in the reflection of the window. His eyes were closed.
“Jesse?”
“Yes. I’m all right.”
I guess to confirm it he straightened and returned to me, graceful as ever, offering me the flat of his palm.
He had the braid of flowers balanced there, still in their half circle. But they were changed now. They weren’t white any longer or even alive.
They were made of gold.
Actual gold, because they sang to me, just like the circlet of roses had. Just like the regular rings and earrings and bracelets and stickpins of all the people I’d ever known.
Jesse had turned the living flowers into metal.
He lifted my arm and slipped them over my wrist. Rigid in their golden death, they hugged the bones of my arm snug like a cuff, like they’d been made specially for me.
Which, I supposed, they had.
I’m not proud of what happened next. In my defense, it had been a long, strange day followed by a sleepless night, and I was more than a little unnerved from—well, from everything. The tea, the duke’s ruby song, Armand and Chloe and the bombs and then Jesse and the night and the kiss and not being human. Not being human.
All I remember is that I was looking down at the cuff, at the perfect composition of the flowers, how they connected petal-to-petal in the most miraculous way, humming warm against my skin. I thought that the king’s own jeweler could not have designed a better bracelet and how funny that was because I was surely as opposite the King of England as a person could be.
Anyway, I wasn’t anticipating it: The shadows from the floor rose up in a rush and clasped me in opaque arms. They encased me and Jesse and the entire room.
Yes, I fainted.
Even as I fell, I realized how humiliating it was. My very last conscious thought was, Please let me wake up alone in my own bed.
And I did.
• • •
You’re wondering if I awoke with the cuff.
Because if I didn’t, perhaps it had all been nothing but a dream. Or my own particular brand of insanity, my notoriously hysterical imagination. Even before we’re out of short pants and pinafores, we’re taught to dismiss both dreams and imaginings as if they count for nothing, and without the cuff, I would likely have done just that. With every fiber of my being, I yearned to be normal. To glide through my days at Iverson without incident. The last thing I wanted was to indulge in my differences from everyone else.
But with the proof of those braided flowers, I’d have to face the fact that my life was about to unfold in a very, very different way than I’d ever envisioned. Normal would become forever out of reach.
The answer, of course, is that I awoke with the cuff.
At first I didn’t even feel it. At first, with the light of day creeping over me—a gray light, a cloudy light, because even though the sky last night had stretched so limpid, by morning a rainstorm was rolling in—I felt only grit in my eyes and the gnawing awareness that if I didn’t get up soon, I’d miss breakfast. And I was hungry.
I staggered out of bed and over to the bureau, yanking open the drawer that contained my Sunday blouse and skirt. It was only then I understood that the heavy thing about my wrist was Jesse’s flowers.
It stopped me cold.
I remembered it all, everything at once in a sickening flood.
I was a …
I was …
The beast in my heart said nothing. Ever since Jesse’s revelation, it had gone still as death. I had to finish the thought all alone.
I was a dragon.
Reflexively, I ran my hands up and down my sides, feeling my ribs, my hips, my legs. Except for my boots, I was still wearing every bit of last night’s clothing—thank you, Jesse—and it didn’t take long to tear it all off entirely so I could examine my skin.
No scales, no plated spine or new, hideous claws where my toe-nails used to be. No hint of anything dragonish at all. Even when I twisted around practically in half, using the looking glass to try to glimpse my backside, I still looked … ordinary. I still looked just like me.
But there was the cuff on my wrist, singing a soft, soft melody. And what had happened with the piano. And how I’d made Malinda choke. And all those years of all those silent songs.