“Don’t be an idiot! If you can’t swim, you can’t swim, Eleanore! You’ll drown out there, and what the bloody hell do you think you’re going to do anyway to a U-boat? Bite it open?”
I stood again. “Yes! If I must! I don’t hear you coming up with a better—”
“You’ll die out there!”
“Or we’ll all die here!”
“We’re going to find another way!”
“You two work on that. I’m off.” I fixed them both with one last, vehement look, the Turn rising inside me.
Remember this. Remember them, this moment, this heartbreak, these two boys. Remember that they loved you.
Armand had reached for my shoulders. “I forbid—Eleanore, please, no—”
“No,” echoed Jesse, speaking at last. “You’re not going after the submarine, Lora. You won’t need to.”
Armand and I paused together, glancing down at him. I stood practically on tiptoe, so ready to become my other self.
Jesse climbed clumsily to his feet. When he swayed, we both lunged to catch him.
“Armand will take me to the shore. I’ll handle the U-boat.”
“How?” demanded Armand at once.
But I understood. I could read him so well now, Jesse-of-the-stars. I understood what he meant to do, and what it would cost him.
I felt myself shaking my head. Above us, the airship propellers thumped louder and louder.
“Yes,” said Jesse, smiling his lovely smile at me. “I already sense your agreement. Death and the Elemental were stronger joined than apart, remember? This is our joining. Don’t waste any more time quarreling with me about it. That’s not your way.” He leaned down to me, a hand tangled in my hair. His mouth pressed to mine, and for the first time ever I didn’t feel bliss at his touch.
I felt misery.
“Go on, Lora-of-the-moon,” he murmured against my lips. “You’re going to save us. I know you will.”
I glared past him to the harsh, baffled face of Armand. “Will you help him? Do you swear it?”
“I—yes, I will. I do.”
I disentangled Jesse’s hand, kissed it, stepped back, and let the Turn consume me, smoke rising and rising, leaving the castle and all I loved behind me for the wild open sky.
• • •
Airships aren’t actually powered by air. They have propellers and engines that run on fuel, much like a water-bound ship, and they stay aloft by means of the hydrogen gas trapped inside the cells of their great elongated balloons.
I knew that much from the reports in the London papers, but what I recalled most about them, watching them float over St. Giles to let loose their unholy fire, were the windowed gondolas that hung beneath the balloon part, filled with crew. And the bomb bays positioned behind those, filled with death. When the ground-defense searchlights landed on them just so, you could clearly see the figures of the men behind the glass.
I remember thinking that the Germans must have had a very fine view of all the neighborhoods they were obliterating.
In every raid, I witnessed the return fire from the rifles and pistols of the watchmen stationed atop the buildings. A short-lived torrent of lights, insignificant as matches lit and dying. If any of them had managed a hit, I’d never been able to tell.
The zeppelins simply flew too high. If there weren’t enough aeroplanes assembled nearby to dog them back to sea, they wiped out everything in their paths until they ran out of bombs.
No aeroplanes were coming to our rescue tonight.
Only me. A thing of smoke and tentative skills. I wasn’t even certain if my wings were meant for flight. I hadn’t exactly had any luck with it the one time I’d tried.
I could glide, though. Probably.
Maybe.
Should worse come to worst, I could smoke up to them, Turn to dragon right there, dig my claws in, and hang on. That might do it.
Looked like I was about to find out.
What I hadn’t thought about, what I’d completely managed to forget about, was that I wasn’t exactly skilled at maintaining my transformed shape, either. The reminder came to me rather forcibly as I was streaming my way east, over the channel, and felt myself beginning to solidify.
No. No!
Yes.
Several thousand feet up in the air, I Turned back into a girl. Screaming, cartwheeling, everything topsy-turvy purple as gravity reclaimed me and I plummeted down to the water.
fly! sang the stars, weighing in past my screams. fly, beast!
It was a damned near save. I was a girl and then I wasn’t, managing the Turn so close to the sea that the