred skin of Dorian’s knuckles. A pink flush crept up Dorian’s pale neck. Jasper was as enthralled with the blush as he had been the first time he’d seen it. But unlike the first time he had seen that hint of scarlet taint Dorian’s cheeks, he had an overwhelming desire to be the only one to make Dorian blush like that, deeply and often. And that was when Jasper knew that he’d lost a war he hadn’t even realized he’d been fighting. Resistance was futile. Surrender, inevitable. He pressed another kiss to Dorian’s hand, just to see that pink darken a shade.

“I’m sorry,” Dorian said, shaking his head, Christmastinsel hair fluttering with the movement. “I guess I haven’t been feeling much like myself lately either.”

Dorian drew his hand back, and the smooth glide of skin on skin was nearly too much to bear. Jasper had long ago decided that his heart had little use beyond its biological function, but as Dorian pulled away from him, he knew that his was as breakable as anyone’s.

Echo stirred, feeling the scratch of carpeting beneath her head. Bells tolled, and she’d never been happier to hear them. She was alive, even if just barely, and someone was wrapping linen around her burnt hands. Ivy’s voice floated through the black, and the Ala’s answered it. They were alive too. Echo kept her eyes closed and let the familiar sound of their conversation wash over her.

Now that she was out of the Black Forest, away from the Oracle’s sanctum and the power of her own reflection, she was beginning to feel like herself again. Her wounds had mostly healed, save for the burns on her hands. The fire she’d called had scorched her, too. It didn’t seem fair that her newfound power should turn on her like that, but it bothered her infinitely less than the sensation of another person lurking at the back of her mind, like an actor waiting in the wings.

Rose.

When Echo had opened that door inside her, letting the firebird out of its cage, Rose had come along for the ride, clinging to the power that could have been hers had she only made the choice to welcome it. She’d been a vessel, too, just like Echo. And now, she was occupying a darkened corner of Echo’s brain, not merely with her presence, but with everything that made her
Rose
. What Rose knew, Echo knew, even the secrets she’d kept until the day she died. What Rose felt, Echo felt. She remembered being happy once, a long time ago. She remembered the way Caius had kissed her the first time, standing on the beach by her cabin with the ocean lapping at their feet. She remembered nights spent cuddled together in front of a fireplace, talking about their hopes and fears. All of it was as real to Echo as her own memories, her own emotions. It was too much.

When she cracked her eyes open, she was greeted by the sight of three people leaning over her. Three of the most important people in her life. The Ala. Ivy. And now, strangely enough, Caius. They were all staring at her. This was how animals in zoos must have felt. Lying there, with all those faces peering at her with equal parts concern and curiosity, was suffocating. When she struggled to sit up, no fewer than three sets of hands—black, white, and a featherless tan—moved to push her back down. It was all too much.

“Stop,” Echo said, voice breathier than she would have liked. “Everybody, stop. Stop touching me, stop staring at me, stop inhaling my air.”

Ivy sucked in a breath, and Echo could have sworn she actually held it.
God bless your heart, Ivy
.

The Ala’s face slipped into something approaching neutrality, but Echo could see the wonder in her eyes.

“It was in you the whole time,” the Ala said. “I should have known.”

Echo pushed herself up to a seated position, back resting against Jasper’s ridiculous suede couch. When Caius steadied her with a hand on her lower back, she didn’t stop him. His hand lingered there, settling right above the waistband of her jeans. Echo was acutely aware of every minute detail of the texture of his skin. Ivy’s eyes darted down to Caius’s hand, but she kept her thoughts to herself.

“How could you have known?” Echo asked. “I still don’t even understand how or why this is possible. I remember everything about Rose. She was the firebird’s last vessel—she’s the one who left the maps behind for me to find. And there are other images, things I don’t understand. How do I have those memories?”