Jesse thought fiercely. If I could take this one moment away from you and keep the agony for myself—
Her eyes opened, went instantly to his. Panic lit her gaze.
Then she was gone.
His fingers sank to the floor through her empty blouse, and the blue dragon smoke that was all of Eleanore Jones rose into strands above him.
Chapter 19
It did not hurt.
It took me a while to comprehend that. I think mostly what I felt in those first few seconds, beyond astonishment, was an extreme sense of loss: loss of gravity, loss of orientation, loss of Jesse’s touch. Yet, by some means, I could still see. I could hear. I was still myself, with my own thoughts but none of my own body.
I was lighter than the air. I was diaphanous, bobbing and floating and unable to control it, and the dripping-wet stalactites poked down around me, and Jesse was a boy on his feet below me, his face tipped up, gilded hair and eyes glinting like emeralds.
He mouthed my name. It came to me distant and smothered, but, weirdly, it didn’t seem to matter. The boy down there didn’t matter nearly as much as these fascinating rock formations that combed through me now with their solid teeth, because I knew that they were only the lid on a ceiling, and beyond the ceiling was freedom.
And, oh, how I yearned for it. I twined and spiraled and searched for a way out, and the waiting stars sang hallelujahs to me and pulled and pulled—yes, this way—
“Lora. Lora!”
I bubbled against the ceiling. The smoky fragments of me stretched longer and longer; I realized I could become less than smoke. I could flatten myself, sheer as a sheet of molecules, a shimmering hint of next-to-nothing. Even thinner.
And it felt … good.
That was when I knew that, if I wanted, I could just keep thinning. Let myself unravel. Final freedom. No weight, no pain, no worries. Not ever again.
“Come back to me, Eleanore. Listen to me. You have to come back now.”
The boy spoke sternly, and I paused. A fire burned within him. How peculiar that I could see it now, in this form, when he could do me no harm. It burned inside him without even a flicker, just this strong, steady light that illuminated him in flame and gold, every cell. Every beautiful bit.
“Dragon,” snapped the boy. “I command you to come back.”
I wanted to laugh at that. Command. Indeed.
But … he’d done something to me. I couldn’t maintain my lovely thin stretch. I was changing, thickening, even as I fought it. I was pouring back down to the floor of the cavern in a darker mass, coils of smoke that tightened into the shape of the girl I’d once been, a girl with feet and tucked legs and a body hunched over them, her head hanging and her long hair sweeping the stone.
My fingers curled against damp rock. I sucked in air.
Then Jesse was crouched beside me, an arm tight around my back, his head bent over mine. He might have been breathing harder than I was.
“You—” I gulped some more air. “You can command me?”
“I didn’t want to have to.”
“That is completely unfair!”
“Aye.”
He pulled me to my feet and embraced me fully, something he’d never done before. I allowed myself to sink into the heat of his body for a minute, then lifted my head from his chest, blinking. The cavern seemed more sparkly. Everything looked sparklier and brighter. Colder. On the ground a few feet away lay a familiar pile of clothing in a very familiar layout, and I was wearing none of it.
Perhaps he noticed, too. Perhaps he just read the subtle signals of my body, the sudden rigidity of my spine, because he stepped back and began to shrug out of his peacoat.
“Here.” He draped it over me. “How are you? How do you feel?”
“Naked,” I grumbled. “You can command me?”
His hands tightened upon my shoulders. “Eleanore.” When my eyes lifted to his, Jesse broke into a grin. And right then I glimpsed again the ineffably divine fire that burned within this child of the stars; it was there, right there behind the summer beauty of his gaze. All the brightness around me, all the sparkles, the heat and cold and the rising joy that welled through me so sharply it almost hurt: all reflections of him.
“You did it,” he said. “You went to smoke.”
I touched a hand to his cheek, awed. “Crikey. I did.”