reached her. Her face drained of color, and she swayed and braced a hand against the mantelpiece for support. It wasn’t much, but he’d done it, he’d penetrated that stone-cold façade, he’d broken through to some deeper heart of her, he knew it. It was as gratifying as a fresh rush of morphine, and now the words spilled free and he couldn’t stop them if he tried.
“She heard voices, she said. Odd songs no one else could hear. Told my father there was something inside her, another person or something, and it kept telling her to jump. She’d tried it twice before, but Reggie had managed to stop her, so this time she waited until dark. Her body wasn’t found until the next afternoon, when finally they thought to search the grotto.” The bitter smile stretched across his face again. “So. At least I know I won’t lose my cunning in the end.”
“Armand,” Eleanore said, making his name a terrible sound, a sound so lovely and sweet and awful it pierced him to the core.
He sealed his lips together. He stood in place without moving, glaring at her, unwilling to surrender more of himself to any part of her.
“Armand,” she repeated, and lowered her arm. “Do you hear songs?”
“No,” he answered instantly, because he was cunning and he always knew the right thing to say, but this time it didn’t work. His glancing blow to her heart had opened her to him, or him to her, and he realized right then that not only had he broken her enough to see into her, but that she could see into him.
And she didn’t believe him.
Lies, rumors, masks; he was composed of little else. She saw it now.
He did the only thing he could. Mandy walked away, out of the study, back into the celebration of his blessed brother’s life.
He did not seek out Eleanore again.
Chapter 20
Third letter from Rue, dated November 17, 1809
Darling girl,
Time has stolen too much from me. Time has ensured we shall never again meet face-to-face. But there are a few things more I must share with you before I Travel On.
The first is a Word.
How strange it seems to me now, but there was an era when even penning this Word would summon grievous punishment from our tribal Council. We dared not write it, we dared not speak it. We lived it only in whispers. In public locations it seemed best not even to think it, lest some Sighted human steal it from our very minds.
But the Council is gone now, all those hoary old men finally Turned to dust. I confess I find no small satisfaction in surviving them. Little difference their laws ever made to me. I was always too bold for their liking. And so I tell my friend who is my eyes and useful hands in these hard, blind years to inscribe the following letters on this page: Drákon.
That is who we are. That is what we are. And your blood, my child, ensures that no matter how many of us are gone now, done in by humans or our own foolish devices, we are not quite extinct.
Not damned quite.
I’ve hidden you well. I hid your entire line from the Council and the tribe, and of all my many notorious accomplishments—I am not so modest as to deny they are many—the secret of your life and that of your progenitors is my greatest.
They never guessed where Kit and I went, or why. They never thought beyond Europe, certainly not so far as a land of warlords and rice fields and misted mountains.
A land where dragons are worshipped instead of butchered. A place where our boy, your great-grandfather, could show his true face to the sun and fly free.
Those dead old Councilmen, those iron-fisted bastards who strangled us nigh to death with their Rules. How I wish I could gloat in their faces.
You are my final vengeance upon them, and my final grace. You hold all my hopes now, as well as my heart.
All my love,
—Rue
Chapter 21
How did the rest of the evening play out? I’ve no idea. I exited the study after Armand in a daze, in a heart-thumping confusion of shock and incredulity. Even though I’d followed him nearly right away, I didn’t see him anywhere, not in the hallway, not in the ballroom or the gardens after that.
I do remember some of it. I remember the duke on a graveled path with torchlight in his hair, watching me, surrounded by his